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William McDougall's nickname was "Wandering
Wille" and it summed up his political career in a Nutshell.
He was born at
Toronto on Jan. 25, 1822, educated there and at Victoria College, then in
Colbourg, Ont. As a boy of 15 he witnessed the burning of Montgomery's
tavern near his home by Loyalists during the 1837 rebellion. In 1847 he
started his career as a lawyer, but later turned to publishing the North
American, a newspaper which soon failed and was merged with George Brown's
Globe. He ran for the Perth seat in the Legislature in 1857 but was
defeated. The next year he was luckier. North Oxford elected him. Actually,
his political activities had started when he helped found the "Clear Grit"
movement at Markham, Ont., in March, 1850. At the Confederation conferences
he was allied with Sir Oliver Mowat in wanting an elected, rather than an
appointed, Senate. |
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| With Confederation he was named
to the federal cabinet and was promptly read out of the Reform party at a
Toronto convention on June 27, 1876. He stayed in the cabinet until the fall
of 1869 when he set out for the Red River settlement (Winnipeg) to become
lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Territories, today's prairie provinces
and the northwest territories. However,, when he got to the boarder, the
settlers refused to let him go further. He returned to Ottawa in disgrace
and from then on, his political career was in eclipse. He died in Ottawa in
1905. |
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