Smith, Donald Alexander, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal

Donald Alexander Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, fur trader and railway financier (born on August 6, 1820, at Forres, Scotland; died on January 21, 1914, at London, England). Smith joined the Hudson's Bay Company in 1838 and began a hardship post in Labrador. Gifted with both shrewdness and compassion, he moved steadily upward in the company. In December 1869, during the Red River Rebellion, Sir John A. Macdonald sent him to the Red River Colony to find a peaceful solution to the problem there. Smith went there as a Hudson's Bay Company official, but he had private authority to act for the Canadian government. At first, Riel was suspicious of him and kept him in Fort Garry under surveillance. Smith bore it patiently and he successfully persuaded the Red River people to begin negotiations with Canada.

Smith's political career followed. Alongside his role as a Hudson's Bay Company officer, he was a member of Parliament from 1871 to 1880. A good Conservative, he nevertheless felt obliged to speak against the Pacific Scandal in Parliament in 1873. Macdonald viewed this as treachery, for it helped bring down his government, but Smith felt his conscience came before his political party.

In 1880 Smith was part of the Montreal group that created the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. During the tumultuous years of 1880-85, when the railway was being built and was more than once on the edge of bankruptcy, he backed the project stoutheartedly. Like his cousin George Stephen, he risked his fortune by doing so.

After the railway was completed, Smith was knighted and then created Baron Lord Strathcona. He was appointed Canadian High Commissioner to Great Britain from 1896 until his death.