| The Right Honourable The Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal |
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Lord Strathcona circa 1870-1880 |
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| Born | Donald Alexander Smith 6 August 1820 Forres, Scotland |
| Died | 21 January 1914 (aged 93) London, England |
| Cause of death | Heart disease, bronchial catarrh and heart failure |
| Resting place | Highgate Cemetery |
| Residence | 28 Grosvenor Square, London |
| Other names | Sir Donald Alexander Smith |
| Citizenship | Canada |
| Net worth | $28,867,635 |
| Spouse | Isabella Sophia Hardisty |
| Children | Margaret Charlotte |
| Signature | |
Sir Donald Alexander Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, GCMG, GCVO, PC, DL (6 August 1820 – 21 January 1914) was a Scottish-born Canadian fur trader, financier, railroad baron and politician.
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Smith was born in Forres, in Moray, Scotland to Alexander Smith, a saddler, and Barbera Stuart. On leaving school at the age of 16 he briefly apprenticed to become a lawyer in the town clerk's office.
He married Isabella Sophia, Baroness Strathcona and Mount Royal, the daughter of Richard Hardisty, Esquire, of the Hudson's Bay Company. She was presented to the King and Queen, March 13, 1903. The couple lived at 53 Cadogan Square, London; Knebworth House, Stevenage, Herts, England; Glencoe, Scotland; and 1157 Dorchester Street, Montreal.
Their daughter, Hon. Margaret Charlotte Howard, was the wife of Robert J. B. Howard, Esquire. Isabella Sophia and her daughter donated $100,000 to McGill University in Montreal to erect of a new wing to its Medical Building.[1]
He emigrated to Lower Canada in 1838 to work for the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), becoming a clerk for the organization in 1842. He was given administrative control over the seigneury of Mingan (in modern Labrador) in late 1843, where his innovative methods met with the disapproval of HBC governor Sir George Simpson. The Mingan post burned down in 1846, and Smith left for Montreal the following year. He returned in 1848, and remained in Labrador until the 1860s, administering the fur trade and salmon fishing within the region.
In 1862, Smith was promoted as the company's Chief Factor in charge of the Labrador district. He travelled to London in 1865, and made a favourable impression on the HBC's directors. In 1868, he was promoted to Commissioner of the Montreal department, managing the HBC's eastern operations. That same year, Smith joined with George Stephen, Richard Bladworth Angus, and Andrew Paton to establish the textile manufactory, Paton Manufacturing Company, in Sherbrooke.
In 1869, Smith was sent to the Red River Settlement in present day Manitoba by the Canadian government to negotiate with Louis Riel, leader of the Red River Rebellion. Smith's offers, including land recognition for the Métis, led to Riel calling a Council of 40 representatives for formal negotiations. Smith succeeded in gaining clemency for some prisoners within the region; he was not, however, able to prevent the execution of Thomas Scott by the provisional government.
Smith returned to Ottawa in early 1870, and was appointed President of the HBC's Council of the Northern Department (effectively becoming administrator of the Northwest Territories, including Manitoba).
Smith accompanied Col. Garnet Wolseley's military mission to Red River later in the year; following the end of the rebellion, Wolseley illegally appointed Smith as the Acting Governor of Assiniboia pending Lieutenant Governor Adams George Archibald's arrival in the province. Smith stayed in the region after 1870, and was responsible for negotiating the transfer of HBC land to the federal government (as well as coordinating the transfer of several specific land claims in the region). Archibald appointed Smith to his Executive Council on October 20, 1870, although this decision was subsequently overturned by the Canadian government, which ruled that Archibald had overstepped his legal authority.
In Manitoba's first general election, held on December 27, 1870, Smith was elected to the provincial legislature for the riding of Winnipeg and St. John, defeating long-time HBC nemesis John Christian Schultz by 71 votes to 63. Smith was a supporter of Archibald's consensus government, and opposed Schultz's ultra-loyalist Canadian Party; there was a riot among the Ontario soldiers stationed in Winnipeg following the announcement of Smith's victory.
