Background
Hugh Finlay was born in Scotland and emigrated to Quebec shortly after the capitulation of the country to General Amherst in 1790.
Hugh Finlay was born in Scotland and emigrated to Quebec shortly after the capitulation of the country to General Amherst in 1790.
He entered business as a merchant, and was appointed a justice of the peace, an office of great importance at a time when there was a mere handful of English people in the midst of a large French community. He had the valuable qualification of understanding and speaking the French language.
When Benjamin Franklin, deputy of the postmaster-general of England, decided after the Treaty of Paris in 1763 to extend the limits of the Colonial Post-Office to include the newly acquired territory, he came to Quebec, opened post-offices in that town, at Three Rivers, and at Montreal, and placed the Canadian section under Finlay.
His report is a valuable survey of the condition of the country on the eve of the Revolution. On his return to New York, he learned of Franklin’s dismissal on January 31, 1774, and of his own appointment on February 25 as joint deputy postmaster-general with Thomas Foxcroft of Philadelphia.
The recognition of the independence of the colonies, however, made a readjustment necessary, and in July 1784, Finlay was appointed deputy postmaster-general of Canada. In 1787, by direction of the governor-general, Finlay made a journey to Halifax, Nova Scotia, through a country in large part wilderness, and established a mail-route which passed through the principal settlements in the Maritime Provinces.
On his return he was placed in charge of the whole postal service of British North America. In 1792 he concluded a convention with the postmaster-general of the United States, the chief object of which was to provide for the conveyance to and from New York of mails between Canada and Great Britain.
In 1799 disaster fell upon him. Owing to defalcations on the part of a postmaster for whom he was responsible, Finlay was dismissed from his office as a defaulter. That he was not regarded as blameworthy by the governor-general or his associates in Quebec is shown by the fact that he retained all his provincial offices, including that of legislative councilor until his death.
He was married on October 16, 1865, in Havana to Adela Shine, a native of the Island of Trinidad.
A son, Carlos Eduardo, followed his father in the practise of medicine in Havana.