WALLS, VICTOR BENJAMIN (1892-1984)

WALLS, VICTOR BENJAMIN, United Church minister, Blackville, 1972-73; b. Blackville, 23 Jun 1892, s/o Benjamin Walls and Letitia Lyons; m. 1st, Marion E. Smith, RN, of Fredericton Junction, and 2nd, Verna E. Augustine, of Trinidad; d. Newcastle, 19 Sep 1984.

Victor B. Walls interrupted his undergraduate studies at Dalhousie University and served for four years in the Canadian Medical Corps in World War I, in Britain, France, and Belgium. He returned to college after his discharge, received his degree (BA 1921), and trained for the ministry at the Presbyterian College in Halifax. He was ordained in 1923, and in 1924 he was appointed principal of Naparima College, a secondary school conducted by the Canadian Presbyterian mission in San Fernando, Trinidad. He continued to occupy this position until his retirement in 1953, serving at the same time as moderator and treasurer of the Presbyterian church in Trinidad and as a member of that country's board of education.

The government of Trinidad and Tobago honored Walls with the King's Silver Jubilee Medal (1935), the Coronation medals of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II, and the Chaconia Gold Medal, the country's highest civilian award. In 1953 Pine Hill Divinity Hall, which had granted him a BD in course in 1931, awarded him an honorary DD.

During much of his lengthy retirement Walls lived at Blackville, and he was the full-time supply minister of St Andrew's United Church there in 1972-73. When he died in 1984, at age ninety-two, his survivors were his second wife, Verna E. Augustine, and a son of his first marriage.