Memorable Manitobans: Joseph Laurie Lamont (1891-1955)

Physician, municipal official.

Born at Treherne, Manitoba on 24 July 1891, son of Dr. T. J. Lamont and Mary Weightman, he was educated at the Treherne Public School, Winnipeg Collegiate, and the University of Manitoba (BA, 1911 where he was a medalist in Science). Of Scotch ancestry, his father came to Manitoba in 1880 and practised medicine at Treherne for 35 years; he was the first school teacher in Brandon and opened the first school there while his mother was the third teacher in Brandon (Canon Jeffery of Winnipeg being the second).

Lamont taught school in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta during the summer periods of his university work, later serving as a lecturer and demonstrator in Chemistry at the University of Manitoba for two years after his graduation. He went abroad in 1913 to Edinburgh University where he studied until the First World War broke out. He enlisted with the Edinburgh University Corps, serving six months with the ambulance before finishing his course at the University, when he became House Surgeon of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. He became attached to the Royal Navy in July 1917 where he stayed until demobilization in February 1919 (mine-sweeping flotilla; attached to battle cruisers); Third North Seas Fast Mine-Sweeping Flotilla. He returned to Canada and took over father’s medical practice at Treherne, also serving as a coroner for the Province of Manitoba.

He was married twice, first to Janet Cleghorn Hopekirk (1889-1921), with whom he had one son, Dr. Thomas W. Lamont, and on 28 September 1927 to Helen Robertson. He served as Reeve of the Rural Municipality of South Norfolk from 1938 to 1941. His recreations included golf and tennis.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and was stationed for a time at Halifax. In 1941 he returned to Winnipeg to become district medical officer in the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. He retired in December 1948 due to ill health.

He died at Winnipeg on 24 September 1955 and was buried in the Woodlands Cemetery at Treherne.

Sources:

Birth and marriage registrations, Manitoba Vital Statistics.

Pioneers and Prominent People of Manitoba, Winnipeg: Canadian Publicity Company, 1925.

Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 26 September 1955.

“Ex-DVA medical officer dies”, Winnipeg Free Press, 26 September 1955, page 5.

This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.

Page revised: 22 April 2012

Memorable Manitobans

Memorable Manitobans

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