Dennis, John Stoughton

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: John Gilpin, “DENNIS, JOHN STOUGHTON (1856-1938),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/dennis_john_stoughton_1856_1938_16E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Surveyor, militia and army officer, civil servant, and railway-company official; b. 22 Oct. 1856 in Weston (Toronto), Upper Canada, eldest son of John Stoughton Dennis and Sarah Maria Oliver; m. first 29 Dec. 1879 Mary Conroy in Aylmer (Gatineau), Que., and they had a daughter; m. secondly 1921, in New York City, Kate Hunter of Kingston, Ont.; d. 26 Nov. 1938 in Victoria
    • John Stoughton Dennis was born into an affluent loyalist family. His father, as surveyor general and deputy minister of the federal Department of the Interior, played a significant role in the settlement of western Canada, and John would follow in his footsteps. Educated at Trinity College School in Weston, and for a time at the gunnery school in Kingston (A Battery, Garrison Artillery), he trained as a surveyor under his father and Bolton Magrath of Aylmer. In 1877 he qualified as a dominion land surveyor and dominion topographical surveyor. He helped organize the Association of Provincial Land Surveyors in Manitoba and served as its president in 1881. Active too in the Association of Dominion Land Surveyors, formed in 1882, Dennis was president in 1890. Recognition of his engineering skills would come in 1901, when he was admitted to the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers.
    • During the early years of World War I, Dennis’s focus on western settlement sharpened. Beginning in 1914 he prepared a series of memoranda on the failure of rural settlement to keep pace with railway construction and urban growth. His recommendations included an aggressive post-war program to correct this imbalance, starting with the CPR’s formation of a department of colonization and development in the fall of 1916. Dennis became its first commissioner on 24 March 1917 and he would later move to Montreal, where the railway was headquartered.
    • Having made these preparations, he concentrated his efforts on meeting imperial and Canadian wartime needs, which in his mind were the same. In 1917–18, with the rank of colonel, he was placed in charge of the Canadian section of the British–Canadian recruiting mission in the United States. In recognition of this service, he was made a cmg in 1918. The next year he was part of the Canadian economic commission and military contingent sent to revolutionary Siberia, where he was responsible for transportation. He was also commissioner of the Canadian Red Cross. Canada’s intervention confirmed his view of Siberia as a future market, but following their arrival in Vladivostok in February 1919, the members of the economic commission concluded that the region’s devastation precluded this objective. Dennis was able, however, to deal with dire conditions of health and supply before the withdrawal of the Canadian brigade and Red Cross staff in May.
    • Dennis returned to Montreal and his duties as commissioner of colonization and development, determined to solve the problems identified at the outset of the war. He failed to achieve his ambitious goal of ten million immigrants in ten years, but he had some successes, including the relocation of Mennonites from Russia in the early 1920s. Later in the decade his department supervised a number of new schemes directed specifically at British immigrants. Dennis’s role in the CPR’s post-war effort to attract settlers also included his presidency of the Canada Colonization Association from 1925 to 1932.
  • Great Grandson of Proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=2176
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/133801568/john-stoughton-dennis