/>^/^ 
 
 cy'T-' 
 
 THE CANADIAN 
 
 liograjiliral iirtiniiarij 
 
 AND 
 
 PORTRAIT GALLERY 
 
 OF 
 
 EMIiNENT AND SELF-MADE MEN. 
 
 Ql;Klil':C AND MARITIMK IMIOVINCKS VOMJMK. 
 
 CljiMBO, X(U) Vorit niiQ (Totonio : 
 
 ami<:ric.\\ iuoc.rai'iiical i'uhlisiiing company. 
 
 II. C. COOlMvK, JU., (C CO., I'KOPKIKTOUS. 
 IHMI. 
 
 I KAIIVKAI', I'lllMKH. UUIilllC. 
 
1: 
 
 i >U)0'J'C"-J'U 'jjO ' ii,0 Ui'^ ' JJ JU J ' ti s 
 
 eiBLIOTHEQUE 
 
 DE 
 
 M.I-abbeVERREAU 
 
 Xo. 
 
 I 'Ifissr 
 
 Di risinii 
 
 Si'r/f 
 
 
 •fa A 
 
 (iiOiiCS'iO'iiOQ'a uiiO'aoaC ' 
 
was b:i>r.\ 
 of Wii'lu. 
 
CIIEyiLIER CMS. P. F. BlILfilRGE, ilS, 
 
 QUEBEC. 
 
 THE subject of this sketch, who -'s a Chevalier of the Order of St. Saiiveur de 
 Monte Reale, Italy, was born in September, 1827, and lor the past thirty- 
 three years has been practising' his profession as an engineer, architect and sur- 
 veyor, in the city of Quebec. Since 1856 he has been a member of the Board of 
 Examiners of Land Surveyors for the province, aiKl since 1875 its chairman ; he is 
 an honorary member of the Society for the Generalization of Education in Erance ; 
 and has been the recipient of thirteen medals of honour and of seventeen diplomas, 
 &c., from learned societies and public bodies in Erance, Belgium, Italy. Russia, 
 Japan, &c. Mr. Baillairges father, v.-ho died in 1865, at the age of G8, was borii 
 in Quebec, and for over thirty years was road surveyor of that city. Mis mother, 
 Charlotte Janverin Horsley, who is still living, was born in the Isle of Wight, 
 England, and was a daughter of Lieutenant Horsley, R.N. His grandfather on the 
 paternal side, P. Elorent Baillairge, is of Erench descent, and was connected, now 
 nearly a centu'-y ago, with the restoration of the Basilica, Quebec. The wife of 
 the latter was Mile Cureux de St. Germain, also of Erench descent. 
 
 Our subject married, in 1845, Euphemie, daughter of Mr. Jean Duval, and 
 step-daughter of the Hon. John Duval, for many years Chief Justice of Lower 
 Canada, by whom he had eleven children, four of whom only survive. His wife 
 dying in Eebruary, 1878, he, in April of the following year, married Anne, eldest 
 daughter of Captain Benjamin Wilson, of the English navy, by whom he has 
 one son. 
 
 Mr. Baillairge was educated at the Seminary of Quebec, but, findiu'-- the 
 curriculum of studies too lengthy, he left that institution some time before the ter- 
 mination of the full course often years, and entered into a joint apprenticeship as 
 architect, engineer and surveyor. During this apprenticeship he devoted himself 
 to mathematical and natural science studies, and received diplomas for his profi- 
 ciency in 1848, at the age of 21. At that period he entered upon his profession, 
 and for the last fourteen years has filled the post of city engineer of Quebec, is ma- 
 nager of its water works, and since 1S75 has been engineer, on the part of the citv 
 in and over the North Shore, Piles and Lake St. John Railways. 
 
