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ROCHE, WILLIAM JAMES, physician, politician, and office holder; b. 30 Nov. 1859 near Lucan, Upper Canada, son of William Elliott Roche, a merchant, and Maria Carter Hodgins; m. 17 July 1884 Annie Elizabeth Cook (d. 1946) in Toronto, and they had a daughter and two sons, one of whom died in infancy; d. 30 Sept. 1937 in Ottawa and was buried there in Beechwood Cemetery.

William James Roche was born in Middlesex County, in the village that would later be named Clandeboye, to Irish Protestant parents. He attended elementary school in nearby Lucan and high school in London. After teaching for two years, in 1876 he enrolled in Trinity Medical School in Toronto. He completed his last year of studies at the University of Western Ontario in London, where in 1883 he became the institution’s first medical graduate, receiving first-class honours. Later that year Roche moved to Minnedosa, Man., where he established a general practice. He served as a territorial representative for Marquette on the Council of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba from 1886 to 1901.

Roche’s involvement in politics began in 1892 when he ran unsuccessfully in the provincial general election as a Conservative candidate for the Minnedosa constituency. Four years later he was elected by a narrow margin as the Conservative representative for Marquette in the House of Commons, and after becoming an mp, he maintained his private medical practice in Minnedosa. Roche was re-elected during general elections in 1900, 1904, 1908, and 1911, although usually not by large majorities, and he served as Conservative whip for the west (1901–10) and assistant Conservative whip (1910–11). Prime Minister Robert Laird Borden assigned him the portfolios of secretary of state and secretary of state for external affairs in 1911. The following year the former position was passed to Louis Coderre, responsibility for the latter was transferred to the prime minister, and Roche was appointed minister of the interior, a post he would occupy until 1917. His tenure was not without controversy. In the House of Commons on 14 April 1915, he made an accusation of corruption against his predecessor as minister of the interior, Frank Oliver, and other Liberals from the previous administration.

When he was minister of the interior, Roche actively encouraged immigration from the United States and the United Kingdom, making promotional tours to both countries, while discouraging it from places he considered less desirable. When the steamship Komagata Maru [see Mewa Singh*] arrived in Vancouver in 1914 with a few hundred Punjabis on board, he gave instructions to immigration officials, including William Bruce Almon Ritchie*, to deny them entry even though they were British subjects. The following year he doubled the amount of money immigrants had to have in hand, from $25 to $50. During the First World War Roche was honorary lieutenant-colonel of the 32nd Manitoba Horse, and in 1917 he introduced a bill for organizing land settlement for returned soldiers, which was eventually passed.

In his capacity as minister of the interior, Roche was also superintendent of Indian affairs. Peter Henderson Bryce, who was chief medical officer for the department from 1904 to 1921, had high hopes that Roche’s medical background would prompt him to address the deplorable conditions in residential schools [see Allen Patrick Willie] and reserves, which Bryce had flagged in his reports. Roche appears to have taken no interest in the matter, however, and in Bryce’s scathing attack on the department’s inaction in 1922, The story of a national crime, he wrote that Roche “must be held responsible for the neglect of what proved to be a very serious situation.”

In poor health, Roche retired from federal politics in 1917, and his portfolios were split between Arthur Meighen*, who became minister of the interior, and James Alexander Calder*, who became minister of immigration and colonization. That same year Roche was appointed chairman of the Civil Service Commission. He championed several reforms, most notably the Civil Service Act of 1918, which replaced the prevailing patronage system with one based on merit, resulting in less staff turnover. During his tenure the Civil Service Superannuation Act of 1924 was passed, establishing pensions for federal employees. On the negative side, the commission refused to hear appeals from individual civil servants, and those who tried faced the possibility of dismissal. The commission had also placed formal restrictions on the employment of married women in 1921. The only one of three commissioners to remain after a 1932 parliamentary inquiry, Roche continued until his retirement in 1935.

Roche was a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (representing Manitoba as its grand master in 1893), the Ancient Order of United Workmen, the Royal Colonial Institute of London, the Rideau Club (Ottawa), and the Church of England in Canada. He served as the fourth chancellor of the University of Western Ontario (1916–29) and received honorary llds from that institution (1911) and Queen’s University in Kingston (1919). In 1934 King George V named him a companion of the Order of St Michael and St George.

Gordon Goldsborough