Part 6

The memorial service read in the American Presbyterian church to which previous allusion has been made, was one of the most impressive ever held within the borders of Canada and the tributes to Mr. Hays on that occasion attested how high was the position which he held in the regard of business colleagues, of eminent educators, ministers and others. Principal Peterson of McGill University said in part: “We have done well to come together in this solemn manner, not to meet in a useless parade of grief and sorrow, but to pay a sincere tribute to the worth of one who has gone to his last reward and to express our sympathy to those who suffer the loss of one so dear, and who have scarcely yet survived the shock of their sudden bereavement. Our men died like heroes--in that last dread extremity they bore themselves nobly and well.

“And I doubt not that foremost in fortitude was that great-hearted man who today is mourned throughout the world, Charles M. Hays, who was then eagerly returning to take his controlling part in those great enterprises with which his name will always be associated, and no doubt looking forward with joy to returning to his accustomed work and surroundings here. The vast transportation system over which he so well presided, and to which he gave fresh life, has just paid him well earned tribute in those moments of organized, concerted, silence stretching across this continent--the awed hush of reverent respect and tender sympathy from every section of the railway service and from every rank and class in the community at large. It was a moving incident, but only a slight indication of the esteem in which he was held everywhere, and of the loss which the railways and the people have sustained.

“Mr. Hays came to Montreal in 1896, shortly after I came here, and since then it has been my privilege to know him well, and to meet him frequently in university and other affairs. Only a short time before Mr. Hays left for Europe I had a walk with him, when he talked to me of his plans for the future, and discussed university and other educational matters, with the grave and serious hope for future advancement which marked his thought. Little then did either of us think it possible that so terrible a disaster should cut short his vigorous and useful career. He was a real leader of men, a true captain of industry, carrying a huge burden of work and responsibility on his shoulders, and always carrying it as a strong Christian man should. We shall go forth from this solemn service to our customary duties, graver and sadder men. It may be that we shall not have the melancholy duty of following to the grave the remains of this man whose work interlinked a vast continent. He has found his grave in the ocean, and it may be literally said of him that the whole world is his tomb. Certainly his memory will not soon die; for long will the memory live of this impressive memorial of his sad fate and the sorrow of his stricken family. And when the far-reaching plans for which he stood sponsor are realized we shall often go back in thought to what this city, this dominion and the empire at large owes to the ability, the integrity and dauntless energy of Charles Melville Hays.”

One of the glowing and well deserved tributes paid to the memory of Charles Melville Hays was spoken by Rev. T. S. McWilliams. D. D., of Cleveland, Ohio, who said: “The man whose loss we mourn today, and whose memory we would honor was not merely a national, he was an international figure. The great enterprise of which he was at the head, and, to an unusual degree the guiding and animating spirit, was not merely a national, but an international railway. It seems fitting therefore that one from the United States should have a small part in this memorial service. The humble tribute which I bring is not merely that of a former pastor--as such I was privileged to say a few words on Sunday last. Nor is my tribute that of a personal friend--as such my place would not be here in the pulpit, but in position with the mourners, amongst those who most deeply and genuinely feel a sense of personal loss. Mine is the privilege today of bringing a neighboring nation’s tribute, if you will; of assuring you that many of the American people share with you the sorrow and sense of loss which you feel so keenly. In the United States the late Charles M. Hays was born, and there he spent the larger part of his life. Of our country he remained a citizen to the last. Yet there were few men more genuinely devoted to the interests of Canada or more intelligently attached to British institutions than he. Few, if any, in Canada saw with clearer vision the great possibilities of the future of your country and believed more intensely in the great destinies of Canada.

“To speak of Mr. Hays’ preeminent ability as a railway man is scarcely necessary. We have only to look around to see the monuments to his genius. There are two immense office buildings that ornament your city; there is that wonderful steel bridge over Niagara’s gorge and the great station at Ottawa. There is the rejuvenated and vastly extended Grand Trunk Railway. And, perhaps greatest of all, there is the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, destined at no distant date to span this continent, making accessible natural resources of incalculable value, and bringing into practical part of the national progress vast regions at present inaccessible to the agriculturist. These are great enterprises which have attracted the admiring attention of the world and stimulated rival systems to greater activity, while bringing millions in money to your land, and, what means much more to you, an unprecedented tide of immigration. It is but just to say that such enterprises as these have been no small factor in the building up of that great progress and prosperity which characterizes Canada at the present time.

