Building an Empire: "Big Pants" Harry F. McLean and His Sons of Martha.

Robert W. Sexty is a commerce professor at the Memorial University of
Newfoundland and author of Canadian Business: Issues and Stakeholders.

Born in 1883 in the American Midwest, Harry F. McLean moved to Canada and operated businesses from Merrickville, a small Ontario town near Ottawa. His principal company was Dominion Construction Company, which built railways, hydroelectric projects, viaducts and tunnels, highways, wartime factories, and military bases in eastern North America. He was a generous, but unconventional, philanthropist, giving large tips to doormen and waiters, distributing $100 bills to injured soldiers, and tossing fistfuls of money out of hotel windows.

In addition to describing McLean’s numerous construction projects and volatile personal life, the book outlines the various encounters he had with government bureaucrats, politicians (including a friendship with Mackenzie King), unions, the courts, wars, and disasters (including the 1917 Halifax explosion). Dozens of photographs dating from 1873 illustrate the book, as do reproductions of advertisements and posters. Quotations are extensively inserted with varying effectiveness.

The author researched this work extensively over a 10-year period. Numerous footnotes are used and a large bibliography is included with a list of persons interviewed. The author travelled to visit interviewees, the construction sites, various archives, and locations where McLean lived. She also uncovered the film commissioned by McLean in 1933, Abitibi Canyon: The Story of the Conquest of a River, which she claims is the first known documentary of a construction project. Her only connection to McLean appears to be that she lives near Merrickville.

McLean was knowledgeable of classical literature and taught Rudyard Kipling’s ode to engineers, “Sons of Martha,” to his workers. Over the years he constructed nine cairns, to which he attached plaques with verses from the poem. These served as a tribute to his workers, especially those killed or injured during construction. McLean’s companies no longer exist and he died in 1961. The author suggests that he contributed to Canada’s development, and was a man of stature not only metaphorically, but physically, requiring “big pants.” Today, the cairns and this book are his legacy.