Donald Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal
Donald Alexander Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, , known as Sir Donald A. Smith between May 1886 and August 1897, was a Scottish-born Canadian businessman who became one of the British Empire's foremost builders and philanthropists. He became commissioner, governor and principal shareholder of the Hudson's Bay Company. He was president of the Bank of Montreal and with his first cousin, George Stephen, co-founded the Canadian Pacific Railway. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba and afterwards represented Montreal in the House of Commons of Canada. He was Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 1896 to 1914. He was chairman of Burmah Oil and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. He was chancellor of McGill University and the University of Aberdeen.
King Edward VII called him "Uncle Donald". His estate was valued at $5.5 million. During his lifetime, and including the bequests left after his death, he gave away just over $7.5 million-plus a further £1 million to a huge variety of charitable causes across Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. He personally raised Strathcona's Horse, who saw their first action in the Second Boer War. He funded the building of Leanchoil Hospital. He and his first cousin, Lord Mount Stephen, purchased the land and then each gave $1 million to the City of Montreal to construct and maintain the Royal Victoria Hospital. He endowed the Lord Strathcona Medal and donated generously to McGill University, Aberdeen University, the Victoria University of Manchester, Yale University, the Prince of Wales Hospital Fund and the Imperial Institute. At McGill, he started the Donalda Program for the purpose of providing higher education for Canadian women, building the Royal Victoria College on Sherbrooke Street for that purpose in 1886. He also built the Strathcona Medical Building at McGill and endowed its chairs in pathology and hygiene.
Early life
Born 6 August 1820, on Forres High Street, in Moray, Scotland, he was the second son of Alexander Smith and his wife Barbara Stuart, daughter of Donald Stuart of Leanchoil, Upper Strathspey, descended from Murdoch Stewart, 2nd Duke of Albany. His father, whose family had lived at Archiestown Cottage as crofters at Knockando, became a saddler at Forres after trying his hand at farming and soldiering. Donald was also a first cousin of the successful and notably philanthropic Grant brothers of Manchester, who were reputedly immortalised as the "Cheeryble Brothers" in Charles Dickens' book, Nicholas Nickleby. Donald's mother was the sister of the Canadian explorer John Stuart, partner of the North West Company who rose to become Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company.Smith was educated at Anderson's Free School and on leaving at age sixteen he was apprenticed to become a lawyer in the offices of Robert Watson, Town Clerk of Forres. By the age of eighteen, Smith chose another career path: offered entry into mercantile life at Manchester, and a career in the Indian Civil Service, his choice was to pattern himself on his uncle John Stuart who offered him a junior clerkship in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. Smith chose to follow his uncle's career and sailed to Montreal that year.
Hudson's Bay Company
Smith emigrated to Lower Canada in 1838 to work for the Hudson's Bay Company, becoming a clerk for the organization in 1842. He was given administrative control over the seigneury of Mingan 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, the government of John A. Macdonald held the HBC accountable for the disturbances reported in the Red River Colony, which was part of the proposed purchase of the original part of Rupert's Land from the HBC. The person in charge of HBC's nominal head office in Montreal was Smith, and he was asked by the Governor-General to investigate and write a Royal Commission report. Smith travelled to Manitoba, and negotiated at Fort Garry with Louis Riel, who had been voted the leader of the resistance. Smith's offers, including land recognition for the Métis, led to Riel calling a Council of 40 representatives, drawn half-and-half from the Metis and the HBC settlers, for formal negotiations. Smith returned to Ottawa in early 1870, and communicated the Royal Commission on the North-West Territories, which effectively made his name in Canada and London. Smith succeeded in gaining clemency for some prisoners within the region; he was not, however, able to prevent the execution of Thomas Scott by Riel's provisional government. He was appointed that year to the office of President of the HBC's Council of the Northern Department.
Smith accompanied Col. Garnet Wolseley's military mission to Red River later in the year; following the end of the resistance, Wolseley 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. Archibald appointed Smith to his Executive Council on 20 October 1870, although this decision was subsequently overturned by the Canadian government, which ruled that Archibald had overstepped his legal authority.
Political career
In Manitoba's first general election, held on 27 December 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 House of Commons of Canada 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 to the first group of members of the Temporary North-West Council the first governing assembly of the North-West 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. 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 he remained a leading figure in the HBC's operations for another 30 years.
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 10 September 1880, Smith was defeated by former Winnipeg Mayor Thomas Scott, 735 votes to 577.
Corporate leader
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. 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 he was involved in a myriad of Canadian and American corporations in the latter 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. His leadership in real estate transactions caused Smith to become a financier, and he was thus involved in over 80 trust structures, including the Royal Trust and Montreal Trust. He retained a significant interest in the Hudson's Bay Company throughout his life and became in 1889 Governor of the company that had made his name.
Smith was also involved in the newspaper industry in his later years. 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.