Engineer.
Born at Toronto, Ontario on 14 February 1882, son of William W. Blair and Margaret Maria Bastedo (1856-1948), he came to Winnipeg in 1906 and was City Engineer of St. Boniface from 1906 to 1916. During the First World War, he was a member of the 100th Battalion Winnipeg Grenadiers. He spent several years at Victoria, British Columbia as resident engineer for the Canadian National Railways and was later the senior partner in the engineering firm of M. P. Blair and Son. He was a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Professional Engineers of Manitoba, and Canadian Institute of Civil Engineers. On 6 September 1911, he married Muriel Torrance Wood (1889-1988, daughter of George D. Wood) at Winnipeg and they had six children: Helen Margery Blair (1912-1995), William Wallace Blair (1914-?), McCrea Parker Blair (?-1999), George Duncan Wood Blair (1917-1997), David Wood Blair (?-2001), Muriel Torrance Blair (1921-1993, wife of ? Clark). The family lived at 25 West Gate. He died at his Winnipeg home, 1054 Grosvenor Avenue, on 21 November 1958 and was buried in the St. John’s Cathedral Cemetery.
See also:
Historic Sites of Manitoba: Blair House (25 West Gate, Winnipeg)
Ontario birth registration, Ancestry.
Birth and marriage registrations, Manitoba Vital Statistics.
Attestation papers, Canadian Expeditionary Force, Library and Archives Canada.
“M. P. Blair, engineer, dies at age 76,” Winnipeg Free Press, 22 November 1958, page 4.
Obituary [Helen Margery Blair], Winnipeg Free Press, 29 October 1995, page 60.
Obituary [David Wood Blair], Winnipeg Free Press, 24 June 2001.
Obituaries and burial transcriptions, Manitoba Genealogical Society.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 13 May 2019
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