The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4). Dent John Charles
in October, 1873, he took his seat in the House of Commons at Ottawa. The Pacific Scandal disclosures followed, and Sir John A. Macdonald's Government made way for that of the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie. In the new Administration Mr. Laird accepted the portfolio of Minister of the Interior, and was sworn into office on the 7th of November. Upon returning to his constituents in Queen's County he was returned by acclamation. He was again returned by acclamation at the general election of 1874. He retained his office of Minister of the Interior until the 7th of October, 1876, when he was appointed by the Governor-General to the Lieutenant-Governorship of the North-West Territories. This position he has ever since filled with the best results to the Dominion. During his tenure of office as Minister of the Interior he carried several important measures through Parliament, and — in the summer of 1874 — effected an important Treaty with the Indians of the North-West, whereby he secured to the Crown the possession of a tract of 75,500 square miles in extent, and thus guaranteed the peaceable possession of a large portion of the route of the Canada Pacific Railway and its accompanying telegraph lines.
In 1864 Mr. Laird married Mary Louisa, second daughter of the late Mr. Thomas Owen, who was for many years Postmaster-General of Prince Edward Island. An elder brother of the Lieutenant-Governor, the Hon. Alexander Laird, held office in the late Local Government of Prince Edward Island, and at present represents the Second District of Prince, in the Local Assembly.
THE HON. CHARLES E. B. DE BOUCHERVILLE
The Bouchers and De Bouchervilles for over two hundred years have played no unimportant part in the history of Canada. Lieutenant-General Pierre Boucher, Sieur de Grobois, Governor of Three Rivers in 1653, the founder of the Seigniory of Boucherville, and a man of great influence in his day, was one of the most noted members of the family. The late Hon. P. Boucher de Boucherville, for many years a Legislative Councillor of Lower Canada, was the father of the subject of this sketch, who was born at Boucherville, Province of Quebec, in 1820. He was educated at St. Sulpice College, Montreal. He subsequently went to Paris, pursued his studies in the medical profession there, and graduated with high honours. He has been married twice, first to Miss Susanne Morrogh, daughter of Mr. R. L. Morrogh, Advocate, of Montreal; and after her death, to Miss C. Luissier, of Varennes. In 1861 he was elected to the House of Assembly for the county of Chambly. He continued to represent this constituency until 1867, when he entered the Legislative Council, and became a member of Mr. Chauveau's Ministry, with the office of Speaker of the Council, which position he held until February, 1873. On the reconstruction of the Cabinet, September 22nd, 1874, he was entrusted with the formation of a Ministry. This duty he accomplished successfully, taking for himself the portfolio of Secretary and Registrar, and Minister of Public Instruction. On the 27th January, 1876, he changed his portfolio for that of Agriculture and Public Works. In February, 1879, he was called to the Senate, an honour which he accepted without resigning his seat in the Legislative Council.
The De Boucherville Ministry remained in power until the 4th of March, 1878, when it was summarily dismissed by the Hon. Luc Letellier de St. Just, Lieutenant-Governor of the Province, for reasons which appeared to him to be just. The facts with reference to this matter have been detailed in the sketch of the life of Mr. Letellier, contained in the first volume of this work. On the refusal of Mr. De Boucherville to name a successor, Mr. Letellier called in the Hon. Henri Gustave Joly of Lotbinière, and invited him to form a Ministry. In October, 1879, the ex-Premier and his friends succeeded in defeating the Liberal Government. A Conservative Ministry was formed, in whose councils, however, Mr. De Boucherville has taken no part, though his efforts to drive from power the Liberal Administration were conspicuously displayed in the Upper Chamber of the Province. He is a good speaker, precise, moderate and adroit. He is skilful in defence and equally skilful in attack. His administrative capacity is considerable, and the duties of the several offices which he has held at various intervals, have been ably and industriously performed.
THE REV. SAMUEL NELLES, D.D., LL.D.,
Dr. Nelles's life, like that of most men of purely scholastic pursuits, has been comparatively uneventful, and does not form a very fruitful field for biographical purposes. It has, however, been an eminently useful one, and has been attended with results most beneficial to the educational establishment with which his name has long been associated, and over which he has presided for a continuous period of thirty years. He is of German descent, on both the paternal and maternal sides. His paternal grandparents emigrated from Germany to the State of New York sometime during the last century, and settled in the historic valley of the Mohawk, where some of their descendants still reside. There Dr. Nelles's father, the late Mr. William Nelles, was born, and there he passed the early years of his life. He married Miss Mary Hardy, who was also of German stock on the mother's side, and was born in the State of Pennsylvania. By this lady he had a numerous family, the eldest son being the subject of this sketch. The parents emigrated from New York State to Upper Canada soon after the close of the War of 1812-15, and devoted themselves to farming pursuits. The Doctor was born at the family homestead, in the quiet little village of Mount Pleasant — known to the Post Office Department as Mohawk — in what is now the township of Brantford, in the county of Brant, about five miles south-west of the present city of Brantford, on the 17th of October, 1823. At the present day, the schools of Mount Pleasant will bear comparison with those of many places of much larger population; but fifty years ago, when young Samuel Nelles was in attendance there, they were like most other schools in the rural districts of Upper Canada — that is to say, they afforded no facilities for anything beyond a very rudimentary educational training. Such as they were, however, they furnished the only means of instruction at his command until he had entered upon his seventeenth year. Previous to that time he had lived at home, attending school and assisting his father in farm work. He had, however, displayed great fondness for study, and had, by dint of his natural ability and steady application, made greater progress than could have been made by any boy who was not possessed by an ardent thirst for knowledge. His parents accordingly resolved that he should have an opportunity of following out the natural bent of his mind. In 1839 he was placed at Lewiston Academy, in the State of New York, where he spent an industrious year, and where he had for a tutor the brilliant, witty and humorous John Godfrey Saxe. Mr. Saxe was not then known to the world as a poet, but he was an accomplished philologist, and was reading for the Bar. He had just graduated at Middlebury College, Vermont, and was teaching belles-lettres in the Lewiston Academy contemporaneously with the prosecution of his legal studies. In October, 1840, young Nelles transferred himself to an academy at Fredonia, in Chautauqua county, N.Y., where he remained ten months. In the following October (1841) he entered the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, at Lima, N.Y., where he devoted his time chiefly to Classics, Mathematics, English Literature and Criticism. Having spent a profitable year at Lima, he entered Victoria College, Cobourg — which was then under the Presidency of the Rev. Egerton Ryerson — in the autumn of 1842. He was one of the first two matriculated students at the institution, which had just been incorporated as a University. After an Arts course of two years at Victoria College, and a year spent in study at home, he attended for some time at the University of Middletown, Connecticut, where he graduated as B.A. in 1846. He then spent a year as a teacher in Canada, and took charge of the Newburgh Academy, in the county of Lennox. In June, 1847, he entered the ministry of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, and was placed in charge of a congregation at Port Hope, where he remained for a year. He was then transferred to the old Adelaide Street Church, Toronto, where he laboured for two years. Thence he was transferred to London, but had only resided there about three months when, in the month of September, 1850, he was appointed President of Victoria College. This important and responsible position he has held ever since.
At the time of his taking office, the institution was by no means in a flourishing condition. It was carried on under circumstances of great difficulty and embarrassment, and had a competent administrator not been found to take charge of it, its future would have been very problematical. An improvement in its condition, however, was perceptible from the time when Mr. Nelles took the management. It has continued to prosper ever since, and has long ago taken rank among the most noteworthy educational institutions in the Dominion. At the time of Professor Nelles's appointment there was only a single Faculty — Arts — and the attendance was very small. The teachers