Wonderful interview! I couldn't help thinking about a couple of my distant cousins who both started out herding sheep in the northeast of Scotland and ended up having a major impact on shaping Canada in the country's early years.

One of my distant cousins, Donald Smith [Lord Strathcona], was entirely open about his marriage to a native woman. The wealthy Montreal elite regarded Smith as a country bumpkin, and looked down their collective noses at his wife whom he apparently adored.

One of those who looked askance was his cousin George Stephen [Lord Mount Stephen] who was the president of the Bank of Montreal. But blood ties were strong, and Stephen, being the superlative tactition that he was, saw the advantage of bringing the influence of the Hudson's Bay Company [of which Smith was Chief Factor] into the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Smith and Stephen were good examples of the extremes of Scottish social attitudes. Smith was gregarious, generous and by all accounts well loved by many; Stephen was a stern, disciplined teatotaller, a brilliant mathematician whose acquisitiveness might have made him a prototype for Scrooge McDuck.

Somehow the cousins worked together but when all was said and done the last spike was not driven by the Prime Minister [John A. MacDonald], nor by George Stephen, but by the aged Donald Smith.

I like to think that Smith's influence rubbed off on Stephen. When George Stephen retired to England, he was reputed to be the wealthiest man in the British Empire. He bequeathed his wealth largely to education throughout the northeast of Scotland and elsewhere.