Keefer, Samuel

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: H. V. Nelles, “KEEFER, SAMUEL,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 11, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/keefer_samuel_11E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Civil engineer and public servant; b. 22 Jan. 1811 at Thorold, Upper Canada, fourth son of George Keefer and Catherine Lampman; m. first 13 May 1840 Anne E. Crawford (d. 1876), second daughter of Senator George Crawford, of Brockville, Upper Canada; m. secondly 13 Dec. 1883 Rosalie Ellis Pocock, also of Brockville; d. there 7 Jan. 1890.
    • Politics and engineering were necessarily related in mid-19th-century Canada since most big projects were public works in which the key jobs were political appointments. Samuel Keefer’s apprenticeship from 1827 to 1833 in the Welland Canal Company, which was interrupted by two years at Upper Canada College, was an ideal preparation for an engineering career in such a world. Under the guidance of his father, who was president of the company, William Hamilton Merritt, its driving force, and the Erie Canal veterans who engineered the work, Keefer learned the technical and political lessons of his craft. Expertise and political influence eventually carried Samuel Keefer to the top of his chosen profession, from which he fell in disgrace, only to be rescued by grateful political friends.
    • A year later, no doubt with some help from his friends, he was appointed secretary to the newly established Board of Works of Lower Canada, and with the reorganization of the board following the union of 1841 he became its chief engineer. By the age of 30 Keefer held one of the most important engineering appointments in British North America.
    • The Board of Works (after 1846 the Department of Public Works) was the largest department in the provincial bureaucracy. In 1842 its headquarters staff of four administered a field staff of 92, which included many engineers. A decade later the field staff numbered over 200 and by confederation had reached 500. The board built and maintained many of the roads and bridges of the province (although these were being turned over to local authorities wherever possible); it also looked after the timber slides, harbours, and lighthouses, and it was responsible for housing the peripatetic provincial government and its departments. But in the 1840s by far its greatest and most costly responsibility was the completion of the St Lawrence canal system. In the 1850s oversight of the planning and construction of the provincial railway system would be added to these responsibilities.
    • Keefer also managed to negotiate the difficult transition from one transportation technology to another. When the railway era arrived in earnest, he left the Department of Public Works in 1853 to take up more lucrative employment as a divisional engineer on the Grand Trunk Railway under Alexander McKenzie Ross. He was called back into public service by the government of John A. Macdonald and Étienne-Paschal Taché.
    • When in 1859 Hamilton Killaly’s career as deputy of the largest spending department of government had to be sacrificed to the universal demand for retrenchment and restraint, Samuel Keefer had the duties of deputy commissioner of public works added to his responsibilities as inspector of railroads on 6 May. 
  • Son of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=4367
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/201736568/samuel-keefer