(died 15 Sept. 1957, aged 77), clergyman and author. (J. G. Berry) Born at Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, Eng. He studied at Edinburgh and Stirling high schools, St. Andrew’s University (M. A.) and the University of Edinburgh (B. D.). He was a minister in Scotland, then in 1926 became a minister in Fredericton, N. B. He came to Ontario in 1933, and was a minister there in Kinburn, Martintown (with Williamstown), Burlington, and Sutton West. He was minister of the two associated congregations of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Martintown, and Hephzibah Presbyterian Church, Williamstown, Jan. 1937 to July 1943. He received a Doctor of Divinity degree (by examination) from Presbyterian College, Montreal, in 1938. His article on the 150th anniversary of the Presbyterian congregation at Williamstown was published in The Presbyterian Record Nov. 1937. Articles he wrote on GC in the Ottawa Journal were reprinted in the Glengarry News 25 Feb. 1938 (“In the Heart of Glengarry”) and 10 March 1939 (“White World of Glengarry”) and in the Cornwall Standard-Freeholder 19 May 1937 (on covered bridges and in particular on that of “our village,” Martintown) and 17 Sept. 1937 (on country life in GC) and 20 Oct. 1939 (“War in Our Village)”. Also in the Standard-Freeholder, 11 June 1937, he wrote reconstructing how a GC village looked in earlier times. His “Glengarry Village” in The Dalhousie Review (1939) has long been one of the well known essays on GC. In 1945, when he was living in Burlington, he wrote “Glengarry in the Spotlight,” an article of tribute to the county based on the public expectation that it would soon be Mackenzie King’s constituency (Ottawa Journal, repr. Standard Freeholder 14 July 1945) He retired from the full-time ministry in 1950. He was married to Agnes Mitchell. (two children)

     He must be distinguished from his contemporary at Martintown and near namesake the Rev. William G. Berry, minister of St. Andrew’s United Church, Martintown, from 1936 to 1939 and the author of This Incredible Thing– Evangelism (Toronto, The Ryerson Press, 32 pp., 1959).

MacMillan, Kirk: index (for J.G. and W.G. Berry) *obituary, The Presbyterian Record, Oct. 1957 * Rhodes Grant, ii, 42, 44, and iii * Jean McCuaig MacIntosh, ‘Our Heritage’: A History of Old St. Andrew’s the Stone Church at Martintown (1984)