244 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



tion but was returned at a bye-election in 1869 to fill a vacancy in 

 North Renfrew occasioned by the resignation of the late John Tupper, 

 who gave up the seat as a compromise to have Mr. Murray withdraw 

 his candidature for the Commons as an opponent to Sir Francis 

 Hincks. 



He is a native of Carleton County, Ontario, having been born in 

 1836. His father was a merchant on the Rideau Canal during its 

 construction, but owing to ill health he gave up the mercantile business 

 and retired to a farm. Thomas, the eldest of eight sons, was educated 

 at the common school and the Grammar School at Smith Falls, after 

 which he served four years as a clerk with W. R. R. Lyons of Rich- 

 mond, Carleton County, and later for two years with Porter Bros, 

 of Ottawa. In 1854, while yet in his teens, he opened a store at 

 Ottawa, where he continued in business until 1858, when he moved to 

 Pembroke and set up as a general merchant and dealer in lumber and 

 real estate and has been associated with that thriving town ever 

 since. He was noted for his straightforward business methods and 

 his history is largely the history of the town and he is affectionately 

 regarded as the veretan political war horse of North Renfrew. His 

 life has been a most active one. During the construction of the Cana- 

 dian Pacific Railway he was connected with several firms furnishing 

 supplies and taking over grading contracts along the line. He owned, 

 subdivided and sold a very large portion of the townsite of Pembroke 

 and Murray ward is still the most flourishing part of the town. He 

 owned four hundred acres of the land upon which the town of North 

 Bay is built and, forseeing its future possibilities, he subdivided it, 

 built dwellings, hotels and stores and induced the government to erect 

 a couit house and other public buildings. That North Bay is the 

 busy railway, commercial and municipal centre thai it is to-day is due 

 largely to the enterprise of Mr. Murray. 



His political career has been as full of interest as his business life. 

 He has in all contested fourteen pailiamentary elections, not to men- 

 tion a dozen or more municipal fights, as he has served his own town 

 in every capacity within the gift of its citizens. Five times he was 

 placed in nomination foi the House of Commons in Pontiac, thiee 

 times in North Renfrew and six times he was a candidate for local 

 legislature in North Renfrew. 



He sat in pailiament about twenty years, in all, the greater part 

 of this time as the representative ot North Renfrew in the local legis- 

 lature. Mr. Murray is a Libeial in politics, a believer in reciprocity 

 and a strong advocate of the Montreal, Ottawa and Georgian Bay 

 canal and of the abolition of the Senate. Although he if crowding 

 his four score years he is erect in his beaiing and his intellect is clear 