“The credit of such achievements is, of course, to be shared with Mr. Hays’ earnest colaborers--and he would have been the first to give them such credit--but to Mr. Hays is certainly due the credit of the initiative. For a man at the early age of thirty-eight years to rise from the bottom of the ladder to the presidency of such a railway system as the Wabash, and later to be selected as president of the Grand Trunk, charged with its rehabilitation, and to so conduct its affairs that after only five years its securities had enhanced in value by eighty-six millions of dollars; to be called to the presidency of the Southern Pacific, and then called back again to the Grand Trunk to consummate yet vaster plans--these are proofs positive and sufficient of his preeminent railway genius. The tribute of silence in which we a few minutes ago reverently joined--a silence in which we were joined by that great army of employes from ocean to ocean--was not the silence of obedience to an enforced order. It was the genuine heart-felt tribute of men of all ranks to a leader whom they had loved and lost.

“The contagion of his example spread through every part of that great system. Himself a hard and rapid worker his own example was a sufficient incentive to do away with indolence and incompetence. His presence anywhere on the system encouraged and thrilled to better work not by fear of the tyrant’s command to go, but they thrilled at the leader’s call to come.

“Mr. Hays was first, last and all the time a great railway man. But it would be unjust to speak merely of that. He possessed other qualities that impressed me even more than that. He was throughout his life a man of lofty and unbending principle. I personally know that his early ending of his connection with a great railway system, sacrificing a position to which was attached great honor and an immense salary, and his going out of that office, not knowing whither he went, was a wonderful example of the triumph of principle over what appeared to be personal interests. It stands as a proof of Mr. Hays’ unwillingness to be the tool of a designing genius no matter what that might seem to offer him in the way of personal remuneration. And in the great positions he held it was his constant endeavor to be just to all. It was his endeavor by day and his prayer by night to always carry an even balance between the employes of his company and those who had invested their living in it with even justice to both. Knowledge of this permeated the whole system, and brought a realization amongst the men that the main endeavor of the leader was not to get out of the employes as much as possible and give them in return as little as possible, but that they were really working with, not for, their president, in the interests of all.

“And he was a public-spirited man in many other spheres. That he was a generous friend of education is proven in that he was a governor of McGill University; that he was a benefactor to suffering humanity is shown by the hospitals of which he was a governor. But far more than these public positions were innumerable cases in which he proved himself a generous but unostentatious friend to the needy. And may I for a moment draw aside the sacred veil, and speak of his home life. As a father, husband, brother, comrade, to all in his household he was ever the genial, pure, high-minded Christian gentleman--the idol of his home, as he deserved to be. His religious influence was unmistakable and caused him inevitably to work for the right. I am confident that his deep religious sense of duty was at the bottom of much that we admire in his career--he was utterly honest, not because he believed it to be the best business policy, but because he had faith in the right; he was filled with genial optimism, not from blindness to the facts, but because he knew them.

“That such lives should be allowed to be interrupted by such disasters as that we now mourn is a problem which cannot be satisfactorily answered. It may be said that no man’s place is impossible to be filled. But Methodism has never found another John Wesley, and the Grand Trunk will look and wait for long before it finds another Charles Melville Hays.”

DOUGALL CUSHING.

One of the most able, successful and progressive of the younger generation of professional men in Montreal is Dougall Cushing, connected with important legal interests as a member of the firm of Barron & Cushing, notaries. He is a native son of the city, born May 3, 1886, his parents being Charles and Lily (Macaulay) Cushing. The family is of old American establishment, the great-grandfather of the subject of this review, Job Cushing, having been born in Massachusetts in 1765. The father was born in May, 1848, and he was for a number of years the senior member of the firm of Cushing & Barron and known as an able and reliable notary. He was in addition a director in the Sun Life Assurance Company, on the board of governors of the Young Men’s Christian Association and deacon in Calvary Congregational church, a man of wide interests, high standards and useful and important accomplishments. His death occurred September 30, 1910. He and his wife became the parents of seven children, R. Macaulay, Dougall of this review, Charles, Arthur, Eric, Geoffrey and Edith.