Politicians were allowed to serve in both the provincial and federal parliaments in this period of Manitoba history, and Smith was elected to the Canadian House of Commons for the newly-formed riding of Selkirk in early 1871. He sat as an Independent Conservative, and initially supported the government of Sir John A. Macdonald. Easily re-elected in 1872, Smith was a strong defender of HBC interests in the House of Commons, and also spoke for issues concerning Manitoba and the Northwest. He helped create the Bank of Manitoba and the Manitoba Insurance Company during this period, assisted by banker Sir Hugh Allan.
In 1872 Smith was appointed in the first group of members of the Temporary North-West Council the first governing assembly of Northwest Territories. Smith was one of the few people who served on two provincial / territorial legislatures and the federal parliament at the same time.
Smith broke with Macdonald in 1873, after the Prime Minister had delayed reimbursement for Smith's earlier expenses in Red River. Smith voted to censure the government in a motion over the Pacific Scandal, and was thereby partly responsible for the government's defeat. Smith remained an Independent Conservative, but his relations with the official Conservative representatives were often strained in later years.
Manitoba abolished the "dual mandate" in 1873, and Smith resigned from the provincial legislature in early 1874 (the first person to do so). In the Canadian general election of 1874, Smith defeated Liberal candidate Andrew G. B. Bannatyne by 329 votes to 225. The Manitoba Free Press, at the time, suggested that Smith had encouraged Bannatyne's candidacy to prevent more serious opposition from emerging.
In 1873, the HBC separated its fur trade and land sales operations, putting Smith in charge of the latter. Smith had developed an interest in railway expansion through his work with the HBC, and in 1875 was among the incorporators of the Manitoba Western Railway. He was also a partner in the Red River Transportation Company, which gained control over the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad in March 1878. His business ventures increasingly dominated his labours, and he formally resigned as land commissioner in early 1879 (though remaining a leading figure in the HBC's Canadian operations).
Smith faced a serious electoral challenge from former Manitoba Lieutenant Governor Alexander Morris in the general election of 1878. Aided on this occasion by the Manitoba Free Press, Smith defeated Morris by 555 votes to 546; local Conservative organizers protested the result, and it was overturned two years later. On September 10, 1880, Smith was defeated by former Winnipeg Mayor Thomas Scott, 735 votes to 577.
In May 1879, Smith became a director in the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway Company, having control over 20% of its shares. He was subsequently a leading figure in the creation of the Canadian Pacific Railway, although he was not appointed as a director of the organization until 1883 because of his lingering animosity with Sir John A. Macdonald (who had again become Prime Minister in 1878). During his tenure on the board, Smith had the honour of driving the last spike at Craigellachie, British Columbia to complete the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway rail line. Smith remained on the board of directors for several years, although he was by-passed for the company's presidency in 1888, in favour of William Cornelius Van Horne.
Smith became extremely wealthy through his investments, and was involved in a myriad of Canadian and American corporations in the later part of the 19th century. He was appointed to the board of the Bank of Montreal in 1872, became its Vice-President in 1882, and was promoted to the Presidency in 1887.
Smith was also involved in the newspaper industry during this period. His attempt to take over the Toronto Globe in 1882 was unsuccessful, though he took effective control of the Manitoba Free Press from William Fisher Luxton in 1893. In 1889, he was the principal shareholder of the Hudson's Bay Company and was elected as its 26th governor, holding this position until his death in 1914.
Smith was re-elected to the Canadian House of Commons in 1887, in the Quebec riding of Montreal West, and once again sat as an "Independent Conservative". He was re-elected in the election of 1891, defeating his only opponent (one James Cochrane) 4586 votes to 880. Smith remained interested in Manitoba politics, and attempted (without success) to broker a compromise between Thomas Greenway and the federal government during the Manitoba school crisis of the 1890s.