Mr Baillair'^chas held successive commissions in the militia, as ensign, lieu- 
 tenant, and captain ; and in iS6o, and for several years thereafter, was hydrogra- 
 phic surveyor to the Quebec Board of Harbour Commissioners. In 1861, he was 
 elected vice-president of the AssoclaMon of Architects and Civil Engineers of 
 Canada. In 1858, he was elected, and ayaia in 1 861 unanimously re-elected, to 
 represent the St. Louis ward in the City Council, Quebec. In 1863, he was called 
 for two y;ars to Ottawa, to act as joint architect of the Parliament raid Depart- 
 mental buildings, then in course of erection. Interests of considerable magnitude 
 w.;re then at stake between the Government and the contractors, claims amounting 
 to ne.Tiy half a million of money having to be adjusted. In connection with his 
 employment by the Government, Mr. Baillairge found, that to continue his services 
 he must be a party to some sacrifice of principle, which, rather than consent to, he 
 was indiscreet enough to tell the authorities of the ti' le. This excess of virtue 
 was too mora' for the appointing power and more than it was disposed to brook 
 in an employee of the Government. The difficulty was, therefore, got over by giv- 
 ino- Mr. Baillairge his feuille dc route, a compliment to his integrity of which he has 
 ever since been justly proud. He shortly afterwards returned to Quebec. 
 
 During his professional career, Mr. Baillairge designed and erected nume- 
 rous private residences in and around Quebec, as well as many public buildings, 
 including the Asylum and the Church of the Sisters of Charity, the Laval Univer. 
 sity building, the new gaol, the music hall, several churches, both in the city and 
 in the adjoining parishes, that of Ste Marie, Beauce being much admired on account 
 oft e beauty and regularity of its interior. The " Monument dcs Braves de 1760" 
 was erected in i860, on the St. Foy road, after a design by him and under his 
 superintendence. The Government, the clergy and others have often availed them- 
 selves of his services in arbitration on knotty questions of technology, disputed 
 boundaries, builders claims, surveys and reports on various subjects. 
 
 In 1S72, Mr. Baillairge suggested, and in 1878 designed and carried out 
 what is now known as the Dufferin Terrace, Quebec, a struccure some 1,500 feet 
 in I'.'ngth, overlooking the St. Lawrence from a height of 18: feet, and built along 
 the face of the cliff under the Citadel. This terrace was inaugurated in 1878 by 
 their Excellencies the Marquis of Lome and II. R.I I. the Princess Louise, who pro- 
 nounced it a si)lendid achievement. 
 
 In 1873, Mr. Baillairge designed and built the aqueduct bridge over the 
 St. Charles, the peculiarity about which is that the structure forms an arch as 
 does the aqueduct pipe it encloses, whereby, in case of the destruction of the sur- 
 rounding woo 1-work by fire, the pipe being self-supporting, the city may not be 
 deprived of water while re-constructing the frost-protecting tunnel enclosure. 
 

 At the a^e of seventeen, the subject of our sketch built a double cylindered 
 steam carrias.'-e fir traffic on ordinary roads. 
 
 From 1S48 to 1S65 he delivered a series of lectures, in the old Parliament 
 building's and elsewhcu-e, on astronomy, light, steam and the steam engine, pneu- 
 matics, acoustics, geometry, the atmosphere, and other kindred subjects, under the 
 patronage of the Canadian and other Institutes ; and in i872, in the rooms of the 
 Literary and Historical Society, Quebec, under the auspices of that Institution, he 
 delivered an exhrustive lecture on geometry, mensuration, and the stereometricon 
 (a mode of cubing all solids by one and the same rule, thus reducing the study and 
 labour of a year to that of a day or an hour), which he had then but recently in- 
 vented, and for which he was made honorary member of several learned societies, 
 and received the numerous medals and diplomas already alhrJed to. 
 
