Montreal Shipowner, would-be builder of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Hugh Allan was an enterprising nineteenth century financier who was born in 1810 at Saltcoats beside the entry to the Firth of Clyde where much of Scotland's Atlantic shipping and shipbuilding had concentrated. In 1822 his father, a Clydeside sea captain, began his own regular transatlantic service between Glasgow and the St. Lawrence with one sailing vessel. The next year his son went to work, at 13, as an office boy at Greenock on the Clyde. At 16, young Hugh then moved overseas to a Montreal merchandising house that was also shipping agent for his father's growing service. There he flourished in Canada's top commercial city, becoming junior partner in a Montreal ship brokerage and shipbuilding firm. In 1839, under Hugh's influence as a senior partner, the same firm expanded into shipping. In fact, under his direction the firm went on to produce Canada's celebrated "Allan Line" of transatlantic transport.
 

Former president of the Montreal Board of Trade (1851-1854), Sir Hugh Allan was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1871. [Photo, courtesy National Archives of Canada/C-266681]

With financial help from his father and brothers in Scotland, Allan's partnership bought both sailing craft and the new ocean vessels, enlarging their business over the 1840s until in 1852 they incorporated as the Montreal Ocean Steamship Company. Moreover, as President of the Montreal Board of Trade (1851-1854), Allan by 1853 had induced the Canadian government of the day to subsidize mail carriage between Montreal and Britain, and in 1856, helped by friends in the Conservative party; had taken away the valuable sea-mail contracts from competitors. The Allan line also bought or built non-propeller steamers (faster and safer than the old paddlewheelers) and continued to improve ship technology, even introducing in 1879 the first all-steel steamship launched on the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Allan Lines had supplied transport for British and French troops in the Crimean War of the 1850s, later carrying British forces to Africa. Hence, Allan was knighted in 1871 in recognition of his services both to Canada and the British Empire.
 

Better known as the "Allan Line," the Montreal Ocean Steamship Co. was headquartered for many years in downtown Montreal at the corner of Craig and Bleury Streets.

In other fields of enterprise, he was president of the Montreal Telegraph Company that pioneered telegraphic links in Canada. He was also a founder of the powerful Merchants Bank of Canada, established in Montreal in 1861. Additionally, he owned Nova Scotia coal mines, Quebec and/or Ontario tobacco, paper, textile, and steel plants. In particular, he headed the Canadian Pacific Railway Company - a line promised to British Columbia on its entering Confederation in 1871 - that would knit up the young Canadian transcontinental union. After winning the federal election of 1872, Sir John A. Macdonald's government had passed a C.P.R. bill offering $30 million and 50 million acres of western lands to the company that would accept the challenge. Despite hot competition from a Toronto-centred group, the Montrealbased consortium led by Sir Hugh Allan was finally awarded the multimillion dollar contract.
 

Depcted on a toleware cigarette case (c. 1905), the S.S. Victorian was the first ocean liner driver by turbine engines. [Photo, courtesy Charles J. Humber collection]

In the spring of 1873 the Allan CPR success changed to disaster when news leaked out that he had provided $360,000 to fund their 1872 elections to such leading Conservatives as Sir George-Etienne Cartier, the Quebec leader, and Sir John A. Macdonald in Kingston, Ontario. These election "bribes" mocked the Canadian public and were certainly exploited by the Liberal opposition. At any rate, the Macdonald government fell in what was termed the Pacific Scandal and Allan's railway undertaking totally collapsed, delaying the CPR until the 1880s. Nevertheless, the big shipping magnate with his many other interests went onward until his death at Edinburgh in 1882. And his life of enterprising achievement was not all that significantly lessened by the grand "Scandal" for which he is all too readily remembered.

J.M.S. Careless