Simon McTavish - Montreal

Montreal

In the meantime, the Americans had withdrawn from Canada, and McTavish transferred his operations to Montreal. He continued to trade on his own through the Revolutionary War, supplying goods both at Grand Portage and Detroit, and speculating in rum for the British soldiers at Detroit and Niagara. By the end of the war, he was able to put together a group of business investors and trapper/explorers to create the North West Company. With the Frobisher brothers he owned 37.5% of the company's shares and upon the death of Benjamin Frobisher in 1787 McTavish became the man in charge of the business.

A restructuring of the company a few months later saw the shrewd McTavish gain control of eleven of the company's twenty shares. Most important, he was managing partner of a new Montreal firm, McTavish, Frobisher and Company, which imported the North West Company's goods and forwarded its furs to the London market, taking commissions on all transactions. The vertical integration of the business was extended in 1792, when the firm of McTavish, Fraser and Company was established in London itself, to procure the trade goods at source and sell the furs. From his headquarters in Montreal, over the next sixteen years McTavish built a business empire that stretched from the Labrador coast to the Rocky Mountains and in the process made himself a wealthy man.

As the fur trade expanded across Western Canada, the HBC's financial dominance allowed them to take the advantage. The HBC had rejected the Nor’Westers’ request for the right to bring in goods via Hudson Bay, so at a great cost of £45,000 McTavish sent two expeditions to establish footholds for the NWC. These actions did not bring the desired effect and the NWC also failed in receiving a charter from the British government, leaving just one alternative — an attempt to purchase a majority of the shares in the HBC.

During his time in Britain, Simon McTavish had befriended the chief of Clan MacTavish, and on the chief's death, Simon brought one of the sons into the North West Company. In 1799, McTavish did something that gave him great personal satisfaction: the acquisition of the Dunardary estate in North Knapdale, Argyll, which had been the ancestral home for the heads of the McTavish (MacTavish) clan for several hundred years. Although Simon's own family had been closely associated with clan Fraser, it is believed that his ancestors were a branch of the McTavish clan of Dunardary, who had settled in Stratherrick some generations before.

As an astute businessman with great vision, McTavish recognized the need for industrialization of Montreal and that need presented opportunities to make more money. In 1802 he purchased the seigneury of Terrebonne where he built two modern flour-mills and a bakery and established a sawmill, encouraging other entrepreneurs to begin the manufacturing of wooden barrels.