Osler was born in 1845 at Bond Head near Tecumseh Township, Simcoe County, Canada West.

[1] He was the fourth son of the Reverend Featherstone Lake Osler, a former lieutenant in the Royal Navy turned Anglican clergyman, and his wife Ellen Free Pickton.

[2] Throughout the 1880s to 1890s, Osler greatly increased his financial influence through a combination of investments, westward railway expansions, and western land grants.

In the years prior to his death, Osler had promised money to his friends to support various funds and causes which were posthumously covered by his estate.

His expertise as a successful businessman helped fund and support important causes related to arts, cultures, and health in the city of Toronto.

Together with George Agnew Reid, Byron Edmund Walker and others, Osler participated in the campaign to found an art museum in Toronto in the early 1900s.

[4] Osler began his involvement on a trip to Egypt from 1906 to 1907 where he met Charles T. Currelly, archaeologist and future director of the Royal Ontario Museum.

Osler's descendants, the Matthews family, continue to support the Royal Ontario Museum to the present day.

The Royal Ontario Museum's Sir Edmund Osler Gate to the wing of the Matthews Family Court of Chinese Sculpture is named after him.

[4] Osler was born at Tecumseh Township, Simcoe County, Canada West and grew up in the area of present-day Hamilton, Ontario.

Lee; and Canadian businessman Eugene O'Keefe —at his funeral held in St Michael's Cathedral Basilica in 1899.

One of Edmund's uncles served as a medical officer in the Navy and wrote the Life of Lord Exmouth and the poem The Voyage.

Beagle as the science officer on Charles Darwin's historic voyage to the Galápagos Islands, but turned it down as his father was dying.