John Jones Ross

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John Jones Ross

John Jones Ross , PC (born August 16, 1831 in Québec , † May 4, 1901 in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade ) was a Canadian politician and doctor . He was the seventh prime minister of the province of Québec and ruled from January 23, 1884 to January 25, 1887. During that time, he also chaired the Parti conservateur du Québec . From 1867 until his death he was a member of the Legislative Council of Québec without interruption . At the same time he was from 1867 to 1874 for the Conservative Party of Canada in the lower house and from 1887 Senator .

biography

Political background

The son of a Scotsman and a French-Canadian woman attended the Petit Séminaire de Québec from 1844 to 1847 . He then studied medicine and received his license to practice medicine in 1853 . Ross then returned to his home town of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade, married Arline Lanouette in 1854 (the marriage remained childless) and was initially a typical country doctor who also dealt with communal matters of all kinds. This also included a service as a surgeon in the local militia and in 1865 admission to the Collège des médecins et chirurgiens of his province, where he was to hold the chair from 1889 to 1895 after his rise there. He also served in a society and council on agriculture.

Ross was first elected to the Canada's House of Commons for the Champlain constituency in 1861 , and was re-elected in 1863. Although he had initially broken with the government because of the proposed increased defense spending for the militias against possible attacks by the USA , he nevertheless renewed his loyalty to the government after this proposal was rejected. After the formation of the Canadian state in 1867, he received a double mandate for the federal and provincial lower houses, but left the latter in November to instead take a seat on the Legislative Council of Québec , which he held until his death.

Ascent

The economic development of his region was the main focus in both houses of Ross'. He promoted banking in rural areas and was busy (which he would later have in common with all his predecessors as prime minister) with the expansion of the rail network, which he saw as an opportunity to stop the emigration of French Canadians, which worried him as much as it did the then Prime Minister Chauveau . Ross took this as an opportunity to board the North Shore Railway in 1870, where he could take care of this matter. If he was progressive here, he remained decidedly conservative in other areas. Ross agreed against universal suffrage and secret elections, reforms propagated by the Liberal Party . Ross believes that voting rights should be linked to a minimum of property. His deep Catholic faith brought him programmatically close to the ultramontane wing of his party. Ross's original support for the idea of ​​founding a Catholic party within the Conservatives met with considerable opposition from the incumbent Co-Prime Minister of the Province of Canada and then Federal MP and Minister George-Etienne Cartier , whereupon Ross withdrew his support.

After the second Prime Minister, Gédéon Ouimet, took office in early 1873, Ross became the spokesman for the Legislative Council and thus automatically became a member of the cabinet. This dual function brought with it the certain contradiction of having a role in the Legislative Council as a speaker that was more important than party interests and at the same time being a member of a conservative government. The abolition of the dual mandate for the provincial and federal parliaments in May 1873 (with the exception of the senators) forced Ross to choose one of the parliaments. While he was able to avoid the federal Pacific scandal by opting for Québec , he fell over the Tanneries scandal . Ross, admitting the cabinet's mistakes, deemed the government's status so damaged that he resigned in August 1874. Ouimet soon followed.

A committee of inquiry under the new Prime Minister Charles-Eugène Boucher de Boucherville absolved Ross and Ouimet of all guilt. Boucherville then took the government reshuffle in January 1876 as an opportunity to reappoint him to his old post as spokesman for the Legislative Council. The replacement of Boucherville by Lieutenant Governor Luc Letellier de Saint-Just in March 1878, however, deprived Ross of his cabinet post again. The new liberal Prime Minister Henri-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière was not granted a long reign either. Ross coordinated the fight against the liberal government together with Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau , his stance on blocking the lower house led to a conflict between the two houses. After five Liberal MPs had converted to the Conservatives, he had achieved his goal: Chapleau became the new Prime Minister and in October 1879 appointed Ross again as spokesman for the Legislative Council.

