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
connected with that aristocratic class known in Ireland as “Castle
Catholics.” His mother, who was born at Ferhill Castle, Blackwater,
county Clare, was also closely allied by ties of blood to the famous
fighting “Goughs of Clare,” whose name is historical through General
Gough, of India fame. Dr. Gaynor is the eldest member of a family of
twelve, eight of whom are still living. One of his brothers, the Rev.
William C. Gaynor, is Roman Catholic pastor of Richmond, in Carleton
county, New Brunswick. Father Gaynor is a writer of great power on
theological questions, and is the author of “Papal Infallibility,”
published in 1885, and of a Commentary in Latin on the _Summa
Theologica_, of Thomas Aquinas, now in press in Paris. Another brother,
P. A. Gaynor, is a member of a large lumbering house in Pennsylvania,
and is now in the Redwood district of California, where he has
established a branch firm. Dr. Gaynor was educated partly at St.
Michael’s College, Chatham, and partly at St. Joseph’s College,
Memramcook. In the former institution he studied mathematics and the
exact sciences under the most distinguished teacher of his day in New
Brunswick, Thomas Caulfield, M.A., of Trinity College, Dublin. His
subsequent studies in logic and metaphysics were pursued at St. Joseph’s
College, Memramcook. In this institution he taught the higher
mathematics. It was here also that in 1877 he began the study of
medicine under the preceptorship of Dr. H. E. Boissy, resident physician
to St. Joseph’s, and leading medical practitioner among the Acadians of
New Brunswick. From St. Joseph’s Dr. Gaynor went in 1878 to Buffalo, New
York. There he attended the lectures in the medical department of
Buffalo University. He followed also the different courses of the newly
established College of Physicians and Surgeons in the same city.
Graduating in 1881, after a four years’ course, he carried off the
honours of his class, and was immediately offered the chair of chemistry
and toxicology in his _alma mater_. This honourable position he declined
at the insistance of his friends in New Brunswick, and immediately
returned to his native province. Shortly after his return he read by
invitation a paper on “Chloroform as an Anæsthetic,” before the Medical
Society of New Brunswick. Establishing himself at DeBec, Carleton
county, he soon acquired a lucrative practice. It was here that for the
first time in the history of medicine in New Brunswick nitro-glycerine
was employed, by Dr. Gaynor, for remedial purposes. Finding that his
sphere of labour was too circumscribed, and desirous of entering into a
larger field, Dr. Gaynor removed, in 1884, to St. John city, where he
has since resided. On February 20, 1884, he was united in the bonds of
holy wedlock to Nora Costigan, of St. John, a relative of the Hon. John
Costigan, Minister of Inland Revenue. By her he has three
children—Walter and Frederick, born February 16, 1885, and James, born
August 28, 1886.
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