Fletcher, Edward Taylor

FLETCHER, Edward Taylor (1817-1897) of Quebec City was in partnership there with Frederick Hacker from 1838 to 1841 (see list of works under Hacker & Fletcher). Born in Canterbury, England on 20 May 1817, he was brought to Quebec City in the Province of Canada by his family and arrived in October 1827. He attended private school, and later studied literature and history at the Petit Seminaire in Quebec City. His cousin there was the architect Frederick Hacker, another native of Canterbury, and in 1838 he accepted a post as junior assistant with Hacker, and then became his professional partner in the office of Hacker & Fletcher, active from September 1838 until 1841. During this period, Fletcher was one of six architects who submitted an entry, under his own name, in the 1841 architectural competition for the Queen’s College [now Queen’s University], at Kingston, Ont. (J. Stewart & I. Wilson, Heritage Kingston, 1973, 121-22). He may have been encouraged by Hacker to prepare a design for this competition, and Hacker may have advised Fletcher on his scheme, but regardless, his proposal was passed over in favour of the winning design by John G. Howard. This scheme by Howard was never built, and Fletcher’s drawings are now lost.

Fletcher appears to have abandoned the architectural profession after 1841, and he became a full-time land surveyor with the Crown Lands Dept. in December 1841, and pursued a career in surveying for the next 40 years until his retirement in New Westminster, B.C. in 1882. He died in Victoria, B.C. at the residence of his son on 1 February 1897 (obit. Daily Columbian [New Westminster], 1 February 1897, 4; biog. in Ontario Land Surveyors Annual Reports, 1935, 131-34; A.J.H. Richardson, Quebec City: Architects, Artisans & Builders, 1984, 301-02, list of works by Hacker & Fletcher; biog. in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, XII, 1990, 320-21).