Samuel "Sam" Bingham (184516 June 1905) was the Mayor of

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

between 1897 and 1898.Dave Mullington "Chain of Office: Biographic Sketches of Ottawa's Mayors (1847-1948)" (Renfrew, Ontario: General Store Publishing House, 2005) He was born in

Bytown Bytown is the former name of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It was founded on September 26, 1826, incorporated as a town on January 1, 1850, and superseded by the incorporation of the City of Ottawa on January 1, 1855. The founding was marked by a sod ...

's Lower Town to

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...

parents in 1845. As a young man, he worked on the log drives on the

Gatineau River The Gatineau River (french: Rivière Gatineau, ) is a river in western Quebec, Canada, which rises in lakes north of the Baskatong Reservoir and flows south to join the Ottawa River at the city of Gatineau, Quebec. The river is long and drains a ...

. With the Gilmour and Edwards lumber companies, he formed the Gatineau Boom Company, which later became part of the

Canadian International Paper Company The Canadian International Paper Company (CIP) was a Montreal-based forest products company, a former subsidiary of International Paper. It was originally formed as the St. Maurice Lumber Company in 1919 but was renamed in 1925. It was sold to C ...

. He was an

alderman An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members them ...

on the Ottawa City Council from 1880 to 1893. Bingham believed that

English speaking English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the i ...

citizens of Ottawa should learn French. In 1905, he drowned in the Gatineau River near

Wakefield, Quebec Wakefield is one of many villages of the Municipality La Pêche, with the village centre on the western shore of the Gatineau River, at the confluence of the La Pêche River in the Outaouais region of the province of Quebec in Canada. It is thirty ...

after he fell asleep while returning in a horse-drawn wagon from clearing a

log jam A log jam is a naturally occurring phenomenon characterized by a dense accumulation of tree trunks and pieces of large wood across a vast section of a river, stream, or lake. ("Large wood" is commonly defined as pieces of wood more than in diame ...

on the river. There is a bust of Bingham by sculptor

Hamilton MacCarthy Hamilton Thomas Carlton Plantagenet MacCarthy (28 July 1846 – 24 October 1939) was one of the earliest masters of monumental bronze sculpture in Canada. He is known for his historical sculptures, in particular his Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons ...

in Notre-Dame Cemetery. In 1893, an attempt to rename the

Cummings Bridge The Cummings Bridge in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, crosses the Rideau River, connecting Rideau Street to Montreal Road in Vanier. It is a multi-span open spandrel arch bridge, constructed in 1921 and renovated in 1996. History The area east of the ...

over the

Rideau River The Rideau River (french: Rivière Rideau) is a river in Eastern Ontario, Canada. The river flows north from Upper Rideau Lake and empties into the Ottawa River at the Rideau Falls in Ottawa, Ontario. Its length is . As explained in a writin ...

after the former mayor was thwarted by residents of Sandy Hill.

References

* ''Ottawa - The Capital of Canada'' Shirley E. Woods, Jr. (1980) Mayors of Ottawa Canadian people of Irish descent 1845 births 1905 deaths {{Ontario-mayor-stub