Donald Mann
| Sir Donald Mann | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1853-03-23 Near Acton, Upper Canada |
| Died | 1934-11-10 Toronto, Ontario |
| Occupation | Lumberman, railway contractor, railway promoter |
| Father | |
| Mother | |
| Partner | |
Sir Donald Mann (23 March 1853 – 10 November 1934 (aged 81)) was a Canadian lumberman, railway contractor, and railway promoter, best known as the co-founder, alongside William Mackenzie , of the Canadian Northern Railway, a transcontinental railway that eventually became part of Canadian National Railways.[1]
Early life
Mann was born on 23 March 1853 near Acton in Upper Canada, the fifth of ten children of Hugh Mann and Helen Macdonell, Presbyterian Scottish pioneer farmers who had settled on the frontier.[1] He attended local public school and briefly prepared for the ministry before leaving at age seventeen to work in lumber camps in Michigan. He later returned to Upper Canada to assist a struggling older brother, and by age twenty-one had become foreman of a small lumbering operation near Parry Sound.[1]
Career
Early contracting in western Canada
In 1878 Mann moved west, and his expertise in timber clearing secured him contracts clearing rights-of-way for the St Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railroad in 1879, work that extended to Winnipeg. He is said to have helped bring the first locomotive into Winnipeg on Christmas Eve, the machine having been floated down the Red River on a barge and brought ashore over ice-laid rails his crew had prepared.[1] After an illness in 1880 he organized teams cutting railway ties for the Canadian Pacific Railway, and in 1881 he secured contracts under the Langdon, Shepard and Company arrangement, grading roadbeds and clearing rights-of-way during the dramatic 1882 main-line expansion west of Winnipeg toward Calgary.[1]
While working in the Rocky Mountains in the mid-1880s, Mann met William Mackenzie, a fellow contractor building wooden bridges and trestles for the CPR. The two settled a minor dispute over a consignment of mixed-up mules through James Ross's suggestion of alternating selection, and the encounter planted the seed of a later partnership.[1] In May 1885, amid a labour strike at Beaver, British Columbia, triggered by CPR payment delays, Mackenzie and Mann kept their crews in order; the last CPR spike was driven on 7 November 1885, though most contractors, including Mann, continued work into 1886.[1]
The Qu'Appelle–Long Lake–Saskatchewan and Calgary–Edmonton lines
In 1888, James Ross secured a general contract with the Qu'Appelle, Long Lake and Saskatchewan Railroad and invited Mann, Mackenzie, and Herbert Holt to join. Ross managed the project overall, Mann prepared and graded the roadbed, Mackenzie built bridges and other structures, and Holt headed the track-laying crews.[1] The same team subsequently built the Calgary and Edmonton Railway from Calgary's CPR main line northward to Edmonton and southward to Fort Macleod, earning substantial profits before parting ways in 1891.[1]
Following independent ventures in South America and China, Mann returned to Canada by 1894 and turned his attention to western opportunities.[1]
Founding of the Canadian Northern Railway
Mann gained control of two Manitoba railway charters: the Winnipeg Great Northern Railway and the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company. In 1895 he invited Mackenzie to join him in building the LMRC from Dauphin to Gladstone, a 125-mile line completed in 1896 using bonds guaranteed by Manitoba Premier Thomas Greenway's government — on the condition that freight rates remain subject to provincial approval, a concession that addressed settler complaints about CPR pricing.[1] The line turned a small profit despite its low and locally popular rates, and David Blythe Hanna, the superintendent, worked energetically to serve settler needs.[1]
In December 1898 the WGNR and LMRC amalgamated as the Canadian Northern Railway, with Frederic Thomas Nicholls as president. A broad federal charter in mid-1899 authorized expansion.[1] With Manitoba government bond guarantees under Premier Rodmond Palen Roblin, Mackenzie and Mann acquired the Northern Pacific's roughly 350 miles of Manitoba track and extended their main line east to Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay) by the end of 1901.[1]
Port Arthur and the Canadian Northern's expansion
Mann was a particular champion of the Port Arthur route, which passed through mineral-rich territory and offered access to Great Lakes coal traffic. In partnership with the Pittsburgh Coal Company, Mackenzie and Mann built a large coal and ore shipping facility at Port Arthur.[1] The Canadian Northern set freight rates from Winnipeg to Port Arthur at 10 cents per hundredweight, sharply undercutting the CPR's rate of more than 14 cents — and the 28-cent rate the CPR had charged in the 1880s — making the company popular with western shippers and settlers.[1]
Rather than drawing salaries, Mann and Mackenzie received common shares. In 1902 they incorporated Mackenzie, Mann and Company Limited to hold Canadian Northern shares earned through contracting work.[1]
Transcontinental ambitions and World War I
The Grand Trunk Railway's 1903 westward expansion plan, led by Vice-President Charles Melville Hays, was intended to pressure Mackenzie and Mann into selling out. Instead, federal guarantees supported both the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway west of Winnipeg and the National Transcontinental Railway east of Winnipeg, while the prime minister separately guaranteed Canadian Northern extensions from Port Arthur to Toronto and Montreal.[1] A 1909–1910 arrangement saw British Columbia Premier Richard McBride guarantee bonds for construction from the Alberta border to Vancouver; the western terminus was initially to be named Port Mann in Donald Mann's honour before Vancouver was chosen instead.[1]
