Samuel Henry Strong is a native of Dorsetshire, Eng., and was born in 1825. His father, Rev. Samuel T. Strong, was at one time Rector of Bytown, now Ottawa. Our subject was educated in Ottawa and Toronto; was called to the Bar at Hilary term, 1849; practiced at Toronto, and soon distinguished himself as a Barrister. He was created a Queen’s Counsel in 1863; was elected a Bencher of the Law School of Upper Canada, in 1860, and was a member of the Commission for consolidating the Public General Statutes of Upper Canada and Canada respectively, from December 20, 1856, to December 5, 1859.
Mr. Strong was appointed Vice-Chancellor for Ontario on the 27th of December, 1869; there remained until May 27, 1874, when he was promoted to the Court of Error and Appeal for this Province, and was appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court, October 8, 1875. Prior to this date (in 1871) Judge Strong was appointed, with four other prominent men, Adam Wilson, now Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas; J. W. Gwynne, recently placed on the Supreme Bench; C. T. Patterson, now Judge of the Court of Appeals, and J. R. Gowan, Judge of the Judicial District of Simcoe a Commission to inquire into the constitution and jurisdiction of the several Courts of Law and Equity, Superior and Inferior, Appellate and Original, and into the operation and effect of the present separation and division of the jurisdiction among the Courts, &c., similar to the English Judicature Commission. Judge Strong has just the stamp of mind to be of eminent service on such a Commission.
An Attorney-at-law who knew Judge Strong when a student-at-law and during the period of his practice at the Bar, speaks of him, in a letter addressed to the editor of this work, as follows:
“At his elevation to the Bench, Samuel H. Strong stood the acknowledged head of the Chancery Bar of Ontario, with only one or two equals, and no superior. His high mental culture and legal attainments eminently fitted him for the position he now holds. Few men have his legal grasp and perspicuity. He seems at once to grasp all the facts and legal points of matters brought before him, and rarely, if ever, is wrong in his first judgment. He is considered, not only by the legal profession, but by his brother Judges, to have a legal mind second in balance to that of no jurist in the Dominion.”
Judge Strong has a wife and two children.
