Byron Edmund Walker
Sir Byron Edmund Walker, CVO was a Canadian banker. He was the president of the Canadian Bank of Commerce from 1907 to 1924, and a generous patron of the arts, helping to found and nurture many of Canada's cultural and educational institutions, including the University of Toronto, National Gallery of Canada, the Champlain Society, Appleby College, Art Gallery of Ontario and Royal Ontario Museum.
In 1910, King George V knighted Walker for his contributions to business and the arts.
Early years
Byron Edmund Walker was born on 14 October 1848 on the outskirts of Caledonia in Seneca Township, Haldimand County, Canada West.His grandfather, Thomas Walker, had been a manufacturer of watchcases in London, England. He arrived in Upper Canada in 1834 with four of his children, some books and some pictures. The loss of his wife and four of his children contributed heavily to his decision to leave London for Canada. The third youngest child was Alfred Edmund Walker, Sir Edmund's father, a farmer who became a clerk. He was also an amateur naturalist, paleontologist and watercolour painter. Alfred Edmund married Fanny Murton of Hamilton in 1845. Fanny's parents also were immigrants from England, having arrived in 1832. Her father, William Murton, was college educated and her mother spoke Italian and French and played the harpsichord. She also ran a private junior school in Hamilton.
The Walkers had nine children of which Byron Edmund was the second oldest. The family moved from their farm near Caledonia, to Hamilton in 1852. There, at the age of four, Edmund began studies at his grandmother's school and then at the Hamilton Central School where he completed all six grades. He hoped to pursue a teaching career but poor health curtailed his enrollment in the Toronto Normal School, the teacher's college founded by Egerton Ryerson in 1851. At the age of 12, Walker entered the service of his uncle, John Walter Murton, who had a currency exchange business in Hamilton.
Banking career
While working at his uncle's bureau de change, Walker became an expert in recognizing counterfeit bills being circulated during the American Civil War. After seven years at his uncle's firm, he spent a few months in Montreal but poor health forced him to return to Hamilton in 1868 where he began work as a discount clerk in the newly opened Canadian Bank of Commerce.The Canadian Bank of Commerce was established by industrialist William McMaster in 1867. McMaster would serve as a guiding light to the young Edmund, who quickly rose through the ranks. In 1872, he was appointed chief accountant at the bank's head office in Toronto. In May 1873, Walker was sent to New York City as junior agent for the bank. Charged with responsibility for loans of gold against currency, he successfully maintained proper margins in spite of his clients' many sudden bankruptcies. The enterprising Walker was then sent to the bank's Windsor branch in 1875. In 1878, he was appointed manager of the London, Ontario branch, a year later was made inspector of the bank, and in 1880 he returned to Hamilton as manager.
Walker married Mary Alexander in 1874 while living in New York. Together they had four sons and three daughters. She was the daughter of Alexander Alexander, a carpenter who emigrated from Scotland to Lockport, New York, in 1834. That year, he married Isabella Buchan and moved to Hamilton, Ontario, where he became a green grocer. Together they had five children.
From 1881 to 1886, Edmund was again in New York as the bank's joint agent, giving him the opportunity to increase his talents in foreign exchange and to conduct international banking on a much larger scale. There he could expand his cultural interests, visiting galleries and museums, and beginning, in earnest, his art collection. In 1886, at age 38, Walker was recalled to Toronto as general manager of the Canadian Bank of Commerce. By then there were 30 branches in Ontario and agencies in Toronto, Montreal and New York. The bank's assets at its inception were $2,997,081; 50 years later, these were $440,310,703 with branches across the country, largely attributable to Walker's strong leadership.
Walker is known for developing the first set of written regulations for dividing a bank into a complex array of departments and is widely credited for the Canadian government's 1881/82 revision of the Canada Banking Act that gave Canada a centralized, panic-proof banking system. Walker was also professionally respected internationally. As vice-president of the American Bankers Association he was invited by a U.S. congressional committee to advise on the drafting of the Federal Reserve legislation. He held many key national and international positions; chairman of the bankers' section of the Toronto Board of Trade from 1891 to 1892; vice-president of the Canadian Bankers Association in 1893 and its president from 1894 to 1895; chairman of the 1899 Royal Commission on the financial position of the province of Ontario; and chairman of the Section of Money and Credit for the 1904 Universal Exposition in St. Louis. He was a fellow of the Institute of Bankers of England and fellow of the Royal Economic Society of England.
In 1906, he was elected director of the Canadian Bank of Commerce. He served as president from 1907 until his death in 1924.
