John Rolph

John Rolph (4 March 1793 – 19 October 1870) was a Canadian physician, lawyer, and political figure. He was elected to the Parliament of Upper Canada in 1824 to represent Middlesex County and was considered the leader of the Reform faction in the 1820s. In 1837 he helped plan the Upper Canada Rebellion, but acted as the government's emissary to negotiate a truce once the rebellion began. In the 1850s he was elected to the newly-formed Parliament of the Province of Canada, representing Norfolk County, and was appointed as Minister of Crown Lands and Minister of Agriculture. He founded several medical schools throughout his life, including the Rolph School, and incorporated new teaching techniques and medical practices into his lectures. His actions against rival medical schools decreased public confidence in the ability of medical professionals to regulate themselves.

Rolph grew up in Thornbury, Gloucestershire, and was educated in medicine and law at St John's College, Cambridge; Inner Temple, London; and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He immigrated to Upper Canada in 1813 and lived on his father's farm in Port Talbot, where he practised law and medicine concurrently and opened a medical school called the Talbot Dispensary. In 1824, Rolph was elected to the Parliament of Upper Canada. He returned to England to petition the Colonial Office to allow the naturalisation of American citizens who moved to Canada, allowing them to vote and be elected to the provincial legislative assembly. He was a member of the committee that examined the feasibility of creating the City of Toronto. Elected as an alderman to Toronto's city council, he resigned after his council colleagues did not select him to be the city's mayor. Rolph joined the Executive Council of Upper Canada in 1836, but the entire council resigned a few weeks later when Lieutenant-General Francis Bond Head refused to consult them.

William Lyon Mackenzie persuaded Rolph to support the Upper Canada Rebellion after the latter was promised he would become president of a newly formed Republic of Canada. When the rebellion began, Rolph did not join the rebels at their headquarters. Bond Head did not know of Rolph's involvement with the rebellion and appointed Rolph as his emissary to bring the government's offer of a truce to the rebels. Rolph fled to the US when fellow Reform leader Thomas David Morrison was arrested. The Canadian government granted him amnesty and he returned to Canada in 1843. He created the Rolph School, a new educational institution for medicine, in Toronto. In 1851 he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada. When Rolph became an opposition member of the government, his focus shifted to running his medical school and he declined to run in the 1857 provincial election. He retired as dean of his medical school in 1870 and died later that year after suffering a stroke.