The outbreak of World War I in 1914 severely disrupted the Canadian Northern's ability to raise capital. Labour and material shortages plagued construction, yet the railway's last spike was driven on 23 January 1915 at Basque, British Columbia.[1] A 1916 royal commission co-chaired by Sir Henry Lumley Drayton recommended government acquisition of the privately held Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific shares. An arbitration board valued Mackenzie, Mann and Company's holdings at $10,800,000 — barely enough to cover what the two men owed their principal creditor, the Canadian Bank of Commerce under Sir Byron Edmund Walker.[1] The Canadian Northern became part of the new Canadian National Railways, initially led by David Blythe Hanna.[1]
Role within the enterprise
Among the Canadian Northern's four key figures — Mann, Mackenzie, Hanna, and the chief solicitor Zebulon Aiton Lash — Mann occupied a distinctive frontiersman role: laying roadbeds well ahead of construction, prospecting for natural resources, and proposing branch-line extensions to promising developments.[1] He drove branch lines to isolated but rich coalfields such as the Brazeau fields on the eastern slopes of the Rockies, and the partnership acquired James Dunsmuir's coal operations on Vancouver Island as well as Cape Breton Island mines.[1] Politically, Mann cultivated Liberal contacts while Mackenzie aligned more closely with the Conservatives, an arrangement that helped the company navigate different federal governments.[1]
In January 1911, Mann and Mackenzie both received knighthoods in King George V's New Year's Honours List.[1]
Personal life
Mann married Jane (Jennie) Emily Williams (1858–1945) on 9 March 1887 in Winnipeg. They had one son, Donald Cameron Mann, who was an invalid.[1]
Contemporary accounts describe Mann as a tall and powerfully built man with a black beard and a disarmingly bluff, unpretentious manner, in keeping with someone who had spent much of his life in rough lumber and railway camps.[1] He was a devout Presbyterian with a reflective nature; an 1938 entry in the Standard Dictionary of Canadian Biography noted that he was "curiously sensitive to natural beauty" and that he had mixed feelings about building railways through the pristine Rocky Mountain wilderness.[2]
After leaving the railway world Mann invested in prospecting and mining ventures. He acquired 125 acres on Kingston Road in Scarborough Township near Henry Mill Pellatt's summer residence and built Fallingbrook Mansion, a palatial English-style estate furnished with antique furniture, oil paintings, silk hangings, and finely bound books.[1]
On 26 January 1930, Fallingbrook was destroyed by fire, consuming many of Mann's personal papers. A Toronto Daily Star reporter found the seventy-six-year-old Sir Donald directing firefighters in the bitter cold; the mansion had reportedly cost $150,000 to build and its contents were valued at nearly $200,000.[3] The Manns subsequently moved to a modest home on St George Street in Toronto.[1]
Mann donated the solid-gold Mann Cup in 1910, awarded annually to Canada's senior men's field lacrosse champions, and he was recognized in 2002 as a master builder in the Canadian Railway Hall of Fame.[1]
Death
Sir Donald Mann died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage on 10 November 1934 in Toronto. He was buried at Fairview Cemetery in Acton. His estate was valued at $110,755. He was survived by his wife Jane and his son Donald Cameron.[1][4]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.24 1.25 1.26 1.27 1.28 1.29 1.30 1.31 Cite error: Invalid
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External links
- ↑ T. D. Regehr."T. D. Regehr, "Mann, Donald," Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16."[website].Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16 (University of Toronto/Université Laval).2022.University of Toronto/Université Laval.Link.(Rights: copyrighted | Access: open)
- ↑ "LAC, R231-588-5."[record].R231-588-5.Library and Archives Canada.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ "Manitoba, Dept. of Justice, Vital Statistics Agency — Marriage registration no. 1887-001070."[record].no. 1887-001070.Manitoba Vital Statistics Agency, Winnipeg.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ ""Sir Donald Mann Dead"."[newspaper].The Globe.1934-11-12.p. 12.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ ""Fallingbrook fire"."[newspaper].The Globe.1930-01-27.p. 12.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ ""Fallingbrook fire"."[newspaper].Toronto Daily Star.1930-01-27.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ D. B. Hanna."Trains of recollection drawn from fifty years of railway service in Scotland and Canada."[book].Trains of recollection drawn from fifty years of railway service in Scotland and Canada.1924.edited by Arthur Hawkes.Thomas Allen, Toronto.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ T. D. Regehr."The Canadian Northern Railway, pioneer road of the northern prairies, 1895–1918."[book].1976.Macmillan, Toronto.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ Roberts and Tunnell."Standard Dictionary of Canadian Biography."[book].Standard Dictionary of Canadian Biography.vol. 2.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ Robert Dorman."A statutory history of the steam and electric railways of Canada, 1836–1937."[book].1938.Department of Transport, Ottawa.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ G. R. Stevens."Canadian National Railways."[book].Canadian National Railways.1962.2 vols.; vol. 2.Clarke, Irwin, Toronto and Vancouver.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)