A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time by Rose

De Montaigne, the celebrated French essayist. At the age of seven years he commenced his Latin grammar, while residing with his father, at Woodfield, near Quebec. At sixteen he was sent to Little Easton, county of Essex, England, where he prepared to enter Trinity College, Cambridge. There he acquitted himself in such a manner as induced Dr. Monk, professor of Greek, one of his examiners, to recommend him as principal of a college in Nova Scotia, for which position he considered Mr. Mountain peculiarly fitted. On leaving Cambridge he returned to Quebec, and acted as secretary for his father while studying for the ministry. On the 2nd of August, 1812, he was ordained a deacon, and was appointed to assist the bishop’s chaplain, Rev. Salter Mountain. In 1814 he was admitted to the order of priest, and was appointed evening lecturer in the cathedral, and on the 2nd of August, in the same year, he was married to Mary Hume, third daughter of Deputy-General Commissary Thompson, and went to Nova Scotia, where he was appointed rector of Fredericton, and also chaplain of the troops and Legislative Council. After three years sojourn there he resigned, and returned to Quebec, and on his arrival was appointed bishop’s official and officiating clergyman of Quebec. He commenced life well; his earliest noticeable act was to establish intimate relations with the “Venerable Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and for Propagating the Gospel.” His second was to establish, at Quebec, national schools for boys and girls. Early in January, 1818, he commenced as a simple missionary, and afterward continued as archdeacon to visit the outlying portions of the diocese. Such work he found, to the end of his career, to be full of attraction and encouragement, for in heart and soul he was the _beau ideal_ of a missionary. In 1819 he received the degree of D.D. from the Archbishop of Canterbury, and was appointed a member of the “Board for the Advancement of Learning in Canada.” In 1821 he became rector of Quebec and archdeacon of Lower Canada. In 1823 he was nominated honorary professor of divinity and principal of McGill College, Montreal. In 1825 he went to England, his chief object being to represent the claim of the Anglican church in the matter of the clergy reserves, and also to express his father’s wish to be relieved of a portion of the cares of his bishopric. The suggestion he made was that the diocese of Quebec, which covered nearly half a continent, should be divided into two parts, each to be a separate bishopric; or, if this proposition was not acceded to, he suggested that the Rev. Dr. Stewart be associated with his father in the administration of the See. These plans, however, were set at naught by the death of his father, which event occurred on the 18th of June, 1825, while he was yet absent in the motherland, and Rev. Dr. Stewart succeeded Rev. Jacob Mountain as Bishop of Quebec. Ten years passed slowly by, and in 1835 the archdeacon, the subject of our sketch, again went to England, his objects being the same as before—the settlement of the clergy reserve question, and the necessity of procuring further episcopal assistance in the diocese. Bishop Stewart had broken down, even as his predecessor had done before him, and was most anxious that the archdeacon, “whom he dearly loved and called his ‘right hand,’ should be appointed suffragan.” “This duty,” says his biographer, “the latter was more than disinclined to accept, for his desire from first to last was to serve, not to rule. He only yielded when Bishop Stewart emphatically declared he would have no one else.” He was consecrated coadjutor on the 14th of January, 1836, under the title of Bishop of Montreal. On the 22nd of September, Bishop Stewart went to England, and did not return, for, becoming weaker and weaker, he died in the following year. Thus, despite his wishes to the contrary, the subject of our sketch became the third bishop of the undivided diocese of Canada. Rev. George Jehoshaphat Mountain was a true and humble-minded Christian; all the events of his life go to prove this. While his devotion to the sick and suffering at Quebec, in 1832, when the cholera rushed like a cyclone from Grosse-Isle to the mainland, and hundreds of homes were made desolate, renders his name well worthy of record among the great and good of our land, and again his light shines before the world in 1847, when typhus fever, the result of the famine in Ireland, was imported into Canada. It is written: “The Anglican clergy, few in number, with devoted zeal, took their duty at Grosse-Isle week about, the bishop taking the first week. Most of the clergy sickened, and two of them died of the fever. The trial, we may imagine, was acute enough, for