Читать книгу A Cyclopædia of Canadian Biography - Various - Страница 156

Table of Contents

Lambly, William Harwood, Registrar of the County of Megantic, Inverness, Province of Quebec, was born on the 1st December, 1839, at Halifax, Megantic county, Quebec, and has resided in the same county ever since. His parents were John Robert Lambly and Anne Mackie. Mr. Lambly, senr., was for nearly twenty years registrar of deeds for the county of Megantic, and his father, the grandfather of the subject of our sketch, was for more than a quarter of a century harbour master of the port of Quebec, and in his day published a complete guide, with descriptive charts, of the river St. Lawrence, from Quebec to the Gulf. The family removed, when William was a child, to Leeds, in which place he lived until 1861, when the chef-lieu of the county was established at Inverness, whither he removed. He commenced his education in the village school, then attended the seminary at Newport, Vermont, and afterwards took a special course at Victoria College, Cobourg, Ontario, including some branches of the higher mathematics, French, and the classics. In 1862 he was appointed registrar of the county of Megantic by the Hon. Charles Stanley, Viscount Monck, then governor-general of Canada, and has held the office ever since. He has been returning officer at every election in the county, local and federal, since that time, and although many of the elections have been contested, no complaint has ever been made of partiality or irregularity. He was appointed a justice of the peace in 1863, and has held the appointment ever since. Since that time he has tried over two hundred cases, many of them being for infractions of the license law, and no judgment of his has ever been set aside on certiorari or appeal. He is also a commissioner of the Superior Court, and a commissioner per dedimus potestatem. He was elected a municipal councillor for Inverness on an anti-license ticket, in 1866, by a large majority, and was appointed mayor of the township at the first meeting of the council thereafter, and continued in the office of mayor during his term of office as councillor. In 1868 he declined re-election, and was appointed secretary-treasurer of the council, and also of the school commissioners of Inverness, and has held these offices ever since. Under the Dominion License Act of 1863, he was appointed first commissioner of the county of Megantic, and then president of the license board and by his vote and influence not a single license was issued in the county from the time he became president of the board until the law was declared ultra vires, and was abandoned. He is a member of the Association of Registrars of the Province of Quebec, and in 1866 was unanimously elected president of the association, and has been re-elected unanimously in 1887. He joined the Sons of Temperance in 1855, and has held various offices in his division, and the Good Templars in 1869, and was rapidly promoted in his lodge. In 1878 he first attended the Grand Lodge of the Province of Quebec, and was unanimously elected grand worthy councillor. In the following year he was unanimously elected grand worthy chief templar of the province, and held that office by unanimous elections for seven consecutive years, declining the election for the eighth term. In 1879 he was elected representative to the Right Worthy Grand Lodge, and has since attended every session of that body. In the Right Worthy Grand Lodge he was appointed right worthy grand marshal in 1881, and again in 1882; right worthy grand messenger in 1883, and right worthy grand councillor, being the second highest position in the body, in 1885, and again in 1886, and which office he still holds, and he has this year (1887) been appointed deputy right worthy grand templar for the Province of Quebec. He was one of the representatives of the R. W. G. Lodge in Boston, in 1886, at the conference on union of all Good Templars in the world, and was one of the signers of the original basis of union. He has organised a number of Good Templar lodges in the Provinces of Quebec and Nova Scotia, and has given many lectures and addresses on temperance and prohibition in various parts of the Dominion, and in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Va.; Charlestown, S.C., Chicago and other places. He is a vice-president of the Quebec branch of the Dominion Alliance for the total suppression of the liquor traffic, and has successfully fought and stamped out every grog shop in Inverness, although there were nearly a score of them in the place when he came there to live in 1861. He is not a politician, and never takes part in any political discussions. He has travelled considerably in Canada, having visited the chief cities from Halifax, N.S., to Sarnia, Ont., besides many of the great cities in the United States. He is a Methodist with broad Armenian views, but claims every man as a brother, no matter what church he belongs to, if he loves the Lord Jesus Christ. It will be seen that Mr. Lambly is an enthusiastic temperance man. He totally abstains from all intoxicants and narcotics, and has never tasted any kind of spirituous liquors, wine, or cider. Consequently he is an out and out prohibitionist, will never consent to license, in any shape or form, for the sale of liquors. He has an undying hate to what he calls the thrice accursed traffic in strong drink, and deals it deadly blows on every opportune occasion. He hopes to see the bright and glorious day dawn on this fair Dominion when we shall have prohibition pure and simple from the Atlantic to the Pacific. On the 25th June, 1863, he was married at Lachute, P.Q., to Isabella D. Brown, daughter of the Rev. W. D. Brown, a Methodist minister now in his 79th year, yet actively engaged preaching the gospel. The fruit of this marriage has been four sons and three daughters, one of whom died in infancy, and the two eldest sons are now studying for the ministry of the Methodist church.