Henry Beatty – a mover and shaker in Canadian transport

Jonathan Smyth's latest Times Past column is about Henry Beatty and his family from Cootehill. Henry was a famous pioneer of Canadian transport...

THE great Cavan Diaspora has produced many a fascinating son and daughter from Ireland’s Lake County. Amongst them was the businessman and entrepreneur Henry Beatty who alongside his relatives had the vision to develop Canada’s transportation system and, in the process, created many jobs during the 19th century.

I remember at university, in the mid-1990s, during dinner with friends, a Canadian man, once said to me ‘you say you’re from Cavan, Ireland, well from what I’ve read, your county has produced some of the most successful entrepreneurs in Canada and the United States combined’, and added, ‘the most millionaires recorded in those nations’, were, he believed, ‘from Cavan’. Indeed, the Irish both at home and abroad, had a reputation for their fearless tenacity and hardworking ways.

Henry Beatty was born in Cootehill on May 1, 1834. His parents were James Beatty and Ann Haney Beatty. Around 1844, on the cusp of the Great Hunger, the family left Cootehill and set sail for Canada. They joined James’s brother, William Beatty and his family, in Thorold, Canada. William and James were sons of John and Jane Beatty of Cootehill. In 1835, William and his wife Frances Hughes departed Cootehill to settle in Canada where he started a tannery.

In 1857, Henry started working for a hardware firm in the nearby town of St Catharines and worked for a time in St Paul, Minnesota in the same trade, before heading to California to set up his own store. The news of a gold rush in the Cariboo District of British Columbia, drew him back to Canada. Here he opened a store that sold miner’s gear and it was said that he even dabbled in a bit of mining too at a place called William’s Creek. His enterprising ways made him a neat fortune amounting to a sum of 40,000 dollars. On a home visit to Thorold to see his mother, he returned as a man of great wealth.

His uncle William who had become a successful industrialist was greatly impressed by his nephew’s work ethic and financial success. Soon, Henry Beatty found himself joining forces with the uncle and his sons, to change the face of transportation in Canada. William, like Henry, too, was born in Cootehill. One biographer wrote: ‘His story, even when told briefly, speaks of high adventure and accomplishment among the leading Canadian figures of his time’.

Henry Beatty travelled to visit his Irish hometown, around the 1900s, and a photograph was taken of him at Cootehill Market House.

Partnership

Henry Beaty began a business partnership with his uncle William in 1870. William Beatty and his sons James and William, were in the steamship business from 1865 and had called their company the Beatty Line of Sarnia. When Henry came along, they were building a second ship to be named the Manitoba. An entry about Henry Beatty in the Canadian Encyclopaedia by John A. Eagle recorded that: ‘In 1882 he was appointed manager of lake transportation for the Canadian Pacific Railway’ and ‘one of his first duties was to supervise construction in Scotland of three vessels that became the nucleus of CPR Steamships. A man of unusual executive ability and vision, he served as marine adviser to the CPR after his retirement (1892)’.

The CPR would one day buy out the Beatty Line and make it a part of the company’s trans-Atlantic steam fleet.

Henry’s wife was Harriet Minerva Powell was a relation of the Massey Family who were prominent Canadian manufacturers. The Beattys had five children. They were George Marshall Beatty (1870-1871), Henry Albert Beatty (1874-1954), Mary Haney Beatty (1876-1963), Edward Wentworth Beatty (1877-1942), and Gordon Murray Beatty (1879-1923). They lived at 13 Sullivan, City of Thorold, Ontario. In 1999, the Beatty House has been formally recognised as one of Canada’s historic places. Henry Beatty died in Toronto City on April 10, 1914.

Edward Wentworth Beatty (1877-1942)

Henry’s son, Sir Edward Wentworth Beatty, was described by John A. Eagle as a lawyer and railway official, and continuing, Eagle wrote, having established himself with a law firm in Toronto, Edward met with good fortune when A.R. Creelman, a member of the company, was appointed ‘Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) general counsel in 1901’; good fortune arose when Edward was brought along to Montréal as Creelman’s assistant. Beatty’s intelligence impressed the Railway’s President Thomas O’Shaughnessy who requested him to join the company’s general counsel. It was noted in the Canadian Encyclopaedia that Edward Beatty was appointed the first ‘Canadian-born’ president of the CPR in 1918. He received a knighthood from George V in 1935, and in the early 1940s, he set up Canadian Pacific Airlines.

Edward took an interest in education and served as chancellor to McGill University from 1919. Addressing students at McGill University in 1935, he told them: “Human happiness is the product of the human soul not of machines nor of systems for the better distribution of wealth’.

Numerous universities from all around the world conferred him with many honorary degrees. Edward Beatty once wrote a book’ Obligations of Business’ which is still considered an important cultural work.

His brother, Henry Albert Beatty, was a surgeon at the Toronto Western Hospital before his appointment in 1910, as the CPR’s Medical Officer.

Edward Beatty was a ‘lifelong’ philanthropist noted by the Ontario Heritage Trust, for giving away half his estate to charity on his death, at the age of 65 years in 1943. Edward Beatty was buried at Victoria Lawn Cemetery, St Catharines, Niagara Regional Municipality, Ontario.

Henry Beatty and his family’s contribution to the industrial and cultural life of Canada was prolific, and they rightly deserve to be remembered for what is best about the people of Cavan, and the families who today, make up our worldwide Diaspora.

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