Part 16

Dr. Frank Richardson England, an alumnus of Bishop’s College of Montreal and now well known as a practical educator as well as a successful practitioner, was born August 21, 1862, at Cowansville, province of Quebec, and is the eldest son of Francis and Jane (Ruiter) England, of Dunham, Quebec. The family comes of United Empire Loyalist stock and the parents are now deceased.

While Dr. England acquired his early education at Waterloo, he pursued his medical course at Bishop’s College in Montreal, from which he was graduated with the class of 1885, the degrees of M. D. and C. M. being then conferred upon him, and obtaining the Wood and Nelson gold medals. He was professor of diseases of children at Bishop’s College in 1887 and professor of surgery in the same institution in 1894. In 1905 he was graduated at McGill College (ad eund). The profession has honored him with official distinction, for in 1906 he was chosen president of the Montreal Medico-Chirurgical Society and the following year was vice president of the Canadian Medical Association. He is a governor and fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He is now, 1914, surgeon of the Western Hospital at Montreal and in his surgical practice displays comprehensive knowledge of anatomy, of the component parts of the human body and of the onslaughts made upon it by disease or left to it as a legacy by progenitors. He is cool and collected at critical moments and combines strength with tenderness, seeking ever the ultimate good of patient and of profession.

Dr. England was married twice. In 1887 he wedded Carrie Ann, youngest daughter of the late R. L. Galer, of Dunham. Following her death Dr. England married Octavia Grace Ritchie, B. A., M. D., of Montreal, the youngest daughter of the late Thomas W. Ritchie, Q. C. She was born in Montreal and became a student in McGill University, winning the degree of Bachelor of Arts, together with first class honors in natural science in 1883. She was afterward graduated from Bishop’s College, Lennoxville, Quebec, with the degree of M. D. and C. M. in 1891. She was one of the first class of ladies to graduate from McGill and the first woman to receive a medical degree in the province of Quebec. Mrs. England took a scholarship at Kingston and later pursued a post-graduate course at Vienna, Austria. She has done much to arouse public feeling in favor of the medical education of women in Quebec and was secretary of the organization called the Donalda Students to procure this concession. She is now a governor of the Western Hospital and was assistant gynecologist there from 1894 until 1896. She has lectured on medical subjects before the Women’s Club and the Young Women’s Christian Association. She is a member of the Montreal Medico-Chirurgical Society and was a delegate to the Quinquennial Congress of the National Council of Women at Toronto in 1909. She is president of the local council of the National Council of Women. In 1897 she became the wife of Dr. Frank Richardson England of Montreal. Both continue actively in the practice of the profession, and each has a large clientage, indicating the prominence to which they have attained.

WILLIAM JOHN WHITE.

William John White, whose authorship no less than his practice has gained him eminence and success, is regarded as one of the foremost representatives of the Montreal bar. Contemporaneous writers pronounce upon him high encomiums for his contributions to legal as well as to general literature. A native of Peterboro, Ontario, he was born January 29, 1861, a son of the late Richard White, D. C. L., and Jean (Riddel) White. After completing his studies in the Montreal high school he entered McGill University, where he pursued a classical and legal course, winning the B. A. degree in 1881, the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law in 1882, while in 1885 the Master of Arts degree was conferred upon him and in 1902 that of Doctor of Civil Law. He completed his legal studies at the Sorbonne in Paris and in 1883 entered upon the active work of the profession as an advocate. He has since successfully practiced and was created king’s counsel in 1899. He is now senior partner of the law firm of White & Buchanan and is recognized as one of the leaders of the Montreal bar. In 1901 he was made batonnier. His law practice has been of an important as well as of an extensive character. He was retained as counsel by the Mexican government in the boundary dispute between the United States and Mexico in 1911. His high standing in his profession and his thorough understanding of vital and significant governmental problems have brought him into prominence in various international affairs. He served as a member of the board of investigation appointed by the minister of labor in the United Shoe Machinery case, and his opinions have been sought on various questions of far-reaching importance. He represented the Montreal bar at the annual meeting of the New York State Bar Association at Albany in 1902 and at the Illinois State Bar Association in 1906, and on the latter occasion read a paper on The Law of Quebec. He is the author of a treatise on Canadian Company Law which was published in 1901.

