Arthur Harvey (1834-1905)
President of the society, 1898-99.
This photo was published in the 1904 RASC Selected Papers and Proceedings.
The following was published in the
[IN MEMORIAM : ARTHUR HARVEY.
SEE FRONTISPIECE.]
JUST as the last pages of this volume were on the press came
the news of the death, at his late residence, 80 Crescent Road, of
our former president Mr. Arthur Harvey. We append a short
sketch of his active and useful life.
Mr. Arthur Harvey was born in England, April 23 rd, 1834,
and educated chiefly in France and the Netherlands, with the
latter of which countries his family had long been connected.
Returning from the Continent he entered Trinity College, Dublin,
in 1852, and in 1855 added a special course in actuarial science,
in London, where Prof. De Morgan was the great lodestone for
students. Coming to Canada in 1856, Mr. Harvey first took
service as assistant editor, or "scissors", to a newspaper in
Brantford, but soon removed to Hamilton, where he became associated
with the "Spectator." Being one of the two swiftest shorthand
writers in Canada, and as well able to follow a French as an
English orator, he lived in Toronto during the sessions of
Parliament, and, on the removal of the seat of government to
Quebec, took up residence there as confidential correspondent of
the Spectator, and engaged in literary work generally, as a writer
of magazine articles. For a time Mr. Harvey was editor of the
Quebec "Chronicle", and developed a liking for statistics. A
small pamphlet on the grain trade of the basin of the Lakes, in
which graphic statistics were used for the first time in Canada,
brought him the friendship of Mr. (afterwards Sir) Alexander
Galt, whom he assisted in preparing the Budget of 1862, which
in turn led to his being appointed to a position in the Department
of Finance, nominally as statistical clerk but really as confiden-
tial aid to the minister of Finance. In this capacity he served
under several ministers, being entrusted with important inquiries
for each. Thus, for Sir Alexander Galt he investigated the
working of the Reciprocity Treaty, and was the secretary of the
commission sent to Washington by the Five Provinces to negotiate
for its renewal. For Mr. Holton he investigated the expenditures
for printing and supplies to the Departments and organized a
new and regular tariff of charges and a system of checks which
resulted in large public savings. For Mr. (now Sir) William P.
Howland he examined Interprovincial Trade' and its probable
development on the removal of tariffs and the completion of an
Intercolonial Railway. For Mr. Gait, again minister, he collect-
ed the statistics of the several Provinces in view of their
approaching confederation, spending several months at the
capitals of the Maritime Provinces, for this purpose. With the
leave of the Government a great part of this work was published
as the Year Book of British North America, 1867, and of Canada,
1868 and 1869, and Mr. Harvey always regarded it as his magnum
oftus. It entitles him to be looked on as the father of Canadian
statistics. The collection, completion and summing up of
materials independently and often imperfectly gathered is no
slight work. The general summary, communicated to his chief, Mr.
Harvey understood to have been used in London in laying down
the basis for Confederation; and the Year Book, which was in
more complete and scientific shape than any national statistical
work except that officially published for Italy, was the standard
for reference during all the Provincial debates on that union
which followed. Under Sir John Rose the chief work done by Mr.
Harvey was the suggestion and preparation of the first Canadian
insurance law, which called for the making of regular annual
returns and for the deposit of a sum of money as a guarantee of
permanency. All these ministers had been Mr. Harvey's per-
sonal friends, but when Sir Francis Hincks was appointed to the
office, Mr. Harvey resigned his most agreeable and (for a civil
servant) well paid position, and came to Toronto in 1870 to take
charge of the Provincial Insurance Company. After several
years' labor in building up the finances of the company, on the
eve of success, a conflagration year came along, and with the fire
at St. John, N.B., (1877) as a climax, he thought it most honor-
able to wind up its affairs. From that time he did not engage in
important public enterprises.
Mr. Harvey has always been actively concerned in the work
of scientific, literary and other societies. He was secretary of
the Horticultural Society at Hamilton, and the real founder of
the Hamilton (Scientific) Association. He was a hard-working
secretary of the St. George's Society at Quebec and a member of
the Literary and Historical Society there. At Ottawa he formed
and was Sec'y-Treasurer of the Civil Service Building and Sav-
ings Society, and was largely instrumental in the erection of St.
Alban's churchÄboth urgently needed. On coming to Toronto,
several building societies here and in other places wished him to
value their terminable mortgages, and being unwilling to divert
his attention from the affairs of the Provincial Insurance Com-
pany, he published the Tables he had prepared for his own use,
which were the first tables anywhere printed for the valuation
of mortgages repayable by monthly payments. In due time he
joined the Canadian Institute and was its President in 1891 and
1892. In 1890 he was a delegate to a function at Montpelier,
France, where he addressed the meeting in French, which the
other delegates were surprised to find was not a ftalois; and he
expressed the hope that some day France would take a less
narrow view of the Newfoundland French Shore question. He
became a member of the Astronomical Society and was its
President in 1898 and 1899. The Transactions of these Societies
contain several papers from his pen. His specialty was the in-
vestigation of the connection between solar and terrestrial
phenomena (see p.xiv ante) for which the records of the Magnetic
and Meteorological Observatory here give many of the necessary
data. In recognition of his work on solar phenomena he was
elected Honorary President and Director, La Institutio Solar
Internacional, Monte Video, Uruguay; and just shortly before
his death'was elected a Fellow of this Society. In 1894 he was
elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and the bibli-
ography which each Fellow has to prepare, for election, can be
referred to in the proceedings for that year (Vol. XII) as an
evidence of the fertility of his pen. Later he published a work
on "Decimals and Decimalisation", being a historical resume of
the movements preceding the adoption in France and other
countries of the metric system, of which system Mr. Harvey was
a warm advocate. The Transactions of this Society for 1902Ä3
were edited under his supervision. Though Mr. Harvey pre-
ferred his literary to his scientific papers his most recent
contribution to the Canadian Institute, on "The Principles of
Insurance, with Special Reference to Sick Benefits", (the "proofs"
of which he was correcting an hour or two before his death),
seems to indicate a desire to aid in the establishment of a system
of relief in sickness and old age, not based on German precedent
but adapted to Canadian conditions.
Mr. Harvey was a most versatile man. He had a remarkable
mastery of languages living and dead, and was highly accom-
plished both in music and art. In debate he was a strenuous
fighter, but when the fight was over no one was gentler or kinder
than he.
