Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook

Sir William Maxwell "Max" Aitken, 1st Baronet, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, PC (May 25, 1879 – June 9, 1964) was a Canadian-British business tycoon, politician, and writer.

Early career in Canada

Beaverbrook House, formerly the Old Manse Library, and earlier the boyhood home of Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, in Newcastle, Miramichi, New Brunswick (IR Walker 1983)

Aitken was born in Maple, Ontario, Canada, in 1879, the son of a Presbyterian minister. The following year, his family moved to Newcastle, New Brunswick, Canada, which he considered to be his home town. It was here, at the age of 13, that he published his first newspaper.

Although Aitken wrote the entrance examinations for Dalhousie University and registered at the Saint John Law School, he did not attend either institution. His only formal higher education came when he briefly attended the University of New Brunswick. Aitken worked for a short time as an office boy in the law office of Richard Bedford Bennett, in the town of Chatham, New Brunswick. Bennett later became Prime Minister of Canada and a business associate.

As a young man, Aitken made his way to Halifax, Nova Scotia where John F Stairs, part of the city's dominant business family, gave him employment, training him in the business of finance. In 1904, when Stairs opened his newly formed Royal Securities Corporation, Aitken became a minority shareholder and the firm's general manager. Under the tutelage of Stairs, who would be his mentor and friend, Aitken engineered a number of successful business deals and was planning to do a series of bank mergers; however, Stairs' unexpected early death in late September 1904 led to Aitken acquiring control of the company. Stairs had given the untested and untrained Aitken an opportunity in business, just as Aitken would later do when he hired A. J. Nesbitt, a young dry goods salesman from Saint John, New Brunswick. Because Montreal, Quebec was the financial center of Canada, Aitken would send Nesbitt to open the Montreal branch of Royal Securities.

On January 29, 1906, in Halifax, Aitken married Gladys Henderson Drury, daughter of Major-General Charles William Drury CBE. They had three children before her death in 1927:

1. Janet Gladys Aitken (1908-1988)
2. John William Maxwell Aitken (1910-1985)
3. Peter Rudyard Aitken (1912-1947)

Canada Cement Scandal

Lord Beaverbrook plaque in Maple, Ontario

In 1910 Aitken acquired many of the small regional cement plants in Eastern Canada and amalgamated them into Canada Cement. Canada was booming economically at the time and he had the monopoly on the material. There were irregularities in the stock transfer resulting from the conglomeration of the cement plants. Aitken sold his shares, making a large amount of money and cheating investors. Aitken then left for England. Some say had he stayed in Canada, he would have been charged with securities fraud.

In 1912, A. J. Nesbitt left Aitken's employ to form the Nesbitt, Thomson and Co. stock brokerage. Aitken appointed employee Izaak Walton Killam as the new President of Royal Securities and sold the Canadian securities company to Killam in 1919.

To England

The year he moved to England, Aitkin became Liberal Unionist Member of Parliament for Ashton-under-Lyne. He bought and later sold control of the Rolls-Royce automobile company and began to build a London newspaper empire. He often worked closely with Andrew Bonar Law, another native of New Brunswick, who became the only Canadian to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. In 1911, he was knighted by King George V. During World War I, the Canadian government put him in charge of creating the Canadian War Records Office in London, and Aitken made certain that news of Canada's contribution to the War was printed in Canadian and British newspapers. Aitken also established the Canadian War Memorials Fund that evolved into a collection of war art by the premier artists and sculptors in Britain and Canada. His visits to the Western Front during World War I, during which he held the honorary rank of colonel in the Canadian Army, resulted in his 1916 book Canada in Flanders, a three-volume collection that chronicled the achievements of Canadian soldiers on the battlefields. After the War, he wrote several books including Politicians and the Press in 1925 and Politicians and the War in 1928.

Adding to his chain of newspapers, which included the London Evening Standard, he bought a controlling interest in the failing Daily Express from Lawson Johnson on 14 November, 1916 for £17,500; he had been lending money to the paper and its proprietors since January 1911. He always obscured this transaction because it was at the same time as the Parliamentary crisis which replaced Asquith with Lloyd George, in which Aitken's ally and protegé Bonar Law played a great part. Aitken's friend and biographer, A.J.P. Taylor, states that this was a mere coincidence, brought on by Johnson's eagerness to be quit of the paper.

He was granted a peerage in 1917 as the 1st Baron Beaverbrook. In 1918 he became the first Minister of Information. He became responsible for allied propaganda in allied and neutral countries. Lord Northcliffe became a Director of Propaganda and control propaganda in enemy countries. During his time in office Beaverbrook had a number of clashes with Foreign Secretary Balfour over the use of intelligence material. Beaverbrook felt that intelligence should become part of his department, Balfour disagreed. Eventually the intelligence committee was assigned to Beaverbrook but they then resigned en masse to be re-employed by the Foreign office. Beaverbrook also came under attack from MP's who distrusted a press baron being employed by the state. He survived but became increasingly frustrated with his limited role and influence, and in September 1918 he resigned claiming ill health.

