Bourinot, Sir John George

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Margaret A. Banks, “BOURINOT, Sir JOHN GEORGE,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bourinot_john_george_13E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Journalist, historian, littérateur, civil servant, and expert in parliamentary procedure and constitutional law; b. 24 Oct. 1836 in Sydney, N.S., son of John Bourinot and Margaret Jane Marshall; m. first 1 Sept. 1858, in Toronto, Bridges Delia Houck (d. 1861), a widow, and they had two sons; m. secondly 3 Oct. 1865 Emily Alden Pilsbury (d. 1887) in Halifax, and they had one son and two daughters; m. thirdly 3 July 1889 Isabelle Cameron in Regina, and they had two sons, one of whom was Arthur Stanley; d. 13 Oct. 1902 in Ottawa.
    • John George Bourinot’s father was one of Sydney’s most prominent citizens, representing Cape Breton County in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly from 1859 to 1867 and serving in the Senate from 1867 until his death in 1884, and his mother was the daughter of John George Marshall, a justice of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas for Cape Breton. For a short time after leaving Trinity, Bourinot was the parliamentary reporter of the Toronto Leader.
    • By October 1858, however, he had returned to Sydney, where on the 13th he signed articles of clerkship with attorney James Charles McKeagney. The term was to be five years, but Bourinot did not complete it; he is said to have dreaded a life of professional routine in the law. Perhaps his most important writing immediately after confederation was a series of letters in 1868 to the Ottawa Times entitled “The state of affairs in Nova Scotia.” Written between 23 January and 28 November, the letters trace the development of the movement in Nova Scotia for the repeal of the British North America Act, showing the split between Howe, who by the latter date had given up the fight for repeal and was negotiating with Ottawa for “better terms,” and members of the assembly, such as Attorney General Martin Isaac Wilkins, who in the absence of repeal seemed ready to establish a Nova Scotian republic. Although a strong unionist, Bourinot claimed that Nova Scotia had valid grievances and urged Ontario and Quebec to conciliate the people of the Maritime provinces. 
    • An article in the Canadian Parliamentary Review in 1984 noted that Bourinot has “some claim to being considered the first political scientist in Canada.” Certainly he promoted the teaching of political science in Canadian universities, asserting in 1889 that “no institution of learning should keep exclusively within the old beaten paths of classical and mathematical learning.” His ideal course in Canadian political science combined the study of contemporary government with that of the political and constitutional history of Canada, Britain, and France.
    • A recurring theme in Bourinot’s historical writing is that there were three well-defined eras of development in Canada, the French regime, the period from the conquest to confederation, and the period from confederation to the time of writing. 
  • Great Grandson of Proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=15138
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7051647/john-george-bourinot