Keefer, Thomas Coltrin

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: H. V. Nelles, “KEEFER, THOMAS COLTRIN,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/keefer_thomas_coltrin_14E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Engineer, author, and businessman; b. 4 Nov. 1821 in Thorold Township, Upper Canada, eighth son of George Keefer and Jane Emory, née McBride; m. first 27 Sept. 1848 Elizabeth McKay (d. 1870) in New Edinburgh (Ottawa), and they had three sons and four daughters; m. secondly 26 June 1873 Annie MacKinnon, née McKay (d. 1906), in Rockcliffe (Rockcliffe Park), Ont.; they had no children; d. there 7 Jan. 1915.
    • Like his elder half-brother Samuel Keefer, Thomas Keefer was born to engineering. His father, through commercial association with William Hamilton Merritt, was first president of the Welland Canal Company. In the 1820s and 1830s the Keefer children, and there were 14 of them, grew up immersed in the ceaseless activity, disasters, and tentative triumphs of frontier canal building.
    • Keefer received his formal education at Grantham Academy in St Catharines and Upper Canada College in Toronto. Upon graduation in 1838 he worked as an apprentice engineer on the Erie Canal in New York State, at the time the leading project on the continent for schooling engineers. From 1840 to 1845 he practised as an assistant engineer on the Welland Canal, which was then being reconstructed with public money. Through the influence of Samuel, who had become chief engineer of the Board of Works of the Province of Canada, Thomas was appointed engineer in charge of the timber slides and river improvements at Bytown (Ottawa) in 1845. Four years later he was transferred to the St Lawrence River improvements, on which he would work for about two years.
    • Above all, he maintained, Canada needed transportation improvements. The St Lawrence pointed the direction westward. It was for man to improve upon this avenue with the new technology of masonry, steam, and iron. But this goal would require concerted effort and public investment. These convictions formed the basis of the two pamphlets published in Montreal and Toronto in 1850, Philosophy of railroads . . . and The canals of Canada . . . , with which Keefer burst into prominence.
    • Written at the behest of the Montreal and Lachine Rail-road, Philosophy stands as one of the most rousing hymns to railway promotion ever penned. Its immediate object was to turn Montreal’s attention away from local railways and projects connecting the city by rail to seaboard ports towards a strategic linkage with Toronto, thereby allowing Montreal to outdistance its American rivals for control of the interior trade. But in its rolling cadences and literary allusions, Keefer’s prose transcended the immediate commercial objectives of his Montreal patrons to make a soaring general argument linking railways to the material improvement and moral perfection of man. For this reason the pamphlet was reprinted four times, translated into French, and in various forms employed in the promotions of several Maritime and New England projects. Canals, which won first prize in the essay competition sponsored by Governor Lord Elgin to celebrate the completion of the provincial canal system, set forth in equally compelling prose the idea of a commercial empire of the St Lawrence.
    • Keefer lived out his model of professional achievement. He came from a distinguished family, added to its honour through his practice and international reputation, wielded a formidable pen, moved comfortably in the highest echelon of Canadian society, and was decorated abroad. He built useful works, but it was not given to him to build a great work. Perhaps for this reason the ultimate distinction of a knighthood eluded him.
    • Keefer’s last literary piece, written in his 90th year, was a homage to his mentor, W. H. Merritt. In The old Welland Canal and the man who made it (Ottawa, 1911), he recalled the thrill he had felt as a boy in 1829 watching two vessels, one British and one American, break through ice to open the Welland Canal. This recollection, with its symbols of technological triumph, continental economic integration, faith, human perseverance, and innocence, captures the main themes of Keefer’s life.
  • Grandson 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/112578285/thomas_coltrin-keefer