MCMANUS, JOHN PATRICK CANTWELL (1867-1938)

MCMANUS, JOHN PATRICK CANTWELL, doctor; b. Bath, Ont., 6 May 1867, s/o Patrick T. McManus; m. 1907, Mary Ford, of Fordham, N.Y.; d. Kingston, Ont., 22 Jun 1938.

John P. C. McManus was the son of an engineer of Irish birth, and he was a brother of the writer Emily Julian McManus, some of whose verse appeared in W. D. Lighthall's 1889 anthology entitled Songs of the Great Dominion.

McManus was trained in medicine at Queen's University (MD CM 1897), where he played football and developed a lifelong interest in college sports. It is not known what motivated him to migrate to New Brunswick, but he arrived on the Miramichi around 1898 and set up a practice at Blackville. He was still a single man, who in 1901 was boarding at the home of Henry Lipsett, a railwayman at Blackville. His name was seldom in the news, but in 1902 it was reported that he had been a delegate to a provincial meeting of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. He was forty years old when he was married in 1907 in Fordham, N.Y. His bride, Mary Ford, was a cousin of Father Simon J. Crumley, the parish priest at Blackville, who went to New York to officiate at the wedding.

McManus was named to a seat on the County Board of Health in 1911, but a year later he closed his office at Blackville and returned to Ontario. He subsequently practiced in Prescott and Toronto and was on the staff of the Bellevue Hospital in New York for fifteen years. He and his wife had two sons, both of whom were also doctors.