 The following letter from the Ministry of Pub'ic Instruction, Russia, is 
 worthy of insertion as explanatory of the advantages of the stereometricon : 
 
 RIlMSIKUK DK I.'InsTRUCTION Puiil.IQUi;, 
 
 Saint-Petersbourg, le '» fevrier 1877. 
 No. 1823, 
 
 A I\l. Baillaikge, 
 
 ArcJiitccte a Quebec, 
 
 MoNSiEUU. — Le comite scientifique du ministere de I'lnstruction Publique, 
 (de Russie), reconnaissant I'incontestable utilite de votre " Tableau Stereome- 
 tri([ue" pour I'enseignement de la geom'trie en general, de meme que pour son 
 application pratique a d'autres sciences, eprouve un plaisir tout particuliera joindre 
 aux suffrages des savants de I'Europe et de I'Amerique sa complete approbation, 
 en vous informant que le susdit tableau, avec toutes scs applications, sera rccom- 
 mande aux ecoles primaires et moyennes, pour en completer les cabinets et les 
 collections mathematiques, et inscrit dans les catalogues des ouvn'ges approuves 
 par le ministere de I'lnstruction Publique. 
 
 On fera. en outre, des dispositions pour faire venir de TAmerique a Saint- 
 Petcrsbourg quelques exemplaires de vos editions, et vous etes prie instamment, 
 monsieur, d'avoir la bonie d'informer le coniit6 s'il n'existe pas quelque part en 
 Europe, un depot de vos ouvrages mathematiques. 
 
 Agreez, monsieur, I'assu ranee de ma haute consideration. 
 
 Le chef du departement au ministere de I'lnstruction Publique. 
 
 E. Die Bkadkior. 
 
And the Quebec Mercury, of the loth July, 1878, hiis the following hi rela- 
 tion to a second letter from the same source : 
 
 It will be remembered that in February, 1877, Mr. Haillairirc received an 
 official letter from the Minister of Public Instruction, of St. Petersbourg-, Russia, 
 informini^ him that his new system of mensuration had been adopted in all the pri- 
 mary and medium schools of that vast empire. After a lapse of eighteen months, 
 the system having been found to work well, Mr. Baillairge has received an addi- 
 tionnal testimonial from the snme source, informiny^ him that the system is to be 
 applied in all the polytechnics schools of the Russian empire." 
 
 Mr. Baillairij^e has since that time, given occasional lectures in both lan- 
 guages on industrial art and design, and on other interesting and instructive topics, 
 and is now en'^^aged on a dictionary or dictionnarles of the consonances of both the 
 French and English languages. 
 
 In 1866, he wrote his treatise on geometry and trigonometry, plane and 
 pherical, with mathematical tables — a volume of some 900 pages octavo, and has 
 since edited several works and pamphlet on like subjects. 
 
 In his work on geometry, which, by the way, is written in the French lan- 
 guage, Mr. Baillairge has, by a process explained in the preface, reduced to fully 
 half their number the two hundred and odd propositions of the first six books of 
 Euclid, while deducing and retaining all the results arrived at by the great geo- 
 meter. 
 
 Mr. Baillairge, moreover, shows the practical use and adaptation of pro- 
 blems and theorems, which might otherwise appear to be of doubtful utility, as of 
 the ratio between the tangent, whole secant and part of the secant without the 
 circle, in the laying out of railroad and other curves running through given points, 
 and numerous other examples. His treatment of spherics and of the affections of 
 the sides and angles is, in many respects, novel, and more easy of apprehension 
 by the general student. 
 
 In a note at foot of page 330, Mr. Baillairge shows the fallacy of Thorpe's 
 pretended solution of the trisection of an angle, at which the i)oor man had la- 
 boured for thirty-four years, and takes the then Government to task for granting 
 Mr. Thorpe a patent for the discovery. 
 
 In February 1874, he visited Europe, and it was on the 15th of March of 
 ihat year that he received his first laurels at the " Grand Conservatoire National 
 des Arts et Metiers," Paris. 
 
