Differences
This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.
| |
| w:w_walsh [2024/12/17 21:40] – created sallyr | w:w_walsh [2024/12/17 21:49] (current) – sallyr |
|---|
| William “Billy” Walsh | William Legh Walsh (1857 – 1938) |
| | |
| Billy Walsh was an undercover officer for the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) in the Yukon. Superintendent Steele and Commissioner Ogilvie started a Criminal Investigation Department in Dawson in 1898. The detectives were usually former policemen known only to Steele and they operated undercover in the town. Superintendent Perry took over later and also hired detectives. A man named Kallis got $175.00 a month and he rehired J. H. Seeley, who had been one of Steele's detectives, for $200 a month. After the O'Brien murders, the two former detectives, Seeley and McGuire, gave an account to the Alaskan newspapers and claimed credit for the O'Brien's capture.((Jim Wallace, //Forty Mile to Bonanza: The North-West Mounted Police in the Klondike Gold Rush.// Calgary: Bunker to Bunker Publishing, 2000: 125-6, 183, 190.)) | William Walsh was born in Simcoe, Upper Canada to Aquila and Jane Wilson Adams Walsh. William studied law at the University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall. He was called to the Ontario bar in 1880 and practiced law in Simcoe and then Orangeville. He served on the public-school board in Orangeville and served as mayor in 1891-93 and 1899-1900. He was a member of the famed Orangeville Dufferins lacrosse team.((Kenneth Munro, “William Legh Walsh.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2019 website: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/walsh_william_legh_16E.html)) |
| | |
| A robbery on 15 November 1902 warranted the hiring of Billy Walsh as an undercover detective. In September 1901, there were rumours from Seattle that discontent among the American miners was fuelling a movement to seize the territory. The number of NWMP officers in the territory was increased by fifty and the Dalton Post detachment was also doubled. Inspector Donald Howard was brought in to teach the Whitehorse men how to operate the Maxim machine gun.((Jim Wallace, //Forty Mile to Bonanza: The North-West Mounted Police in the Klondike Gold Rush.// Calgary: Bunker to Bunker Publishing, 2000: 125-6, 183, 190.)) | |
| |
| | Walsh moved to the Yukon in 1900 and established a law practice in Dawson.((Kenneth Munro, “William Legh Walsh.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2019 website: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/walsh_william_legh_16E.html)) Mining disputes accounted for the majority of the territory's litigation. Walsh was a Conservative supporter in the land of Liberals. He was considered one of the most able Yukon barristers. He defended the publisher and editor of the //Yukon Sun// on charges of criminal libel. In 1903, he was appointed King's Council. He was a frequent participant in Yukon sports, taking up curling in the winter and baseball in the summer, and known as the “bald-headed cyclone." He invested in gold mining properties but left the country with less money than he made.((Hamar Foster and John McLaren, ed., "The Yukon Legal Profession” in //The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History Essays in the History of Canadian Law: Vol. VI British Columbia and the Yukon.// Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995: 474-78.))) |
| | |
| | Walsh was defeated in a run for mayor of Dawson, and in 1904 he joined Maitland Stewart McCarthy and moved to Calgary to practice law. He was active in the Church of England and served as chancellor of the diocese of Calgary from 1927 to 1931. He was founding president of the Alberta Conservative Association in 1905 and was an organizer in the 1911 federal election which the Conservatives won. He was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of Alberta in 1912 and in 1931 was named to its appellate division. He conducted several cases that received national and international interest and became known as a hanging judge as he believed in capital punishment. He was appointed lieutenant governor of Alberta in 1931 and served until October 1936. Among the honors he received was a chiefship from the Blood Indians, the first non-indigenous person to be named, and he received an honorary degree from the University of Alberta. Walsh retired to Victoria but remained interested in Alberta politics.((Kenneth Munro, “William Legh Walsh.” //Dictionary of Canadian Biography,// 2019 website: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/walsh_william_legh_16E.html)) |
| |
