REPRESENTATIVE CANADIANS
RT. HON. SIR R. L. BORDEN. P.C., K.C.M.G., K.C., LL.D.,
Ottawa
NATIONAL BIOGRAPHICAL SERIES III
A CYCLOPÆDIA
of
CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY
Brief Biographies of Persons Distinguished in the Professional, Military
and Political Life, and the Commerce and Industry of
Canada, in the Twentieth Century.
Edited by
HECTOR CHARLESWORTH
TORONTO
THE HUNTER-ROSE COMPANY, LIMITED
1919
PREFACE
It is now thirty-three years since the first volume of biographies bearingthe title “Representative Canadians” was issued by the present firm ofpublishers. In 1886 the scope of the work was unique, so far as thiscountry was concerned, for previous volumes of the kind had confined themselvesto the careers of Canadians who have won fame in either a political or militarycapacity. The aim of the editors of the first volume of “Representative Canadians”was to give recognition of the emergence of Canada from a colonialto something like a national status by recording something of the achievementsof those who had contributed to the intellectual, industrial and commercialgrowth of the country, as well as of its political leaders. The purpose remainedthe same in the second volume published in 1888, and is once more the impulseof the present book.
The vast majority of those whose careers were recorded in 1886 havepassed away; and the same is true of those who figured in the second volumeof the series. Consequently, the earlier issues of “Representative Canadians”grow every day more precious, for, in many cases, they contain the sole recordsof men who initiated great enterprises or furthered important movementswhich have left a lasting mark on the history of Canada. We cannot but thinkthat the reader who, thirty or forty years hence, may chance to scan the pagesof the present volume will gather a very vivid picture of Canada as it wasin one of the crucial periods of the world’s affairs—a picture in which thecharacters of those Canadians who lived and “carried on” through the yearsof the greatest war in all history may be discerned in the records of their lives.