Date Published:
April 2005

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

Sir Dominick Daly

Daly, Sir Dominick (1798-1868), administrator, was born in Galway, Ireland, on August 11, 1798, the third son of Dominick Daly, an Irish landowner. He came to Canada as the private secretary of Sir Francis Burton in 1822; and in 1827 he was appointed provincial secretary for Lower Canada. He was continued in this office under the Act of Union in 1841, having been elected to the Legislative Assembly for Megantic. During the years 1841-8 he clung to office in successive administrations, and from November, 1843, to August, 1844, he was the governor's sole constitutional adviser; but in 1848 he was not included in the second Baldwin-Lafontaine administration. He was the last survivor of the old Canadian bureaucracy, and was commonly known as "the perpetual secretary." In 1851 he returned to England, and was appointed successively governor of Tobago (1851-4), lieutenant-governor of Prince Edward Island (1854-7), and governor of South Australia (1860-8). He was knighted in 1857; and he died in South Australia on February 19, 1868. In 1826 he married Caroline Maria, daughter of Col. Ralph Gore of Kilkenny, Ireland.

Source  : W. Stewart Wallace, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. II, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 411p., p. 176.