Part 142

=Taschereau, Hon. Jean Thomas=, LL.D., Quebec, late Judge of the Supreme Court of the Dominion of Canada, is a gentleman, the simple mention of whose name recalls a family famous in the political annals of Lower Canada, and which has given more eminent men to the church and bench than probably any other in the country. It has almost passed into a proverb among the French Canadians of the province of Quebec that “there is always a Taschereau on the bench.” As a matter of fact, three generations of the family have been represented on it, and five Taschereaus in all have exercised the highest judicial functions in the province or in the dominion. In the case of our distinguished subject not only was he himself a judge, but his father before him was a judge, his son after him is a judge of the Superior Court of the province, and another of his relatives, the Hon. Elzear Taschereau, is at present one of the judges of the Supreme Court of the Dominion. Still another member of the family, Hon. Andrée Taschereau, now deceased, was resident judge of the Superior Court in the Kamouraska district, and one of the most eminent jurists of his day. Others again have held the office of sheriff of the Beauce district; one is now a prominent member of the bar of that district, and was the representative of Beauce county in the Canadian House of Commons during the last parliament; and one, Lieutenant-Colonel Taschereau, holds one of the most important military commands in the Quebec district. But the judicial, political, and military distinction of the Taschereau family is altogether eclipsed by the lustre conferred upon it by the fact that the first Canadian wearer of the Roman purple was selected from among its members. His Eminence, Cardinal Taschereau, Archbishop of Quebec, is a brother of our subject, and the “bright particular star” whose elevation to the exalted dignity of a Prince of the Roman Catholic church, has made the name of Taschereau famous all over the civilized world. The family is also one of the oldest and most distinguished in Lower Canada, its founder there being Thomas Jacques Taschereau, of Touraine, France, who was a son of Christopher Taschereau, King’s counsellor, director of the mint and treasurer of the city of Tours, and who came to New France towards the beginning of the last century, was appointed by the French viceroy as treasurer of the marine, and in 1736 obtained from the French Crown the grant of a valuable seigniory along the banks of the river Chaudière in Beauce, P.Q. Our subject’s father was the Hon. Jean Thomas Taschereau, senior, long a prominent member of the parliament of Lower Canada, and one of the advocates and champions of constitutional liberty in that province, who suffered imprisonment for their opinions in 1810. He was afterwards raised to the dignity of puisne judge of the Court of Queen’s Bench for his native province, and distinguished himself as an able and upright magistrate. Our subject was one of his sons by his wife, Maria Panet, daughter of the late Hon. Jean Panet, first speaker of the Lower Canadian House of Assembly (an office which he held for twenty consecutive years), and was born in the city of Quebec, on the 12th December, 1814. He was educated at the Quebec Seminary, where, like his brother, the present cardinal, he greatly distinguished himself in different branches, taking the leading prizes, especially for Latin, mathematics, etc. On the completion of his classical course, he studied law with two of the most eminent local practitioners of the day, Hon. Henry Black, afterwards judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court at Quebec, and Andrew Stuart, Q.C., afterwards Her Majesty’s solicitor-general for Lower Canada, and was called to the bar of that province in 1836, subsequently following several law courses in Paris, France. On his return to Canada, he opened a law office in the city of Quebec, and for the next twenty years practised his profession with success and distinction. In 1855, he was honored by Laval University with the title of LL.D., and in September of the same year he was called by the government to act as assistant judge of the Superior Court in the place of one of the regular judges of that court, during the sitting of the special court formed under the act to abolish feudal rights and seignorial dues in Lower Canada. Twice afterwards, in 1858 and in 1860, in which last mentioned year he was also created a Q.C., was he honored by a similar mark of the government’s appreciation, and in 1865 he was definitely appointed to the bench as a puisne judge of the Superior Court, as successor to the Hon. A. N. Morin, deceased. On the 11th February, 1873, he mounted another rung of the judicial ladder, being appointed puisne judge of the Court of Queen’s Bench for the province of Quebec, and some two years later on, the 8th October, 1875, he was elevated to the still more exalted position of puisne judge of the Supreme Court of the Dominion, which he retained until the 19th October, 1878, when he resigned on account of ill-health, and retired on his well-earned pension, after having served the public in all nineteen years on the bench as a judge. Our subject enjoyed to the utmost the confidence of the bar and the people, as well for his scrupulous and painstaking character, as for the almost invariable soundness of his decisions. It is needless to say that his religion is the Roman Catholic. In the spring of 1887, the Roman Pontiff, Leo XIII., conferred on him the decoration or cross of the Order of St. Gregory the Great. He has been twice married—firstly, in 1840, to Louise Adele, daughter of the late Hon. Amable Dionne, M.L.C., who died in 1861; and lastly in 1862, to Marie Josephine, daughter of the late Hon. R. E. Caron, second lieutenant-governor of the province of Quebec, and a sister of Sir A. R. Caron, Dominion minister of militia. He is the father of twelve children, ten of whom survive. His eldest son, Hon. Henri Thomas Taschereau, formerly Liberal M.P. for Montmagny, has been a judge of the Superior Court for the province of Quebec since 1878; and another son, by his second union, is now a rising member of the Quebec bar.

