A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time. Various
Franco-German war, he was elected president of the German societies, and as such he delivered on May 2nd, 1871, in front of the Court House, to an audience of several thousands, the Peace Jubilee address; and subsequently at the town of Waterloo, on the occasion of the first “German Saenger Fest” in Ontario, being held there, he delivered to an overcrowded house at the Agricultural Hall, the address in German and also in English. The old Alien Act requiring a residence of seven years before a foreigner could become a naturalized subject, was felt by many Germans to be too long a period of probation, especially since it only required five years’ residence in the United States to become a citizen there. Accordingly Mr. Klotz agitated the matter through the medium of the public press, and by letters to members of Parliament and to the government. In this he was ably assisted by other Germans, and their united efforts were crowned with success, the seven years being first reduced to five, and later to three years’ residence. An attempt was made by him to induce the British government to extend the privileges of a person naturalized in Canada, over the whole British empire; but in this attempt he failed, although his arguments upon that subject had been kindly forwarded to the British government, by His Excellency the Governor-General. It appeared that the reasons for refusal were not on account of Canada, but of such of the numerous British possessions which still number among its inhabitants a large body of semi-civilized peoples, through whom serious difficulties might arise, if such colonies were also to apply and obtain the like privileges which were asked for Canada. Among the Masonic fraternity, the name of Otto Klotz has become a household word. He became a member of the same in 1846, and has ever since been an active and energetic worker of the Mystic tie. He is an old member of the Grand Lodge and served without interruption as a member of the Board of General Purposes since 1864. He made the subject of Benevolence his special study, and the present system of distributing aid, and of regulating grants is his work; in acknowledgment of which, the Grand Lodge presented him in 1873 with a handsome testimonial. He continued his noble work with unabated energy, adding from time to time improvements suggested by experience, and in 1885, after twenty-one consecutive years as chairman of the Committee on Benevolence, the Grand Lodge conferred upon him the highest honour, by unanimously electing him a Past Grand Master, and voting for the purchase of a handsome and costly Grand Master’s regalia, which, with an elaborate address beautifully engraved, were presented to him at a later day at his mother lodge, the old Barton, No. 6, in the city of Hamilton, in presence of one of the largest gatherings of the fraternity ever assembled there. Besides this great honour conferred upon him, and the many fraternal greetings and tributes paid him on that occasion by the brethren assembled, he had the additional pleasure of the presence of three of his sons, two of whom as Past Masters of Preston lodge, and the youngest as Master of the Lodge of Strict Observance, in Hamilton; and the gratification of a most cordial and fraternal reception of them by the brethren assembled, as worthy sons of a worthy father. The family of Mr. Klotz and his good wife consists of four sons and two daughters, of whom three sons and one daughter are married and have families, while the eldest son and youngest daughter have remained single. They are all living in comfortable circumstances, highly respected by all who know them, and the just pride of their aged parents. A family gathering which occurs once a year is always accompanied by those genuine pleasures which are in store for a happy family in which strife and bickerings are unknown quantities. At one of these gatherings the unanimous wish of Mr. Klotz’s children was expressed that he should retire from business, and spend with his good wife the remaining years of his life in rest and comfort. Arrangements were made accordingly, and in 1881, he retired from business, since which time he has been living on his income, with his wife and unmarried daughter in a commodious dwelling, enjoying that repose and comfort which is the just reward of honest industry.
