James Hamet Dunn
His father owned a shipbuilding company whose fortunes had been all but wiped out by the sharp decline in the demand for wooden ships, and died when he fell into the harbour when James was an infant.
In his posthumous biography, boyhood and lifelong friend Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook remarks on Dunn's exposure to the Shorter Catechism and the creed of John Knox through his mother's devotion.
Specifically, Beaverbrook mentions the responses to Questions 74 and 75[1] (which explicitly command that wealth be acquired only by lawful means) as formative influences on the young Dunn.
After completing his schooling, he left home to find employment and for a time he worked as a deckhand for an American shipping company on Lake Michigan.
Within a short time, Dunn was drawn to the booming economy of Montreal, Quebec where he landed a position with one of the city's prominent law firms.
Already a close friend of fellow New Brunswickers, Max Aitken (the future Lord Beaverbrook) and a bright young lawyer named Richard Bennett, Dunn's brokerage work led to even more business connections with some of the elite of corporate Canada, including George Alexander Drummond, Henry Pellatt and the up-and-coming Izaak Walton Killam.
At a time of rapid development in mechanized industry, as a result of large hydro-electric projects, shrewd investments, underwritings and stock promotions, James Dunn was soon a wealthy man.
All was not easy and as a director of the Sovereign Bank in Canada that fell victim to the stock market crash of 1907, he experienced severe financial difficulties.
Added to this, mismanagement kept hidden by the officers running his Montreal brokerage house, one of whom committed suicide when his discrepancies were revealed, caused Dunn more financial grief.
In 1913, his partner Fischer disappeared and went to ground leaving him with monstrous debts, as their firm was a partnership, not a limited liability vehicle, but he managed courageously and with help from his creditors to cover them all.
[5] Because of a crucial need for nickel steel during the early years of First World War, the BANCo was expropriated by the British government and they delegated Dunn to reorganize it.
It is reported that Dunn partnered with the Belgian financier Alfred Loewenstein in several business ventures, the duo emerging with more than £1,000,000 profit from their 1920s investment in British Celanese alone.
[citation needed] Although he lived primarily in England during his stockbroking years and maintained a villa in France, Dunn frequently traveled to Canada to spend time at his fishing camp on the Nigadoo River not far from his birthplace.
[citation needed] A number of Sir James Dunn's Canadian investments were in Northern Ontario mining ventures and he began a business relationship with Algoma Steel, a company in Sault Ste.
[11] Algoma Steel went through years of ups and downs, marked by a lack of strong leadership, and in 1935 the company was again forced into receivership, and with it went the city: a plaintive cry for help from the mayor to Dunn details the ordeal.
[12] This time, at the age of 61,[13] Dunn engineered a takeover so that he became the sole controlling shareholder thereby allowing him to take the tough but necessary reorganization measures to restore profitability to the steel maker.
The process, which had been established at Broken Hill Proprietary by Guillaume Daniel Delprat at the turn of the century because of a similar exhaustion, had been tried once or twice in the US but on ore quite different from that at the Victoria.
[17] During the Second World War, the company benefited from the huge demand for steel by the military; however, financial calls from his associates, who needed or wanted to liquidate positions as a result of the French collapse, bedeviled Dunn, who retained in the end his Algoma shares and nothing else.
Howe threatened Dunn on 26 October 1940 with effective expropriation under the War Measures Act and the National Resources Mobilization Act: the government might obtain control of "trading, exportation, importation, production and manufacture" works, and require him "to place [himself], [his] services and [his] property at the disposal of His Majesty in right of Canada, as may be deemed necessary or expedient for securing the public safety, the defence of Canada, the maintenance of public order, or the efficient prosecution of the war, or for maintaining supplies or services essential to the life of the community."
A letter to Churchill from Beaverbrook, who at the time was in the former's Ministry, was enough to secure the person and property of Dunn, but his health suffered ill effects, as presently will be related.
Unhappy over CSL's policy of prioritizing service to his steel mill's competition on the lower section of the Great Lakes, with backing from a Winnipeg, Manitoba businessman plus the Montreal publishing magnate, John Wilson McConnell, James Dunn quietly set about buying up shares of the shipping line.
The 1928 death of his daughter Mona Dunn from his first marriage sent him into a state of depression and for a time he thought about cutting back on his business activities and returning home to his native New Brunswick.
Anne Dunn grew up to be an artist, studying under Henry Moore and in Paris, France with Fernand Léger and at the Académie Julian.
[38] In commemoration of his birthday, in the same year, Lady Dunn privately published The Ballad of a Bathurst Boy: 1874-1956, a celebration of her late husband's life in verse.
[40] Lord Beaverbrook (Max Aitken) published in 1961 a detailed biography of his late friend, titled Courage: The Story of Sir James Dunn.
Dunn also left a very significant estate to his last wife who fulfilled his wishes and made numerous contributions to charitable, cultural, and educational works.
[44] As used here, the James Hamet Dunn legacy includes not only the bequests of his estate, but also significant charitable gifts that he made during his lifetime, and may no longer exist.
Two examples from his hometown suffice to demonstrate his essence: A number of foundations, buildings and academic Chairs bear (or bore) his name including: In addition, Sir James Dunn has been honoured with numerous buildings and institutions bearing his name such as: Sir James was a member of the committee that built and opened London's first public golf courses in Richmond Park, which were opened in 1923 and 1925.
