Hector Mansfield Howell (1842-1918)

Lawyer, judge.

The son of Charles Howell, he was born on 17 September 1842, in the County of Hastings, on the Bay of Quinte, Canada West. He was of United Empire Loyalist stock on both sides of his family. He was educated in the local schools and at Albert College in Belleville, where he obtained his arts degree. He studied law at Osgoode Hall in Toronto and was called to the Ontario Bar in 1871.

He practised law in Barrie with Dalton McCarthy, and then in Uxbridge, Ontario, before accepting an invitation tojoin Heber Archibald in Winnipeg in 1878, with whom he was associated for nineteen years. He was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1886, at which time he was senior partner with the law firm of Howell, Hudson, Ormond and Marlatt. He was appointed Chief Justice of the Manitoba Court of Appeal in 1906, and served until 1912. He was a Bencher for the Law Society of Manitoba from 1898 to 1906 and President from 1904 to 1906.

In 1890 he defended Liberal attorney general Joseph E. Martin in a famous libel trial involving the editor of the Manitoba Free Press, William Luxton. The Manitoba Schools Question led him to become a Liberal.

On 14 July 1875, he married Harriett Susanah Lally (1851-1909) of Barrie, Ontario. They had five children: Edmund Howell (1876-1916), Emma Howell (1877-1903), Harriett H. Howell (1879-1949, wife of Dr. Richard Kenny), Constance Lally Howell (1883-1961, wife of Charles E. Pentland), and Sybil Howell (1886-1963). The composer Barbara Pentland was his granddaughter. A founding member of the Manitoba Historical Society and the St. Charles Country Club, he served as president of the Winnipeg Rowing Club, and in 1886 was elected president of the Winnipeg and St. Paul (Minnesota) Rowing Club. In 1900 he was President of the St. David’s Society and subsequently Honorary President.

He died on 7 April 1918 from injuries sustained in a fall from a streetcar in Long Beach, California earlier that year.

More information:

“Eminent Winnipeggers. No. VII. Mr. H. M. Howell.” Undated newspaper clipping in Manitoba Historical Scrapbook MB1, page 9, Manitoba Legislative Library.

Hector Mansfield Howell, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online

Sources:

1901 Canada census, Automated Genealogy.

Marriage registration, Ancestry.

We thank Keith Jones for providing additional information used in this profile.

Profile revised: 22 January 2010

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