Simon James Dawson
| Simon James Dawson | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1818-06-13 Redhaven, near Portsoy, Scotland |
| Died | 1902-10-30 Ottawa, Ontario |
| Occupation | Surveyor, civil engineer, politician |
| Father | |
| Mother | |
Simon James Dawson (baptized James Simon; 13 June 1818 – 30 October 1902 (aged 84)) was a Scottish-born Canadian civil engineer, surveyor, and politician best known for building the Dawson Road, an overland and water route connecting Prince Arthur's Landing to the Red River settlement, and for his long parliamentary career representing northern Ontario.
Early life
Dawson was born in Redhaven, near Portsoy, Scotland on 13 June 1818, the tenth child and eighth son of John Dawson and Anne McDonell.[1] Most of his family emigrated to Nepean Township near Bytown (present-day Ottawa) in 1836, though Dawson remained in Scotland for some years afterward. Several of his brothers found work in the Ottawa Valley lumber industry. During the 1840s he worked for Gilmour and Company in the Pembroke region and carried out survey work near Peterborough.[1]
By 1851 he had joined the Department of Public Works at Trois-Rivières, where he gained experience working with French Canadian crews and Indigenous boatmen.[1] His brother William McDonell Dawson, who served as superintendent of the Crown Lands Department's woods and forests branch and as a member of the Legislative Assembly, likely helped open government doors for him.[1]
Exploration and the Dawson route
In 1857 Dawson was appointed surveyor to a Canadian government expedition tasked with exploring the country between Lake Superior and the Red River settlement.[1] The enterprise was directed by George Gladman; geologist Henry Youle Hind led the scientific investigations. Following Gladman's dismissal in 1858 the expedition split into two divisions, one under Hind and one under Dawson. When reports were laid before the assembly in 1859, Dawson had taken a markedly more optimistic view of the region's economic potential than either Hind or John Palliser of the competing British expedition.[1]
Dawson proposed a route west that would make use of navigable waterways, calling for wagon roads and locks at Fort Frances to prepare the ground for a transcontinental railway while blocking possible American northward expansion. The projected cost prevented immediate action, but after Confederation the Canadian government returned to the idea.[2]
Dawson was placed in charge of construction from Lake Superior to the Lake of the Woods; John Allan Snow managed the section onward to Upper Fort Garry (present-day Winnipeg). The outbreak of Métis resistance at Red River in 1869 sharply accelerated the project, and Dawson was ordered to engage a work crew exceeding 1,000 men in early 1870 to speed passage for Colonel Garnet Joseph Wolseley's military force.[1] Wolseley's soldiers contributed more than 5,000 workdays completing roads and bridges along the route. Within a year an emigrant transport service was operating and settlers were moving westward along what became known as the Dawson Road.[3]
Thunder Bay connection
Prince Arthur's Landing — later Port Arthur, now part of the city of Thunder Bay — owed its existence to Dawson's route; Wolseley named the settlement after it became a staging point for his expedition.[1] Dawson took a personal interest in Prince Arthur's Landing and in local ventures including mining projects and the construction of St. Andrew's Church under Father Richard Baxter.[1]
Dawson also played a significant role in the negotiation of Treaty No. 3 with the Saulteaux people of the Lake of the Woods region in the early 1870s, an involvement that earned him national recognition and a reputation as a sympathetic advocate for Indigenous interests, even though his influence was ultimately insufficient to shape government policy in their favour.[1]
His position was threatened when government planners routed the proposed transcontinental railway north of Fort Frances, risking the bypassing of Prince Arthur's Landing. Concern for the town's future prompted him to resign as superintendent of the Dawson Road and turn to politics.[1]
Political career
Dawson represented Algoma — then encompassing all of present-day northern Ontario — in the Ontario Legislative Assembly from 1875 to 1878, before moving to the House of Commons where he sat for several terms.[1] He ran initially as an independent; in the provincial house he aligned in practice with Oliver Mowat's Liberal government, while at Ottawa he became a close supporter of Sir John A. Macdonald — so much so that most contemporaries overlooked his nominal independence until he formally joined the Conservatives in 1887.[1]
In the legislature Dawson repeatedly drew attention to northern development and articulated a sense of alienation from the preoccupations of southern members. He developed ideas about creating a separate northern province that would bridge Ontario and Quebec and connect the eastern and western portions of the country. He also clashed with D'Alton McCarthy in the Commons over his support for bilingualism in the North-West Territories, a position that proved deeply unpopular with much of his constituency.[1]
In 1880 Dawson chaired a Commons committee investigating Ontario's territorial claims northward to the Albany River and westward to the Lake of the Woods. The arbitrators' award of 1878 had recognized these claims, and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council confirmed Ontario's position in 1884 — an outcome that ended both Dawson's dream of a separate northern province and his moment of national prominence.[1]
His support for Indigenous fishing rights and Department of Indian Affairs interventions drew protests from Manitoulin Island and Rat Portage. Both his age and his association with the Dawson Road — a route superseded by the Canadian Pacific Railway — eroded his electoral standing through the 1880s. A Rat Portage newspaper dismissed him in 1889 as an "old fossil."[1] He failed to secure the Conservative nomination in Algoma for the 1891 election, and subsequent attempts to obtain a Senate appointment in 1891–92 came to nothing, ending his public career.[1]
Death
Dawson spent his final years in Ottawa, where he died on 30 October 1902 in relative obscurity.[1] He died unmarried and without children.[1] Obituaries appeared in the Daily Times-Journal (Fort William) and the Ottawa press.[4][5]
In the Papers of the Thunder Bay Historical Society
The Council of the City of Fort William drew attention to Dawson's pioneer services in a memorial address recorded in the Society's 1911–1912 volume. It noted that Dawson had come to Canada from Scotland as a boy, and that his uncle, Colonel Miles McDonnell, was the first Governor of Assiniboia and a cousin of Lord Selkirk; one of his brothers served as a Member of Parliament and another was a well-known Catholic priest in Ottawa.[6]
In 1870 Dawson was directed by the Dominion Government to organize transportation for a military expedition from Thunder Bay to Fort Garry on the Red River, a wilderness route of approximately 500 miles. During the preceding winter he had large wooden bridges built across the Kaministiquia River and Mattawa River, constructed 150 boats and flat scows, and assembled the necessary voyageurs and supplies. The expedition — commanded by Colonel Wolseley and numbering approximately 3,000 soldiers, voyageurs, and Indigenous people — proceeded without a significant accident, and Dawson received the formal thanks of both the Imperial and Dominion governments for his management of the transportation branch.[6]
In his later years Dawson was in straitened circumstances, having invested whatever means he had accumulated into mining enterprises in the Thunder Bay District and lost them. The memorial noted that his only surviving relative remained in pecuniary distress, and the Fort William council petitioned for a small government annuity on her behalf.[6]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 Elizabeth Arthur."Elizabeth Arthur, "Simon James Dawson," Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13."[website].Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13 (University of Toronto/Université Laval).1994.University of Toronto/Université Laval.Link.(Rights: copyrighted | Access: open)
- ↑ Simon James Dawson."Report on the exploration of the country between Lake Superior and the Red River settlement, and between the latter place and the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan."[book].1859.Toronto.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ Simon James Dawson."Report of the Red River expedition of 1870; reprint, with remarks on certain strictures published in England by an officer of the Expeditionary Force."[book].1871.Ottawa.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ "Obituary notice."[newspaper].Daily Times-Journal.1902-12-06.Fort William, Ontario.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ "Obituary notice."[newspaper].Ottawa Evening Journal.1902-11-02.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Peter McKellar."Recess to Consider."[book].Papers of the Thunder Bay Historical Society.1911–1912.p. 79.Link.(Rights: public_domain | Access: open)
- ↑ Elizabeth Arthur."Simon J. Dawson, c.e.."[book].1987.Thunder Bay, Ontario.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ M. E. Arthur."The frontier politician."[book].Aspects of nineteenth-century Ontario, ed. F. H. Armstrong et al..1974.pp. 278–96.Toronto and Buffalo, N.Y..(Rights: unknown | Access: open)