John Norquay

JOHN NORQUAY

Canadian Politician: He played only a minor role in the events of Louis Riel's Red River Rebellion (1869–70), but decided to enter public life shortly thereafter. He was acclaimed for the riding of High Bluff in Manitoba's first general election on 27 December 1870, and soon became a leader in the "mixed-blood" community. He first became minister of public works and later minister of agriculture. In 1878, upon the resignation of the premier of Manitoba, he became the first Metis premier of a province in Canada. He served as premier until 1887.

Parents

John Norquay was the the fifth of the six children of John Norquay and his wife, Isabella Truthwaite. He was born on 8 May 1841, near St Andrews in Manitoba, Canada, and died at Winnipeg there on 5 July 1889 Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Ancestry

John Norquay was a descendant of Hudson’s Bay Company servants who had worked on the northern rivers and the shores of Hudson Bay during the eighteenth century. His maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Vincent, was the daughter of a “country marriage” between an Indian or Métis woman and an HBC officer. John’s father, a reliable jack of all trades at Norway House (Man.) in the mid 1830s, moved to the Red River Settlement in 1838 where he acquired a small farm and a few head of livestock. John had an unsettled childhood. His mother died in 1843 when he was two and his father in 1849. He was then raised by his paternal grandmother, Mrs James Spence, and by his teachers at the Anglican St John’s Collegiate School in Red River Dictionary of Canadian Biography

St. Andrews, Lisgar, Manitoba, Canada, 1881

John Norquay and his wife Elizabeth, and seven of their children, are noticed in the Canadian Federal Census which was enumerated on 4 April 1881. At this time they were residents of St. Andews, Lisgar, in Manitoba 1881 Census of Canada

Biographical Accounts

1. Dictionary of Canadian Biography: John Norquay
2. The Canadian Encyclopedia: John Norquay
3. Memorable Manitobans: John Norquay
4. Red River Sncestry: John Norquay
5. Wikipedia: John Norquay

Notes

• Residence: St. Andrew's, Red River, Manitoba - 1881
• Updated from MyHeritage Match by SmartCopy: Sep 25 2014, 12:37:46 UTC