Robert Dunsmuir

Robert Dunsmuir ( August 31, 1825 Hurlford, Scotland, † April 12, 1889 in Victoria, Canada ) was a Scottish- Canadian businessman and politician in British Columbia.

Early years in Scotland

Robert Dunsmuir was the son of 20 -year-old James Dunsmuir and his wife Elizabeth. His family was active in his native Ayrshire in the coal business. 1832 died almost the entire family of Robert Dunsmuir junior - mother, father, grandmother and two of his three sisters - within a few days of cholera. Three years later died of the grandfather, who had become quite wealthy, and left a third of its assets his orphaned grandchildren. Dunsmuir was enrolled in the Kilmarnock Academy and continued his schooling at the Paisley Mercantile and Mechanical School continued. Subsequently he trained in the coal mines with his uncle. In 1847 he married Joan White; the first daughter came eight days after the marriage to the world, the second two years later.

Towards the end of 1850, the uncle of Dunsmuir, Boyd Gilmour, a contract with the Hudson 's Bay Company (HBC ) for extraction of coal in Fort Rupert on the north east coast of Vancouver Iceland in Canada. When the workers who had to travel there, learned about the living conditions there, many of them went back down, so that Robert Dunsmuir shortdecided joined 24 hours before the departure of the group. With the Pekin the journey via Cape Horn took to Fort Vancouver 191 days. Eight days later, Joan Dunsmuir gave birth to her third child, James Dunsmuir. On 18 July 1851, the group traveled on to Fort Rupert.

Transactions with coal

On 9 August 1851, the Scots arrived in Fort Rupert, and began the three-year term of the contract with HBC. For a year, Gilmour tried unsuccessfully to build a coal production in Fort Rupert, to Governor James Douglas ordered him to go to Nanaimo, where a coal deposit was discovered. 1854 ended the contract with the HBC. When Governor Douglas refused to increase the payments, Gilmour returned to Scotland, his nephew remained. 1855 Dunsmuir refused to participate in a strike of coal miners, and for that he was on his own account exploit a mine that had been abandoned by the HBC. Two years later, Horace Douglas Lascelles and three other ship's officers were aware of him, which convinced him to lead the Harewood Coal Mining Company. The company was not a success due to lack of capital and was bought by the Vancouver Coal Mining and Land Company ( VCMLC ), but Dunsmuir had since made a name for himself as a competent miner and was hired by the VCMLC as mine overseer.

Result of the expiration of the lease of the HBC, it was also possible for third parties to stake out deposits for itself. In October 1869 Dunsmuir for fishing on Lake Diver was a few miles north-west of Nanaimo, as he there found a coal foothills. He pricked from a claim of six square kilometers, which covered the northern half of the lake and reached up to Wellington. To exploit a deposit of this size a company was needed, and so he founded Dunsmuir, Diggle & Company. His sons James and Alexander, as well as other partners left the company again after the formalities had been completed. Wadham Diggle, captain of the ship boxer invested $ 8,000 in the company, and Rear Admiral Arthur Farquhar, Commander of the Pacific Fleet $ 12,000. In 1873 the Wellington Mine produced 16,000 tons of coal, of the 40,000 tons on Vancouver Iceland, 1875, there were already 50,000 tons annually. The most important customers were San Francisco and the Royal Navy. 1881 Dunsmuir stated that the annual carbon emissions amounted to about 180,000 tonnes from its mines, of which about 85 percent were exported. It employed about 550 workers, of whom more than half Chinese, and expanded constantly. 1879 Farquar was paid and Diggle 1883; the company threw in the meantime from $ 500,000 profit called henceforth R. Dunsmuir & Sons.

Within ten years, Dunsmuir had built a coal empire. He also invested in real estate on Vancouver Iceland and in an iron foundry, in a theater in Victoria, agricultural land and in a dike project. His workers he paid lower wages than his competitors, and he preferred Asians who were willing to work for half the usual wages. Its coal mines were safer than the VCMLC, although Robert Dunsmuir rejected many demands for better safety precautions. Finally happened in 1876 in the Wellingtongrube a serious accident. The following year there was a strike at the Dunsmuir his workers locked out for four months, and military and police requested to harass the strikers. Then the miners were forced to work for wages that were one-third lower than before.

