McGann, John Barrett

Hearing. Emigrated from Ireland to New York City in 1854 and worked for a year as a clerk at the New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb. Moved to Toronto and taught in a grammar school there before establishing a school for the deaf in Toronto in 1858, serving as its headmaster. Corruption by other school officers led him to found a new school, to which all the previous school's pupils and its name transferred. This school eventually grew into the Hamilton Institute for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, and was succeeded in 1870 by a new school at Belleville, ON, that is now the Ontario School for the Deaf. McGann retired in 1878.