William Lees was a 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....

 farmer, merchant and political figure. He represented Lanark South

Lanark South

Lanark South was a federal electoral district represented in the Canadian House of Commons from 1867 to 1917. It was located in the province of Ontario...

 in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The Legislative Assembly of Ontario , is the legislature of the Canadian province of Ontario, and is the second largest provincial legislature of Canada...

 as an independent Conservative and then a Conservative

Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario

The Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario , is a right-of-centre political party in Ontario, Canada. The party was known for many years as "Ontario's natural governing party." It has ruled the province for 80 of the years since Confederation, including an uninterrupted run from 1943 to 1985...

 from 1879 to 1890.

He was born in Bathurst Township, Lanark County

Lanark County, Ontario

Lanark County is a county located in the Canadian province of Ontario. As of 2006, the population is 63,785. Its county seat is Perth.The county took its name from the town of Lanark in Scotland.-Geography:...

, 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 1821, the son of Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 immigrants. He began work as a farmer, later building a sawmill

Sawmill

A sawmill is a facility where logs are cut into boards.-Sawmill process:A sawmill's basic operation is much like those of hundreds of years ago; a log enters on one end and dimensional lumber exits on the other end....

 and a gristmill

Gristmill

The terms gristmill or grist mill can refer either to a building in which grain is ground into flour, or to the grinding mechanism itself.- Early history :...

. He was named a justice of the peace in 1852. Lees served on the township countil, also serving as reeve and county warden. He also served as captain in the local militia. Lees was a Third Degree member of the local Masonic lodge. He married Mary Playfair, then Margaret Ward and later Annie Irvine Laurie.

One of his daughters married Peter McLaren

Peter McLaren (politician)

Peter McLaren was a Canadian politician.Born in Lanark, Upper Canada, he was the son of James McLaren, an immigrant from Scotland. He married Sophia, the daughter of William Lees. McLaren was involved in the timber trade and operated sawmills in Carleton Place and at McLaren's depot on the...

, who later served in the Senate.

External links

• Member's parliamentary history for the Legislative Assembly of Ontario
• The Canadian biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self-made men : Ontario volume (1880)
• http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/mtq?doc=32954The Canadian parliamentary companion and annual register, 1880, CH Mackintosh
  Charles H. Mackintosh
  Charles Herbert Mackintosh was a journalist, mayor of Ottawa from 1879–1881, represented Ottawa City as a Liberal-Conservative in the Canadian House of Commons from 1882 to 1887, and from 1890 to 1893, and served as Lieutenant Governor of the Northwest Territories from 1893 to 1898.-Parentage and...
  
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