Donald Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal belongs to the commercial record as a figure whose ventures outlasted the conditions that produced them.
The record lists Donald Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal as Canadian businessman, politician and philanthropist (1820-1914).
Donald Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal was born at Forres in 1820. His recorded nationality is Canada. He was educated at St John's College.
Industrialisation changed the scale of everything: factories, railways, joint-stock capital and the first modern corporations.
He worked as entrepreneur, diplomat and politician.
Commercial success is easy to measure and hard to interpret; timing and market do much of the work.
Recognition followed: Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George, Albert Medal (1912) and honorary doctorate at the Laval University (1902).
That the business was built from Canada shaped it: capital, regulation and market size differ by country, and they decide what is even attemptable.
Donald Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal died in 1914, aged 94. What remains is the enterprise and its consequences, which is the only durable measure of a commercial life.
Achievements
- Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order
- Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George
- Albert Medal — 1912
- honorary doctorate at the Laval University — 1902
- Educated at St John's College