In the controversy that divided the conservatives as to whether the Université Laval , based in the city of Québec, could open further campuses in other parts of the province, Ross took an opposing position, but was nevertheless named as the authorized representative for agriculture and state construction projects. However, the sale of the western sections of the Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa and Occidental Railway to the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), which was supposed to ensure that the city of Quebec would become the terminus, led to a rift between Ross and Ross despite the election victory of the Conservatives Chapleau. Ross had wanted to sell the entire route to the CPR, but when the CPR only wanted the western section and the eastern section was to go to a syndicate controlled by Chapleau's father-in-law Senécal, he was not able to sell the eastern section I Agree. Ross, whose efforts the election victory of 1881 was partly thanks to, resigned in March 1882 and fought the sale now as a simple member of the Legislative Council. The sale took place anyway, Chapleau switched to the federal government and handed over his office to Joseph-Alfred Mousseau , who formed a new government in July 1882.

Prime Minister of Quebec

Mousseau was subsequently unable to secure the support of the party's Catholic wing, which had opposed the sale, which resulted in his resignation. Hector-Louis Langevin , chairman of the federal Québec Conservatives (the party was made up of local groups at the federal level) found the desired successor in Ross, which Chapleau reluctantly accepted. Ross formed a government with representatives from all wings of his party on January 23, 1884 and retained his seat on the Legislative Council. The policy he had now initiated was aimed at cutting spending and finding new sources of income. He also relied on an increase in federal grants, since the Québec, Montreal, Ottawa and Occidental Railway had received nothing while the CPR had now been granted grants. With the threat of blocking grants to the CPR, members of the Québec government managed to change course in state grants in favor of Québec.

In the spring of 1884 Ross proposed to reduce costs to incorporate the normal public schools into the collèges classiques . This specifically Québec school form, which at that time was the only way to study at university and was to be reserved for boys until 1908, was, in contrast to normal schools, financed by school fees. Despite the sympathy of Catholic church circles, for whom the normal schools were too liberal, this request could not be enforced against the denominationally separate school councils and the more moderately-minded Archbishop Elzéar-Alexandre Taschereau . Following his religious stance, Ross also advocated other concerns of the conservative wing of the Catholic Church. Eventually, however, there was an estrangement between him and Ross. The strengthening of the state's influence on mental hospitals and his refusal to stand against the federal government after the Northwest Rebellion , which led to the execution of the leader Louis Riel , and to stand up for the minority of the Métis who instigated the rebellion , led to this alienation.

Ross could not get rid of the Riel affair in the end of the legislative period, but had to defend his position again at the beginning of the new one that the respect of federal powers was necessary so that, conversely, those of the provinces would be guaranteed. Successive requests by the Liberals, with the support of the Catholic Conservatives, to express an official regret over Riel's execution or to condemn the provincial government for its apathy, were rejected. For the provincial election scheduled for October 1886, Ross now had to rely on the help of the federal conservatives; in this election the weight within the conservatives shifted towards his opponents. Knowing that his days were numbered, Ross remained Prime Minister for a while under pressure from Ottawa in order to find a successor capable of reaching a consensus and thus not let the Liberals under Honoré Mercier come to the provincial government before the federal election. On January 25, 1887, Louis-Olivier Taillon Ross succeeded him. But even Taillon could not unite the party behind him, his term of office lasted only a few days (he was later to receive a second one that lasted 3½ years), because the election went in favor of the liberals and made Mercier the new prime minister.

Senator in Ottawa

Canadian Prime Minister John Macdonald named Ross a senator in April 1887 . He continued to advocate Québec issues in both upper houses. So he proposed to set up a regular steamboat operation between Québec and France . In September 1891 he was appointed Speaker of the Senate by Macdonald's successor John Abbott , which he remained until the Conservatives were defeated in the general election in 1896 . In the Manitoba Schools Question , where the Catholics in Manitoba were denied their own school, Ross remained as stubborn as unsuccessful. After all, he became minister without portfolio under the short-lived government of Charles Tupper , after Wilfrid Laurier's successor in office, Wilfrid Laurier did not shake the uniform system, which was not changed by a letter to the papal legate initiated by Ross and other conservatives. In his homeland, however, Ross contributed with his vote in the Senate to the rejection of a draft law by the Liberals to re-establish a Ministry of Education, which would have ended the sole responsibility of the denominational school councils for the school system (this only happened in 1998).

At the turn of the century, Ross' health deteriorated. He died a few weeks after his wife in 1901.

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personal data
SURNAME Ross, John Jones
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian politician and doctor
DATE OF BIRTH August 16, 1831
PLACE OF BIRTH Quebec
DATE OF DEATH May 4, 1901
Place of death Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade