Hugh Ryan

Background & Siblings

Hugh Ryan, the eldest son of Martin John Ryan and Margaret Conway, was born into a wealthy Irish-Catholic family, who owned Gortkelly Castle before his father sold the estate. The family immigrated in 1841 to Montreal, Canada, when Ryan was nine years old. Ryan had three younger siblings: John Ryan, Patrick Ryan, and Catherine Ryan; and one older sibling in Alice Ryan.

Early career

In 1850, at the age of eighteen, Ryan began working on the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railway under the direction of Polish-Canadian engineer and contractor Sir Casimir Stanislaus Gzowski; known as the "father of the Canadian Railway."

Business ventures

During the 1880s and 90s, Ryan aggressively expanded his business portfolio beyond development contracting by founding the Dominion Cable Company and becoming a director of various concerns, among them: the Imperial Bank of Canada, the Freehold Loan and Savings Company, the Toronto General Trusts Company, the Toronto Electric Light Company, the Canadian General Electric Company; the Dominion Cattle Company; and the Canadian Locomotive and Engine Company in Kingston, Ontario.

Dominion Cattle Company

The Dominion Cattle Company was established in 1882 for the purposes of breeding, raising, buying and selling cattle, horses and sheep on 500,000 acres of land stretching between Oklahoma and Texas (including Day Ranch and the Box T Ranch). The founders included Hugh Ryan, rancher J.P. Wiser, the Hon. Rufus Henry Pope, the Hon. William Bullock Ives, the Hon. A.W. Ogilvie and William Herring. In 1883 the Dominion Cattle Company acquired an additional 284,113 acres of land in the Cherokee strip adjacent their Texas holdings on a five year lease. Ryan lobbied for the company to be listed on the Montreal Stock Exchange in 1884, and was subsequently elected as a director in 1885 alongside Senator Matthew Henry Cochrane. By 1887 the company owned 30,000 cattle and 400 horses valued at $933,000, and Ryan owned the second largest number of company stocks with a value of $130,000; which he sold before the company filed for bankruptcy 1888.

Ryan's documented interest in the political happenings of his native Ireland was punctuated by his sizeable donations to the Irish Parliamentary Party; in an effort to help Irish nationalist Members of Parliament and further their agenda of Irish Independence in the House of Commons at Westminster.

In 1895, Ryan was approached once again by Archbishop John Walsh of Toronto, and the Premier of Ontario, Edward Blake, to support the idea of an Irish Race Convention in Dublin the following year. Though Ryan initially declined the offer, he did ultimately attend the 1896 convention as part of the official Canadian delegation representing the city of Toronto, as reported by the Globe and Mail, alongside John Costigan, Sir William Mulock, James Joseph Foy, and Sir Frank Smith (his daughter Marys's father-in-law).

Marriage, Children & GodChildren

On 20 March 1858 Ryan married Mary Margaret Walsh in Perth, Ontario. The couple lived in Hollydene a Gothic Revival mansion in the Rosedale neighbourhood of Toronto, with their five children: Mary "Minnie" Alice Ryan, John Thomas Ryan, Patrick William Ryan, Alphonso Martin Ryan, and Marguerite "Rita" Teresa Ryan. Hollydene, now Branksome Hall, is classified as a building of historical significance under Part V of the Ontario Heritage Act.

Hugh Ryan's daughter Mary "Minnie" Alice Ryan married James Austin Smith, son of Canadian Senator and business tycoon Sir. Frank Smith, on 5 June 1888 at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in a "fashionable ceremony" conducted by Bishop Timothy O'Mahony. The bridesmaids included the bride's sister Miss Rita Ryan, the bride's cousins Miss Nellie Ryan and Miss Margaret Isabel McHenry, and socialite Miss Kathleen Harty (daughter of Ontario politician William Harty).

Ryan's wife Margaret died on 23 February 1904 while vacationing in Cairo, Egypt with their daughters, and was interred in the family mausoleum at the Mount Hope Catholic Cemetery, Toronto.

Hugh Ryan was godfather to Alice Ryan's daughter Margaret Isabel McHenry (née Doheny) and John Ryan's daughters Isabelle Teresa Pettit (née Ryan) and Helen Margaret "Nellie" MacDonell (née Ryan). Helen's youngest son, Hugh MacDonell, was named after her uncle. All three goddaughters received sizeable sums in Ryan's last will and testament.

A Roman Catholic, Ryan was approached by Archbishop John Walsh in 1893 to fund a major extension of St Michael's Hospital; where Ryan served as vice-president of the board. Ryan agreed, building a three-storey surgical wing that included an operating theatre designed to accommodate fifty medical students and ten wards each containing ten beds. The wards had an advanced feature for the time: hot-and-cold-air registers so that the temperature of each ward could be customised to fit the needs of patients. As a result, the hospital became the second largest of the city's twenty-eight hospitals, after Toronto General where Ryan also served as a board member.

The Hugh Ryan wing —the building a gift of Mr. Ryan, the furnishings a gift of his wife, Margaret— was opened on Thanksgiving Day, 1895. The only condition Ryan made part of the deed was that the hospital be kept open night and day to receive anyone in need of its services, without consideration for creed, colour or nationality. The public wards faced Bond Street and boasted an adjoining convalescent room on each of the three floors, filled with easy chairs, a bookcase, and writing table. But it was for the private and semi-private rooms that Mrs. Ryan must have really given her imagination (and her pocket book) free rein —brass bedsteads, oak bedroom sets, engravings on the walls, a service of china and silver, and soft rugs on the hardwood floors.

The Hugh Ryan Wing was opened by Archbishop John Walsh on Canadian Thanksgiving, 1895, with speakers including Ryan himself, M.P. Oliver Aiken Howland, M.P. George Ralph Richardson Cockburn, and the extension's chief architect John A. Pearson. An enthusiastic press wrote that the new addition was a model for sanitation, lighting and ventilation. The wing ultimately cost Ryan $40,000.

That same year Ryan also built the nurses' residence, named the "Margaret Ryan Home for Nurses" after his wife, who oversaw the furnishing of said residences; like she had with the public, private and semi-private hospital rooms. The residence consisted of three houses and was connected to the hospital by a covered passage —one house was occupied by the Sisters of Saint Joseph and the other two by nurses in training, at that time numbering between thirty and forty.