in the summer of 1847, upwards of five thousand interments took place at the immigrants’ station at Grosse-Isle. ‘No one liveth to himself or dieth to himself,’ wrote the heroic bishop. There was chivalry as well as gentleness in his nature which, like expressed virtue, communicated itself to all.” Bishop Mountain served his God as a minister of the gospel for fifty years, and died on the morning of the feast of the Epiphany, 1863, deeply respected and beloved. * * * * * =Blair, Hon. Andrew George=, Attorney-General and Premier of New Brunswick, was born in Fredericton, N.B., on the 7th March, 1844. He is of Scotch descent. He was educated at the Collegiate School, in Fredericton. He chose law as a profession, and after spending the usual time in study, was called to the bar in April, 1866, and successfully practised for some years. In 1878 he entered the political arena, and was returned to represent York county in the House of Assembly of New Brunswick, at the general election of that year. A petition, however, having been filed against his return, he resigned the seat, and on the issue of a new writ, was re-elected on the 14th November of the same year. At the first session of the new house, in February, 1879, he was chosen leader of the opposition, then consisting of only six members beside himself, in a house of forty-one. In the last session of that house, held in 1882, the opposition, under his leadership, had increased to seventeen. At the general election of that year, 1882, he was re-elected for his old constituency, and in March, 1883, defeated the Hanington government, and was called upon to form a new ministry, which he succeeded in accomplishing in one day. On accepting the office of attorney-general he again appealed to his constituents on the 24th of March, and was elected. At the general elections held in 1887 he was once more elected, at the head of the New Brunswick Legislature as premier and attorney-general. Hon. Mr. Blair is an independent Liberal in politics; and in religion is an adherent of the Methodist church. He was married on 31st October, 1866, to Annie E., eldest daughter of George Thompson, late of the educational department, at Fredericton. The issue of this union has been ten children. * * * * * =Burland, George B.=, President and General Manager of the British American Bank Note Company, Montreal.—Mr. Burland, the subject of our sketch, is descended from a long line of illustrious ancestry. There is an old estate in Cheshire, called “Burland,” after the family, and at the time of the accession of Edward III. to the throne in 1327, Robert de Burland held possession in the county of Somerset. John Burland, born in 1696, married, in 1718, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Claver Morris, M.D., of the city of Wells. He died November 6, 1746, and left four sons and two daughters: John Burland, son and heir; Claver Morris Burland, M.D.; William Burland, fellow New College, Oxford; Robert Burland; Mary, wife of Rev. William Hudlestone, and Anne, wife of Rev. William Eater. John, the eldest son, was of Baliol College, Oxford, where he entered in 1740. In 1743 he went to the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1746. In 1762 he was made sergeant-at-law; in 1773 he was given the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws; in 1774 he was knighted and sworn one of the Barons of the Exchequer in room of Baron Adams. This he enjoyed but one year and eleven months, and died February 29, 1776, by the rupture of a blood vessel in his brain, as he was sitting in company with his brother, Robert Burland, and his intimate friend, Colonel Charles Webb. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a handsome monument, with the following inscription, is erected to his memory: “Near this place are deposited the remains of the Hon. Sir John Burland, Knt., LL.D., one of the Barons of his Majesty’s Court of Exchequer; as a man, valued and beloved, as a judge, honoured and revered. He died suddenly on the 29th February, 1776, aged 51 years.” This gentleman married, in 1747, Lætitia, the daughter of Wm. Berkeley Portman, of Orchard Portman, and Anne, his wife, only daughter of Sir Edward Seymour, of Maiden Bradley, baronet, speaker of the House of Commons, and comptroller of the household of Queen Anne. George B. Burland, of Montreal, is descended from this family, and was born at Loggan Hall, in the county of Wexford, in the year 1829. His father, Benjamin Burland, was born in 1779, and educated for the medical profession. He married, in 1806, Belinda Roe, daughter of Robert Roe, a gentleman of ample wealth, and owner of large estates in Queen’s county. He sailed for Canada in July, 1840, and died in 1842. His uncle was one of the first to afford relief to the sufferers in the great famine of