Prime Minister Sir Mackenzie Bowell wanted Smith to succeed him in 1896, but Smith refused. The position of Prime Minister instead went to Sir Charles Tupper, who appointed Smith as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom on April 24, 1896.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier retained Smith as High Commissioner following the Liberal election victory of 1896, although his powers were somewhat undercut. He was created Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, of Glencoe in the County of Argyll and of Mount Royal in the Province of Quebec and Dominion of Canada, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, in 1897. He cooperated with Manitoba Liberal Clifford Sifton in opening the Canadian prairies to eastern-European immigration. He raised Strathcona's Horse, a private unit of Canadian soldiers, during the Second Boer War, and became one of the leading supporters of British imperialism within London. He was involved in the creation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, of which he became the chairman in 1909. Lord Strathcona subsequently used his influence to make the company a major supplier of the Royal Navy.
Strathcona was a leading philanthropist in his later years, donating large sums of money to various organizations in Britain, Canada and elsewhere. His largest donations were made with George Stephen, donating the money to build the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal that opened its doors in 1893. Strathcona also made a major donation to McGill University in Montreal, where he helped establish a school for women in 1884. He was named Chancellor of McGill in 1888, and held the largely ceremonial post until his death. He also bequeathed funds to the Sheffield Scientific School for a science and engineering building and to support two professorships in engineering. He had been awarded an honorary degree from Yale in 1892.
In 1905 he bought the island of Colonsay in the Inner Hebrides, which remains in the hands of his successors today.
In 1910, Sir Donald Alexander Smith deposited in trust with the Dominion Government the sum of $500,000, bearing annual interest of 4%, to develop citizenship and patriotism in the Royal Canadian Army Cadets movement through physical training, rifle shooting, and military drill. He is remembered today with the Lord Strathcona Medal.
Lord Strathcona died in 1914 in London and buried at Highgate Cemetery. His seventy-five year tenure with the Hudson's Bay Company remains a record.
Lord Strathcona is commemorated in Manitoba by the Rural Municipality of Strathcona and by three streets in Winnipeg: Donald Street and Smith Street in the downtown core, and Strathcona Street in the city's West End.[2] In Alberta he is commemorated by the Calgary neighbourhood of Strathcona Park[3] and by the Edmonton neighbourhood of Strathcona. In British Columbia, the Vancouver neighbourhood of Strathcona takes its name from the Lord Strathcona School built in 1891. There are oil portraits of Lord Strathcona by many artists, but the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury seems to have made a number of head and shoulder portraits of him from 1898 (examples may be found at the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad offices, and in the Hudson's Bay Company [this has a repainted background]). The Town of Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories is named after Donald Smith. There is a stained glass window memorialising him in Westminster Abbey.
| Parliament of Canada | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by None |
Member of Parliament from Selkirk 1871–1880 |
Succeeded by Thomas Scott |
| Preceded by Matthew Hamilton Gault |
Member of Parliament from Montreal West 1887–1896 |
Succeeded by The electoral district was abolished in 1892 |
| Business positions | ||
| Preceded by C. F. Smithers |
President of the Bank of Montreal 1887-1905 |
Succeeded by George Alexander Drummond |
| Preceded by Eden Colvile |
Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company 1889-1914 |
Succeeded by Thomas Skinner |
| Diplomatic posts | ||
| Preceded by Charles Tupper |
Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom 1896–1914 |
Succeeded by George Halsey Perley |
| Academic offices | ||
| Preceded by James Ferrier |
Chancellor of McGill University 1889–1914 |
Succeeded by William Christopher Macdonald |
| Preceded by Marquess of Huntly |
Rector of the University of Aberdeen 1899–? |
Succeeded by Unknown |
| Peerage of the United Kingdom | ||
| Preceded by New Creation |
Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal 1897–1914 |
Succeeded by Margaret Charlotte Howard |
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