Blair, Andrew George

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: D. M. Young, “BLAIR, ANDREW GEORGE,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/blair_andrew_george_13E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Seventh Prenmier of New Brunswick, Lawyer and politician; b. 7 March 1844 in Fredericton, son of Andrew Blair and Mary Ann Segee; m. there 31 Oct. 1866 Annie Elizabeth Thompson, and of their ten children two sons and five daughters survived him; d. there 25 Jan. 1907.
    • Andrew Blair’s father, a native of Halifax and about 57 years of age when Andrew was born, was referred to in the 1851 census as a carpenter, and elsewhere variously as surveyor, road commissioner, and contractor; he died when his son was 15. The chief male influence on Andrew’s early youth was his mother’s youngest brother, George N. Segee. After education in the Fredericton Collegiate School, Andrew entered his uncle’s law office at age 14, and on Segee’s death in 1863 completed his legal studies under John Campbell Allen. Admitted as an attorney in 1865 and called to the bar in April 1866, he entered into partnership in 1867 with George Frederick Gregory.
    •  After running unsuccessfully in the provincial elections of 1870 and 1874, Blair was elected to the House of Assembly for York County at the head of the poll in 1878. Federal party labels counted for little in the assembly, where members chose government or opposition on the basis of constituency interests or personal concerns. Blair quickly became the centre of an opposition faction that by 1881 saw itself as the core of an alternative government. Constituency interests took precedence on 23 March when a vote was taken on the location of the capital, the parliament house in Fredericton having burned the previous month. Blair and nine members of the opposition joined Fraser and nine government members to defeat Saint John’s aspirations and carry the retention of Fredericton by a margin of 20 to 18.
    • Blair became attorney general and premier. Like most attorneys general of that era, he continued to carry on a private legal practice, necessary in his case to meet his family responsibilities. Safely in office, Blair showed himself to be a master of hard-headed practicality. In an adroit display of political legerdemain he made the opposition ineffective, persuading several members to cross the floor. The limited political and financial resources available were carefully husbanded to balance competing constituency interests and appease personal and sectarian rivalries, with some kept available to serve the general interests of the province. 
    • Blair’s approach to public life was constructive. He was a builder. He succeeded, where all his predecessors had failed, in creating a party structure in the unstable political world of New Brunswick. By making a place for the Acadians, he transformed the Liberal party and established the dominance which it has since retained in the province. In his deviousness he was a politician in the John A. Macdonald mould, with an instinct for power, but he lacked the saving grace of humour, and early responsibility and a large family had made him more continually aware than Macdonald of the need for looking after his own self-interest. He was a lover of ideas and a keeper of his own counsel, an individualist who said that he did not give a fig for a man who went with the tide, adding, “I like to strike out for myself and breast it.” Shortly after he resigned in 1904 a journalist referred to his “calm reticence” and said, “He speaks but seldom, but when his voice is heard it is with no equivocal sound.”
  • Grandson of Proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=7433
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8535241/andrew-george-blair