Dougall Cushing was reared in his parents’ home and acquired his preliminary education in the grammar and high schools of Montreal. He afterward attended McGill University, from which he was graduated B. A. in 1907 and B. C. L. in 1910. In the following year he established himself as a notary in his native city, associating himself with Robert H. Barron, his father’s former partner. The firm of Barron & Cushing is today, as it has been for many years past, one of the strongest of its kind in the city, for Dougall Cushing has followed closely in his father’s footsteps, and has proved himself brilliant, reliable and energetic in the conduct of his professional interests.

Mr. Cushing belongs to Phi Kappa Pi, which he joined in McGill University and is a member of the Seventeenth Regiment, Duke of York’s Royal Canadian Hussars. He is one of the popular and enterprising young men of Montreal and has already gained a creditable place in a profession in which his superior merit and ability will undoubtedly win for him ultimate distinction.

HON. SAMUEL GALE.

Hon. Samuel Gale, one of the ablest members of the legal profession in his day, and a very prominent citizen of Montreal, died in that city on Saturday, April 15, 1865. He was the son of a Mr. Gale who, born in Hampshire, England, came to America in 1770 as assistant paymaster to the forces. He married there a Miss Wells, of Brattleboro, and soon after left the army, and took up his residence in the colony of New York. During the Revolution he stood firmly by the old flag under which he had served, and was for some time imprisoned as a loyalist. After the Revolution, he came to reside in Canada, upon an estate granted to his wife’s father by the crown, as indemnification for the losses brought upon him as a loyalist in the Revolution. He was subsequently secretary to Governor Prescott, whom he accompanied to England, and there assisted to defend him from the attacks made upon his administration. While there he wrote an essay on Public Credit, addressed and submitted to Pitt. The following is the inscription on his tombstone at Farnham, in Shefford county:

“Here rests Samuel Gale, Esq., formerly acting deputy paymaster general of H. Majesty’s forces in the Southern Provinces, now the U. S. of America; subsequently Secretary to H. E. the Governor-in-chief of H. M. dominions in N. A.; Author of Essays on Public Credit, and other works; born at Kimpton Hants, England, October 14, 1748; died at Farnham, June 27, 1826.”

Samuel Gale of this review was born at St. Augustine, East Florida, in 1783. He was educated at Quebec, while his father was secretary, and came to study law at Montreal under Chief Justice Sewell, in 1802, having Chief Justice Rolland and Mr. Papineau as fellow students. Mr. Gale was admitted to the bar in 1808, and ere long secured a large practice. In 1815 he was appointed a magistrate in the Indian territories, and accompanied Lord Selkirk when he went to the northwest. Later, when Lord Dalhousie was attacked for his Canadian administration, Mr. Gale went home as bearer of memorials from the English-speaking Lower Canadians in the townships and elsewhere, defending his lordship’s conduct. In 1829, he became chairman of the quarter sessions, and in 1834 was raised to the bench to replace Mr. Justice Uniacke, who preferred to resign the seat on the bench to which he had just been appointed rather than come back to Montreal during the cholera, then raging here. Judge Gale retired from the bench in 1849, forced into retirement by continued ill health and the gradual coming on of the infirmities of old age.

He had married in 1839 a Miss Hawley, of St. Armand West, by whom he had three daughters. Mrs. Gale died in September, 1849. Of the daughters the only one now living is Anna R., widow of T. Sterry Hunt, of Montreal, who is mentioned elsewhere in this work; while of the other two, Agnes Logan married Andrew Stuart of Quebec, a son of Chief Justice Stuart and of a very prominent family in that city, and the third became the Baroness von Friesen, who died December 10, 1875, in Berlin, Germany.

Born of parents who had both suffered for their loyal adherence to the British Crown during the American Revolution, and educated in their views Mr. Gale was, as long as he busied himself in politics, a stanch conservative and defender of British unity and British supremacy. He wrote a series of letters to the Montreal Herald (in those days the organ of the stoutest conservatism) over the signature of “Nerva” which produced a strong impression on the public mind at that time; and in espousing the cause of Lord Dalhousie and upholding the old constitution (under the title constitutionalists taken by the conservatives of that day) against the advocates of democracy or responsible government, he was but consistently pursuing the course on which he first set out. While upon the bench he maintained in an elaborate and very able judgment the right of the Crown to establish martial law here in 1837, refusing to theorize about what abstract rights man had or ought to have, declaring simply and firmly what the law, as he read it, established the prerogative of the sovereign to be in a colony. Both as a lawyer and judge he won the respect of his confreres alike by his ability and learning.

