Bird, Charles Harold

Person

Bird, Charles Harold

1872-1944

Charles Harold Bird was born in September 1872 in Barrie, Ontario. Son of a Chinese mother (Amy Laura Amoi) and an English father (Shearman Godfrey Bird, Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers), he was the youngest child in a family of eight children, five born in China, one in England, and two in Barrie. Following an honourable discharge, and after a brief time spent in England, Shearman Godfrey Bird removed to Canada and Barrie, where he established himself as a successful land surveyor and architect. In 1873, Shearman Bird died, leaving his wife to raise a large family on the pension of a retired army veteran.

C.H. Bird entered Trinity Medical College, Toronto and graduated as gold medallist and valedictorian of his class in the spring of 1893, being the only person, to that point and for some years after, who passed the final examination with honours. Following his internship he moved to Dromore, County Grey, where he set up practice for a little over a year. In 1896, Charles Harold Bird removed to Gananoque, at his brother's invitation, and established himself in the town where he would spend the rest of his life. Over the succeeding years he built "Wigborough" (1897), the house named after the family home in England, and designed by his older brother Eustace, a graduate of the Royal Institute of British Architecture in England and married Edith Bryson Dunn of Toronto (1898) with whom he had three children: Harold Godfrey, Edward Shearman, and Laura Frances.

Charles Harold Bird held many respected positions both within the provincial and municipal medical communities, including being an examiner for many years for the Ontario Medical Council, and the Medical Officer of Health for the Town of Gananoque. In 1942, he, along with the assistance of others, helped in the formation of the local chapter of the Victorian Order of Nurses (V.O.N.). His concern for the safety of public health led to his championing the pasteurisation of milk that in turn resulted in Gananoque becoming one of the first municipalities in Ontario to have "safe milk".

Active in community affairs, he was instrumental in having the Gananoque Arena erected and joined with other community members to form the Gananoque Arena Company; as well as beginning the North Shore Realty Company. The formation of the Thousand Islands Motor League was in large part due to his energy and foresight. For many years too, he was a member of the local Board of Education; a Director of the Ontario Steel Products Company; the Medical Officer for the Steel Company of Canada's Gananoque Plant from the time it first had a "shop physician" to the time of his death in 1944; the District Medical Officer for the Grand Trunk Railway (later the Canadian National Railway); and was President of the Chamber of Commerce at the time planning was under way for the construction of the Macdonald-Cartier (401) Highway.

Dr. Charles Harold Bird died in September 1944, age seventy-two. He was predeceased by his first wife, Edith Bryson Dunn in 1933. His second wife, Jean Bain (m. 1934), died in August 1984.

Bird, Harold Godfrey (1899-1991)

CA QUA02117

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