Robert Reford

At the time of his death half a century was drawing to its close since the subject of this sketch, the late Robert Reford, first established a commercial connection with Montreal. The outstanding position which Mr. Reford occupied in the life of the city was the natural outcome of qualities which quickly bring men to be recognized as a source of strength to whatever spheres in which they may move. He was a man of very pronounced ability, tenaciousness of purpose, firmness of decision and of forceful character but by those who knew him best he will be remembered, chiefly for those high standards of honor which were his for the straightforwardness and uprightness of all his dealings with his fellowmen and for the strong sense of justice which throughout his long career he was so often called upon to exercise.

Robert Reford was born at Moylena, which for generations had been the family seat near Antrim, Ireland, in 1831 and was a lad of fourteen when in 1845 he came with his mother, three brothers and one sister to make his home in Canada. The family arrived at Quebec the night of the great fire when the lower town was almost completely destroyed. After a very brief stay in Montreal they settled in Toronto, where Mr. Reford completed his education. He was, however, still but a boy when he became engaged in business and, though he was indentured to work for his first employer for two years at a fixed salary, it is indicative of the great natural capacity which he possessed and of his steadiness and alertness in business, that at the end of the first year his salary was increased fivefold and again at the end of the second year that amount was doubled. In three years time, still barely on the threshold of manhood, Robert Reford had proved his ability to such an extent as to be offered a partnership with William Strachan in a wholesale and retail grocery business which the latter was about to open. This offer was accepted but the firm dissolved after a few years duration and Mr. Reford started a business on his own account, which he continued to conduct alone for several years, only taking Richard Dunbar as a partner when he acquired, by purchase, from William Ross, another large wholesale business of the same nature. The two businesses were run separately, one as Reford & Dunbar, the other in partnership with the late John Dillon, as Reford & Dillon, wholesale grocers and merchants. It would indeed have been strange if a man, imbued with the spirit of enterprise and courage, as was Mr. Reford to a very remarkable degree, had been content to remain without some wider scope for his abilities than that offered, even by a successful wholesale business. It was not long before he took the initial step which was to lead him so far along the path of that vast question of transportation.

Mr. Reford was one of the pioneer workers in this direction, entering the carrying trade, in the early ’60s. He amassed a considerable fortune during the forty odd years he was engaged in shipping pursuits but never did he lose sight of the fact that Canada’s interests as a whole are intimately and indivisibly bound up in every phase of the shipping industry, nor did he ever fail to consider and work towards the benefit of those wider interests of his adopted country.

The operation of vessels on the Great Lakes was the beginning of Mr. Reford’s shipping enterprises. In 1860 he equipped the schooner “Seagull” and sent her with a general cargo of Canadian produce to Port Natal, South Africa, thus being the first man to undertake direct shipping connection between Canada and that part of the world.

In 1865, associated with his old friend William Ross, the firm opened a branch in Montreal. This was the commencement of the present Montreal firm. The business was now assuming large trading proportions with Great Britain, the United States, China, Japan, the West Indies and other foreign countries; nevertheless it soon began to confine itself more strictly to ocean shipping. The firm became agents and part owners of the Thomson and Donaldson lines. When the story of the growth of Canada’s shipping comes to be written the name of Robert Reford will loom up largely on its pages. Mr. Dillon severed his connection with Mr. Reford in the shipping business in 1897 and it was then that the present company, the Robert Reford Co., Ltd., was incorporated, with very extensive steamship services of six different lines to many of the world’s principal ports and with branch offices established in Quebec, Toronto, St. John, New Brunswick, and Portland, Maine. Canada owes not a little to Mr. Reford for contributing so materially to the opening up of new markets for her produce along the east coast of Great Britain, and also for the building up of further valuable trade connections by giving direct shipping communication between Canada and the Mediterranean ports. Every aspect of the carrying trade had been studied by him with that thoroughness and regard for detail which characterized the man in everything he undertook. His opinions and advice on shipping and on transportation generally were appreciated as those of an expert, and sought after by people from all over the Dominion.

