Date Published:
July 2007

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Sir Joseph Dubuc

Dubuc, Sir Joseph (1840-1914), chief justice of Manitoba (1903-9), was born at Ste. Martine, Lower Canada, on December 26, 1840, the son of Joseph Dubuc and Phebée Euphémie Garand. He was educated at Montreal College and McGill University (LL.B., 1869), and was called to the bar of Quebec in 1869, and of  Manitoba in 1871. He settled in Winnipeg in June, 1870, became a member of Louis Riel's provisional council, and in December, 1870, was elected to represent St. Norbert in the first Legislative Assembly of Manitoba. He sat in the Assembly until 1878; in 1874 he was for a short time attorney-general in the Girard administration, and from 1875 to 1878 he was speaker of the Assembly. In 1872 he was also appointed a member of the Council of the North West Territories. In 1878 he was elected to represent Provencher in the Canadian House of Commons, as a Conservative; and he sat for this constituency until his appointment in 1879 as a judge of the court of Queer's Bench in Manitoba. In 1903 he became chief justice of Manitoba, and he retired from the bench in 1910. He died at Los Angeles, California, on January 7, 1914. In 1872 he married Maria Anne Hénault of St. Cuthbert, Quebec. He was an LL.D. of the University of Toronto (1907), and he was created a knight bachelor in 1912. See Rev. E. LeCompte, Sir Joseph Dubuc (Montreal, 1923), and L. A. Prud'homme, “Sir Joseph Dubuc” (Revue canadienne, 1914).

Source: W. Stewart WALLACE, The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. II, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 411p., p. 240.