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Provincial Archives of New Brunswick

Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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RETTIE, ALEXANDER R. (1883-1949)

RETTIE, ALEXANDER R., Presbyterian minister, Millerton, 1910-18; b. Salt Springs, Pictou Co., N.S., 29 Mar 1883, s/o Capt. Alexander R. Rettie and Isabella J. Brown; m. 1911, Jennie L. Irving, of Buctouche, N.B.; d. Halifax, 16 Aug 1949.

Alexander R. Rettie was educated at Pictou Academy and Dalhousie University (BA 1907, MA 1908) and trained for the ministry at the Presbyterian College in Halifax. Ordained at Millerton in 1910, he was the minister there for eight years. At the beginning of his term he convinced the congregation at Derby to renovate the sixty-three-year-old Ferguson Church. It was closed for three months in the fall of 1910 while being "remodelled and beautified within and without" by the contractor Peter A. Forsyth.

Rettie's wife, Jennie L. Irving, was an older half-sister of the New Brunswick industrialist Kenneth Colin ("K. C.") Irving, and while the family was living at Millerton young Kenneth Irving spent more than a year with them. He had been expelled from school at Buctouche for fighting, and his family had gotten him enrolled instead in the Millerton Superior School.

After he left Millerton, Rettie was a missionary in Keewatin, near Kenora, Ont., for about six years and then withdrew from the full-time ministry to sell insurance. He was an agent in Brandon, Man., in the mid 1920s, but for many years prior to his retirement in 1949 he was based in Halifax, as Nova Scotia manager for the Imperial Life Assurance Co. His named survivors were his wife and a daughter.

Sources

[b/m] UC archives (his submission) [d] Commercial World 25 Aug 1949 / Advocate 27 Jun 1918; DeMont; Leader 27 May 1910, 9 Jun 1911; Walkington; World 2 Nov 1910


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