Samuel Dickson: Canadian Industrialist and Lumber Baron
Jonathan Smyth's latest Times Past column looks at the Cavan born Samuel Dickson who went on to become a Canadian Industrialist and Lumber Baron...
Not everybody may know this, but Canada is officially known as the ‘Dominion of Canada’? It is doubtful that it is ever going to become the 51st state of America, as the media reported when the idea was suggested recently by the American President. This beautiful North American country stretches 4,700 miles from east to west and is made up of ten provinces and three territories. Canada is famed for its fabulous landscape, scenic forests and natural environment and the Canadians themselves are considered welcoming and respectful in manner. As citizens they are said to enjoy a good standard of living, even if the population is much smaller than its neighbour, the United States. Canada is a nation built on immigration and welcomes immigrants who are an essential part of the country’s economic success. Education is highly valued, and Canadian universities have strong rankings throughout the world.
Another thing that is not too well known on this side of the Atlantic is that the famous Canadian lumber baron, Samuel Dickson, was born in Co. Cavan. Now, to be clear, we are talking here about Cavan in Ireland, and not the famous Cavan-Monaghan township in Canada: today this township is absorbed into Peterborough City, Ontario. Incidentally, it was in the same city that Dickson lived. He is still celebrated as one of Canada’s important pioneering industrialists of the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century, there were Co. Cavan-based Dickson families living in the parishes of Ballymachugh, Kildallan and Lavey.
Peter Gillis wrote about Samuel Dickson in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography and his entry offers us more details on the life of this businessman. Gillis wrote that in 1810 Dickson was born in Co. Cavan and twenty years later in 1830 he emigrated to Canada. The first job he got was in Peterborough where he worked for a distiller named John Hall who happened to be a fellow Cavan man. Hall was a prominent businessman and Gillis says, like Dickson, he was a Presbyterian. Hall owned a grist mill and a sawmill on the Ontonabee River, Peterborough, but fell into debt and had to sell the whole lot. Dickson soon realised that lumber, like gold, had value and contacted the new sawmill owner who agreed to lease the business to him. By 1840, Dickson became a producer of pine lumber.
Gillis emphasises that Dickson knew the importance of having proper ‘control’ over a good water system in order to ‘power’ the milling operations’ effectively. Within a decade, Dickson left the sawmill and established another one on the far side of the Ontonabee River. Through canny business arrangements, Samuel had attained a substantial share of the water rights on both sides of the river and ‘by 1870’ he practically had control of the whole water system. Dickson’s lumber was highly sought after in British and American markets and by 1851 the Dickson Lumber Company was at its height when they produced 1,000,000 feet of board, of which 800,000 feet was ‘for foreign markets’ and the remaining for the Canadian home market.
In 1861, lumber companies in Peterborough produced 63,599,000 feet of board, while in the same period, Dickson’s lumber production had risen to ‘6,000,000 board feet per year.’ Gillis informs us that to reach American markets, Samuel had the lumber first shipped to Port Hope, on Lake Ontario, and then sent onwards to Albany, New York, which became the ‘main distribution centre’ for all the ‘major markets along the East Coast of the United States.
According to the Dickson family archive he came to own ‘all the land from Parkhill (Smith Road) to the bridge on Hunter Street on both sides of the river’: whereupon he built his sawmills and lumber yards. The Dickson family records can be researched at Trent University, Peterborough. The files also contain a letter written to Samuel from his mother.
On September 22, 2012, Andrew Elliott who is an archivist and freelance writer wrote in the Peterborough Examiner about Samuel Dickson, and he recounted the story of the Lumber Baron’s untimely death. He was only 60 years of age. So, what happened?
In the winter of 1870, there had been a huge snowfall. This was followed by a much warmer spring than usual which melted the snow causing water levels in the Otonabee to rise by ‘15 inches.’ This was much higher than it normally would have been, and the pressure of its flow breached several of the river’s dams. It was on April 25, 1870, that Dickson and two of his employees, in the company of a man named Mr Dancy attempted to repair the wall of the Dickson Dam. Continuing, the Peterborough Examiner explains what happened next: ‘Dickson was on the pier to show the workers what to do.’ However, matters took a turn for the worst when the pier ‘suddenly gave way’, trapping Dickson. Next, he was tossed into the ‘raging waters.’ His workers were unable to stop him from falling. Dickson was pulled from the water but died thirty-six hours later from his injuries on April 27. At the time of his death, Samuel had been in the process of building a ‘grand house’ for himself at 490 Dickson Street, Peterborough. Another house, next door to number 490, at 520 Dickson Street, was built for his daughter Elizabeth Dickson Davidson. Members of the family lived there from 1877 until 1969 when the property was sold.
Samuel Dickson and his wife Anne had a family of six daughters. They were Margaret, Ellen, Elizabeth, Jane, Charlotte, and Martha. It should be remembered that as a major employer, Dickson’s Lumber Company was instrumental in the early development of Peterborough City. For further information, check out Peter Gillis’s account of Samuel Dickson in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.