Desbrisay, Mather Byles

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: A. A. MacKenzie, “DesBRISAY, MATHER BYLES,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 12, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/desbrisay_mather_byles_12E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Lawyer, politician, office holder, judge, and historian; b. 19 March 1828 in Chester, N.S., son of Thomas Belcher DesBrisay and Lucretia Bourdette Woodward; m. September 1876 Ada A. Harley; they had no children; d. 8 April 1900 in Bridgewater, N.S.
    • Mather Byles DesBrisay was a great-grandson of Thomas Desbrisay, lieutenant governor of St John’s (Prince Edward) Island, and of the loyalist clergyman Mather Byles. After being educated in Halifax and Dartmouth schools, he received his legal training in the office of George Augustus Blanchard and Alexander James in Halifax, and he was called to the bar in 1851.
    • After an unsuccessful venture into politics in 1863, DesBrisay, a Liberal, was elected to the House of Assembly for Lunenburg County by a large majority in the anti-confederate (Liberal) sweep in 1867. He was one of seven extreme anti-confederate mhas, led by Dr George Murray of Pictou County, who stubbornly opposed Nova Scotia’s “coercion” into confederation. According to DesBrisay, “Canada had no more right to tax Nova Scotia without her people’s consent than Great Britain had to tax the American colonies in 1776.” He was re-elected in 1871 and 1874, but by 1871 he had realized that repeal was unattainable. He had also discovered that the Liberals, once in power, had proved as grasping as the Conservatives. Wealthy supporters of the government party were rewarded with large land grants for timber and mineral speculation. Believing that the land should be reserved for bona fide settlers, DesBrisay, who served as the province’s immigration agent in the 1870s, fought the land grab with some success by forcing the government to publish a list of the grants. 
    • DesBrisay will be better remembered as a historian than as a judge or politician. His essay on the history of Lunenburg County, submitted for the Akins Historical Prize at King’s College in 1868, was published in an expanded version two years later in Halifax and in a greatly enlarged second edition (Toronto, 1895). Based on a wide range of documents and on interviews with many elderly settlers, the History of the county of Lunenburg is a serious attempt to recreate the atmosphere of early Lunenburg and to describe the progress of settlement. It is not without errors, which the dependence on reminiscences made inevitable. In glorifying the county’s hardy pioneers, the book employs a tone that is often moralizing.
  • Great grandson of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=1101
  • Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/103413446/mather-byles-desbrisay