Mr. Baillairge lately issued a report on the defects in the mode of building 
 in this province, and recommended the establishment of a Polytechnic School for 
 the Province of Quebec, which is now shortly about to be opened in the provin- 
 cial capital under Government patrona,:j^e. It is due to the praiseworthy efforts of 
 the Rev. Brother Aphraates, superior of the order of Christian Brothers, and of 
 which institution Mr. Baillairge, it is understood, is to be professor of technology 
 and en^-ineerinix. 
 
 Some of Mr. Bailloirgc's annual reports on civic affairs are very interesting 
 and instructive ; that of 1S7S, on "the municipal situation," is particularly worthy 
 of perusal. His report ot 1872 was more especially sought after by almost every 
 city engineer in the Canadas and United States, on account of the varied infor- 
 mation it conveyed. It may also be remembered, as illustrative of the versatility 
 of his talent and of his humoristic turn of mind, that a comedy, *' Le Dlable De- 
 venu Cuisinier," written by him in the French language, was, in 1873, played in 
 the " Music Hall," and again in the " Salle Jacques Cartier," Quebec, by tlie 
 IMaugard Company, then in the city, to the great merriment of ail [)resent. 
 
 Nor will the members of " Le Club des 21," composed as it is of the literati, 
 scientists and artists of Quebec, under the presidency of the Count of Premio Real, 
 Consul-General of Spain for Canada, soon forget how, in March, 1S79, Mr. Bail- 
 lairge, in a paper read at one of the sittings of the Club, around a well-spread 
 board, successively portrayed and hit off the peculiarities of each and every mem- 
 ber of the club, and of the count himself, while at the same time doing full justice 
 to the abilities of all. 
 
 Mr. Baillairge is a close and industrious worker, devoting fmrteen hours 
 out of the twenty-four to his professional callings, and again robbing the night for 
 the time to pursue his literary and scientific i)ursuits. 
 
 In politics, if he may be said to have any, he is inclined to Liberalism, but 
 he is of too inde[)endent a character to be tied to a party, preferring to treat each 
 question on its merits, irrespective of its promoters. 
 
 The subject of this sketch is brother to G. F. B.iillairge. D;puty Minister 
 of Public Works of the Dominion, and grand ne()hjw to I'Van^ois Baillairge, an 
 eminent painter and sculptor " de TAcademic Royale de Peinlure et SciiliJiure, 
 France," who carved some of the statues in the Basilica, and whose studio in St. 
 Louis Street (the quaint old owki story building, now Driscoll's iiverj' stable) was 
 at that time so often visited by Prince Fdward, Uuke of Kent, lather of Queen 
 Victoria, during his sojourn in Quebec, 
 
— 6 — 
 
 A portrait of Mr. Baillairge, but which, however, does not do him justice, 
 accompanied by a brief bio,^•rapllical notice, appeared in L Opinion Pnbliqiic of the 
 25th April 1878. The Rivisfa Universale, of Italy, also published his portrait and 
 a biographical sketch of Mr. Baillairge s career, in February of 1878. 
 
 Since the above was edited, in 1879, Mr. Baillairge has been the recipient 
 of the following additional testimonials : 
 
 Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. 
 
 Grenville St., Toronto, Jan. 7th 1880. 
 DicAU Sir, 
 
 I am commanded by His Excellency the Governot General (Marquis of 
 Lome) to inform you that he has been pieased to nominate you as an associate of 
 the New Canadian Academy. 
 
 (Signed), L. N. O'BRIEN, 
 
 Prcsvhnt. 
 
 Royal Society of Canada, 
 
 Montreal, March 7th 1882. 
 Sir, 
 
 I have the honor to intimate to you by request of the Governor General 
 (Marquis of Lome, ) that Mis Excellency hopes yo^ will allow yourself to be named 
 by him as one of the twenty original metnbers of The Mathematical, Physical and 
 Chemical Section of the New Literary and Scientific Society of Canada, the first 
 meeting of which will be held at Ottawa on the 25th of May, Should you acceiJt 
 be good enough to state what work you wish associat'jd with your name. 
 