Aside from his profession Mr. White has been connected with several business enterprises and public projects of importance. In 1911 he became one of the directors of the Sherwin-Williams Company of Canada, and from 1906 to 1908 he served as alderman of the city. He is a director and was elected the vice president of the new Technical School of Montreal. He was one of the founders of the Society of Historical Studies and was chosen to the presidency of that organization for 1891-2. He was likewise one of the organizers of the Society of Canadian Literature and of the Canadian branch of the American Folk Lore Society. From 1889 until 1891 he published a monthly magazine known as Canadiana and Dr. John Reade termed him “A writer of taste and force,” while the Montreal Witness spoke of him as “A thoroughly capable man.” Mr. White belongs to a number of the leading clubs, including the St. James, University, Outremont Golf and the Montreal Jockey Clubs of Montreal; the Rideau Club of Ottawa; the Quebec Garrison Club; and the Constitutional Club of London, England. It is in his law practice, however, that he has won the recognition that has placed him in the present enviable position which he occupies. He has ever in his practice been faithful to his clients, fair to his adversaries and candid to the court. In many cases with which he has been connected he has exhibited the possession of every faculty of which a lawyer may be proud--skill in presentation of his own evidence, extraordinary ability in cross examination, strong grasp of every feature of the case, power to secure favorable rulings from the judge, unusual familiarity with human nature and untiring industry. These qualities have gained him notable success in law practice.

ROBERT REFORD.

At the time of his death half a century was drawing to its close since the subject of this sketch, the late Robert Reford, first established a commercial connection with Montreal. The outstanding position which Mr. Reford occupied in the life of the city was the natural outcome of qualities which quickly bring men to be recognized as a source of strength to whatever spheres in which they may move. He was a man of very pronounced ability, tenaciousness of purpose, firmness of decision and of forceful character but by those who knew him best he will be remembered, chiefly for those high standards of honor which were his for the straightforwardness and uprightness of all his dealings with his fellowmen and for the strong sense of justice which throughout his long career he was so often called upon to exercise.

Robert Reford was born at Moylena, which for generations had been the family seat near Antrim, Ireland, in 1831 and was a lad of fourteen when in 1845 he came with his mother, three brothers and one sister to make his home in Canada. The family arrived at Quebec the night of the great fire when the lower town was almost completely destroyed. After a very brief stay in Montreal they settled in Toronto, where Mr. Reford completed his education. He was, however, still but a boy when he became engaged in business and, though he was indentured to work for his first employer for two years at a fixed salary, it is indicative of the great natural capacity which he possessed and of his steadiness and alertness in business, that at the end of the first year his salary was increased fivefold and again at the end of the second year that amount was doubled. In three years time, still barely on the threshold of manhood, Robert Reford had proved his ability to such an extent as to be offered a partnership with William Strachan in a wholesale and retail grocery business which the latter was about to open. This offer was accepted but the firm dissolved after a few years duration and Mr. Reford started a business on his own account, which he continued to conduct alone for several years, only taking Richard Dunbar as a partner when he acquired, by purchase, from William Ross, another large wholesale business of the same nature. The two businesses were run separately, one as Reford & Dunbar, the other in partnership with the late John Dillon, as Reford & Dillon, wholesale grocers and merchants. It would indeed have been strange if a man, imbued with the spirit of enterprise and courage, as was Mr. Reford to a very remarkable degree, had been content to remain without some wider scope for his abilities than that offered, even by a successful wholesale business. It was not long before he took the initial step which was to lead him so far along the path of that vast question of transportation.

