John Hamilton Gray (New Brunswick politician)

John Hamilton Gray, QC (* 1814 in St. George 's, Bermuda, † June 5, 1889 in Victoria, British Columbia) was a Canadian politician and military officer. From 1856 to 1857 he was the prime minister of the then colony of New Brunswick. As one of the Fathers of Confederation, he is among the pioneers of the Canadian federal government established in 1867. From 1867 to 1872 he was Conservative Member of Parliament of the House.

Biography

Gray, the son of an administrator of the Royal Navy and later British consul in Virginia, grew up in Halifax. He studied law at King's College in Windsor and was admitted to the bar in 1836, after which he opened a law firm in Saint John. In addition to his professional activities, he was also commander of a cavalry regiment of the militia of New Brunswick. Until 1854 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Grays political career began in 1849, when he joined the reformist New Brunswick Colonial Association. Although these liberal union rejected his proposal for a federal government in British North America, but in 1850 introduced Gray as candidates for the legislative elections on. He was elected and took in the opposition soon play a leading role because he was considered an excellent speaker. 1851 Gray joined the Conservatives after Governor Edmund Walker Head him and Robert Duncan Wilmot had offered a seat in the government. On June 21, 1856, he took over the premiership. After he had his main concern, the repeal of alcohol prohibition enforced, he expressed increasingly hard to find stable majorities and already had to resign in May 1857 as head of government.

In the elections of 1861, Gray lost his parliamentary seat. Three years later he won in a by-election. Prime Minister Samuel Leonard Tilley appointed him as a delegate to the Charlottetown Conference and at the Quebec Conference, where it was advised on the merger of the North American colonies. The proposed Canadian Confederation met in New Brunswick with fierce resistance. The new Anti- Confederation Party won the elections in March 1865, while the proponents of the Confederacy had suffered a crushing defeat; Gray also lost his seat

But a year later, the political situation changed again radically since the Anti- Confederation Party was falling apart. Gray moved back into parliament and was determined as Speaker. In the first Canadian general election in September 1867, he won the electoral district of Saint John. Since he could not make any influence at the federal level, he resigned in July 1872. He moved then to British Columbia, as he had been appointed to the Supreme Court of this province. In 1878 he told a directed against Chinese immigrants law invalid. Judicial office he held until his death.