Sir Clifford Sifton, politician, businessman, administrative genius, inspired communicator, and Minister of the Interior for Canada (1896-1905) in the Laurier Administration. He resigned from office in 1905. In 1909 he was appointed Chairman of the Canadian Conservation Commission.

After withdrawing from active political life he pursued an independent, but influential course in politics, mostly behind scenes.

Sir Clifford Sifton combined press and politics to start one of Canada’s largest media enterprises, the Manitoba (Winnipeg) Free Press. He was also instrumental in formation of the Canadian Western Light, Heat and Power Company.

Sir Clifford’s other ambitions were to build a $250 million shipping canal from Georgian Bay to Montreal and a shipping line from Australia to Britain that would have used Canadian Railway and an overland link.

Sir John Chalker Crosbie born in Newfoundland to a family who ran a small hotel in St. John’s. It was the leading establishment of its day and boasted of having electric lights and a bathroom on every floor.

At age 24, John Crosbie started the family’s flagship operation, Crosbie and Company. It was the first major local exporter of fish. Sir John realized early in life that the route to success in business is through connections. He worked tirelessly to find international markets for the fish that were the lifeblood of the British Colony. He eventually won a major portion of the island’s export business. He soon began to diversify moving into fish oil products, insurance, shipping and construction and later a major margarine operation – The Newfoundland Butter Company.

Sir John’s involvement in politics seemed almost a natural extension of his business life. In the sparsely populated island business success was synonymous with power. He was elected to the Newfoundland government in 1908 and a year later became a member of the Executive. He was placed in charge of the islands shipping during the most serious tonnage crisis in Newfoundland. He also saw to it that the Home Government in London received ships for the war effort. For this service he was named a Knight of the British Empire. After the war Sir John moved to the finance portfolio in the Monroe government, a position he retained until his retirement in 1928.

Robert Samuel McLaughlin transformed his father’s Oshawa carriage business into General Motors of Canada. The workmanship was of such high quality that demand soon outgrew the little shop in the countryside and the McLaughlins moved to Oshawa.

Sam was soon designing all of the McLaughlin carriages and by the turn of the century they were turning out 25,000 units a year. It was about that time that Sam saw something that would change his life. At the time, there were only about five cars in Toronto. But in the United States, carriage makers and others were turning out ever increasing number of horseless carriages. It was time to take a serious look.

Despite his father’s skepticism, Sam McLaughlin made a deal that would see the Oshawa company design and build a Canadian coach with the Buick Motor Company supplying engines. The McLaughlin Motor Company, with Sam McLaughlin as President, was established in 1907. The company produced 193 cars in its first year. With carriage sales shrinking and car sales on the rise, the McLaughlin Company decided to throw in its lot with General Motors.

Sam McLaughlin was a public benefactor financing projects like extensions to Oshawa hospital, and donated the city’s public library building. Other buildings include the engineering building at Queen’s University in Kingston and the McLaughlin Planetarium in Toronto

Frank H. Sobey was a Canadian businessman who was the primary builder of the Sobeys Stores chain.

Born in Lyons Brook, Nova Scotia, he was three years old when his family moved to the town of Stellarton, where his father operated a meat retailing business, peddling meat products door to door on a horse-drawn wagon. In an era where educational opportunities were limited in small Maritime towns, Frank Sobey left school after Grade 8. However, he had an entrepreneurial mindset, and at age sixteen enrolled in a business college. Frank convinced his father to add produce to the meat business, and that marked the beginning of the creation of the second largest retail food distribution company in Canada. In 1947 he opened the region’s first “Cash and Carry” store, which was an immediate success.

Through Empire Co. Ltd., a family holding company, Frank also built a chain of movie theaters and acquired substantial real estate holdings. In 1971, while still remaining active in the business, he handed over formal control of the company’s operations to his three sons, David, Donald and William.

Frank Sobey received an honorary Doctor of Laws from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the University named its Faculty of Commerce in his honour. In 1985 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

In 1982 Frank Sobey endowed the Sobey Foundation to provide funding for important initiatives that have positive and long-lasting impact in local communities. The “Frank H. Sobey Awards in Business Studies” annually provide assistance to full-time business students from any Atlantic Canadian university.

Jeffry Hall Brock was born in Guelph, Ontario in 1850, the youngest of 11 children. He is remembered most notably as the founder of Great-West Life, one of the top insurance companies in North America today.

Brock moved to Winnipeg in 1879 and established a partnership with Captain G.F. Carruthers, who was in the insurance and finance business. During the next few years, Brock became aware of how eastern policies were hurting the west. Obtaining financing was increasingly difficult in Winnipeg, and high insurance rates were a growing problem. Brock felt that the people needed a Winnipeg-based insurance company that would understand the unique challenges they faced.

There were many in the insurance business who doubted the future of a Winnipeg-based company. Although 40 insurance companies did business in Canada at the time, only 9 were Canadian and none were based in the west. Yet Brock pursued his vision and established Great-West Life in 1891, taking in $2.7 million during the first year. Great-West Life exceeded all expectations, becoming the nation’s fastest growing insurance company within five years. Financing new farms and retail enterprises, the company provided families in the west with the financial security and protection they had needed for so long. By 1896, Great-West Life was represented in every province.

Brock was Managing Director of Great-West Life until his death in 1915. Today, Great-West Life is a leading Canadian insurer, offering financial and benefit plans to families, individuals and business owners across the country.