Mr. Reford was one of the pioneer workers in this direction, entering the carrying trade, in the early ’60s. He amassed a considerable fortune during the forty odd years he was engaged in shipping pursuits but never did he lose sight of the fact that Canada’s interests as a whole are intimately and indivisibly bound up in every phase of the shipping industry, nor did he ever fail to consider and work towards the benefit of those wider interests of his adopted country.

The operation of vessels on the Great Lakes was the beginning of Mr. Reford’s shipping enterprises. In 1860 he equipped the schooner “Seagull” and sent her with a general cargo of Canadian produce to Port Natal, South Africa, thus being the first man to undertake direct shipping connection between Canada and that part of the world.

In 1865, associated with his old friend William Ross, the firm opened a branch in Montreal. This was the commencement of the present Montreal firm. The business was now assuming large trading proportions with Great Britain, the United States, China, Japan, the West Indies and other foreign countries; nevertheless it soon began to confine itself more strictly to ocean shipping. The firm became agents and part owners of the Thomson and Donaldson lines. When the story of the growth of Canada’s shipping comes to be written the name of Robert Reford will loom up largely on its pages. Mr. Dillon severed his connection with Mr. Reford in the shipping business in 1897 and it was then that the present company, the Robert Reford Co., Ltd., was incorporated, with very extensive steamship services of six different lines to many of the world’s principal ports and with branch offices established in Quebec, Toronto, St. John, New Brunswick, and Portland, Maine. Canada owes not a little to Mr. Reford for contributing so materially to the opening up of new markets for her produce along the east coast of Great Britain, and also for the building up of further valuable trade connections by giving direct shipping communication between Canada and the Mediterranean ports. Every aspect of the carrying trade had been studied by him with that thoroughness and regard for detail which characterized the man in everything he undertook. His opinions and advice on shipping and on transportation generally were appreciated as those of an expert, and sought after by people from all over the Dominion.

Apart from his shipping enterprises, which remained the main issue of his commercial life, the most important of his other business activities was his interest in the Mount Royal Milling and Manufacturing Company. Mr. Reford founded the company in 1882 for the milling of rice, with mills in Montreal and Victoria, British Columbia, and acted as its president up to the time of his death. He was also president for many years of the Charlemagne & Lac Ouareau Lumber Company, president of the York Lumber Company, president of the Crown Trust Company and vice president of the Labrador Company; and a director of the Bank of Toronto, of the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and of the Paton Manufacturing Company.

From 1901 to 1905 Mr. Reford was a member of the Montreal Board of Harbour Commissioners and in 1903 was a delegate to the fifth congress of the Chambers of Commerce of the Empire, but no doubt his chief public service was rendered first as a member and then as chairman of the Royal Commission on Transportation, 1904-1905. The work involved in this important commission necessitated its members visiting every Canadian port, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with a view to recommending all possible desirable improvements for the increase of and facilitating the transportation trade appertaining to the Dominion, both ocean and inland. The commission sent in an exhaustive report to the government in December, 1905, based on very thorough personal observations and study, together with the result of carefully gathered evidence of those residents in the different sections of Canada who were best fitted to judge. It strongly advocated the building of the Georgian Bay canal and the formation of national ports on the Atlantic and Pacific, the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. Further, it was urged that there should be a fast all-round-the-world British steamship service which would bind together more closely all portions of the empire, by taking advantage of the shorter ocean route which services between Canada and Europe, via Great Britain on the east, and Asia and the Orient on the west, could offer, if Halifax and Galway were used as the termini for the Atlantic coasts. Mr. Reford’s work on this commission was stupendous, but none of it was done in the light of the public eye. Few knew of the great personal sacrifices which it demanded and which were willingly made by this man of then seventy-four years. In fact all his life Mr. Reford avoided rather than sought any kind of prominence or recognition.

