FOWLER, WILLIAM JAMES (1856-1938)

FOWLER, WILLIAM JAMES, principal of Harkins Academy, 1883-85; b. Houlton, Me, Sep 1856, s/o Elijah Fowler and Jane MacAllister; m. 1896, Annie Fair, of Pointe-à-la-Garde, Que.; d. Montreal, 23 Oct 1938.

William J. Fowler was educated at the Provincial Normal School, the University of New Brunswick (BA 1882, MA 1885), and Queen's University (BD 1888). He was an exceptionally able student, qualifying for a 1st class teacher's license at Normal School and winning the Douglas Gold Medal at UNB in 1882.

Fowler claimed nine months of teaching experience in 1877 when he was hired as principal of the three-classroom school at Douglastown. He held this position until 1879 and then left to attend university. He returned to the Miramichi in January 1883 as principal of the four-classroom school on Wellington Street in Chatham.

From 1 May 1882, when Crawford M. Hutchison departed, Harkins Academy in Newcastle had been without a high school department and had only an acting principal, in effect, in the person of John Matthyne Coyngrahayme, the teacher of the advanced department. In order to reopen the high school and restore the former administrative set-up, the school board advertised for a new principal in the spring of 1883, and from a field of fourteen applicants, Fowler was selected for appointment effective the first of May.

Two years after his engagement, Fowler's contract and the contracts of the other teachers at Harkins were terminated for reasons never explained to the public by the school board. All but one of the teachers were members of the Presbyterian church, and the Rev. William Aitken and members of his congregation took a dim view of the board's action. After failing to have the decision reversed they presented conciliatory addresses and gifts to the teachers at an event held at the Waverley Hotel in the spring of 1885. In his parting remarks to the students of Harkins Academy, Fowler hinted that he may have been a stern disciplinarian during his two years as principal of the school.

Fowler was certified by the Miramichi Presbytery in July 1885 to undertake theological training, and he spent the next three years at Queen's University. After his ordination he accepted a call to New Richmond, on the Gaspé coast of Quebec. Two years afterwards he became the first ordained Presbyterian minister at nearby Escuminac, Que., where he stayed for four years. Over the next thirty-three years he served in half a dozen different churches in Quebec and the Maritimes. His lengthiest pastorate was at Fort Coulonge on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River, where he was stationed for nine years. He retired in Montreal in 1927.

As a minister Fowler was "eminently successful." His sermons were "clear, simple, and fervently evangelical" and were "always clothed in beautiful language." He was also the author of a number of "very able pamphlets" which were in circulation within the church for a long time. He was among the stalwart opponents of church union in 1925 and submitted strong letters to the press on the subject. When he died in 1938, at age eighty-two, his survivors were his wife, Annie Fair, three daughters, and a son.