Robert Dunsmuir

Robert Dunsmuir (born August 31, 1825 in Hurlford , Scotland , † April 12, 1889 in Victoria , Canada ) was a Scottish-Canadian businessman and politician in British Columbia .

Early years in Scotland

Robert Dunsmuir was born to 20-year-old James Dunsmuir and his wife Elizabeth. His family was involved in the coal business in his native Ayrshire . In 1832, almost the entire family of Robert Dunsmuir junior - mother, father, grandmother and two of his three sisters - died of cholera within a few days . Three years later the grandfather, who had become quite wealthy by now, died, leaving a third of his fortune to his orphaned grandchildren. Dunsmuir started school at Kilmarnock Academy and continued his education at Paisley Mercantile and Mechanical School . Then he did an apprenticeship with his uncle in his coal mine. In 1847 he married Joan White; the first daughter was born eight days after the marriage, the second two years later.

In late 1850, Dunsmuir's uncle, Boyd Gilmour, signed a contract with the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) to mine coal at Fort Rupert on the northeast coast of Vancouver Island , Canada . When the workers who were supposed to travel there found out about the living conditions there, many of them backed off, so that Robert Dunsmuir decided to join the group 24 hours before the departure. With the Pekin , the journey via Cape Horn to Fort Vancouver took 191 days. Eight days later, Joan Dunsmuir gave birth to their third child, James Dunsmuir . On July 18, 1851, the group traveled on to Fort Rupert.

Business with coal

Commemorative plaque for Robert Dunsmuir

On August 9, 1851, the Scots arrived at Fort Rupert and the three-year contract with HBC began. Gilmour tried unsuccessfully for a year to set up coal production in Fort Rupert until Governor James Douglas instructed him to go to Nanaimo , where a coal deposit had been discovered. In 1854 the contract with HBC ended. When Governor Douglas refused to increase the payments, Gilmour returned to Scotland, but his nephew stayed. In 1855 Dunsmuir refused to take part in a coal miners' strike, and in return he was allowed to exploit a mine that had been abandoned by the HBC on his own account. Two years later, Horace Douglas Lascelles and three other ship officers became aware of him, who convinced him to head the Harewood Coal Mining Company . The company was unsuccessful due to lack of capital and was bought by the Vancouver Coal Mining and Land Company (VCMLC) , but Dunsmuir had now made a name for himself as a knowledgeable miner and was hired as a mine supervisor by the VCMLC.

With the expiry of the HBC lease, it was also possible for third parties to stake out storage facilities for themselves. In October 1869, Dunsmuir was fishing at Diver Lake , a few miles northwest of Nanaimo, when he found a coal spur there. He stabbed a claim of six square kilometers that encompassed the northern half of the lake and reached as far as Wellington . It took a business to mine a deposit of this size, so he founded Dunsmuir, Diggle & Company . His sons James and Alexander and other partners left the company after the formalities had been completed. Wadham Diggle, captain of the Boxer, invested $ 8,000 in the company, and Rear Admiral Arthur Farquhar , commander of the Pacific Fleet, invested $ 12,000. In 1873 the Wellington mine produced 16,000 tons of coal from the total of 40,000 tons on Vancouver Island, in 1875 it was already 50,000 tons annually. The main buyers were San Francisco and the Royal Navy . In 1881 Dunsmuir stated that the annual coal output from its mines was around 180,000 tons, of which around 85 percent were exported. It employed around 550 workers, more than half of whom were Chinese , and was constantly expanding. Farquar was paid out in 1879 and Diggle in 1883; the company now made $ 500,000 in profits and was renamed R. Dunsmuir & Sons .

Within ten years, Dunsmuir had built a coal empire. He also invested in real estate on Vancouver Island and an iron foundry , a theater in Victoria, agricultural land and a dike project. He paid his workers lower wages than his peers, and he preferred Asians who were willing to work for half the usual wages. Its coal mines were safer than those of the VCMLC, although Robert Dunsmuir also rejected many requests for better security. Finally, in 1876, a serious accident happened in the Wellington Pit. The following year there was a strike in which Dunsmuir locked his workers out for four months and called in the military and police to harass the strikers. The miners were then forced to work for wages a third lower than before.

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography says of Dunsmuir:

“Dunsmuir was an astute and opportunistic mine owner. He was not particularly lucky or ruthless compared to other coal entrepreneurs of the 1870s and 1880s, but he had made the most of the advantages he had over his competitors. "

- Daniel T. Gallacher : "Dunsmuir, Robert"

railroad

Robert Dunsmuir was a co-founder of the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway . The company built a railway line from Esquimalt to Nanaimo, which was later extended to Wellington, Victoria and Courtenay . The company received a concession for 20 percent of the area of ​​Vancouver Island as an incentive to expand and operate the railroad lines. One of the train stops was named after Dunsmuir.

politics

In 1882 Dunsmuir was elected to the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia for the constituency of Nanaimo, while he was traveling in Europe, and was re-elected four years later and appointed to the Cabinet. At the time of his death in 1889, he was still in office.

Thirty-eight years after Robert Dunsmuir arrived on Vancouver Island, where he was making five dollars a week as a miner, he died as the richest man in British Columbia. He controlled a family empire valued at around $ 15 million (today's value around $ 380 million).