In Dictionary of Canadian Biography says of Dunsmuir:

" Dunsmuir was an astute and opportunistic mine owners. He had not compared with other coal operators in the 1870s and 1880s particularly lucky or was not particularly ruthless, but he had made the most of the advantages he had over its competitors. "

Railway

Robert Dunsmuir was one of the founders of the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway. The company built a railway from Esquimalt to Nanaimo, which was later extended to Wellington (Victoria) and Courtenay. The company was awarded a concession for 20 percent of the area of Vancouver Iceland as an incentive to expand the railway lines and operate. A breakpoint train was named after Dunsmuir.

Policy

1882 Dunsmuir - while he was traveling in Europe - elected for the constituency of Nanaimo in the Parliament of British Columbia, re-elected four years later and appointed to the Cabinet. At the time of his death in 1889 he was still in office.

38 years after Robert Dunsmuir had arrived on Vancouver Iceland, where he earned as a miner five U.S. dollars a week, he died the richest man in British Columbia. He controlled a family empire worth about $ 15 million (in today's value of approximately 380 million dollars).

" Robert Dunsmuir was and is the most controversial figure in the history of the province. By most historians, he is considered a great pioneer and entrepreneur who shape both his province as well as wanted to increase his personal fortune. On the other hand, it is in recent times by authors who deal with the industrial history of the province of British Columbia represented as a symbol of unbridled capitalism as well as unscrupulous exploiters of people and material. "

Craigdarroch Castle

In Victoria, Robert Dunsmuir was built from 1887 Craigdarroch Castle for himself and his family. Three of his daughters were still unmarried, and the house should serve social occasions. The architect was Henry Hobson Richardson Americans who built the building in which he created Richardson Romanesque style. Dunsmuir himself never lived in the house since he died three years after the start of construction and prior to completion. 1890 moved into the widow 's house with her ​​three daughters and two orphaned grandchildren and lived there for 18 years. Because inheritance disputes they fell out with her sons. Although she and Robert Dunsmuir felt alienated in the last years of his life, he had bequeathed his entire estate to her and the children, contrary to his promises, not considered. When Joan Dunsmiur died in 1908, she and her son James - brother Alexander was already deceased - not spoken for years. Before the funeral of Joan Dunsmuir, there were reports in the newspapers that James Dunsmuir, now Prime Minister of British Columbia, would not participate in it, but he changed his mind after all.

From 1920 to 1946, the building was used by the University of Victoria. 1994 were held shooting for the film Little Women at the Castle.

Craigdorrach Castle is now a popular tourist attraction, and was declared on 8 June 1992 by the Government of Canada National Historic Site of Canada.

Family

Joan and Robert Dunsmuir had eleven children, two sons and nine daughters, of whom one died as a child.

The older son James Dunsmuir was from 15 June 1900 to November 21, 1902 Prime Minister of the Province of British Columbia and from May 1906 to December 1909 Lieutenant-Governor. The daughter Anne Euphemia, called Effie, married in March 1900 in London Somerset Gough - Calthorpe, who later became an admiral in the Royal Navy. Maud Dunsmuir was through her marriage with Sir Richard Musgrave Lady Musgrave.

Alexander Dunsmuir was not until ten years after the death of his father in the full enjoyment of his heritage. For 20 years he was unmarried, lived with a woman, whom he married after the payment of the legacy. Six weeks after the marriage, still on their honeymoon, he died in 1900 in New York.

Dunsmuir, California

According to tradition, came in 1888, after Alexander Dunsmuir Siskiyou County in California. There it is to have him so much that he wanted to donate a fountain for a new city if they 'd named after him. More recent evidence suggests that it may have not happened so. The fact remains, however, that the place was named after the family Dunsmuir, but probably donated first, and then the wells. The fountain, which had been destroyed in the meantime due to frost exists today and is close to the City Park in Dunsmuir, California.

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