SNOWBALL, WILLIAM BUNTING (1865-1925)

SNOWBALL, WILLIAM BUNTING, businessman and MP; mayor of Chatham, 1901-03 and 1917-19; b. Chatham, 12 Jan 1865, s/o Jabez Bunting Snowball and Margaret Macdougall; m. 1st, 1889, Mary Louise Harrison, d/o Frederick Harrison and Mary Ann Fisher; and 2nd, 1896, Bertha Belle Harris, of Hamilton, Ont.; d. Chatham, 27 Sep 1925.

After completing his schooling at Upper Canada College, William B. Snowball joined the staff of J. B. Snowball & Co., married the daughter of a Methodist minister, and settled down in Chatham. Later he acquired "Sunnyside," the baronial former residence of William Muirhead Jr. A second house on the property was a gardener's residence.

Snowball succeeded his father as president of J. B. Snowball & Co. Ltd and became involved in various other businesses. Among these was the Chatham Electric Light Co. and the Miramichi Telephone Exchange (incorp. 1888), which was controlled by him and other members of the family until electric lights were taken over by the town in 1901, and telephones by the Central Telephone Co. in 1905. He was later a director of the New Brunswick Telephone Co., which absorbed Central Telephone in 1906. Other companies of which he was a director included the North West and South West Boom companies and the Miramichi Steam Navigation Co. and its successor, Miramichi River Service Ltd.

Snowball was a founding director of the Miramichi Exhibition Association in 1902 and later served two terms as president. In 1908 he was elected president of the Canadian Forestry Association, and in 1909 of the Maritime Board of Trade. In 1918 he was the first president of the New Brunswick Lumbermen's Association. He was mayor of Chatham for a total of four years and a trustee and chairman of the Chatham School Board from 1898 to 1925. In 1924 he ran successfully as a Liberal for the Northumberland County seat in the House of Commons, and he sat until his death the next year, at age sixty.

There were two children born of Snowball's marriage to Mary L. Harrison and six of his marriage to Bertha B. Harris. A daughter of the second marriage, Mona J. Snowball, was a member of faculty at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.