110 THE CANADIAN BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY. lished daily, and had acquired one of the most influential positions among the Conservative journals in Central Ontario. He is well known to every newspaper man in the Dominion, and was at one time President of the Ontario Press Association, and at another, Vice-President of the Dominion Editors and Keporters' Association. He is-President of the Belleville and North Hastings Railway Company : a Director of the Grand Junction Railway ; and has been President of the Hastings Mutual Fire Insurance Company ; the West Hastings Agricultural Society ; the Farren Manufacturing Company, and the Dominion Safety Gas Company. He is a Lieutenant-Colonel of Volunteer Rifles; was in active service for four months during the American Civil war, being stationed at the head of Lake Erie after the seizure of the steamer "Parsons," by a number of Southerners, in order to prevent a violation of the neutrality laws, there being a large number of Southerners who had fled to Canada for refuge. Subsequently he was on duty at Prescott at the time of the Fenian raid. Mr. Bowell was chairman of the Board of School Trustees of Belleville for eleven consecutive years; was a member of the Board of Agriculture and Arts for three years, and one year its Vice-President, Holding decided views upon the question of Roman Catholicism, he joined the Orange Association at eighteen years of age, and was for eight years Grand Master of the Provincial Orange Grand Lodge of Ontario East ; Avas Most Worshipful Grand Master and Sovereign of the Orange Association of British America from 1870 to 1878, when he declined re-election and was Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Black Chapter of Ireland ; and President of the Grand Triennial Orange Council of the World, having been elected to that position at Deny, Ireland, in July. 1876, Mr. Bowell was an unsuccessful candidate for the North Riding of Hastings in the Canadian Assembly in 1863, but was returned for that constituency in 1867, being the first Parliament after Confederation, and was re-elected in 1872, 1874, and 1878, and by acclamation after his acceptance of the Portfolio of Minister of Customs in the Dominion Cabinet. From his first taking a seat in the Legislative halls of his country, Mr. Bowell took an active part in the proceedings of the House. He first distinguished himself by attacking the Government upon its militia policy, and defeating it upon some important details of the bill, though at the time the Government had a majority of between 60 and 70 in a house of 186 members. After the rebellion in the North-West, the leader of the rebellion, Louis Riel, was returned for a French Parish in Manitoba, and went to Ottawa and took the oath of office and signed the roll. Mr. Bowell immediately took steps to prevent him from taking his seat, and instituted an investigation into his complicity in the murder of one Thomas Scott, an Irish Orangeman, whom he, Riel, had taken prisoner for being a loyalist. 1874, by a large majority, on a motion made by the subject of this memoir, This investigation Hi,? most important Mr. Bowell conducted with much skill, and it resulted in Kiel's expulsion from the House in