Hutchison, William Burnet, 1865-1959
William Burnet Hutchison was the son of Alexander C. Hutchison, a leading architect in eastern Canada in the latter half of the 19th Century. William B. was born in the town of Westmount and was educated at Montreal High School. He attended McGill University for two years and began work as an apprentice carpenter with Laird, Paten & Sons in 1885. In 1887 his father offered to train him as a draftsman in his busy office of Hutchison & Steele, Architects. He remained with the firm for the next decade, and in July 1898 became a registered member of the Province of Quebec Association of Architects. By the following year he had attained the post of senior assistant in his father’s new firm of Hutchison & Wood, Architects, and for the next 25 years he held the position of Site Supervisor for all outside works by the firm until the death of his father in early January 1922.
At this time, William B. became the successor to his late father‘s practice and continued to work in partnership with George W. Wood who had joined his father’s firm in 1899. Their work included a variety of commercial, industrial, ecclesiastical and residential works in and around Montreal, many of them for English-speaking clients in Westmount, Hampstead, and Hudson Heights, as well as in downtown Montreal.
Prominent examples of their work include Wesley United Church, Notre Dame de Grace Avenue at Royal Avenue, 1926-27; Joseph C. Wray & Bros, Mountain Street, funeral chapel, 1928-29 ; the Trafalgar Apartments, Cote des Neiges Road at The Boulevard, for Joseph Gersovitz, 1930-31; the Guaranteed Pure Milk Company, Aqueduct Street, near Dorchester Boulevard West; and a major addition and alterations to the residence of George Summer, Belvedere Road, Westmount, 1929. By 1942, Hutchison had withdrawn from active practice and in 1952 he died in Montreal at the age of 94.

Born in 1838 in Montreal, Hutchison is one of Montreal’s most prestigious and prolific Victorian architects. He apprenticed with his father, an entrepreneur and builder. At age 12 he learned his father’s trade as a stonemason and later took courses at the Mechanic's Institute. He achieved recognition for carrying out some of the finest carved stonework at the Christ Church Cathedral construction site in Montreal and the East Block of the Parliament of Ottawa.

In1865 Hutchison began to practice the profession of architect and in 1876 founded the architectural firm Hutchison and Steele with Alexander Danton Steele. In 1898, Hutchison joined forces with his son, William Burnet, and son-in-law, George Winks Wood, to form the Hutchison and Wood office. From 1909 to 1919, with the arrival of a new partner, the agency took the name of Hutchison, Wood and Miller. In 1883 Hutchison designed the ice palaces for the Montreal Winter Carnival. Three years later when Montreal canceled its carnival because of a smallpox epidemic, the city of Saint-Paul in Minnesota hired him to design its first ice palace. From then on, he acquired an international reputation as a designer of ice buildings.

Hutchison’s accomplishments include the Redpath Museum (1880-1882); Row houses on Summerhill Avenue, Montreal (1893-1894); Erskine and American Church (1894); Stanley Presbyterian Church, Westmount, (1913) in collaboration with Wood and Miller; and Victoria Hall Westmount (1924) in collaboration with Wood and completed after his death.
In addition to his architectural achievements, Alexander Cowper Hutchison was a founding member and president of the Ordre des architects du Québec, a founding member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts from 1885 to 1907 and responsible for the creation of the McGill University School of Architecture. He died in Montreal in 1922.

Montreal architects : classified city directory listings, 1842-1950, 1982: 1898 (Hutchison & Wood)
CaQMCCA files, 12/14/1995 (Hutchison & Wood; Hutchison and Wood; 1912 -1918 when the name of J. Melville Miller was added to it)

Dr. Bellender Hutcheson, a graduate of Northwestern University’s Feinberg Medical School, was born in Mt. Carmel, Illinois, but renounced his American citizenship in order to fight in the Canadian Army at the outbreak of World War I. He joined the 97th Battalion that was later attached to the 75th, attaining the rank of captain; he was demobilized in 1919. He received both the Victoria Cross and the Military Cross at Buckingham Palace; these honours were for “conspicuous gallantry” and devotion to duty under heavy fire on two occasions: a) when he attended wounded including enemy wounded left behind, and b) when he rushed out in front of the Canadian lines in full view of the enemy to attend to a wounded sergeant. After the war he returned to the US, resumed his practice, reclaimed his US citizenship and married his sweetheart. In 2016, the mayor of his hometown, Mt. Carmel, proclaimed December 16 Captain Bellender S. Hutcheson Day.