Dominick Daly

Sir Dominick Daly

Sir Dominick Daly (11 August 1798 – 19 February 1868) was the Governor of Prince Edward Island from 11 July 1854 to 25 May 1859 and later Governor of South Australia from 4 March 1862 until his death on 19 February 1868.

He was born in Ardfry, County Galway, Ireland in 1798 and studied in Birmingham. In 1823, he came to Lower Canada as secretary to Lieutenant-Governor Sir Francis Nathaniel Burton. In 1827, he was appointed provincial secretary for Lower Canada. He was a member of the Special Council of Lower Canada from 1840 to 1841. After the Act of Union in 1840, it became a prerequisite for his post that he be elected and he ran successfully in the Canada East riding of Mégantic in 1841. In 1841, he was appointed provincial secretary of Canada East and a member of the Executive Council. When the council resigned en masse in November 1843 in a dispute with Governor Sir Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, Daly chose to remain, which was viewed as a betrayal by Reformers. This left Daly as acting head of government for several weeks. In 1844, he became provincial secretary for both Canada East and Canada West. In March 1845, he was challenged to a duel by Reformer Thomas Cushing Aylwin; shots were fired but no one was injured. Daly was removed from the Executive Council in 1848 when Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine came to power; he returned to England and served on a commission of inquiry.

In 1852, Daly was appointed lieutenant-governor of Tobago; he was next appointed to the same post in Prince Edward Island. In 1858, he announced his resignation and departed the following year. In October 1861, he was appointed the next Governor of South Australia and died in office in 1868 in Adelaide.

Geography

The town of Daly Waters was named after the new Governor of South Australia by John McDouall Stuart in 1862 on his third attempt to find a path from south to north across the centre of Australia. The Daly River further north was named after him in 1865 by surveyor Boyle Travers Finniss.

External links

• "Biography". Dictionnaire des parlementaires du Québec de 1792 à nos jours (in French). National Assembly of Quebec.
• "Dominick Daly". Dictionary of Canadian Biography (online ed.). University of Toronto Press. 1979–2005.

Political Summary