Читать книгу A Cyclopædia of Canadian Biography - Various - Страница 47

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Falconbridge, William Glenholme, M.A., Q.C., Barrister, Toronto, was born on 12th May, 1846. He is the eldest son of John Kennedy Falconbridge, J.P., of Richmond Hill, in the county of York, a very well known and highly respected retired merchant, who for many years carried on a large and successful business in the counties of York and Simcoe. The subject of this sketch received his chief preliminary training at the Barrie Grammar School, and at the Model Grammar School for Upper Canada, and matriculated with a general proficiency scholarship in the University of Toronto in 1862. His course at the University was one of rather unusual distinction, inasmuch as there was hardly any department in the curriculum in which he did not at some period obtain first-class honours. After winning college prizes and university scholarships in each year, he graduated B.A. in 1866, with a gold medal. He then filled for a year the chair of professor of modern languages in Yarmouth College, N.S., and returned to Toronto on being appointed lecturer on Italian and Spanish in University College, which position he occupied for one year. In 1868, he commenced the study of law in the office of Patton, Osler and Moss, and was called to the bar in 1871. (While he was a student at law he entered the Military School, which was then established in Toronto, as a gentleman cadet, and in due course obtained his certificate of fitness for a captain’s commission in the active militia—under the instructions of the officers of Her Majesty’s 29th regiment of foot). On the 1st of July, 1871, the firm of Harrison, Osler and Moss was formed, the members of which were the late Chief Justices Harrison and Moss; the present Justice Osler, Charles Moss, Q.C., W. A. Foster, Q.C., and Mr. Falconbridge. He was examiner in the University of Toronto for several years, and was elected registrar in 1872, and held that office until 1881, when he resigned and was immediately elected by his fellow graduates a member of the senate of that institution, and again elected at the head of the poll in 1886. In 1885, he was elected a bencher of our only Inn of Court—the Law Society of Upper Canada,—and was re-elected at the general election in 1886, ranking No. six, out of the thirty successful candidates, those who received a larger number of votes being W. R. Meredith, Charles Moss, Dalton McCarthy, C. Robinson, and B. M. Britton. He was gazetted as one of Her Majesty’s counsel in 1885. Mr. Falconbridge is a pronounced and steadfast Conservative in politics, and has frequently been solicited to enter public life, particularly at the general elections for the House of Commons of the Dominion in February, 1887, when he was offered the nomination for Centre Toronto. His friends think that his abilities and personal qualities eminently fit him for the political arena, but he has hitherto felt obliged by the pressure of professional engagements to decline the honour. But he has never been chary of rendering gratuitous public services when called on to do so. He was a prominent member of the Citizens’ Committee appointed at the time of the terrible accident at the Humber, in January, 1884, when twenty-nine men were killed outright or died of their injuries, and fifteen were more or less injured, the other members of the Committee being the then mayor, A. R. Boswell, J. H. Morris, Q.C., T. McGaw, Jno. Livingstone, H. E. Clarke, M.P.P., and John Hallam. Largely through the intervention and efforts of these gentlemen, more than one hundred thousand dollars were received by way of compensation from the Grand Trunk Railway, and about fifteen thousand dollars collected from the general public. For their services in this connection, given ungrudgingly over a period of nearly two years, they were publicly thanked by resolution of the City Council. Mr. Falconbridge is now a member of the firms of Moss, Falconbridge and Barwick, and Moss, Hoyles and Aylesworth, a strong association, representing the survival of the numerous judicial appointments which have been made from their ranks. In religion he has always adhered to the Church of England, and has been for years an officer of the Irish Protestant Benevolent Society. He is a keen sportsman and a skilful and enthusiastic angler, and he is very popular within the circle of his acquaintance. In 1873, he married Mary, youngest daughter of the late Hon. Mr. Justice Sullivan, and step-daughter of the late Hon. Sir Francis Hincks, C.B., K.C.M.G., by whom he has issue one son and five daughters.