Hugh Allan

This article describes the Scottish-Canadian entrepreneur. For the Roman Catholic clergyman of the same name, see Hugh Allan (clergyman) .

Hugh Allan

Sir Hugh Allan (born September 29, 1810 in Saltcoats , Strathclyde , Scotland , † December 9, 1882 in Edinburgh , Scotland) was a Scottish - Canadian banker, shipowner and railroad magnate . He was one of Canada's most influential entrepreneurs in the second half of the 19th century .

biography

Hugh Allan was born into a family of seafarers who owned several ships that sailed from Glasgow to the Saint Lawrence River . At the age of thirteen he began to work as an office worker in the family business. In 1826 he emigrated to Canada . In Montreal worked for a rapidly growing trading company and soon became a partner. By 1840 the company was already controlling 12 percent of all overseas trade to Montreal.

From 1851 to 1854 he was president of the Montreal Chamber of Commerce and enforced the establishment of a regular shipping line to Great Britain , which was subsidized by the state. In 1863 he took control of the entire company, which was officially called the Montreal Ocean Steamship Company , but was popularly simply called Allan Line .

Allan had also been in the railroad business since the late 1850s . In 1871 he became president of the Montreal Northern Colonization Railway , which operated a lucrative route from the Laurentides to Montreal. He was also financially involved in other companies - always with the aim of directing as many export goods as possible onto his steamers . Business success and close relationships with high-ranking politicians made Allan one of Canada's most influential entrepreneurs. On July 24, 1871, he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor .

In 1871 plans were announced to build a transcontinental railroad from the Atlantic to the Pacific . In order to be able to apply for the execution of the lucrative project, he founded the Canada Pacific Railway consortium (not identical to today's Canadian Pacific Railway ). The second applicant for the concession was the Inter-Ocean Railway Company . Before the general election in 1872 , he bribed Prime Minister John Macdonald and other members of the Conservative government and paid a substantial amount into the campaign fund to secure the contract.

But in 1873 the Pacific scandal was exposed , which ultimately led to the overthrow of the Macdonald government. Allan was forced to withdraw from the project under pressure from public opinion, but continued to do business with other railroad companies. He also owned several factories and was involved in five insurance companies.

He had been director of the Bank of Montreal from 1847 to 1857 . In 1861 he founded his own bank, Merchants' Bank , which quickly rose to become the country's second largest financial institution. After the company nearly went bankrupt in 1877 , Allan resigned as president. In 1882 he was able to regain control of the Merchants' Bank. But just a few months later, while visiting relatives in Scotland , he died of a heart attack . He was buried in the Mont-Royal cemetery in Montreal .

family

Allan was the second of five sons of Alexander Allan (1780-1854) and Jean Crawford (1782-1856). In 1844 he married Matilda Caroline Smith (1825–1881) in Montreal and had thirteen children with her, including the ship owner Sir Montagu Allan .

Web links

• Allan, Sir Hugh . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 2, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 363.