Alberta Titans: From Rags to Riches During Alberta's Pioneer Days

Gordon C. Shaw is professor emeritus in the Faculty of Administrative
Studies at York University.

These nice little books summarize the life story of nine businessmen in
Calgary and eight in Ottawa, all of whom were prominent in the earlier
days of their respective cities. Each story is independent of the others
and occupies about 16 pages.

The Ottawa book seems especially interesting since the eight
“titans” served in the 19th century, at a time when Ottawa (then
Bytown) was largely a sawmill- and lumber-oriented town. Its titans
included Colonel John By, who was in charge of building the Rideau
Canal; Thomas MacKay, a major lumberman whose home became Rideau Hall;
and John R. Booth, another important lumberman whose mills and Canada
Atlantic Railway shaped the contours of Ottawa and much of Algonquin
Park.

The Alberta book largely reflects the late 19th- and early 20th-century
development of the city of Calgary. Here the titans include “Pat”
Burns, the meat-packing entrepreneur and one of the founders of the
Calgary Stampede; Bill Heron, an oil pioneer and the creator of the
traditional Stampede cowboy hat; and Max Bell, a rancher, racehorse
owner, and publisher of the newspaper Calgary Albertan.

Intended for the casual reader, both books are well written and a
pleasure to read. Though each book contains a short bibliography, it
lacks footnotes and would have benefited from an index. Finally, Thomas
MacKay’s “Bytown and Prescott Railway” was absorbed by the
Canadian Pacific, not the Grand Trunk.