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=Morin, Eusebe=, St. Hyacinthe, Quebec province, was born on the 14th of July, 1853. He is the son of François Morin, merchant, and Marguerite Maheux. At the age of ten years he entered the St. Hyacinthe Seminary, which he left after taking a classical course of education. At the age of sixteen years he entered as clerk with L. V. Sicotte, dry goods merchant, but after spending one year in this establishment he left, and entered into partnership with Mr. Lamoureux, and traded under the firm name of Lamoureux & Morin for about fifteen months, when he bought his partner out, and assumed the business himself. When he entered into this business, a friend lent him $800 to start with, and this money he honorably paid with interest about a year after he had received it. He continued alone in business until he was twenty-three years of age, in the meantime becoming the first merchant in St. Hyacinthe, in his line, thus proving what can be done by close attention to business. After this, and by the time he had reached his twenty-seventh year, he had established small wholesale and retail houses, trading under the various names of Morin & Lamothe, Morin & Dion, Morin & Robitaille, Morin & Brodeur, both in the city of St. Hyacinthe and the neighboring country. Being of delicate health, he was almost given up by the doctors, and was obliged to liquidate the firms in order to proceed to Europe for the benefit of his health. After an extensive tour through England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Italy, he returned to Canada with a large and varied assortment of European goods, and was thus enabled to re-establish his trade on a sound and more extensive basis than ever, creating the following firms:—Morin & Co., in the liquor trade; Morin & Laline, general store; Morin & Bergeron, dry goods, all in St. Hyacinthe, with a capital of $200,000, he being principal partner in all the above establishments. When thirty-two years of age, becoming tired of the retail trade, he sold to his partners his interest in all the stores he had established, with the object of embarking in real estate transactions, and in this he has proved equally successful. He has built one of the finest private residences in the city of St. Hyacinthe, and finds himself, at the age of thirty-three, the most important property owner in the county of St. Hyacinthe. He enjoys a good reputation, and his numerous partners and friends have reason to be thankful to him for his aid at various times. The city of St. Hyacinthe is also indebted to him for the erection of numerous blocks of magnificent stores, and several private residences. Although Mr. Morin is yet comparatively young, he is exceedingly popular in his district, and has been several times requested to enter public life, but has invariably declined, on the ground that he could be of greater use to his friends and the country at large, in promoting private and public enterprises. He is looked upon as the Vanderbilt of St. Hyacinthe.

