Dexter, Margery : Margery Dexter is the daughter of the late Agnes Marie Auguste Harwood Taschereau, who was the daughter of the Rt. Hon. Sir Henri-Elzéar Taschereau.
Taschereau, Henri Elzéar, Sir, 1836-1911 : Sir Henri-Elzéar Taschereau, lawyer, politician, judge, knight bachelor, professor, author of various legal studies, and co-proprietor of the Seigniory of Sainte-Marie-de-la-Nouvelle-Beauce, Lower Canada, was born on 7 October 1836 at Sainte-Marie, the eldest son of Pierre-Elzéar Taschereau and Hémédine Dionne. Educated in Classics at the Petit Séminaire de Québec from 1847 to 1853, he subsequently attended Laval University briefly, before being called to the bar of Lower Canada in 1857. That same year, he married Marie-Antoinette Harwood, the daughter of Robert Unwin Harwood by whom he had seven children. During this time, he practised law in Québec City while serving as the Conservative member for the riding of Beauce, in the Legislative Assembly for the Province of Canada (1861-1867). His defeat at the polls brought to an end the long political influence that his family had enjoyed in the Beauce region. In 1868, he briefly held the position of Clerk of Peace for the District of Québec but resigned to practice law in his home town of Sainte-Marie. He was subsequently appointed a Puisne Judge of the Superior Court of Quebec, in 1871 and a Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, in 1878. During his time on the bench, he received many honorary academic distinctions, as well as succeeding Sir John Sparrow David Thompson as Dean of the Faculty of Law at the College of Ottawa, from 1894-1896. Following the death of his first wife, Taschereau married Marie-Louise Panet in Ottawa (1897), by whom he had three children. The year 1902 saw Taschereau receive both a knighthood and his appointment as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, becoming the first French Canadian to hold the position. His subsequent appointment to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in 1904 marked the pinnacle of his judicial career. A frequent world traveller during his years in Ottawa, Taschereau would often have to be called home from distant locations to sit on the bench. That same restless search for wisdom and experience from travel was applied to his continuous search for legal solutions between Canada's two legal traditions, Quebec civil law and Canadian common law. However his sense of "legal cosmopolitanism", common with the legal elite, in the mid-19th century had been largely replaced by a general belief in and acceptance of "legal positivism", at the beginning of the 20th century. As a result, his outdated ideology served to alienate Taschereau from his legal peers. Taschereau had planned to attend the Coronation of King George V, in London, when his health failed. He died in Ottawa, on 14 April 1911. Summary of biographical entries for Sir Henri-Elzéar Taschereau from (1) "Dictionary Of Canadian Biography", Vol. XIV / 1911 to 1920. Published by: University of Toronto Press Inc, and Les Presses de l'université Laval, 1998 - [See pages 987-988 in English edition]. - (2) "The Canadian Parliamentary Guide / 1910", Edited by Capt. Ernest J. Chambers, Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, The Senate of Canada - [See page 493].
