(died 12 Jan. 1961, aged 90), clergyman. (J. U. Tanner, John U. Tanner) Born at Sherbrooke, Que. Parents: Rev. Charles Augustus Tanner and his wife Jane Shaw. The Rev. Charles Augustus Tanner, who was born in France in 1839, was the son of the Rev. Jean-Emmanuel Tanner and his wife Olympe Hoerner, who were natives of Switzerland and worked as missionaries in Quebec, converting French Canadians to Protestantism. Owing to this family background, the Rev. J. U. Tanner was fluent in French. He graduated in 1893 from Morrin College, Quebec City, and was a minister at Omemee, Ont., till he came to GC in 1900. In Feb. 1900 the Rev. J. U. Tanner was inducted into the three-point Presbyterian charge of St. Andrew’s, South Lancaster, St. Andrew’s, in the 2nd Concession of Lancaster Township, and Curry Hill. In 1911 he resigned his charge to become field secretary for Home Missions in Quebec and Eastern Ontario. He was well suited to this role through his knowledge of French. It has not become clear, however, through the research done for the present biography, what his duties and actions in the role mentioned were, or what other obligations he may have undertaken after his relatively early withdrawal, at this date, from the parish ministry.

     Lord Dundonald mentions that on his visit to GC on 24 July 1904, a Miss Maclennan sang verses called “Glengarry’s Adieu to Dundonald” which the Rev. J. U. Tanner had “compiled” and which were set to the air of “The March of the Cameron Men.” In 1905, in the inquest following the shooting of a bank robber by Herman Von Metzke, the Rev. J. U. Tanner acted as the interpreter for a French-speaking witness. (Cornwall Standard 5 May 1905) On 19 June 1906, he married Janet (d. 1933) the daughter of Big Jim Rayside and sister of Edith Rayside. Late in life, a widower, he married for the second time, to a Mrs D. A. Fraser of Lancaster, in 1946. In 1912, he was one of the speakers at the centenary celebrations of St. Andrew’s, Williamstown. He wrote a poem in tribute to the late Gunner Nevill Fraser (son of David Fraser), who was killed in WWI. (Cornwall Freeholder 29 March 1917) In 1926 he received the honorary degree of D. D. from McGill University. At an advanced age, in 1950-1951, he served as minister of Zion Church, Apple Hill. He died at his waterfront home in South Lancaster, the village where he had lived for 60 years. If he had children, none survived him. United Church. The burial was at Mount Royal Cemetery, Montreal.

Glengarry News 19 Jan. 1961 * life of Rev. Charles Augustus Tanner in Morgan (1898 & 1912) and life of Olympe Hoerner in Dictionary of Canadian Biography VIII, 396-397 * MacMillan, Kirk, 80, 90 (portrait), 346 * Zion United Church Apple Hill (1989?) and Ella May Smith, The Story of the Old Stone Church [St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, South Lancaster] (1980?), both with portrait * his report on French Canadian evangelization, Presbyterian Church, The Acts and Proceedings of the Forty-Third General Assembly (1917) 13-15 * Earl of Dundonald, My Army Life (1926) 287 (these verses are also mentioned Cornwall Freeholder 29 July 1904) * Centenary 1912 29-30 * Rose Gourlay Gosse, Papa Was a Preacher (1990) 33 * Ross, Lancaster, 370 * elected Moderator of Presbytery of Glengarry, GN 18 Dec. 1903 * attends meeting of French Evangelization Committee, Montreal, Cornwall Standard 2 June 1905 * he and bride honoured at reception on return from marriage, GN 29 June 1906 * officiates at marriage of his sister, GN 11 March 1910, repr. Fraser Obits. 107