Job Abbott was born in Andover, Massachusetts in 1845. An entrepreneur with both vision and drive, Abbott was trained in civil engineering, administration, and law. Studying engineering at Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard University, he graduated in 1864 and went on to study patent law in Ohio. He would become the vice-president and chief engineer of the Wrought Iron Bridge Company in 1872.

Wrought Iron Bridge built standardized, prefabricated bridges which made vital contributions to the development of road and railway transportation. The company sold structures in Ontario until 1879 when Sir John A. Macdonald’s National Policy placed a 25% tariff on imported fabricated ironwork and steelwork. In response, and with support from Wrought Iron Bridge, the Toronto Bridge Company was born. Abbott would become president and chief engineer in 1880, using his engineering experience and contacts to generate impressive sales.

When news emerged of Canadian Pacific’s plans to build a transcontinental railway, Abbott moved to the centre of this action, Montreal. He founded Dominion Bridge Company in 1882 to design and build the many bridges required for this vast enterprise. The numerous structures fabricated and erected by Dominion Bridge have included railway stations, hotels, arenas, commercial buildings, and the reconstruction of Canada’s Parliament Buildings. Abbott personally negotiated many contracts with major clients and was known as a highly effective salesman.

Health troubles plagued Abbott in the later years of his life, and he passed away in August 1896, just before his 51^st birthday. His legacy, Dominion Bridge (later known as AMCA International), went on to become a leader in its industry, dominating the Canadian markets for bridges and the erection of steel frameworks for buildings. A truly versatile professional, Abbott was largely responsible for the successful uniting of American bridge construction technology with British capital and steel supply.

Joseph Masson helped create one of Montreal’s foremost trading companies – The House of Robertson, Masson and Company. At 21, he went to work for the Robertson Company, importers of merchandise from Scotland and England. Hugh Robertson was so impressed with his young clerk’s initiative and firm grasp of business, that he put him in charge of Canadian operations, and made him a partner. Joseph knew what would sell and was anxious to expand the business by diversifying into new areas. The firm continued to prosper. To overcome increasing transportation costs, Masson convinced Hugh Robertson to buy their own ship.

Joseph Masson was one of the earliest stock holders in the Bank of Montreal and served as a Vice President in the days when it advertised Tuesdays and Fridays as ‘discount days’. He invested heavily in, and eventually acquired control of, the Montreal Gas Company, forerunner to Hydro Quebec.

Despite his commitments to business, Masson gave generously of his time and talent to better the community. Appointed to the Legislative Council of Lower Canada in 1834, Masson won acclaim for his role as mediator in an uprising of rebellious citizens, which eventually led to constitutional changes.

Philip S. Ross could be called one of the Fathers of Accounting in North America. When Scotsman Philip Ross settled in Montreal in 1858, accounting was so new to Canada that only two other accountants were listed in the Montreal directory. For years, accounting work was so light that Ross supplemented his income by working as a ship’s chandler.

In 1879, Ross and his friend James Court gathered 11 other accountants in Montreal’s Mechanic’s Hall. The group determined to bring order to the profession by forming an association and seeking a charter that would allow them to restrict the use of the term “chartered accountant.” On July 24, 1880, the group created the first accounting society in North America. Ross served as its president from 1883 to 1896.

His bookkeeping experience evolved into a form of public service – there weren’t any guidelines, no formal education for professional businessmen – just innovation into one of the great professions of the world. So when winter caused lack of custom for his Ships’ Chandlers Shop in lower Montreal, he sent out engraved invitations offering his services to “keep books.”

Not only did Ross contribute greatly to the field of accounting, he dedicated much of his life to serving his community. While living in Montreal, he established the Montreal Sailors’ Institute to provide entertainment and assistance to sailors. So sincere was his dedication to the Institute that when it was facing financial failure, Ross paid off all of the group’s debt out of his own pocket.

Philip S. Ross, noted for his reserve, sharp mind and determined spirit, established Canada’s first accounting firm. Known today as Deloitte, and formerly Touch-Ross, it is the result of a merger in 1958 of P.S. Ross & Sons and George A. Touche & Company, and then with Deloitte.

Leon K. Koerner joined the family business in Czechoslovakia in 1920, at the time of central Europe’s largest forest products enterprises. The Second World War was to play a major part in the relocation of the Koerner family to Canada.

A number of innovative European logging techniques, such as the chute made of logs, were introduced to Canada when the Koerners moved to British Columbia. More than a third of B.C. forests consisted of a wood known as hemlock. The Koerners brothers understood the process required to manufacture lumber from the hemlock trees. Against the advice of skeptics, Leon incorporated new processes in the mill. From his European experience he recognized that with proper drying and cutting, worldwide markets would open to him. By marketing the lumber under its botanical name – Alaska Pine – Koerner began to make substantial sales of the formerly unwanted wood. Among his customers were those formerly supplied by the Koerners in Europe.

Through acquisitions along the B.C. coast, the company grew from small logging camps on floats to fully integrated lumber operation including woodfibre manufacturing and the processing of cellulose.

Leon Koerner was a pioneer in improving working conditions and labour relations for his employees.

Sam Steinberg possessed the stamina, courage and dedication to excellence to fulfill his vision. He succeeded in developing a fledgling family enterprise into a diversified international corporation with sales in the billions of dollars by always striving to meet the customers’ needs. He was a gifted industrial leader and an innovator within the food industry. No detail would escape him in his unrelenting commitment to excellence.

Sam Steinberg had great faith in Canada’s youth and initiated programs of corporate support for universities and for deserving young people involved in educational pursuits. He sponsored the Youth Pavilion Program and led the effort to build the Pavilion of Judaism at Expo ’67. He was honored by his country with the Order of Canada.