Andrew Frederick Gault

Andrew Frederick Gault (14 April 1833 – 7 July 1903) was an Ulster-born Canadian merchant, industrialist, and philanthropist known as the Cotton King of Canada.

In 1842 he himself emigrated with his family to Lower Canada to make a fresh start in Montreal, the mercantile centre of British North America, but nine months later he died of cholera.

[1] Gault had investments in many businesses, including the Dominion Commercial Travellers' Association (1875), Farnham Beet Root Sugar Co. (1879), Corriveau Silk Manufacturing Co. (1883), Citizens Gas Company of Montreal (1883), Globe Woollen Mills Co. Ltd (1887), Canadian Woolen Mills Litd (1887), Campbellford Woolen Mills Co. (1887), Crescent Manufacturing Co. (1896), Havana Electric Tramway Co. (1898), Boas Manufacturing Co. (1898), the Shawinigan Water & Power Company, and Trinidad Electric Light and Tramway Co.

[1] According to the family, Gault's hope for a healthy son caused him to promise Bishop William Bennett Bond that if God would grant this wish he would give a building for the Montreal Diocesan Theological College, which in due course he did.

He also acted as a philanthropist towards other educational causes, giving away more money than he left when he died,[1] and was the founder of the Gault Institute at Salaberry-de-Valleyfield.