John Jennings Creelman

The life work of John Jennings Creelman has brought him into close connection with the general interests of society as affected by legislative procedure, by activity at the bar and by educational interests. In the year 1913 he was appointed lecturer upon railway economics in McGill University and sustains that relation to the present time. Born in Toronto on the 14th of February, 1881, he is a son of Adam R. and Margaret Cumming (Jennings) Creelman. The former was a son of James Creelman, whose father came from Ireland in childhood and settled in New Brunswick in 1790. Adam R. Creelman, preparing for the bar, was created king’s counsel, gained distinction as a member of the legal profession and in 1900 was made general counsel of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. He married Margaret Cumming, daughter of Rev. John Jennings, D. D., the first Presbyterian clergyman from Scotland to settle in Toronto, which city was then known as Little York.

Born and reared in Toronto, John J. Creelman attended the public schools and Upper Canada College where, upon his graduation in 1900, he won the governor general’s medal. His classical course was pursued in the University of Toronto, from which he graduated with the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1904. His legal training was received in McGill University, where he was created B. C. L. in 1907. The same year he pursued a special course in the University of Grenoble, after which he entered upon the active work of his profession as advocate and solicitor. Not only did he secure an extensive and important clientele but he also became an active factor in political circles through his appointment in 1908 as parliamentary secretary to the chairman of the committee upon banking and commerce in the Canadian senate. He is a member of the law firm of Casgrain, Mitchell, McDougall & Creelman. His invested interests also indicate extensive and important connection with commercial and industrial activities. He is now a director of the Canadian British Insulated Company, Limited; the Chamberlain & Hookham Meter Company, Limited; the Lancashire Dynamo & Motor Company of Canada, Limited; the Canadian Union Electric Company, Limited; and Fraser & Chalmers of Canada, Limited. He is likewise vice president of E. M. Sellon & Company, Limited. His varied activities have made him a close and interested student of the signs of the times, with a ready and accurate understanding of cause and effect in many of the great vital and significant problems before the country. His researches and logical deductions in the field of transportation have made him an authority upon the subject of railway economics and by reason thereof he was appointed lecturer on that subject for McGill in 1913. In this connection he has become a member of the Canadian Institute and of the National Tax Association.

The spirit of progress which has actuated his entire life has been equally strongly manifest in his military connections. In 1895 he was a member of the Upper Canada College Rifle Company; in 1899 a trooper in the Governor General’s Bodyguard of Toronto, of which he became a lieutenant in the following year. In 1905 he was transferred to the Third “Montreal” Field Battery and in 1909 was commissioned major in command thereof. In 1912 he became lieutenant colonel in command of the Sixth Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery, and in 1911 he represented Canada on the coronation contingent at the coronation of King George V. From 1911 until 1914 he has been a member of the executive of the Canadian Artillery Association. In 1913 he passed the militia staff course. He is upon the council of the Montreal Reform Club and is a liberal in his political views.

At Galveston, Texas, on the 24th of June, 1908, Mr. Creelman was united in marriage to Miss Katharine M. Weekes, a daughter of Nicholas Weekes, a confederate veteran of the Civil war, and at one time a railroad president and banker of Galveston. Mrs. Creelman is a graduate of the Bishop Strachan School of Toronto and by her marriage has become the mother of a son, John Ashmore Creelman, representative of the family in the fifth generation in Canada. Mr. and Mrs. Creelman hold membership in St. Paul’s Presbyterian church of Montreal, and he is a prominent club man, belonging to the University, Engineers, Royal Montreal Golf, Thistle Curling and Canadian Clubs of Montreal; the University and Military Clubs of Toronto; and the Junior Army and Navy Club of London, England. In addition to a residence in Montreal he has a country home at Mont Tremblant, where the summer seasons are spent.