George Stephen, 1st Baron Mount Stephen

Stephen was born in 1829 at Dufftown, Banffshire, in a cottage built by his grandfather. He was the son of William Stephen (b. 1801), a carpenter, and Elspet, daughter of John Smith, a crofter at Knockando, Moray. His mother was a first cousin of the philanthropic Grant brothers of Manchester, immortalised as the "Cheeryble Brothers" in Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby.

Stephen began life as a boy running barefoot through fields to carry letters for the Duke of Richmond for a shilling. He was educated at the parish school, leaving at the age of fourteen to work variously as a stable boy, shepherd and in a local hotel. The following year he was apprenticed to a draper and silk mercer at Aberdeen, before moving to London in 1848 - first working for a draper and then at a wholesale dry goods house.

George Stephen's first cousin, William Stephen, had already emigrated to Montreal and established a wholesale dry goods business on St. Paul Street. At William's invitation, the Stephen family came to Montreal in 1847, and George joined them in 1850. For the next twelve years George worked for his cousin, who left him the business after his death in 1862. George made his brother, Francis, a partner and eventually sold the business to him and Andrew Robertson in 1867. By 1864, he had been elected to the Montreal Board of Trade, a clear sign of his early success, and by 1866 he was running his own successful wool-importing company while also investing in other textile businesses. Driven by a desire to succeed, coupled with a strong work ethic, he was already demonstrating an unusual business acumen.

In 1866, he started to work closely with his first cousin, Donald Smith (later Lord Strathcona). The two were to become partners in a myriad of ventures which made them both a fortune. One of their first investments was in 1868, when they formed a partnership with Richard B. Angus and Andrew Paton to establish the Paton (Textile) Manufacturing Company of Sherbrooke. By the late 1860s, Stephen had become one of the foremost financiers in Montreal, forming boards and working alongside Montreal's most prominent business names. By 1873, he had become a director of the Bank of Montreal, and three years later he was elected president, in which capacity he frequently traveled to London and New York City to meet with the leading financiers there. He remained as president until 1881, resigning to turn his full attention to running the company that would build the Canadian Pacific Railway. He was elected to the Montreal Board of Trade in July 1864 as a successful businessman. Stephen had begun investing in railways and formed the Canada Rolling Stock Company in 1870.

Remembered as one of the most generous philanthropists of his time, Stephen sought no accolades for his gestures and directed the majority of his fortune towards hospitals. In 1890, he and his first cousin, Lord Strathcona, purchased the Frothingham estate in the Golden Square Mile as the site for the Royal Victoria Hospital. They gave this purchase to the City of Montreal with the caveat that the land and its buildings must only ever be used for education and healing. They then contributed $500,000 each for its construction and after it opened in 1893 they gave a further $500,000 each in stock to establish an endowment fund to maintain it.

Stephen also donated a wing to the Montreal General Hospital and made donations to various hospitals in Scotland. In 1901 he donated £25,000 to clear the debt resting on the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, for which he was in August 1901 honoured with the Freedom of the City of Aberdeen.

Though best remembered today for the Royal Vic, he reserved the bulk of his fortune for the Prince of Wales Hospital Fund in London. Stephen worked closely with the future George V in creating its endowment fund and was its most important benefactor, having made gifts to the amount of £1,315,000.

To put these figures into a personal perspective, when Mount Stephen died in 1921, after providing for his wife, step-daughter and charities, he left £1,414,319 to be divided between nineteen relatives, which worked out at about £75,000 each. Though hardly an inconsequential sum, he gave substantially more to charity than he left to his individual heirs. In his will, he left little to charities in Canada, believing that through the donations mentioned above and his legacy that was the Canadian Pacific Railway, he had given more to Canada than it had given to him.