randomosity

The Man who would have been Prime Minister

Frank Smith’s life is the Cana­dian rags to riches immig­rant boy makes good story.
There is a superb bio­graphy of Sir Frank by Mark McGowan at the Dic­tion­ary of Cana­dian Bio­graphy Online. It is a great read and any attempt by me to improve on it would be fruit­less. What I did want to high­light here were a few of the more over­arch­ing aspects to Sir Frank’s career and how it reflec­ted the nature of the col­li­sion between polit­ics and busi­ness of the time.

I would how­ever con­trib­ute the fol­low­ing fam­ily tree to McGowan’s present­a­tion along with accom­pa­ny­ing photographs.

Busi­ness

There are aspects of McGowan’s bio­graphy that hint at some of the more sali­ent aspects of Smith’s career.
One of the intriguing turns of phrase that McGowan con­cerns what he terms Macdonald’s tem­por­ary loss of con­fid­ence in Smith’s com­mand of his con­stitu­ency. McGowan’s is a well con­sidered and entirely plaus­ible explan­a­tion. What intrigues me more is that the per­son he claims to be Smith’s nom­inee for a judi­cial post. The indi­vidual, Joseph James Foy, was the brother of his busi­ness part­ner and son-in-law, John Foy. The same John was made trustee of Smith’s busi­ness interests in his will. Busi­ness and polit­ics were all kept in the fam­ily as it were and this reflec­tion on the polit­ical eco­nomy of late nine­teenth cen­tury is Canada is noth­ing new, but cer­tainly very strong demon­strated by Smith’s career.

Macdonald’s lack of con­fid­ence in Smith is cer­tainly not demon­strated by the fact that the pro­vi­sioner respons­ible for sup­ply­ing the troops sent west in 1871 was none other than Frank Smith and Com­pany, who billed the gov­ern­ment $3,074.55 for provid­ing food and drink and addi­tion­ally that the troops were trans­por­ted by the steamer ‘Chicora’ (owned by Smith and his Niagara Steam­ship Company).

Of course, con­flicts of interest were a little more loosely defined dur­ing Smith’s time. I came upon Sir Frank when I was look­ing for more inform­a­tion about the activ­it­ies of retail lob­by­ing efforts dur­ing the nine­teenth cen­tury. As McGowan men­tions, Smith “acquired a for­tune, largely from liquor sales,” and this comes as little sur­prise. At this time, there was sub­stan­tial profit to be real­ized from the ‘gro­cery’ busi­ness. Smith was par­tic­u­larly shrewd and was able to consistent;y par­lay his his wealth into greater and greater arenas. As McGowan fur­ther notes, Smith’s pos­i­tion in the Sen­ate and cab­inet provided him with “a great degree of polit­ical influ­ence and a gen­er­ous amount of free time for his busi­ness interests.” His skill­ful blend­ing of these interests and oppor­tun­it­ies bears fur­ther exam­in­a­tion if only to rein­force our appre­ci­ation of the mach­in­a­tion sof the likes of Hincks, Cartier or Mac­don­ald himself.

The list of com­pan­ies with which Smith was involved as investor, dir­ector, or senior man­age­ment was impress­ive. A selec­ted list includes:

Frank Smith and Com­pany, Lon­don
Smith and Wilson, Gro­cers, Toronto
Dir­ector, Lon­don and Lake Erie Rail­way
Dir­ector, Toronto Gen­eral Trusts Com­pany
Dir­ector, Consumer’s Gas Com­pany
Vice-president, Domin­ion Tele­graph Com­pany
Pres­id­ent, Toronto Street Rail­way Com­pany
Pres­id­ent, Home Sav­ings and Loan Com­pany
Pres­id­ent, North­ern Exten­sion Rail­way
Northerrn Pacific Junc­tion Rail­way
Pres­id­ent,
Interoceanic Railway(1872) – amal­gam­ated into CPR by gov order. PRO Cor­res­pond­ence rel­at­ive to the Cana­dian Pacific Rail­way Prin­cipal Author: Great Bri­tain. Colo­nial Office Imprint: Lon­don : W. Clowes, 1874.
Lake Super­ior and Man­itoba Rail­way

Win­nipeg and Fort Gary Rail­way
Sault Ste Marie Bridge and Rail­way
Couchich­ing Hotel Company

CPR to buy the interests of the Transoceanic Rail­way of which he was a dir­ector. The minutes of the com­mit­tee are fas­cin­at­ing to read, as they give this

Gov­ern­ment

Dir­ect­or­ships

Ques­tions of Pro­pri­ety and Patronage

Activ­it­ies in the LVPA

Sir Frank Smith’s Speech to the Sen­ate, 1885

Sources:
Dic­tion­ary of Cana­dian Bio­graphy, Frank Smith by Mark McGowan
To McGowan’s extens­ive and well researched bio­graph­ical essay I would add the fol­low­ing addi­tional sources of inform­a­tion on Sir Frank:

Bar­low Cum­ber­land. A Cen­tury of Sail and Steam on the Niagara River. Toronto: Mus­son, 1911.
Canada: Sen­ate Records, Ott­awa: Hol­land Broth­ers, 1885.