Robert Dunsmuir from Hurlford -

the Scots-Canadian Carnegie

by Norrie Dunsmore (no relation)

In his time, Robert Dunsmuir, was almost as famous a capitalist captain of

finance, commerce and industry, as Andrew Carnegie. Robert, however,
failed to develop any of the charitable instincts which characterised the later
years of his near contemporary.

Born at Hurlford near Kilmarnock in Ayrshire in 1825, Robert was the son of
a coal-master, that is the owner or lessee of a coal-seam and not simply a
miner. Orphaned at an early age, he lived with his uncle, Boyd Gilmour, and
was educated at Kilmarnock Academy. At 16 he was apprenticed to the same
uncle as a miner and began to learn all there was to know about coal. In
1847 he married Joan White, who duly bore him ten children, and in 1851 he
followed his uncle to the Hudson Bay Company’s Fort Rupert coal mine on
Vancouver Island, where the latter held the post of Overman and where
Robert became an indentured coal miner.

Conditions there and later at Nanaimo mine to which they soon transferred
were difficult, including poor management and sporadic Indian raids, and
there was considerable unrest among the miners. In 1855 he refused to join a
consequent strike and was rewarded by the company with the grant of a free
miner’s licence which allowed him to work an abandoned shaft for his own
profit. A company man through and through, at least on the surface, and
widely respected for his formidable skills and knowledge, Robert rose
quickly through the ranks to become the mines’ supervisor for the HBC’s
successor, the Vancouver Coal Mining and Land Company (VCMLC).
In 1864 he briefly left the company to manage the Harewood Coal Mining
Company but the whole project was under-capitalised and their assets -
including Robert - were eventually bought out by the VCMLC. Throughout
the 1860s, too, Robert conducted secret surveys of the island in search of
new seams. In 1869 he struck black gold with the discovery and subsequent
exploitation of the vast Wellington seam in partnership with a group of naval
officers who well understood its strategic and economic importance.

His work over the next ten years is the cornerstone of his claim to
entrepreneurial greatness. Initially, three and later five new shafts were sunk,
a railway was laid from the pit heads to the wharves at Nanaimo harbour, all
equipment and working practices were up-to-date and, by no means least, a
skilled and efficient workforce was created. The majority of the profits were
ploughed back into the business and by 1878 Wellington had overtaken the
tonnage output of all its rivals.

Robert’s management style was simple - ‘Do as you’re told or be sacked’ -

and, assisted by his two sons and a son-in-law, very hands-on. He also paid
below average wages and wherever possible used Chinese workers who
earned 50% of the standard rate. When white miners died in accidents their
names were published; with Chinese workers only the number of the dead
was given out. On the credit side, the general safety record of Robert’s
mines was well above average.

Perhaps the most controversial incident of his career took place in 1877
when miners all across Vancouver Island were threatening to strike in
support of a pay demand. The Wellington mine was due to be closed first.
Pre-emptively, Robert locked his workers out. Four months later, reduced to
destitution and harried by the police and militia, they asked to return to
work. Robert agreed but, in an act of utter and indefensible spitefulness, only
on condition that they would accept a thirty-three percent wage cut.
Over the years his portfolio of business interests expanded to include real
estate, agricultural land, an iron foundry, a theatre in Victoria, and the
construction and operation of a fleet of colliers. The local and national
economy was stimulated and employment was created. Untroubled by
corporation or income tax, his personal wealth reached fabulous proportions
and he was able to buy out all his non-family partners. In 1882, almost by
default, he entered the world of politics; despite becoming President of the
Executive Council, he showed little real interest in or aptitude for it. Nor did
he use his vast wealth and influence for the purposes of wider social benefit.

His final large-scale project was the construction of a railway from Nanaimo
to Victoria. Although his bid can only be described as rapacious in terms of
the vast land grant, the mining, mineral, foreshore and timber rights, and the
subsidies he demanded, it was accepted by the politicians as the only
alternative to the American-owned - and therefore distrusted - Northern
Pacific Railroad. Works began in 1884 and were completed on time by 1886.
In the event the main sub-contractors were American, and much of the land
needed was simply taken from the native population.

In the last years of his life he commissioned the building of the massive,
sandstone pile of Craigdarroch Castle but did not live to see it completed.
His long-estranged wife Joan moved in in1890: it is now a prestigious
museum.

On Robert’s death in1889, thousands attended his funeral, schools were

closed, and shops and offices were draped in black. To the upper and middle
classes he remained something of a hero - a living witness that in Canada, as
in America, a man could rise by his own efforts to the very pinnacles of
wealth and honour. To the majority of workers, however, in his own and
others’ mines and factories, desperately trying to organise themselves
against the worst excesses of capitalist exploitation, he was, and remains, an
irredeemable villain.
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