Integrity, Prudence, Industry, Commerce.” These words are prominently inscribed in the magnificent vaulted ceiling above the main floor in the historic head office of the Canadian Bank of Commerce in downtown Toronto. A lifelong commitment to the ideas and principles those visionary words imply made William McMaster, the creator of that bank, a much respected businessman, community leader, and humanitarian.

Through his success, first as a wholesale merchant and later as a banker, McMaster became a man whose considerable wealth enabled him to endow the internationally acclaimed university in Hamilton, Ontario, named in his honour.
 

This anonymous portrait (circa 1880) of the Hon. William McMaster hangs in the executive offices of the CIBC in downtown Toronto. McMaster, one of the most successful businessmen in all of Canada, created the Canadian Bank of Commerce in 1866, endowed McMaster University in 1887, and was a distinguished member of the Parliament of Canada for 25 years. [Photo, courtesy CIBC Archives]

Born in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, McMaster gained early experience as a clerk in an Irish mercantile enterprise before coming to America as an immigrant, arriving in York, now Toronto, in Upper Canada, August 1833.

Employed in the wholesale and retail drygoods business in York owned by Robert Cathcart, McMaster was soon made a partner. When Cathcart retired in 1844, McMaster became the proprietor of the firm and soon devoted himself solely to the wholesale trade.

Toronto’s rapid growth from just over 9000 people in 1834 to about 30,000 in 1851 stimulated the expansion of successful firms such as McMaster’s. By 1860, his company was widely regarded as the major drygoods enterprise in Canada West, as Upper Canada was known after 1840. His net worth was at least $600,000 by 1860.

McMaster’s success as a businessman has been attributed to the careful but highly insightful and utterly trustworthy manner in which he managed his business affairs. There was also a direct connection between McMaster’s disciplined life, emanating from his deeply held Christian convictions, and his success as a businessman.
 

1. When the headquarters of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, viewed here, officially opened in 1930, it was, at 476 feet or 144 metres, the tallest building in the British Commonwealth. [Photo, courtesy Charles J. Humber Collection] 2. Stunning architectural interior of the banking hall on the main floor of the old Canadian Bank of Commerce building on King Street West in downtown Toronto, circa 1931. [Photo, courtesy CIBC Archives]

Until he was 40, McMaster was completely absorbed in the development of his business and committed to the Baptist church. In 1851, he married Mary Henderson of New York City. Two nephews joined him in his wholesale enterprise: Arthur Robinson McMaster, who was responsible for the financial records of the firm, and James Short McMaster who managed the firm’s growing interests in Great Britain. Gradually the McMasters developed a network of commercial and financial associates in Toronto, Manchester, London, and New York.

As his nephews assumed increased responsibility, McMaster devoted himself to wider business and political interests. He became a director of several transportation companies and pursued the development of the Great Western Railway, which merged in 1882 with the Grand Trunk Railway and became the world’s most extensive railway system. McMaster was also drawn into politics.

In 1862 he was elected as a Liberal member of the Legislative Council of the United Provinces of Canada. This elective body was responsible for the careful examination of all legislation passed by the Legislative Assembly. It was the forerunner of the non-elected Senate established by the British North America Act of 1867.

In 1867, McMaster was appointed a member of the Senate of Canada and remained a Senator until his death 20 years later. As a Senator, he naturally, given his role as the creator of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, took an interest in financial matters.

As a wholesale merchant, McMaster resisted the temptation to expand his business operations beyond his financial capabilities. He also understood the role that banks and the credit they might make available could play in developing and expanding of business activities.

He became a director of the Bank of Montreal in 1864 but was concerned by that bank’s ongoing restriction of credit to businessmen in Canada West. Convinced that the future development of business in Canada, west of the Ottawa River, should not be limited by policies imposed by financiers in Montreal, McMaster left the board of the Bank of Montreal and created his own bank to meet those needs.

