Ash, John

Dr. John Ashe was born on December 24, 1822, in Yorkshire, England.

He was a physician and politician. Little is known of his early life and education except that he attended Guy’s Hospital in London. In 1845, he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and a licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries. Ash practiced medicine in Coxwold (North Yorkshire) from 1849 to 1860. In 1862, he immigrated to Victoria, Vancouver Island. In 1865, he was elected to the House of Assembly of Vancouver Island as a junior member for Esquimalt District. He supported the union of Vancouver Island with British Columbia, providing it was coupled with the granting of responsible government and free port status for Victoria. He retained his seat until the abolition of the Island assembly upon the union of the two colonies in 1866. After British Columbia entered the confederation in 1871, Ash was elected to the provincial legislature for Comox on northern Vancouver Island in 1872. He was appointed to the Executive Council as provincial secretary in the government of Amor De Cosmos, serving until George Anthony Walkem’s government resigned in 1876. Ash also served as the first minister of mines of British Columbia in 1874. He remained in the assembly until 1882, when he decided not to seek re-election.

Dr. Ash’s domestic life was shadowed by sadness. His only child, Annie, died of diphtheria in 1868 at the age of five, and his wife died in 1874. Later the following year, Ash remarried Adelaide Anne Amelia de Veulle. While they were visiting England in 1881, Adelaide died of malaria. Dr. Ash returned to Victoria and continued to practice medicine, specializing in ophthalmology, until his death of apoplexy on April 17, 1886, in Victoria, British Columbia.

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