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=MacDowall, Day Hort=, Prince Albert, M.P. for Saskatchewan, North-West Territory, was born in 1850, at Carruth House, Renfrewshire, Scotland. He is the second son of Henry MacDowall, of Garthland, Renfrewshire, Scotland, _vide_ “Nesbitt’s Heraldry.” Mr. MacDowall was educated at Windlesham, Surrey, England, and Trinity College, Glenalmond, Scotland. He was a captain in the Renfrewshire Rifle Volunteers from 1872 to 1879. He accompanied Gen. Middleton’s force through the Northwest rebellion of 1885, and took charge of the party dispatched by the general through the rebel district from Humboldt to Prince Albert. He was a member of the North-West Council for the district of Lorne, from June, 1883, to October, 1885; and was returned to Parliament, as the member for Saskatchewan, at the general election in 1887. He is a Conservative in politics. He was married August 12th, 1884, to Alice Maude Blanchard, daughter of Charles Blanchard, Truro, N.S. He is a member of the Manitoba Club, Winnipeg; Wanderers’ Club, Pall Mall, London, Eng., and Rideau Club, Ottawa, Ont.

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=Prévost, Oscar A.=, Brevet-Major, (late of the regiment Canadian artillery, then A and B batteries, permanent artillery), Quebec, was born in Montreal on the 9th of May, 1845. His father, Amable C. Prévost, was a descendant of an old French family of Anjou, (Prévost de la Boutèlière). He was a merchant of Montreal, very successful in business, leaving an estate of over half a million dollars. He died in February, 1872. His mother, Rosalind E. Bernard, was born in Montreal, educated at Notre Dame congregation, and was married to Amable C. Prévost, March, 1838. The subject of this sketch was educated at St. Mary’s College, Montreal, taking a classical course, including mathematics and natural philosophy; he afterwards studied law; was admitted to the bar of Lower Canada in October, 1866, and practised his profession until 1870. He joined, as lieutenant, the 4th battalion in the year 1865; served on the frontier during the Fenian raid of 1866; was transferred in 1870 to the Quebec rifle regiment of the North-West expeditionary force under Colonel (now General, Sir) Garnet Wolseley; remained stationed in the North-West till February, 1872, being transferred in July, 1872, to the School of Gunnery, Quebec, and gazetted to B battery as lieutenant with rank of captain; was adjutant of the School of Gunnery B battery, August, 1873, till February, 1880. He went to Woolwich, England, for a special course in the Royal Arsenal, and on his return was appointed superintendent of the government cartridge factory at Quebec, and still holds that appointment. In 1882 he was sent by the minister of militia and defence, Sir A. P. Caron, to England to purchase machinery required for a small ammunition factory to be erected in the government buildings in Quebec. The plans, specifications, alterations to buildings, placing machinery, including boilers and steam engines, and putting the whole plant in working order, was done under his immediate supervision, bringing forth his ability as a practical engineer, and his scientific attainments. This factory has now been at work since 1883. It produced 2,000,000 rounds of ball ammunition, in three months, during the North-West rebellion of 1885, and now supplies the whole Dominion with service ammunition. It can give employment to four hundred hands. He submitted to a board of artillery officers in September, 1886, a new projectile for light and heavy rifled guns, which increased the range and accuracy of guns in a remarkable degree. A foundry, in connection with the cartridge factory, was erected for the manufacture of these projectiles, in July, 1887, and the work now goes on daily. Thus two entirely novel industries have been started in Canada, and the military efficiency of the Dominion increased. In 1876 he travelled through France, Italy, Austria, Hungary and Germany, being authorized to visit the imperial arsenal at Vienna, and obtain information with regard to the new field ordnance and carriages at that time introduced into the Austrian service. Major Prévost was married on 25th May, 1874, to Louisa J., daughter of Hon. Juschereau Duchesnay, of Quebec, ex-senator for the division of Lassale, province of Quebec; seigneur of the seigniories of Fossambault and Gaudarville. Hon. Mr. Duchesnay’s father commanded a company of _Voltigeurs_ under Colonel de Salaberry, his cousin, at the victorious battle of Chateauguay, in 1812. The Juschereau Duchesnay family were connected to Robert Giffard, first seigneur of Beauport, near Quebec, to whom this seigniory had been granted in 1635 by the “Compagnie de la Nouvelle France,” under authority of the French King. The Duchesnays inherited this seigniory in 1668, and they owned it for over two hundred years.

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