A. L. Russell

A. L. Russell
Occupation	Surveyor, civil engineer

A. L. Russell, C.E., D.L.S., was a Dominion land surveyor and civil engineer at Port Arthur, and a founding officer and long-serving vice-president of the Thunder Bay Historical Society in the early twentieth century.

Career

Russell was a civil engineer (C.E.) and Dominion land surveyor (D.L.S.). He was listed in 1894 as a resident of Port Arthur, at the corner of St Paul and Cameron streets, and was associated with Russell & Co.

Thunder Bay Historical Society

Russell was among the Thunder Bay Historical Society's first officers, serving as first vice-president at its founding in 1908 and continuing as a vice-president through much of the following decade. He compiled the Thunder Bay district's list of historic sites for the Historic Landmarks Association of Canada, at the request of its president, Pemberton Smith.

He contributed several historical papers to the Society, among them "The First Military Expedition to the Red River" (1908), "Fort William in the Middle of the XIX Century", and "A Brief History of Port Arthur Harbour" (1913). He also donated to the Society a copy of the 1859 report on the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan exploring expedition. By about 1913 Russell had returned to his earlier home in Ottawa.

In the Papers of the Thunder Bay Historical Society

A. L. Russell was a charter member of the Thunder Bay Historical Society and served as its vice-president for many years. His death, along with that of his wife, occurred in Ottawa; both were reported as losses to the Society in its 1922 volume. At the Society's April 1922 meeting, held at the home of Mr. and Mrs. C. W. Jarvis, a sketch of Russell was read aloud alongside excerpts from early local newspaper files.

A biographical memoir by H. K. Wicksteed, published in the 1924 volume, records that in 1919 Russell was commissioned by the Ontario Government to conduct a detailed survey of Lake Shebandowan and Greenwater Lake, northwest of Port Arthur. During this period Mrs. Russell fell seriously ill; on the advice of friends Russell moved her to Ottawa, where he intended to complete the draughting work for the survey. A few months before his death he suffered a serious streetcar accident from which he never fully recovered, and he died in his eightieth year; Mrs. Russell survived him by only two weeks. Wicksteed, acting as executor of the estate, completed the mapping of Russell's final survey, and noted the courtesy extended to him by the director of surveys and his staff.

Russell was survived by three sisters: Mrs. J. B. Simpson of Ottawa, Mrs. Osborn Lambly of Belleville, and Mrs. Roy of Boyn Attryn, Pennsylvania. One son, born early in his marriage, died in infancy. Wicksteed described Russell as having declined opportunities to enter the Civil Service despite influential Ottawa connections, choosing instead to remain in Port Arthur in anticipation of the region's future development.

Russell's survey expertise was cited in a later article by Helen E. Carthy, published in the 1924–25 volume, which quoted his 1915 description of Thunder Bay's harbour as a navigable area some thirty by fifteen miles in extent.