Political ties
The Liberal Party government of Sir Wilfrid Laurier appointed Walker to the National Battlefields Commission in 1908. The commission was charged with the recovery of non-Crown land for a "Battlefields Park" in Quebec City where the Battle of the Plains of Abraham was fought between French and British forces. The commission was also charged with supervision of the expenditures of the Tercentenary Celebration of Samuel de Champlain founding Quebec in 1608. Later, Walker was made chairman of the Canadian committee of the Peace Centenary, an event planned by the Canadian, American and British governments to commemorate 100 years of peace between Canada and the United States following the War of 1812-14.Although Walker tried to stay out of active politics all his life and never joined a political party, he decided to take a pivotal role in the political arena with a group of 18 prominent businessmen who opposed the Reciprocity Agreement with the United States proposed by the Laurier government. Walker feared that the giant American trusts, once allowed into Canada, would paralyze the Canadian market. Furthermore, as an ardent patriot and staunch imperialist, he feared it would weaken Canada's ties with Britain and lead to annexation by the United States. The anti-reciprocity forces led to the defeat of Laurier's government in 1911. Walker was among those who advised the new Conservative Party prime minister, Sir Robert Borden, on preserving the financial stability of Canada during the First World War.
Interests in education
Walker credited his father for developing his broad interests and love for learning, and always regretted that poor health prevented him from getting a formal education. He believed that the basis of a civilized society was its educational system and that a nation's universities were its most treasured institutions. Throughout his life he took an active interest in educational institutions. One of the first and most lasting of his interests was the University of Toronto. In 1887, the denominational institutions of Victoria College, Knox College, Wycliffe College, and St. Michael's College had entered into a federation with the secular University College, the only one funded by the government. After fire destroyed the eastern portion of University College in 1890, Walker was instrumental in persuading the Ontario government to make its first grant to the amalgamated University of Toronto.He was also responsible for leading the last denominational college - Trinity College, affiliated with the Church of England - into the federation in 1904. Trinity awarded him a Doctor of Civil Law that same year. In 1905, he was a member of the Royal Commission on the reorganization of the university, which was responsible for securing annual government grants thereafter. Over the course of his 32-year involvement with the university, Walker served as trustee, senator, member of the board of governors, chairman and chancellor.
The Toronto Conservatory of Music also joined the university through his efforts. He served as a member of its Board of Governors, and later as president. His support for music also included the Mendelssohn Choir, for which he was honorary president.
With a lasting commitment to education and the importance of Canadian history in nurturing patriotism and a Canadian identity, he founded the Champlain Society in 1905. Established as a non-profit organization, its mandate was to publish important documents relating to Canadian history, projects that commercial publishers would consider unprofitable. He believed that this Society was his finest achievement. He served as its president until his death.
As an author of articles on a variety of subjects - banking, Robert Browning, Italian and Japanese art - it is not surprising that Walker would be one of the founders of the Canadian Society of Authors, established to promote Canadian literature and protect authors with copyright laws. Walker served as president from 1904 to 1909.
In 1911, Walker established Appleby School, a boys' private boarding school, for which he purchased the initial property in Oakville. The first headmaster of the school was Walker's son-in-law John Guest.
A love of art
Through his years in New York City and early trips to Europe - including to London in 1887 and Italy in 1892 - Walker developed skills as an art connoisseur and collector, often lecturing on the subject. His collection of art was housed in his Toronto residence - "Long Garth" at 99 St. George Street. The Victorian brick structure had fine wood interiors, Art Nouveau ceiling decorations by Gustav Hahn, and allegorical murals by George Agnew Reid. "Long Garth" became a treasure trove of etchings, prints, embroideries and oriental carpets, bronzes, brass and ivory work, porcelain china, not to mention his fossil collection and his extensive library. Walker had a particular fascination with printmaking and it was said that his expert eye for detail in detecting counterfeit banknotes aided his connoisseurship. Walker also was a member of the Japan Society of America and the most notable part of his collection, 1,070 Japanese woodblock prints, were bequeathed to the Royal Ontario Museum on his death. Equally of note is the collection of over 400 works of graphic art, ranging from the 15th to the 9th centuries, which he assembled between 1880 and 1924, including works by Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt. His children gave the collection to the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1926.Beyond purchasing some pictures by Canadian artists, Walker's first real connection with the Canadian art world began when he was approached by a number of prominent Toronto artists to help them organize a guild. With these like-minded laymen and artists who shared his ideals he formed the Toronto Guild of Civic Art. Spearheaded by George Agnew Reid, the guild pressed for civic improvements in the city. Walker served as its first president in 1897. As the Guild's representative on the committee to select the artist for the monument to Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe at Queen's Park, Walker was largely responsible for the commission being awarded to sculptor Walter Seymour Allward. Later, Walker was responsible for Allward's commissions to design the South African War Memorial on University Avenue in Toronto, as well as the Bell Telephone Memorial in Brantford.