First baron of Fleet Street

Over time, he turned the dull newspaper into a glittering and witty journal, filled with an array of dramatic photo layouts and in 1918, he founded the Sunday Express. By 1934, daily circulation reached 1,708,000, generating huge profits for Beaverbrook whose wealth was already such that he never took a salary. Following World War II, the Daily Express became the largest selling newspaper in the world, by far, with a circulation of 3,706,000. He would become known by some historians as the first baron of "Fleet Street" and as one of the most powerful men in Britain whose newspapers could make or break almost anyone. In the 1930s, while personally attempting to dissuade King Edward VIII from continuing his potentially ruinous affair with American divorcee, Wallis Simpson, Lord Beaverbrook's newspapers published every tidbit of the affair, especially allegations about pro-Nazi sympathies.

World War II

During World War II, his friend Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, would appoint him as Minister of Aircraft Production and later Minister of Supply. Under Beaverbrook, fighter and bomber production increased so much so that Churchill declared: "His personal force and genius made this Aitken's finest hour". Beaverbrook's impact on war time production has been much debated but his innovative style certainly energised production at a time when it was desperately needed. Beaverbrook also accompanied Churchill to several war time meetings with President Roosevelt. He also headed the British delegation to Moscow with American counterpart Averill Harriman. Throughout the war Beaverbrook remained a close confident of Churchill. However this did not stop arguments between the two such as over the second front over which Beaverbrook resigned in 1942. Clement Attlee commented that 'Churchill often listened to Beaverbrook's advice but was too sensible to take it'

The benefactor

After the war, Lord Beaverbrook served as Chancellor of the University of New Brunswick and became the university's greatest benefactor, fulfilling the same role for the city of Fredericton and the Province as a whole. He would provide additions to the University, scholarship funds, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the Beaverbrook Skating Rink, the Lord Beaverbrook Hotel (profits donated to charity), The Playhouse, Louise Manny's early folklore work, and numerous other projects.

Bust of Lord Beaverbrook, where his ashes are deposited, in the town square of Newcastle, Miramichi, New Brunswick (IR Walker 2008)

In 1957, a bronze statue of Lord Beaverbrook was erected at the centre of Officers' Square in Fredericton, New Brunswick, paid for by money raised by children throughout the province. A bust of him by Oscar Nemon stands in the park in the town square of Newcastle, New Brunswick not far from where he sold newspapers as a young boy. His ashes are in the plinth of the bust.

Beaverbrook was both admired and despised in England, sometimes at the same time: in his 1956 autobiography, David Low quotes H.G. Wells as saying of Beaverbrook: "If ever Max ever gets to Heaven, he won't last long. He will be chucked out for trying to pull off a merger between Heaven and Hell after having secured a controlling interest in key subsidiary companies in both places, of course."

In England he lived at Cherkley Court, near Leatherhead, Surrey. Beaverbrook remained a widower for many years until 1963 when he married Marcia Anastasia Christoforides (1910-1994), the widow of his friend Sir James Dunn. Lord Beaverbrook died in Surrey in 1964. The Beaverbrook Foundation continues his philanthropic interests.

Legacy

Lord Beaverbrook and his wife Lady Beaverbrook have left a considerable legacy to his adopted province of New Brunswick and the United Kingdom, among others. His legacy includes the following buildings:

The statue of Lord Beaverbrook located in Officers Square in Fredericton.

• University of New Brunswick
  • Aitken House
  • Aitken University Centre
  • Lady Beaverbrook Gymnasium
  • Lady Beaverbrook Residence
  • Beaverbrook House (UNBSJ E-Commerce Centre)

• City of Fredericton, New Brunswick
  • Lady Beaverbrook Arena (formerly operated by the University of New Brunswick)
  • The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, including world-renowned art collection (N.B.'s provincial gallery)
  • The Fredericton Playhouse
  • Lord Beaverbrook Hotel

• City of Miramichi, New Brunswick
  • Lord Beaverbrook Arena (LBA)
  • Beaverbrook Kin Centre
  • Lord Beaverbrook statue in Queen Elizabeth Park in Miramichi
  • Aitken Avenue in Miramichi West

• City of Campbellton, New Brunswick
  • Lord Beaverbrook School

• City of Saint John, New Brunswick
  • Lord Beaverbrook Rink

• City of Calgary, Alberta
  • Lord Beaverbrook High School
• McGill University
  • The Beaverbrook Chair in Ethics, Media and Communications

• The Beaver magazine
  • Voted one of the top 100 "Worst Canadians". (August-September edition, 2007)

Bibliography

• Canada in Flanders (1916)
• Politicians and the Press (1925)
• Politicians and the War Vol 1 (1928)
• Politicians and the War Vol 2 (1932)
• Men and Power (1956)
• Friends: Sixty years of Intimate personal relations with Richard Bedford Bennett (1959)
• Courage (1961)
• The decline and fall of Lloyd George (1962)
• The divine propagandist (1962)
• My Early Life (1962)
• Success (1962)
• The Abdication of Edward VIII (1966)

Further reading

• Beaverbrook, by A.J.P. Taylor, 1972.

External links

• National Film Board of Canada biography
• Works by Max Aitken Beaverbrook at Project Gutenberg
• Ontario Plaques - Lord Beaverbrook
• his role as minister of Information during WW1
• The Beaverbrook Papers at the UK Parliamentary Archives