Many of Montreal’s educational and charitable institutions looked to him for guidance and help and whether the requests came to him for his advice, or for financial support, provided he was in sympathy with the object, to either his response was equally ready and generous. He was a governor of McGill University and was the first to respond to an appeal for aid by donating fifty thousand dollars towards a fund for the increase of salaries of the professional staff. In 1911 when the campaign for the general funds of the university was made, it found in him one of its leading spirits and most ardent supporters. Again he gave proof of his faith in the higher education of men’s minds as being an asset of immeasurable national value and set the inspiring example of a one hundred thousand dollars contribution.

Could we mention all the hospitals, homes for the aged poor and for little children, and in fact every kind of philanthropic institution which knew and enjoyed his generous help, the list would indeed be a long one and few such in Montreal omitted from it. Some of his largest donations were to the Montreal General Hospital of which he was a life governor and to which in recent years he gave thirty-five thousand dollars; to the Young Men’s Christian Association he gave ten thousand dollars, and a like sum to the Diocesan Theological College.

In manner the late Robert Reford was somewhat abrupt but this arose purely from that eagerness and energy which every move of the body seemed to betray, and not from any unkindly feeling. He was an exceptionally clear thinker, his mind worked with precision; his plans were made and carried out with unvarying promptitude and method which perhaps supply the key to his amazing capacity for the accomplishment of work. Self indulgence knew no place with him and to the end he adhered to his stern habits of life, granting himself but little respite and no holidays. From the age of twenty-two when he was made captain of No. 4 Company in the Queen’s Own Rifles his interest in civic affairs never waned. He fought untiringly for reforms, often with a lack of support which would have discouraged most men, but this North of Ireland man was not of such stuff. He was of the kind which the hand of Providence seems to have scattered far from their native shores, over the face of the British Empire to give it that salt, without which it could have no savor.

Mr. Reford was twice married; first to Miss Margaret McCord, daughter of A. T. McCord, chamberlain and treasurer of the city of Toronto, who died within a year after the marriage. In 1866 he married Miss Katherine S. Drummond, daughter of Andrew Drummond of Stirling, Scotland. Mrs. Reford survives him, as do five of his children, they being: Robert Wilson Reford, president of the Robert Reford Co., Ltd.; A. D. Reford; L. L. Reford, M. D.; Mrs. H. B. MacDougall; and Miss Kate Reford.

Mr. Reford was a member of St. George’s church and a stanch believer in the power of the church to be a light unto the lives of men. In all things he acted as he believed and so the community is bereft of a personality of strength, of courage and of truth.

MORRIS STANSFELD BLAIKLOCK.

Morris Stansfeld Blaiklock entered the service of the Grand Trunk Railway over thirty years ago and since 1907 has held the position of engineer of maintenance and survey in connection with this road. He is a son of the late Frederick William Blaiklock, who died in 1900, and Elizabeth (Whittaker) Blaiklock, who died in 1889. The father was public land surveyor and head of the Cadastral Bureau of Montreal. The family has long been prominent in engineering circles, the grandfather of our subject, Captain Blaiklock, having been one of the Royal Engineers. A brother of our subject was the late Major W. F. Blaiklock, of the Royal Scots. The family is of English origin.

Morris S. Blaiklock was born in the city of Quebec on the 19th of July, 1859. He pursued his early education in a private school in Quebec and upon the removal of the parents to Montreal in 1870 attended the high school in this city, rounding out his course by receiving private tuition. He then studied architecture for three years and in 1879 entered the employ of the Grand Trunk Railway as assistant engineer, remaining in that position until 1889, when he became resident engineer for the St. Clair Tunnel Company in connection with the same road, holding this office until 1892. In that year he was promoted to the position of inspector, continuing as such until 1897, when he became engineer of the eastern division of the Grand Trunk Railway. In 1902 he was appointed superintendent of the eastern division and in 1907 engineer of maintenance and survey for the system. He has held this latter office ever since. He is one of the foremost men in his line, basing his success upon native ability, a vast experience and executive force of rare quality.

