Charles Clarke was speaker of the Legislature of Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

 in 1880-1883 and served as Liberal

Ontario Liberal Party

The Ontario Liberal Party is a provincial political party in the province of Ontario, Canada. It has formed the Government of Ontario since the provincial election of 2003. The party is ideologically aligned with the Liberal Party of Canada but the two parties are organizationally independent and...

 MLA for Wellington Centre

Wellington Centre

Wellington Centre was a federal electoral district represented in the Canadian House of Commons from 1867 to 1904. It was located in the province of Ontario....

 from 1871 to 1886 and for Wellington East

Wellington East

Wellington East was a provincial electoral district in the province of Ontario, Canada. From c1886 to c1926 it elected members to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario....

 from 1886 to 1891.

He was born in Lincoln

Lincoln, Lincolnshire

Lincoln is a cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England.The non-metropolitan district of Lincoln has a population of 85,595; the 2001 census gave the entire area of Lincoln a population of 120,779....

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 in 1826, studied there with George Boole

George Boole

George Boole was an English mathematician and philosopher.As the inventor of Boolean logic—the basis of modern digital computer logic—Boole is regarded in hindsight as a founder of the field of computer science. Boole said,...

, apprenticed as a draper

Draper

Draper is the now largely obsolete term for a wholesaler, or especially retailer, of cloth, mainly for clothing, or one who works in a draper's shop. A draper may additionally operate as a cloth merchant or a haberdasher. The drapers were an important trade guild...

 and came to Canada West in 1844. He joined his mother and stepfather on a farm in the Niagara District and later moved with them to Elora

Elora, Ontario

Elora is a community in the township of Centre Wellington, Wellington County, Ontario, Canada. It is well known for its 19th-century limestone architecture, its artistic community and the geographically significant Elora Gorge.-History:...

. He opened a store with his stepfather there. He was editor for the Journal and Express newspapers in Hamilton

Hamilton, Ontario

Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812, Hamilton has become the centre of a densely populated and industrialized region at the west end of Lake Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe...

 and helped establish the Elora Backwoodsman. He served on the town council for Elora and was reeve from 1859 to 1864 and from 1867 to 1868. He commanded a local militia unit during the Fenian raids

Fenian raids

Between 1866 and 1871, the Fenian raids of the Fenian Brotherhood who were based in the United States; on British army forts, customs posts and other targets in Canada, were fought to bring pressure on Britain to withdraw from Ireland. They divided many Catholic Irish-Canadians, many of whom were...

, becoming lieutenant-colonel. In 1874, he helped introduce legislation that established the secret ballot

Secret ballot

The secret ballot is a voting method in which a voter's choices in an election or a referendum are anonymous. The key aim is to ensure the voter records a sincere choice by forestalling attempts to influence the voter by intimidation or bribery. The system is one means of achieving the goal of...

for elections in the province. He became clerk of the legislature in January 1892 and served until 1907. He died in Elora in 1909.