Robert Young (Canadian politician)
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Robert Young | |
|---|---|
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| Born | November 11, 1834 Tracadie, New Brunswick |
| Died | February 3, 1904 (aged 69) Caraquet, New Brunswick |
| Occupations | Owner, James Young & Sons and provincial politician |
| Spouse | Sarah Hubbard |
| Children | F.T.B. Young |
Robert Young (November 11, 1834 – February 3, 1904) was a businessman and political figure in Canada who was significant in the economic and political development of the city of Caraquet and in the province of New Brunswick.
Young was born in Tracadie, New Brunswick, the son and grandson of Scottish immigrants. He was the oldest of James Young and Ann Ferguson's eleven children. Young was educated in Chatham, where in 1857 he married Sarah Hubbard. The Young family was part of a ruling class of powerful English-speaking capitalists in majority French-speaking Gloucester County. His sister Helen married pioneer physician Dr. Alfred Corbett Smith and his brother James Young also became a political figure.[1]
Business activities
Young took over the operation of the Caraquet branch of his father's fishing and canning business, James Young and Sons, in 1851. The firm was one of the largest exporters of dried fish and they also canned fish, lobster, and blueberries. After his father's death in 1866, Young took over the operation of the company and expanded the firm's activities in lobster trapping and canning. In 1882 he owned a lobster cannery at Caraquet and another at Black Point in Shippagan. When he retired, his son Frederick Temple Blackwood Young took over the business.[2]
Political career
Young held various offices in the provincial administration both before and after Canadian Confederation. Young represented Gloucester County in the Legislative Assembly of the Colony of New Brunswick from 1861 to 1867. He was commissioner of lighthouses and buoys for the port of Caraquet and represented Gloucester County on the Board of Agriculture. Despite being an anti-confederate, in 1867 the government of George Edwin King appointed him to the Legislative Council, for which he served as president until 1883.[3]
Because most of his constituents were Acadian, Young supported translating the proceedings of the provincial assembly into French. He also presented a study to the house examining the feasibility of publishing public notices in French newspapers. As a legislator, Young opposed the Common Schools Act of 1871. The act established a non-secular English public education system that was supported by a province-wide tax. The Acadian population considered the bill a threat to the French Catholic education system and to their cultural traditions. Young supported the establishment of lazarettos in the province. In 1849 and in 1853, he and his father had built the first two lazarettos in New Brunswick on land that his father later sold to the province. Young also regularly advocated for the business interests of Gloucester County.[2]
Young was initially a Liberal Party member, but later affiliated with the Liberal-Conservative Party and the Conservative Party.[3]
