SIR JOHN JOSEPH CALDWELL ABBOTT (1821-1893), PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA
“I hate politics… I hate notoriety, public meetings, public speeches, caucuses, and everything that I know of that is apparently the necessary incident of politics - except doing public work to the best of my ability.”
John Abbott (1891)
Born in 1821 in St. Andrew’s East (now Saint-André-d’Argenteuil), John Abbott was the son of an Anglican minister. At the age of seventeen, Abbott went to work in the dry-goods trade, where he learned bookkeeping and business. In 1849, he married Mary Bethune (1823-1898). The couple had nine children.