Hugh Reginald Haweis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Canon Hugh Reginald Haweis (1838-1901), was a well-known figure in London’s liberal and literary circles. He is described as “a musician, author, journalist, lecture and preacher” in that order. Although a distinguished cleric, religion always seemed to take a perfunctory position among the senior Haweis’ multitude of interests. A passionate believer in a united Italy, in 1860 he joined the ‘Thousand Red-shirts’ and served under Garibaldi during the invasion of Sicily and Naples. Music and scholarship was his second love. He was a gifted violinist receiving instruction from such famous teachers as Oury and Paganini. As a youth he also wrote verse and prose for the Brighton papers. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was the solo violinist of the Cambridge Musical Society, and where he started a magazine called the Lion. He was also the first Church of England cleric to introduce an orchestra into Sunday services.
In terms of religious theology, the Reverend Haweis can best be described as a ‘Broad Church Anglican’. Loosely defined, this concept is based on the belief that Salvation is by the personal acceptance of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. In 1875, he upset the Anglican world by publishing Ashes to Ashes; a tract advocating cremation over traditional burial. At the time the Church of England associated the former with occultism and Eastern religions.
During the late 1890s Reverend Haweis came to Vancouver and went on a lecturing tour of throughout the British Columbia interior. In addition to his pastoral work, Hugh Haweis was also a successful scholar world traveller and author. In 1886, he published an introduction to The Third and Last Voyage of Captain Cook. Later he wrote and published a number of his own works which included: Sir Morell Mackenzie; Physician and Operator: A Memoir (1893), Travel and Talk 1885-95: My Hundred Thousand Miles of Travel Through America, Canada, Australia New Zealand, Tasmania, Ceylon and the Paradises of the Pacific (1896), Mark Twain and Bret Harte (1900) and Old Violins (1910).