“Robert Dunsmuir was and is the most controversial figure in the history of the province. He is regarded by most historians as a great pioneer and entrepreneur who wanted to shape his province as well as increase his personal fortune. On the other hand, he has recently been portrayed by authors dealing with the industrial history of the province as British Columbia's symbol of unbridled capitalism and as the unscrupulous exploiter of people and materials. "

- Daniel T. Gallacher : "Dunsmuir, Robert"

Craigdarroch Castle

Craigdarroch Castle in Victoria

In Victoria, Robert Dunsmuir had Craigdarroch Castle built for himself and his family from 1887 . Three of his daughters were still unmarried and the house was to be used for social events. The architect was the American Henry Hobson Richardson , who had the building built in the Richardson Romanesque style he created . Dunsmuir himself never lived in the house as he died three years after construction began and before it was completed. In 1890 the widow moved into the house with her three daughters and two orphaned grandchildren and lived there for 18 years. Because of inheritance disputes, she fell out with her sons. Although she and Robert Dunsmuir had become estranged in the last few years of his life, he had bequeathed all of his fortune to her and, contrary to his promises, had neglected the sons. When Joan Dunsmuir died in 1908, she and her son James - brother Alexander had already died - had not spoken to each other for years. Prior to Joan Dunsmuir's funeral, there were reports in the newspapers that James Dunsmuir, now Prime Minister of British Columbia, would not attend, but he eventually changed his mind.

From 1920 to 1946 the building was used by the University of Victoria . In 1994 the film Betty and Her Sisters was shooting at the Castle .

Craigdorrach Castle was declared a National Historic Site of Canada on June 8, 1992 by the Canadian government . A company has existed since 1959 to maintain and restore the house.

family

Effie Calthorpe, nee Dunsmuir

Joan and Robert Dunsmuir had eleven children, two sons and nine daughters, one of whom died as a child.

The elder son, James Dunsmuir, was Prime Minister of the Province of British Columbia from June 15, 1900 to November 21, 1902, and Vice-Governor from May 1906 to December 1909. The daughter Anne Euphemia, called Effie , married Somerset Gough-Calthorpe , later Admiral of the Royal Navy, in London in March 1900 . Maud Dunsmuir became Lady Musgrave through her marriage to Sir Richard Musgrave.

Alexander Dunsmuir did not fully enjoy his inheritance until ten years after his father's death. For 20 years he had lived unmarried with a woman whom he married after the inheritance was paid off. Six weeks after the marriage, while still on his honeymoon, he died in New York in 1900 .

Dunsmuir in California

According to tradition, Alexander Dunsmuir came to Siskiyou County in California in 1888 . He is said to have liked it so much that he wanted to donate a fountain to a new city if it was named after him. According to recent findings, it cannot have happened that way. The fact remains, however, that the place was named after the Dunsmuir family, but probably first, and then the fountain was donated. The fountain, which had been destroyed by frost in the meantime, still exists today and is located near City Park in Dunsmuir , California.

literature

• Lynne Bowen : The Dunsmuirs of Nanaimo . The Nanaimo Festival, Nanaimo 1989
• Lynne Bowen : Robert Dunsmuir. Laird of the Mines. XYZ Publishing, Montreal 1999, ISBN 0-9683601-3-0 .
• Daniel Francis (Ed.): Encyclopedia of British Columbia . Harbor Publishing, 1999, ISBN 1-55017-200-X .
• Terry Reksten :: The Dunsmuir Saga . Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1991, ISBN 0-88894-742-9 .
• Donald F. MacLachlan: The Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway - The Dunsmuir Years: 1884–1905 . The BC Historical Railway Association, 1986, ISBN 0-9692511-0-6 .
• Margaret A. Ormsby :: British Columbia: A History . MacMillan: Vancouver, 1958.
• Jean Barman :: The West Beyond the West: A History of British Columbia, Third Edition . University of Toronto Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8020-9495-7 .
• Daniel T. Gallacher: Dunsmuir, Robert . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).

Web links

• Robert Dunsmuir ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia .
• Craigdarroch Castle website
• Robert Dunsmuir in the database of Find a Grave (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Robert Dunsmuir ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved August 21, 2016.
2. ↑ Source for this section, see Reksten, Ch. 1.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Daniel T. Gallacher: Dunsmuir, Robert . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).
4. ↑ Terry Reksten: The Dunsmuir Saga . 1991, chap. 1 and 2
5. ↑ Original text in English: “Dunsmuir was a shrewd and opportunistic coal proprietor. Compared with other coal entrepreneurs of the 1870s and 1880s, he was not particularly lucky or especially ruthless, but he made the most of the important advantages he had over his competitors. "
6. ^ Jean Barman: The West Beyond the West: A History of British Columbia. P. 129.
7. ↑ Terry Reksten: The Dunsmuir Saga . 1991, p. 104.
8. ↑ Original text in English: “Robert Dunsmuir was and has remained the most controversial person in the province's history. He has been recognized by most historians as a great builder, a pioneer industrialist intent upon shaping his province as much as increasing his personal fortune. He has, on the other hand, been more recently presented, by writers probing the province's early industrial activities, as British Columbia's chief symbol of unbridled capitalism, and a ruthless exploiter of men and material. "
9. ↑ About the architecture on the Craigdarroch Castle website ( memento of the original from January 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
10. ↑ ^{a b} History of the Dunsmuir family on the Craigdarroch Castle website ( Memento of the original from January 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
11. ^ Craigdarroch National Historic Site of Canada. In: Canadian Register of Historic Places. Retrieved October 17, 2013 . 
12. ↑ 2015 Artifact Manual ( Memento of the original from June 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
13. ^ Morgan, Henry James: Types of Canadian women and of women who are or have been connected with Canada. Toronto 1903 ( online )
14. ↑ Alexander Dunsmuir. A Man, A Town, A Promise, A Fountain on laurencecook.com