Waddell, John, M.D. The late Dr. Waddell, of St. John, New Brunswick, was the son of the Rev. John Waddell, a native of Shotts, Scotland. The latter was educated at Glasgow, and came to Nova Scotia in 1797, and became pastor of the Presbyterian church of Truro. He was married in 1802 to a daughter of Jotham Blanchard (a loyalist from Massachusetts, and a colonel in one of the loyalist regiments). The Rev. Mr. Waddell officiated on the occasion of the opening of the old St. Andrew’s Kirk, in St. John, N.B. (destroyed by the great fire), having delivered the first sermon in the church in which his son, the subject of this sketch, fifty years afterwards became a prominent and influential elder. Dr. Waddell was born in Truro, Nova Scotia, on the 17th of March, 1810. When quite a boy, his mother died. After attending the Grammar school at Truro, kept by Mr. James Irving, he entered the Pictou Academy, under the presidency of Dr. McCulloch (the able Biblical controversialist, whose discussions with Bishop Burke, of Halifax, made his name famous throughout Nova Scotia). After leaving the academy, he went into mercantile business in his native town, and so continued until the autumn of 1833, when he commenced the study of medicine under Dr. Lynds. He next proceeded to Glasgow, Scotland, where he pursued his studies with untiring assiduity, and received his diploma, October 18th, 1839, from the Royal College of Surgeons, London. He then went to Paris, and continued there two years, attending the medical lectures given by some of the most scientific men of the French capital. On his return to Nova Scotia, in 1840, he commenced the practice of medicine in Truro. The same year he married Susan, the only daughter of his first medical teacher, Dr. Lynds. The following year she died. Five years afterwards he married Jane Walker Blanchard, daughter of Edward Blanchard, of Truro. In 1849, Dr. Waddell was appointed by His Excellency, Sir Edmund Head, to the situation of medical superintendent of the New Brunswick Lunatic Asylum, a position whose arduous and multifarious duties he discharged with signal success, until his retirement in the spring of 1876, a period of twenty-seven years. When he took charge of the asylum, at the age of thirty-nine, he was the very personification of vigorous health. He was tall and finely proportioned. Humanly speaking there was in him the promise of the attainment of a life of four score years and more. He sprang from a long-lived race. His step was elastic and his form erect; his mind was buoyant and full of love for the work he had but just undertaken. By his kind and gentlemanly manner, he was singularly capable of dealing with those unfortunates who required so much of paternal care and solicitude. And yet, with this urbanity and goodness, there was firmness of character, so much required by the rules of discipline, which never failed to exact obedience, but it was the obedience of a child to a parent. When Dr. Waddell assumed the duties of his office, there were but eighty patients in the establishment, which number gradually increased until the figures reached, at the time of his retirement, three hundred, besides about fifty domestics. With every successive year, from 1849, there was a steady increase of work—work of the most sorrowful description—and with it a corresponding amount of care, anxiety and responsibility. And yet, Dr. Waddell worked on, day after day, in the same unwearied round for twenty-seven years, devoting the flower of his days, his vigour, his manhood to a task which led ultimately to the destruction of a once powerful constitution. At the earnest request of his family—whose members had always been closely knit and compacted together by the most tender cords of affection—he retired from the asylum in the spring of 1876, under the expectation that with rest and freedom from care and anxiety, he would be enabled to take a new lease of life. But instead of that repose for which retirement was sought, it was found that a change from an active to a passive life was more than his shattered constitution could withstand. The day he laid down his staff and turned his back upon the asylum he loved so well and served so faithfully, that day Dr. Waddell’s work upon earth was ended. Bowed down with the infirmities of a premature old age, he lingered till August 29th, 1878, when he passed away at the age of sixty-eight. Probably no man in the province of New Brunswick was better or more generally known than Dr. Waddell, and there are few whose name and works will be held in more grateful remembrance by its inhabitants. His only surviving child, Susan Lynds (by his second marriage), was married August 30th, 1881, to the Rev. Lorenzo Gorham Stevens, rector of St. Luke’s Church, Portland, St. John, N.B., a sketch of whose life will be found elsewhere.
MacVicar, Rev. Malcolm, PhD., LL.D., Professor of Apologetics and Christian Ethics, McMaster Hall (Baptist College), Toronto, was born on the 30th September, 1829, in Argyleshire, Scotland. His father, John MacVicar, was a farmer in Dunglass, near Campbeltown, Kintyre, Scotland, and was known as a man of great physical and intellectual vigour, and was well known in his native Scotland and the land of his adoption, Canada, for his ability, generosity and sterling integrity. His wife, Janet MacTavish, possessed a similar character, and reached the age of ninety-two years before she died, having seen