On November 12, 1889, Mr. Blaiklock married Miss Mary Elizabeth Tunstall, eldest daughter of the late Gabriel C. Tunstall, of Ste. Anne de Bellevue, province of Quebec. Mr. and Mrs. Blaiklock have two children, Jessie B. and Stansfeld. The family residence is at No. 405 Mackay Street, Montreal. Mr. Blaiklock is a member of the Church of St. James the Apostle (Episcopalian). Politically he is an independent conservative.

ALEXANDER MICHAUD.

Progressive citizenship in the twentieth century finds a prominent exemplar in Alexander Michaud, mayor of the city of Maisonneuve, who is an active factor in public affairs and business life of the city. His clear insight, his keen sagacity and his public spirit have made his influence a potent factor in bringing about not only Canada’s commercial progress, but also her moral uplift. He might be termed a practical idealist, for, while he strives for the betterment of many civic and commercial conditions, the methods which he employs take cognizance of present day situations and opportunities and present none of the impractical views of the dreamer. In a word, he is a man of action rather than of theory.

Mr. Michaud is a representative of one of the old French families of Quebec, while the maternal line is of an unadulterated Irish strain. He was born January 27, 1868, at Back River, Quebec, a son of J. B. and Norah (Connolly) Michaud. His education was acquired at the Christian Brothers school and in the Plateau Academy of Montreal. In 1881 he entered the employ of his father, who was a well known miller and flour merchant, remaining with him until 1885. During that period Alexander Michaud, while acting principally in a clerical capacity, also acquired a good general knowledge of the business in its various departments. In 1885 he accepted a position with A. L. Hurtubise & Company, grain merchants of Montreal, with whom he remained for several years in the capacity of bookkeeper and confidential clerk. His ability gained him recognition, followed by promotion, and at the time he resigned his position in that house he was manager of the business.

It was then that Mr. Michaud organized the firm of Michaud Brothers & Company, which soon took a foremost position among the leading wholesale grain and export firms of Montreal. Its existence covered a period of about fifteen years and an extensive business was conducted, constituting another forward step in the career of Alexander Michaud. However, recognizing the fact that the field of real-estate activity and land speculation in Montreal afforded great opportunity for profitable investment, he withdrew from active connection with the grain trade and entered the real-estate business. It is unusual for a man who has been so long identified with one line of business to make so radical a change, but the subsequent success of Mr. Michaud is indicative of his splendid business foresight and capability. The success that he has achieved in the real-estate business has been substantial, is well deserved and represents methods that have lent dignity to the undertaking. There are few, if any, who have more intimate or comprehensive knowledge of realty values or whose judgment is more to be relied upon and these facts have served to bring him an extensive and desirable clientage.

In connection with his public career a Montreal paper has said: “Perhaps the field in which Mr. Michaud was best known to the citizens of Montreal is political. He was an alderman and was president of the finance committee of Maisonneuve from 1905 to 1909 and was elected mayor by acclamation three times in succession. During this time Maisonneuve has made those wonderful strides in growth which have been the admiration of the entire country and have placed herself on a footing which is attracting the attention of the entire world. The part played in this great advance in manufacturing and commerce by the city is not a little due to the energy and foresight of her mayor, who has brought his business acumen and farsighted commercial judgment into play in running the civic side of affairs, the same as he did as a merchant or miller. Mr. Michaud prefers to talk about Maisonneuve rather than about himself, about the opportunities there are there for capital, the splendid locations for factories and the many other inducements which have made the city one of the leaders in commercial advancement during the past five years. It is an interesting subject and more Aladdinlike than Africa diamond mines or the gold strewn coasts of Alaska.” It may be mentioned here that Maisonneuve, though surrounded by the city of Montreal, is an entirely separate city, having its own autonomy.