Life and Career
Born in Montreal, Quebec, to Samuel Davis and Minnie Falk Davis, he graduated from High School of Montreal and then joined his elder brothers Eugene Harmon and Maurice Edward in the family's cigar business, S. Davis and Sons. In 1888 S. Davis and Sons purchased another Montreal firm, D. Ritchie and Company. In 1895, the American Tobacco Company purchased D. Ritchie and Company, as well as the American Cigarette Company, another Montreal cigarette manufacturer. Samuel Davis retired from S. Davis and Sons, Mortimer Barnett Davis left the family firm, which remained in the hands of two of his brothers, to become president of the American Tobacco Company of Canada. In 1902, The British-American Tobacco Company Limited, jointly owned by the American Tobacco Company and the Imperial Tobacco Company of England. It later purchased the American Tobacco Company of Canada, which became the Imperial Tobacco Company of Canada Limited, and Mortimer Barnett Davis was its first president. The financial power of the empire over which he presided, earned him the title of "Tobacco King," which he shares with his great rival, Sir William Christopher Macdonald.
Mortimer Barnett Davis was a member of the Montreal Board of Trade and the Montreal Stock Exchange as well as a director of many companies, including the Union Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Henry Corby distillery (He served as president from 1907 to 1922), Crown Trust Company, Empire Tobacco and part of the senior management of the Nova Scotia Silver Cobalt Mining Company and the Consolidated Asbestos Mining Company.
On June 12, 1898, in San Francisco, he married Henriette Marie Meyer, daughter of Charles Meyer, a banker and philanthropist.
In 1916, he was knighted by King George V, becoming the first Canadian-born Jew to receive such an honour.
He was a member of Temple Emanu-El (see Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom (Westmount, Quebec)), which his father had helped to establish. He underwrote the entire $420,000 of a new YMHA (see Federation CJA) building, which opened at Mount Royal, near Park Avenue, shortly after his death. He was a key force in building the Mount Sinai Sanatarium, in Préfontaine.
Sir Mortimer Davis spent much of the last years of his life at Les Glaïeuls, his villa in Cannes. where he died.
He left 75% of his estate to be used for the construction of a Jewish public hospital that would bear his name. In 1978, long after he died, $10 million from his estate was donated to the existing Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. It was renamed the Sir Mortimer B. Davis Jewish General Hospital.
His Montreal residence in the Golden Square Mile (formerly Sir Mortimer B. Davis House) is now Purvis Hall, on the grounds of McGill University.
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