 I have the honor to be 
 Sir 
 Your most obedient, 
 
 I. STERRY HUNT, 
 
 President of the Mathematical Physical & Chemical Section, 
 C. Baillairge Esq. 
 
Hotel dii goitvernemcnt. ' ' \ 
 
 Quebec, 12 avril 1882. 
 A Monsieur le Chevalier Baillairge, Quebec 
 AIdx Cui;r Monsikuu, 
 
 Je vous prie d'accepter mes siiiceres remerciments pour I'envoi que vous 
 m'avez fait d'une serie complete de vos oeuvres scientifiques, ainsi que du volume 
 de la " Galerie " ou se trouve votre biographic et votre portrait. J'ai etc tres sen- 
 sible a cette attention de votre part ; vos travaux et votre reputation qui s'e.st fait 
 jour meme en Euro[je font honneur, permettez moi de vous le dire, a notre patrie 
 et a la nationalite franco-canadienne. Notre jeune pays compte encore peu d'illus- 
 trations dans le monde de la science, et il doit etre d'autant plus fier de ceux de 
 ses enfants qui attirent sur eux I'attention des hommes dont I'opinion fait autorite. 
 
 Veuillez accepter ma pliotogra;jhie et agroer. Monsieur le Chevalier, I'hom- 
 mage de la parfaite consideration avec laquelle j'ai I'honneur d'etre, 
 
 Votre obeissant serviteur, 
 
 THEODORE RCBITAILLE. 
 Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Province de Quebec. 
 
 In July 1882 Mr, Baillairge was unanimously elected president of the newly 
 incorporated body of Land Surveyors and Engineers of the Province of Quebec. 
 
 Hotel du G Oliver ncmcnt. 
 
 Quebec iSjuin 1877. 
 
 MoN'.SIl'-.UR, 
 
 Permettez-moi de vous offrir mes remerciments pour I'envoi (|ue vous m'avez 
 fait de votio ouvrage " Traite de Gcometrie et de Trigonometrie qui vous fait tant 
 d'honneur ainsi qu'a notre pays. 
 
 Comme [iresident de la Commission Canailienne a Phi!aJe'phie j'ai eu occa- 
 sion de faire examiner votre tableau stert^ometrique par les re[)resentants de la 
 Grande- Bretagne, d(> la France, de I'Allemagne, de la Russie, de I'Espagne, du 
 Portugal, de I'ltalie et, a une seule exception il etait connu et hautenient apprecie 
 par eux tou.\ 
 
 Monsieur Lavoinc, Ingealcur des Ponts et Chaussees, (ju(i je connus i\ Phi- 
 ladelphie, ou il avail la direction de I'exposition des modeles des Travaux Publics 
 
— 8 — 
 
 de France, m'en parla alors, de meme que durant une visite qu'il me fit a Ottawa, 
 I'automne dernier, de la maniere la plus flatteuse pour vous et pour les Canadiens. 
 Je suis heureux. Monsieur, de ces temoignages qui vous honorent et de 
 savoir que vos travaux, tant de fois couronnes dans votre pays et h I'etranger, 
 viennent de I'etre encore a I'Exposition Universelle de i87'6 a Philadelphie. 
 
 Je demeure, 
 
 Monsieur, 
 
 Votre obeissant serviteur, 
 
 L. LETELLIER. 
 
 , Lieut.-Gouverneur de la Province de Quebec. 
 
 Monsieur C. Baillairg^, 
 
 Ingenieur Civil, Quebec. 
 
 Hotel du Gouvernement. 
 
 Quebec, iSjuin 1877. 
 
 MoN CHER Monsieur, 
 
 S'il vous etait possible de passer k r.ion bureau, j'aurais le plaisir de savoir 
 que vous consentez, i entrer dans le cercle des Auteurs Canadiens, dont je desire 
 m'entourer intimement, de temps a autres a Spencer Wood. 
 
 Bien k vous, 
 
 L. LETELLIER, 
 M. C. Baillargd, Quebec. 
 
 54 
 2703/3C