and the oppressed, no matter how unpopular the cause may be. He does his duty as he sees it, regardless of consequences to himself. The philanthropic Quakeress, Lucretia Jenks, thus speaks of Dr. Ross:—
No, friend Ross! thou art not old;
A heart so true, so kind, so bold,
As in thy bosom throbs to-day,
Never! never! will decay.
Some I know, but half thy years,
Are quite deaf to all that cheers;
They are dumb when they should speak,
And blind to all the poor and weak.
There are none I know, in sooth,
Who part so slowly with their youth,
As men like thee, who take delight
In helping others to live right.
Lucretia Jenks.
Rhode Island, 22, 11mo., 1885.
When Dr. Ross had attained his fiftieth birthday, he was the recipient of many tokens of regard and congratulations from friends and co-workers. From the poet Whittier the following:—
Dear Friend—Thy fifty years have not been idle ones, but filled with good works; I hope another half century may be added to them.
From Wendell Phillips:—
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 has travelled a good deal, and has twice visited France. He has been married twice. First, in October, 1855, to M. E. A. Jessup, of Prescott, daughter of Edward Jessup, formerly M.P., for the Johnstown district. This lady died, leaving a family of two children. The son has graduated M.D. in McGill University. He married the second time in May, 1886, to M. A. A. Bryant, daughter of Shettelworth Bryant, of Blackheath (Eng.), and cousin of Colonel Bryant, St. Leonards, England.
Call, Robert Randolph, Newcastle, New Brunswick, was born in Newcastle, Miramichi, N.B., September 12, 1837. His father, Obadiah Call, was a native of the state of Maine, having been born in the village of Dresden, August 1, 1800, and is still alive. Margaret Burke, his mother, was born in Limerick, Ireland, in 1810, and came to Miramichi with her father, who was a house-carpenter, shortly after the great fire in 1825. She died on the 10th of May, 1877. Robert, the subject of this sketch, was educated at the Grammar School of Newcastle, and soon after leaving this institution developed an aptitude for business. In 1871, in company with John C. Miller, he built the side-wheel steamer New Era, and established the first line of passenger steamers that ran on the Miramichi river. During the past twenty-five years he has been interested in the steamboat business, and occupied the position of agent for the Quebec and Gulf Ports Steamship Company, and for other lines of steamers that have called at the port of Newcastle. On November 26, 1866, he received the appointment of United States Consular Agent at Newcastle. In June, 1867, was elected chairman of the Northumberland County Almshouse Commissioners; and in January, 1874, was made a member of the board of Pilotage Commissioners for the Miramichi district of New Brunswick, under the Pilotage Act, which then came into force, and was chosen its secretary-treasurer. Mr. Call is owner of the gas works in his native town, and they are operated under his own immediate direction. On the 9th September, 1865, he was appointed a lieutenant in the 2nd battalion Northumberland County Militia; and on October 1st, 1868, at a public meeting held in the town of Newcastle for the purpose of organizing a battery, was chosen captain of the Newcastle Field Battery of Artillery, and was gazetted as such on the 18th December of the same year. On the 18th December, 1873, he was made major, and lieutenant-colonel on the 4th February, 1885. He still retains the command of this battery, which he was mainly instrumental in raising. In 1875 this corps was called into active service during the school riots in Caraquet, Gloucester county. Lieutenant-Colonel Call, with Lieutenant Mitchell second in command, and part of the battery, in all forty-six persons, with horses, sleds, two nine-pounder guns, ammunition, etc., left Newcastle on the afternoon of the 28th January for Bathurst, the shire town of Gloucester county, and had to traverse a distance of fifty-five miles through a comparatively desolate country. The weather was very unsettled, and more severe than it had been for years. The snow was fully four feet deep on the level, while in many places it was drifted so badly that the men had to shovel for hours before the teams could pass. They, however, after experiencing great fatigue, and with hard labour, succeeded in reaching their destination on the evening of the 29th, having accomplished the journey in twenty-eight hours, without resting, except while the horses were being fed on the road, the men in the meantime keeping their seats on the sleds, and eating the provisions they had brought from home with them. On their arrival in Bathurst they found that twenty-six of the leading rioters had been safely lodged in the jail there. The infantry that followed them proceeded to Caraquet. Here the battery remained for about six weeks, making the court house their barracks, until the excitement was calmed down and quiet was restored. Mr. Call became a member of Northumberland lodge, A. F. and A. Masons, in 1863, and in the years 1866 and 1867 was master of the lodge. In 1873 he was appointed representative to the Grand Lodge of New Jersey. He is also a member of the Northumberland Highland Society, and one of its vice-presidents. He has travelled a good deal, having visited England for his health in 1863, going over and returning in a sailing vessel. In 1881
