A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time: A Collection of Persons Distinguished in Professional and Political Life, Leaders in the Commerce and Industry of Canada, and Successful Pioneers
History
A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time: A Collection of Persons Distinguished in Professional and Political Life, Leaders in the Commerce and Industry of Canada, and Successful Pioneers
MY DEAR ROSS—Measured by the good you have done in your fifty
years, you have already lived a century.
From Harriet Beecher Stowe:—
DEAR DR. ROSS—As you look back over your fifty years, what a
comfort to you must be the reflection that you have saved so
many from the horrors of slavery.
During the small-pox epidemic in Montreal in 1885 Dr. Ross was a
prominent opponent of vaccination, declaring that it was not only
useless as a preventive of small-pox, but that it propagated the disease
when practised during the existence of an epidemic. In place of
vaccination, he strongly advocates the strict enforcement of sanitation
and isolation. He maintains that personal and municipal cleanliness is
the only scientific safeguard against zymotic diseases. When the
authorities attempted to enforce vaccination by fines and imprisonment,
Dr. Ross organized the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League, and
successfully resisted what he considered an outrage on human rights. Dr.
Ross is a radical reformer in religion, medicine, politics, sociology
and dietetics, and a total abstainer from intoxicants and tobacco. He is
a graduate of the allopathic, hydropathic, eclectic and botanic systems
of medicine, and a member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of
the provinces of Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba.
* * * * *
=Ellis, William=, Superintendent of the Welland Canal, St. Catharines,
Ontario, was born near London, England, on the 31st August, 1826, and
came to Canada in 1853, to take charge of the construction of an
eighty-two mile section of the Grand Trunk Railway. His father and
mother, Thomas and Margaret Ellis, were members of two old Yorkshire
families. William Ellis received his education in Cheshunt, Herts, and
London, England. Before coming to Canada, he acted in England as
engineer and contractor’s agent on various railway works, and in Canada
on the Grand Trunk Railway; and during the last seven years he has been
superintendent of the Welland canal. While a resident of Prescott in
1861, he was elected town councillor; and in 1864, he was chosen mayor.
For three years in succession he was president of the Prescott
Mechanics’ Institute, the Grenville County Agricultural Society, the
Prescott Board of School Trustees, and the Prescott Choral Society. At
present he is and has been for the past three years president of the St.
Catharines Philharmonic Society. Mr. Ellis belongs to the Episcopal
church, and occupies a prominent position in the denomination. He was
for three years churchwarden while in Prescott, and for twenty-one years
lay delegate for that parish. For St. Catharines, he has been lay
delegate for six years, and is also churchwarden of St. George’s Church,
and warden of St. George’s Guild. During the Fenian troubles in 1866,
Mr. Ellis served as lieutenant in the Garrison Artillery in Prescott,
and retired from military service on the disbandment of his company. He
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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