For many years previous to his death he was deeply interested in the freedom of the slave. He could not speak with patience of any compromise with slavery and waxed indignant in denunciation of all who in any way aided, abetted, or even countenanced it. When the Anderson case was before the Upper Canada courts he was one of the most active among those who aroused agitation here. When the Prince of Wales visited this country he got up a congratulatory address from the colored people of Canada which, however, was not received, as the prince was desired by the Duke of Newcastle, not to recognize differences of race and creed wherever it could be helped.

Judge Gale was a man of high principle and ever bore an unblemished moral character. Once in his early career at the bar he was forced by the then prevailing customs of society to fight a duel. His antagonist was Sir James Stuart, who had quarreled with him in court and Mr. Gale was severely wounded. It was an event which, we believe, he profoundly regretted, and gladly saw the better day dawn when men ran no risk of forfeiting their position as gentlemen by refusing to shoot, or be shot at, in order to redress real or fancied insults. He was a scrupulously just man, most methodical and punctual in business matters. There were in his writings great care, and precision and clearness of language. In his letters, too, and even in signing his name, the same trait was observable. He often used to condemn the stupid custom of men who signed their names with a flourish, yet so illegibly that no one could read, but only guess at, the word intended. He was not ostentatious of his charities, yet they were not lacking. Some years before his demise he made a gift of land to Bishop’s College, Lennoxville, and during the last months of his life, when age and illness were day by day wearing him out, he found relief for his own distress in aiding to relieve that of the needy and afflicted.

With him passed away one more of those men, who link the creative past, in which were laid the foundations of our civilization, with the bustling present and of whom the generation of today knows naught; of men more proud and precise in their manners than we are; and of such rectitude and sense of honor, that we feel deeply the loss of the influence of their example. A loyal subject, a learned and upright judge, a kind, true, steadfast friend, was lost to the community in Judge Gale.

ROLLO CAMPBELL, M. D.

Dr. Rollo Campbell, of whom it was said that no man ever spoke ill, was the son of Dr. Francis W. Campbell and was born in Montreal on the 6th of June, 1864. His life record covered a comparatively brief span. He was educated under private tutors and in Bishop’s College, where he pursued his professional course, being graduated from that institution at Lennoxville, P. Q., with honors in the class of 1886, at which time the M. D. degree was conferred upon him. His early professional experience came to him as interne in the Western Hospital at Montreal, where he remained for a year, gaining the wide knowledge and training that only hospital practice can bring. He then went to Europe, pursuing his studies in London and in Edinburgh. Upon returning to his native land he located in Montreal for practice and it was not long before he had established an enviable reputation as a conscientious, capable physician of untiring energy, thoroughly devoted to his profession and ever ready to do a kindness to those in need of his services. He was especially interested in surgery and his researches along that line were broad and varied.

From the time of his graduation Dr. Campbell was on the teaching staff of Bishop’s College, first as demonstrator of anatomy, to which he was appointed in 1897, and later as professor of surgery. For many years he was on the consulting staff of the Montreal Dispensary and was one of the assistant surgeons of the Western Hospital, in which institution he was greatly interested. He was likewise an examiner for the New York Life Insurance Company.

A feature in his professional connections was his service as surgeon for seventeen years of the Fifth Royal Scots of Canada, in which regiment he was very popular. At one time he was president of Bishop’s Medical College Graduates’ Society and he was physician to several fraternal societies. He also belonged to the Montreal Medico-Chirurgical Society and along more strictly social lines he was connected with the Metropolitan Club, the Montreal Military Institute and the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association. Of the latter he was a life member and was captain of the Bicycle Club of that organization.

Dr. Campbell was married in Montreal in 1892 in St. Paul’s Presbyterian church to Miss Marion May Fletcher, a daughter of Henry Fletcher, who for thirty years was tide surveyor of the port of Montreal, and his wife, whose maiden name was Margaret Ann McInnes. Dr. and Mrs. Campbell became parents of two children: Gladys Agnes and Edith Margaret. The family circle was broken by the hand of death when on the 31st of May, 1904, Dr. Campbell passed away. Speaking of him at this time a fellow graduate of Bishop’s College said: “He was a fine fellow. I think I can safely say that I never heard anyone speak ill of him. He was kind and thoughtful and devoted himself to his work. In fact, I fear that he worked too hard on account of that conscientiousness which would not allow of his neglecting any seeming duty. He will be greatly missed, not only by his fellow practitioners, but by all who knew him and respected him.”