Alexander Mackenzie
...unities in Scotland. He built a bomb – proof stone arch at Fort Henry in Kingston, worked on: the Martello towers at Fort Henry, the Beauharnois Canal near Montreal, the Welland Canal, the Episcopal Church and bank in Sarnia courthouses and jails in Chatham and Sandwich. Like his family Mackenzie was a member of the Liberal Party. Already in Scotland he had been drawn to the Chartist movement which advocated democratic reform and later on he continued in the Reform party (forerunner of the Liberal party) in Canada. In 1852 Alexander Mackenzie became editor of a new Liberal newspaper, the Lambton Shield, in Sarnia and through it become friend with George Brown, editor of the Toronto Globe and the leader of the Liberal Party. Later he was elected as a Reform member to the Provincial Assembly in 1861. In 1867 he was elected to federal Parliament and sat in the Ontario Assembly from 1871 to 1872, when dual representation was abolished. In 1873 he became the second Prime Minister. Honourable Alexander Mackenzie was Prime Minister from November 7, 1873 and remained at this position until October 8, 1878 when Conservatives won election and returned to power with Macdonald at the head. Mackenzie also served as a Minister of Public Works. He gave up the leadership of the Liberals in 1880 but remained in Parliament until his death in 1892. He died on 17 of April 1892 of a stroke and is buried in Lakeview Cemetery near Sarnia, Ontario next ho his second wife Jane. Behind every man is his wife. While the American First Lady has a number of responsibilities and usually her own staff, the same is not true of the spouse of the Prime Minister. The spouse of the Prime Minister of Canada does not have a significant role and she is not officially called First Lady of Canada. Perhaps, it is because the much smaller role of the personal lives of politicians in Canadian media and the fact that the Canadian PM is not the head of state. In life of Alexander Mackenzie were two women. Helen Neil Mackenzie (October 21, 1826 – January 4, 1852) was his first wife. It was because of Helen, who previously immigrated to Canada with her family, that Alexander himself came to Canada in 1842 to follow his sweetheart. The couple had three children but two of them died in infancy and the third one was a girl, named Mary Mackenzie. Helen died after being married to Alexander for seven years. A year after her death Alexander remarried and again a Scottish woman Jane Sym. The couple had no children. Jane died after her husband and is buried next to him in Lakeview Cemetery, near Sarnia, Ontario. I have already mentioned that, Alexander Mackenzie refused all offers of a British knighthood. Was it because of his Scottish heritage or because of his pride in working – class origin? Perhaps both is right, because well – known is his citation: “I have always held those political opinions which point to the universal brotherhood of man, no matter in what rank of life he may have taken his origin”. It was relatively unusual for a man of such humble origin to achieve a position of Prime Minister in time which generally offered such opportunity only to the privileged. The current Governor General, Lord Dufferin himself was mistrustful about a Mackenzie taking over government. Although there were many who blamed his government for the economic recession which plagued the country in the mid 1870s, I supposed, Mackenzie did not fail the expectations. He brought with him his stonemason’s skill and his democratic principles and the fact is that as Prime Minister he made every effort to reform and simplify the system of government. Under his administration, the Liberal government reformed the electoral system and introduced the „secret ballot” in 1874, established the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario in 1874, established the Supreme Court of Canada in 1875, created the Office of the Auditor General in 1878 and struggled to lay foundations of the national railway. ...