HEA, JOSEPH RICHARD (1823-1905)

HEA, JOSEPH RICHARD, teacher, scholar; president of the University of New Brunswick; b. Co. Cork, Ireland, 10 Mar 1823, s/o John Hea and Catherine Beek; m. 1st, 1848, Miriam Ann Edson, of Niagara, Canada West, and 2nd, 1886, Rebecca Anne Armistead, a native of Lloydtown, northwest of Toronto; d. Grand Valley, Dufferin Co., Ont., 8 Jan 1905.

Joseph R. Hea came to the Miramichi with his parents as an infant. He studied at the County Grammar School under Archibald Gray and William Jenkins and was later an assistant teacher there. He was both a student and an instructor at the Wesleyan Academy in Sackville when it opened in 1843, and he remained on the staff for nine years. In 1848 he was Classical and French master. On the basis of his scholarly attainments he was awarded a non-resident BA by King's College, Fredericton, in 1849 and an MA in 1851.

Hea was professor of French, Latin, and Greek at Mount Allison in 1851-52. He was "a man of many gifts and notably capable as a teacher" but was not without "some eccentricities of character." It has been stated that he resigned his position in 1852 amid "hints of personal feuds and recriminations," but the particulars of his departure are not known. In May 1852 the Sons of Temperance at Chatham, of which he had remained a member, expressed regret over his "resignation" from Mount Allison, praised his "universal popularity," and wished him well in his "new sphere of labor." The new work was to be in Nova Scotia, where in July 1852 he opened Lower Horton Seminary, a private boarding school for boys. In an advertisement he promised to correspond monthly with parents and refrain from the use of corporal punishment.

While conducting his school in Nova Scotia, Hea pursued the study of law at King's College, Windsor (BCL 1856, DCL 1858), and when King's College, Fredericton, was reorganized as the University of New Brunswick, he filed an application for the presidency, claiming that he possessed "the energy and nerve," as well as the academic qualifications and experience needed for the job. His four-page letter was dated 20 June 1860, and he was appointed in July. Unfortunately for him, however, his term was of only a few hectic months' duration. The students, led by I. Allen Jack, complained bitterly about his harshness and unfairness as a disciplinarian, and young Jack's father, William Jack, who was a lawyer, was permitted to investigate the allegations. Forty-six pages of "evidence" of the president's abusiveness in word and deed were compiled by Jack, on the basis of which he was removed from office in the spring of 1861.

Hea returned to Nova Scotia and was living at Windsor in 1868. He later moved to Toronto and worked as an insurance adjustor. His first wife, Miriam A. Edson, who was fourteen years his senior, died in Toronto in 1885. He and his second wife, Rebecca A. Armistead, who was twenty years his junior, made their home in Grand Valley, northwest of Toronto. Until it was destroyed by a tornado in 1985, St Alban's Anglican Church at Grand Valley had a memorial window testifying to Hea's work with the Sunday school. A tombstone stands in St Alban's Cemetery.