Edmund Holyoke Heward

A few years prior to his death Edmund Holyoke Heward of Montreal retired from active business. He had been prominently connected with banking interests, and his colleagues remember him as a man of progressive spirit and marked capacity for handling the multiplicity of details as well as the principal features that arise in connection with the banking business. The family name figures in the military history of the country. His grandfather, Stephen Heward, was in command of a force of men at the capture of Fort Detroit. The father, Augustus Heward, was associated with Lieutenant Colonel Osborne Smith in founding the Victoria Volunteer Rifles, now the Third Victoria Rifles, of which Lieutenant Colonel Smith became the first commander, while Mr. Heward became the first major, but subsequently succeeded to the command.

Edmund H. Heward was born in the family residence at Cote des Neiges, in 1841. He was educated under Dr. Howe at the Montreal high school and entered into the wholesale hardware business of Mulholland & Baker when in his teens. His initial business experience came through several years’ connection with that house, at the end of which time he entered the service of the Merchants Bank of Canada, with which he was associated for more than thirty years. Gradual advancement brought him to an eminent position in banking circles. He possessed unusual ability in co-ordinating forces and unifying elements into a harmonious whole. For some time he was manager of the St. Johns (Quebec) branch of the bank, but afterward returned to Montreal and established the Notre Dame Street branch and later the St. Catherine West branch of the same bank. As the years passed on every feature of the banking business became familiar to him, and his thorough understanding thereof was manifest in his executive direction and capable control. He retired a few years prior to his death, possessed of a handsome competence that was the legitimate and logical reward of his effort and capability.

Mr. Heward married Miss Alice Ward, a daughter of the late Hon. J. K. Ward of Montreal, and unto them were born six children. Mr. Heward joined his father’s old regiment, the Victoria Rifles, with which he went to the front in the last Fenian raid and was present at the affair at Pigeon Hill. He was a handsome man of fine physique and unfailing courtesy—a gentleman of the old school. His death on May 17, 1910, occasioned deep regret in both the business and social circles of Montreal.