William Legh Walsh (1857 – 1938)

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.1)

Walsh moved to the Yukon in 1900 and established a law practice in Dawson.2) 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.3))

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.4)

1) , 2) , 4)
Kenneth Munro, “William Legh Walsh.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 2019 website: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/walsh_william_legh_16E.html
3)
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.