Mabee, James Pitt

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Jamie Benidickson, “MABEE, JAMES PITT,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/mabee_james_pitt_14E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Lawyer, judge, and railway commissioner; b. 5 Nov. 1859 in Port Rowan, Upper Canada, son of Simon Pitt Mabee and Frances Susannah Leaton; m. there 24 Oct. 1883 Mary Soleby Thorold (d. 1910), and they had a daughter and a son; d. 6 May 1912 in Toronto.
    • A descendant of loyalist settlers in the Long Point region on Lake Erie, James P. Mabee was raised in Port Rowan, where his father was a justice of the peace, court clerk, and insurance agent. James attended St Thomas High School and then pursued studies at the University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall which led to his call to the bar in Michaelmas term 1882. That year the enterprising Mabee compiled for publication a series of lectures by Joseph Easton MacDougall on torts and negligence.
    • On 24 March 1908 Mabee received a new assignment, to succeed Albert Clements Killam as full-time head of the Board of Railway Commissioners, a federal body that, in the estimate of the Canada Law Journal (Toronto), possibly possessed “wider powers than any Court in Canada.” Even without the duties resulting from Mabee’s additional appointment, in 1910, as Canada’s representative in negotiations for the joint control of traffic rates between Canada and the United States, his workload was onerous. Since 1906, in addition to railway operations, express, telegraph, and telephone companies had been under the jurisdiction of the board, which held hearings frequently all across Canada; by 1912 it would have 65 permanent staff. Never deterred by legal technicality or corporate bullishness, Mabee was ideally qualified to meet the challenges of an evolving regulatory process. As one observer noted, “He whipped lawyers and witnesses into line, brushed away the pettifoggeries, and let it be known that, while the law is a fearful and wonderful thing, justice is very simple and a matter of few words.”
    • Mabee generally dealt judiciously with the railways, the board’s main concern. On occasion he was careful to safeguard the competitive position of Canada’s railway network from the adverse impact of general policy, such as sabbath observance under the Lord’s Day Act of 1906. At the same time he was emphatic in numerous cases on the need for safety, at crossings for instance, and was unwilling to allow carriers to impose unauthorized charges on shipping clients whose survival often depended on the predictability associated with published tariffs.
    • Summing up his years as chief commissioner, the Canada Law Journal stated that “his administration . . . was marked by a masterly grasp of the situation followed by a prompt and intelligent decision which, as a rule, carried conviction, by its wisdom and righteousness, even to those whose claims were refused or modified.” Newspaper editorials, eulogies, and even cartoons stressed Mabee’s fairness, popularity, and leadership in the regulatory supervision of transportation and communications in Canada.
  • Second Great Grandson of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=4894
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/217980039/james-pitt-mabee