A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time. Various
our Lord was done.
John G. Whittier,
Secretary of the Convention in 1833,
which formed the American Anti-Slavery Society.
The sincere radical abolitionists, with whom Dr. Ross was labouring, were despised, hated and ostracised by the rich, the powerful and the so-called higher classes; but Dr. Ross always possessed the courage of his opinions, and prefers the approval of his own conscience to the smiles or favours of men. During the Southern rebellion he was employed by President Lincoln as confidential correspondent in Canada, and rendered very important services to the United States government. For this he received the special thanks of President Lincoln and Secretary Seward. When the war ended, with the downfall of the Confederacy, Dr. Ross offered his services to President Juarez, of Mexico, and received the appointment of surgeon in the Republican army. The capture of Maximilian, and the speedy overthrow of the empire, rendered Dr. Ross’s services unnecessary, and he returned to Canada and to the congenial and more peaceful pursuits of a naturalist. The object of his ambition now was to collect and classify the fauna and flora of his native country, a labour never before attempted by a Canadian. He has collected and classified five hundred and seventy species of birds that regularly or occasionally visit the Dominion of Canada; two hundred and forty species of eggs of birds that breed in Canada; two hundred and forty-seven species of mammals, reptiles, and fresh water fish; three thousand four hundred species of insects; and two thousand species of Canadian flora. The Montreal Herald of August 19, 1884, says:—“Dr. Ross has been a member of the British Association of Science for the last fourteen years, and of the French and American Associations for the past ten years. The following brief sketch will, therefore, prove doubly interesting in view of the approaching gathering of scientific men (meeting of the British Association, Sept., 1884), in this city. He has devoted special attention to the ornithology, ichthyology, botany and entomology of Canada; has personally made large and valuable collections of the fauna and flora of Canada; has enriched by his contributions the natural history museums of Paris, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Rome, Athens, Dresden, Lisbon, Teheran and Cairo, with collections of Canadian fauna and flora. He is author of “Birds of Canada” (1872), “Butterflies and Moths of Canada” (1873), “Flora of Canada” (1873), “Forest Trees of Canada” (1874), “Mammals, Reptiles, and Fresh water Fishes of Canada” (1878), “Recollections of an Abolitionist” (1867), “Ferns and Wild Flowers of Canada” (1877), “Friendly Words to Boys and Young Men” (1884), “Vaccination a Medical Delusion” (1885), and “Natural Diet of Man” (1886). He received the degrees of M.D. (1855), and M.A. (1867); and was knighted by the Emperor of Russia (1876), King of Italy (1876), King of Greece (1876), King of Portugal (1877), King of Saxony (1876), and received the Medal of Merit from the Shah of Persia (1884), the decoration of honour from the Khedive of Egypt (1884), and the decoration of the Académie Française from the government of France (1879). He was offered (and declined) the title of baron by the King of Bavaria, in recognition of his labours as a naturalist, and was appointed consul to Canada by the King of Belgium and the King of Denmark. Dr. Ross was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Linnean and Zoological Societies of England; the Royal Societies of Antiquaries of Denmark and Greece; the Imperial Society of Naturalists of Russia; the Imperial Botanical and Zoological Society of Austria; the Royal Academy of Science of Palermo, Italy; a member of the Entomological Societies of Russia, Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Bohemia and Wurtemburg; member of the Hygienic Societies of France, Germany and Switzerland; honorary member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and member of the European Congress of Ornithology. For several years past Dr. Ross has laboured with his characteristic zeal and energy in behalf of moral and physical reform. He is the founder (1880) of the Canadian Society for the Diffusion of Physiological Knowledge, and enlisted the sympathy and active support of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Earl Shaftesbury, the Archbishop of Toronto, and two hundred and forty clergymen of different denominations, and three hundred Canadian school-teachers in the work of distributing his tracts on “The Evils Arising from Unphysiological Habits in Youth”; over one million copies of these tracts were distributed among the youth of Britain and Canada, calling forth thousands of letters expressing gratitude from parents and friends of the young. Dr. Ross is one of the founders of the St. Louis Hygienic College of Physicians and Surgeons, in which he is professor of hygiene, sanitation and physiology. He is always on the side of the poor and the oppressed, no matter how unpopular the cause may be. He does his duty as he sees it, regardless of consequences to himself. The philanthropic Quakeress, Lucretia Jenks, thus speaks of Dr. Ross:—
No, friend Ross! thou art not old;
A heart so true, so kind, so bold,
As in thy bosom throbs to-day,
Never! never! will decay.
Some I know, but half thy years,
Are quite deaf to all that cheers;
They are dumb when they should speak,
And blind to all the poor and weak.
There are none I know, in sooth,
Who part so slowly with their youth,
As men like thee, who take delight
In helping others to live right.
Lucretia Jenks.
Rhode Island, 22, 11mo., 1885.
When Dr. Ross had attained his fiftieth birthday, he was the recipient of many tokens of regard and congratulations from friends and co-workers. From the poet Whittier the following:—
Dear Friend—Thy fifty years have not been idle ones, but filled with good works; I hope another half century may be added to them.
From Wendell Phillips:—
My dear Ross—Measured by the good you have done in your fifty years, you have already lived a century.
From Harriet Beecher Stowe:—
Dear Dr. Ross—As you look back over your fifty years, what a comfort to you must be the reflection that you have saved so many from the horrors of slavery.
During the small-pox epidemic in Montreal in 1885 Dr. Ross was a prominent opponent of vaccination, declaring that it was not only useless as a preventive of small-pox, but that it propagated the disease when practised during the existence of an epidemic. In place of vaccination, he strongly advocates the strict enforcement of sanitation and isolation. He maintains that personal and municipal cleanliness is the only scientific safeguard against zymotic diseases. When the authorities attempted to enforce vaccination by fines and imprisonment, Dr. Ross organized the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League, and successfully resisted what he considered an outrage on human rights. Dr. Ross is a radical reformer in religion, medicine, politics, sociology and dietetics, and a total abstainer from intoxicants and tobacco. He is a graduate of the allopathic, hydropathic, eclectic and botanic systems of medicine, and a member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the provinces of Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba.
Ellis, William, Superintendent of the Welland Canal, St. Catharines, Ontario, was born near London, England, on the 31st August, 1826, and came to Canada in 1853, to take charge of the construction of an eighty-two mile section of the Grand Trunk Railway. His father and mother, Thomas and Margaret Ellis, were members of two old Yorkshire families. William Ellis received his education in Cheshunt, Herts, and London, England. Before coming to Canada, he acted in England as engineer and contractor’s agent on various railway works, and in Canada on the Grand Trunk Railway; and during the last seven years he has been superintendent of the Welland canal. While a resident of Prescott in 1861, he was elected town councillor; and in 1864, he was chosen mayor. For three years in succession he was president of the Prescott Mechanics’ Institute, the Grenville County Agricultural Society, the Prescott Board of School Trustees, and the Prescott Choral Society. At present he is and has been for the past three years president of the St. Catharines Philharmonic Society. Mr. Ellis belongs to the Episcopal church, and occupies a prominent position in the denomination. He was for three years churchwarden while in Prescott, and for twenty-one years lay delegate for that parish. For St. Catharines, he has been lay delegate for six years, and