The proposed company aimed to accept and execute trusts of various kinds, act as a receiver, trustee, assignee, executor, administrator, and guardian, and serve as an agent or attorney for business transactions.
Its functions would include managing estates, collecting rents, interests, dividends, mortgages, and other securities, as well as conducting activities typical of trust companies.
[1] Months later, the Eastern Trust Company was incorporated by an Act of the Nova Scotia Legislature, which was approved on 1 April 1893.
The company was established following a petition by notable figures including Alfred Gilpin Jones, Thomas Fyshe, Wiley Smith, H. H. Fuller, James Crosskill Mackintosh, Thomas Edward Kenny, William Robertson, Adam Burns, Hugh McDonald Henry, Thomas Ritchie, John Doull, William Benjamin Ross, John Fitzwilliam Stairs, Patrick O'Mullin, Charles C. Blackadar, and Jeremiah F. Kenny, all from Halifax, as well as Robert Caie of Yarmouth and George A. Schofield of Saint John, New Brunswick.
[6] The Eastern Trust Co. received a first mortgage—a legal claim on assets—from the Halifax Electric Tramway Company in December 1895 to back the issuance of $600,000 in debentures.