The establishment of the Canadian Bank of Commerce was made possible after McMaster purchased the charter of the Bank of Canada, which had been inactive since 1858, and secured from the Canadian Parliament in 1866 an amendment to its charter that changed its name to the Canadian Bank of Commerce and revised its capital structure.
 

McMaster University is one of only three universities in Canada named after a Canadian. Created in 1887 and endowed by the Hon. William McMaster, its first building, viewed here, circa 1890, was located in Toronto on Bloor Street West, between what is today the Royal Ontario Museum and Varsity Stadium. The building still stands and is the home of the Royal Conservatory of Music. [Photo, courtesy Charles J. Humber Collection]

In 1867, the Bank of Montreal, at the time Canada’s largest bank, clearly favoured the United States’ system of independent local banks prohibited from maintaining branches. At the same time, an extensive branch banking system was developing in Ontario. With the support of almost all Canadian bankers, except the Bank of Montreal, McMaster worked vigorously to secure legislation to facilitate the development of a branch banking system that, in his judgment, would best meet the needs of Canadians.

After considerable struggle, legislation passed in 1870 and 1871 put all banks in Canada on the same footing and gave Ontario banks the authorization they required to meet the banking needs of the province’s citizens.

With secure foundations in place for his bank, McMaster took steps for careful expansion of its operations. Drawing on the business relationships he had established for his wholesale enterprise, McMaster encouraged the growth of international business for his new bank. It had an agent in New York City by 1872 and one in Chicago by 1875. It was also involved in currency trading on a widening scale. In the decade and a half prior to his retirement as its first president, McMaster provided the primary leadership that placed his bank at the front rank of Canadian banking, second only to the Bank of Montreal established in 1817, 50 years before the creation of the Commerce.

When he retired as president in July 1886, McMaster proposed that younger men be appointed to its board. One of these was George Albertus Cox who, named president of the Commerce in 1890, three years after McMaster’s death, became one of Canada’s most successful financial entrepreneurs.

While it might have been advantageous, from a business perspective, for McMaster to become a member of one of the larger and more influential church denominations, he continued as a steadfast Baptist to the end of his days.

Three years after his first wife, Mary, died in 1868, McMaster married Susan Moulton Fraser, the widow of James Fraser, Indian paymaster for the Government of the United States in Saginaw, Michigan.

Throughout his career, McMaster supported Baptist initiatives in higher education. Among these was the Canadian Literary Institute, created by an Act of the Canadian Parliament in 1858, which opened in Woodstock, Ontario, in 1860. When its building was destroyed by fire early in January 1861, McMaster immediately made a substantial gift to ensure that it would be rebuilt, sustaining its Baptist tradition. Its name was changed in 1883 to Woodstock College.

When the Toronto Baptist College received its charter in 1881, McMaster paid for its lot on Bloor Street West in Toronto and made a major contribution for the construction of its building. It was incorporated as McMaster University in 1887. The university moved to Hamilton in 1930, but the original McMaster building still stands as the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto just west of the Royal Ontario Museum.

Given McMaster’s commitment to Christian principles and education, it is not surprising to learn his last will and testament made specific provision for “an endowment for a Christian School of Learning.” His will charged the Board of Governors and the Senate of the new University to maintain it “with true and faithful regard to the work of affording the best possible facilities for a thoroughly practical Christian course of education...”

Before McMaster died on September 22, 1887, he could look back on a remarkable 50-year business career in Canada. A major commercial contribution was his creation of a new Canadian bank that through his gifted leadership, has expanded to become one of Canada’s leading financial institutions.

His crowning achievement is the university that he endowed. In years that he did not see, McMaster University has become a distinctive Canadian centre of learning through which some 90,000 individuals from many countries have been able to develop, refine, share, and use their higher sensibilities toward the improvement of human and social life in an increasingly interconnected and complex world.

William McMaster’s dedication to Integrity, Prudence, Industry, Commerce is a dynamic model for all who wish to improve the quality of life in the modern world.

D. McCormack Smyth