James Somerville was an 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....

 journalist, newspaper editor and political figure. He was a Liberal

Liberal Party of Canada

The Liberal Party of Canada , colloquially known as the Grits, is the oldest federally registered party in Canada. In the conventional political spectrum, the party sits between the centre and the centre-left. Historically the Liberal Party has positioned itself to the left of the Conservative...

 member of the Canadian House of Commons

Canadian House of Commons

The House of Commons of Canada is a component of the Parliament of Canada, along with the Sovereign and the Senate. The House of Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 308 members known as Members of Parliament...

 who represented Brant North

Brant North

Brant North was a federal electoral district in Ontario, Canada, that was represented in the Canadian House of Commons from 1867 to 1893. It was created by the British North America Act of 1867 which divided the county of Brant into two ridings: Brant North and Brant South according to a...

 from 1882 to 1896 and Wentworth North and Brant

Wentworth North and Brant

Wentworth North and Brant was a federal electoral district represented in the Canadian House of Commons from 1892 to 1904. It was located west of the city of Hamilton in the province of Ontario....

 from 1896 to 1900.

He was born in Dundas

Dundas, Ontario

Dundas is a formerly independent town and now constituent community in the city of Hamilton in Ontario, Canada. It's nickname is the Valley Town. The population has been stable for decades at about twenty thousand, largely because it has not annexed rural land from the protected Dundas Valley...

, Upper Canada

Upper Canada

The Province of Upper Canada was a political division in British Canada established in 1791 by the British Empire to govern the central third of the lands in British North America and to accommodate Loyalist refugees from the United States of America after the American Revolution...

 in 1834 and educated there and in Simcoe

Simcoe, Ontario

Simcoe is an unincorporated community and former town in Southwestern Ontario, Canada located near Lake Erie. It is the county seat and largest community of Norfolk County....

. In 1854, he became editor and owner of the Ayr

Ayr, Ontario

The village of Ayr, Ontario, Canada is a settlement located within the Township of North Dumfries in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo in Southwestern Ontario...

 Observer. In 1858, he returned to Dundas, where he established the True Banner. In the same year, he married Jeanette Rogers. Somerville served as mayor of Dundas in 1874 and was warden for Wentworth County

Wentworth County, Ontario

Wentworth County, area , is a historic county in the Canadian province of Ontario.It was created in 1816 as part of the Gore District in what was then Upper Canada and later Canada West...

.

He died in Dundas in 1916.