Name George Stephens, Succeeded by William H. Walker | Preceded by Alexander Cameron Succeeded by James McShane | |
 | ||
Born 22 September 1832
Swanton, Vermont ( 1832-09-22 ) Died 20 June 1904(1904-06-20) (aged 71)
near Saint-Alexis-des-Monts, Quebec Spouse(s) Elizabeth Mary McIntosh
Frances Ramsey McIntosh | ||
Preceded by Horatio Admiral Nelson | ||
George Washington Stephens (22 September 1832 – 20 June 1904) was a Canadian businessman, lawyer, and politician.
Born in Swanton, Vermont, the son of Harrison Stephens (1801–1881) and Sarah Jackson, his father was a wealthy Montreal merchant who was from Vermont and Stephens was born there when his mother was visiting (his family moved to Montreal in 1830s). After working in the retail hardware trade and working with his brother in the family business, Stephens received a law degree from McGill College in 1863 and was admitted to the Quebec Bar. He started practicing law in a partnership but soon practiced alone.
In 1865 he married the much younger Elizabeth Mary McIntosh, who was of Scottish origin. They had a son, George Washington Stephens, Jr. (1866–1942). After the sudden and unexpected death of Elizabeth, Stephens married her younger sister, Frances Ramsey McIntosh, in 1878. They had a son together, Francis Chattan Stephens (1887–1918), who went to become a stockbroker and, during World War I, a Captain in the Canadian 13th Battalion. Chattan, as he was called, married a daughter of Canadian military minister Albert Edward Kemp in 1912. Their daughter, Frances Elizabeth (1912–2014) married Murray Gordon Ballantyne, son of Charles Colquhoun Ballantyne, politician.
In 1868, Stephens was elected to the Montreal City Council as a councillor for the Saint-Laurent ward. He served on the council from 1868 to 1879, 1881 to 1882, and from 1889 to 1892.
In 1881, he was elected as the Liberal candidate to the Legislative Assembly of Quebec for the electoral district of Montréal-Centre. He was defeated in the 1886 election and again in the 1890 election. He was elected again for Huntingdon in the 1892 and 1897 elections. He was appointed minister without portfolio in the cabinet of Premier Félix-Gabriel Marchand in 1897. He was re-appointed to the same office in the cabinet of Premier Simon-Napoléon Parent. He did not run in the 1900 election and was appointed a provincial commission on colonization in 1902.
His son, George Washington Stephens, was also a politician in Quebec. His second wife, Frances, perished in the sinking of the British luxury liner RMS Lusitania in 1915. Her body was recovered and the coffin sent back to Canada on the Hesperian which was sunk by a torpedo allegedly by the same German submarine that had sunk the Lusitania.