John Stoughton Dennis
Dennis, John Stoughton
John Stoughton Dennis, surveyor, soldier (b at Kingston 19 Oct 1820; d at Kingsmere, Qué 7 July 1885). Of UE Loyalist stock, Dennis was commissioned a surveyor in the Department of Crown Lands in 1843. He joined the militia in 1855, becoming in 1862 Brigade Major of No 3 Military District, Toronto. He was exonerated by a court of inquiry about his leadership in a skirmish against FENIANS in 1866, but the episode seems to have ended his army career. In 1869 Dennis was placed in charge of surveying the North-West Territories, where his arrival helped precipitate the RED RIVER REBELLION.
In 1871 he became surveyor-general of DOMINION LANDS, ie, the person chiefly responsible for mapping the Prairie West, and was deputy minister of the Interior Department 1887-81.
His son, J.S. Dennis Jr, followed a similar career as a surveyor in the West in 1872, as commander of a militia unit against Riel at BATOCHE in 1885, and as inspector of surveys 1887-94. J.S. Dennis Jr wrote a history of the Dominion lands survey 1869-89 (when his father had proposed a better system than the US standard eventually adopted) and ended his career as chief of the CPR Department of Natural Resources in charge of lands and irrigation.
Author DONALD J.C. PHILLIPSON
Suggested Reading
D.W. Thomson, Men and Meridians, Vol 2 (1967).
Shawnadithit grew anxious waiting for her uncle, Longnon, to return to camp at the junction of Badger Brook and the Exploits River, deep in the wilds of Newfoundland...
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