Memorable Manitobans: Benjamin D’Arcy Wallace (1861-1936)

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Benjamin D'Arcy Wallace
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Agriculturalist.

Born in Huron County, Ontario on 10 January 1861, son of Thomas Wallace and Anne Elizabeth D’Arcy, he quit school at the age of 20 to work on the family farm. He later attended the Guelph Agricultural College as one of its first pupils. Coming west in 1882, he first located at Yorkton, NWT [now Saskatchewan] and later moved to Rapid City then Brandon. He used his agricultural knowledge to gradually acquire two thousand acres of land in three provinces, including a farm near Brandon. There he raised cattle and horses. In 1902, he became interested in the nursery business, owning Island Park Nurseries at Portage la Prairie and being a director of Spring Park Nurseries. He erected the Wallace Block in Brandon as his base of business operations. He was a director of the Pioneer Loan Company and a stockholder in the Occidental Fire Insurance Company and Canadian Guaranty and Trust Company.

On 20 February 1889, he married Amanda Farrand (?-1949) at Howell, Ontario. They had one daughter, Elva Millicent Wallace McCarthy (1894-1919), who died during the global flu pandemic of 1919. The family resided at 641 Victoria Avenue, Brandon. He served on the Brandon city council (1907-1910), was President of the Brandon Gentlemen’s Driving Club, a Director of the Agriculture and Art Association, and a member of the Brandon Commercial Club, Independent Order of Foresters, Knights of Pythias, and United Commercial Travelers. In 1908, he ran as a independent political candidate for the federal constituency of Brandon but finished a distant third place behind Clifford Sifton and Thomas Mayne Daly.

He died at Birch River on 30 July 1936 and was buried in the Portage Hillside Cemetery.

Sources:

Marriage registration, Ancestry.

1911 Canada census, Automated Genealogy.

The Story of Manitoba by F. H. Schofield, Winnipeg: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1913.

Death registration, Manitoba Vital Statistics.

Obituaries and burial transcriptions, Manitoba Genealogical Society.

We thank James Kostuchuk for providing additional information used here.

This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.

Page revised: 1 June 2023

Memorable Manitobans

Memorable Manitobans

This is a collection of noteworthy Manitobans from the past, compiled by the Manitoba Historical Society. We acknowledge that the collection contains both reputable and disreputable people. All are worth remembering as a lesson to future generations.

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