Apart from his shipping enterprises, which remained the main issue of his commercial life, the most important of his other business activities was his interest in the Mount Royal Milling and Manufacturing Company. Mr. Reford founded the company in 1882 for the milling of rice, with mills in Montreal and Victoria, British Columbia, and acted as its president up to the time of his death. He was also president for many years of the Charlemagne & Lac Ouareau Lumber Company, president of the York Lumber Company, president of the Crown Trust Company and vice president of the Labrador Company; and a director of the Bank of Toronto, of the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and of the Paton Manufacturing Company.

From 1901 to 1905 Mr. Reford was a member of the Montreal Board of Harbour Commissioners and in 1903 was a delegate to the fifth congress of the Chambers of Commerce of the Empire, but no doubt his chief public service was rendered first as a member and then as chairman of the Royal Commission on Transportation, 1904-1905. The work involved in this important commission necessitated its members visiting every Canadian port, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with a view to recommending all possible desirable improvements for the increase of and facilitating the transportation trade appertaining to the Dominion, both ocean and inland. The commission sent in an exhaustive report to the government in December, 1905, based on very thorough personal observations and study, together with the result of carefully gathered evidence of those residents in the different sections of Canada who were best fitted to judge. It strongly advocated the building of the Georgian Bay canal and the formation of national ports on the Atlantic and Pacific, the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. Further, it was urged that there should be a fast all-round-the-world British steamship service which would bind together more closely all portions of the empire, by taking advantage of the shorter ocean route which services between Canada and Europe, via Great Britain on the east, and Asia and the Orient on the west, could offer, if Halifax and Galway were used as the termini for the Atlantic coasts. Mr. Reford’s work on this commission was stupendous, but none of it was done in the light of the public eye. Few knew of the great personal sacrifices which it demanded and which were willingly made by this man of then seventy-four years. In fact all his life Mr. Reford avoided rather than sought any kind of prominence or recognition.

Many of Montreal’s educational and charitable institutions looked to him for guidance and help and whether the requests came to him for his advice, or for financial support, provided he was in sympathy with the object, to either his response was equally ready and generous. He was a governor of McGill University and was the first to respond to an appeal for aid by donating fifty thousand dollars towards a fund for the increase of salaries of the professional staff. In 1911 when the campaign for the general funds of the university was made, it found in him one of its leading spirits and most ardent supporters. Again he gave proof of his faith in the higher education of men’s minds as being an asset of immeasurable national value and set the inspiring example of a one hundred thousand dollars contribution.

Could we mention all the hospitals, homes for the aged poor and for little children, and in fact every kind of philanthropic institution which knew and enjoyed his generous help, the list would indeed be a long one and few such in Montreal omitted from it. Some of his largest donations were to the Montreal General Hospital of which he was a life governor and to which in recent years he gave thirty-five thousand dollars; to the Young Men’s Christian Association he gave ten thousand dollars, and a like sum to the Diocesan Theological College.

In manner the late Robert Reford was somewhat abrupt but this arose purely from that eagerness and energy which every move of the body seemed to betray, and not from any unkindly feeling. He was an exceptionally clear thinker, his mind worked with precision; his plans were made and carried out with unvarying promptitude and method which perhaps supply the key to his amazing capacity for the accomplishment of work. Self indulgence knew no place with him and to the end he adhered to his stern habits of life, granting himself but little respite and no holidays. From the age of twenty-two when he was made captain of No. 4 Company in the Queen’s Own Rifles his interest in civic affairs never waned. He fought untiringly for reforms, often with a lack of support which would have discouraged most men, but this North of Ireland man was not of such stuff. He was of the kind which the hand of Providence seems to have scattered far from their native shores, over the face of the British Empire to give it that salt, without which it could have no savor.

Mr. Reford was twice married; first to Miss Margaret McCord, daughter of A. T. McCord, chamberlain and treasurer of the city of Toronto, who died within a year after the marriage. In 1866 he married Miss Katherine S. Drummond, daughter of Andrew Drummond of Stirling, Scotland. Mrs. Reford survives him, as do five of his children, they being: Robert Wilson Reford, president of the Robert Reford Co., Ltd.; A. D. Reford; L. L. Reford, M. D.; Mrs. H. B. MacDougall; and Miss Kate Reford.

Mr. Reford was a member of St. George’s church and a stanch believer in the power of the church to be a light unto the lives of men. In all things he acted as he believed and so the community is bereft of a personality of strength, of courage and of truth.