Enos Collins

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Enos Collins (1774-1871) was a merchant, shipowner, banker and privateer from Nova Scotia, Canada. Upon his death he was acclaimed as the richest man in Canada. He was born to a merchant family in Liverpool, Nova Scotia. Trading and a few privateering voyages to the West Indies in his youth gave him experience to own and manage his own fleet of vessels. While best known for his ownership of the privateer schooner Liverpool Packet, Collins main fortune was made in shrewd wartime trading and careful peacetime investments. He moved to Halifax during the War of 1812 and married into the Halifax elite. With several other merchants he founded the Halifax Banking Company in 1825, one of the first Canadian banks, today known as the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. His Halifax estate Gorsebrook is today the site of Saint Mary's University, Halifax, although the university demolished his mansion in the 1960s. His bank and warehouse buildings on the Halifax waterfront have been preserved as part of a waterfront revitalization known as Historic Properties.