[2] At the age of fifteen, a fall from a horse severely injured his spine and gave a shock to his nervous system from which he never completely recovered.

Until the family left for Montreal and it became clear he would have to earn his own living, he passed his time in the countryside, fishing, shooting, and hunting rabbits with his ferrets.

[3] His popular father had been the most prosperous merchant at Strabane, controlling a large proportion of the general business of two or three Northern Irish counties.

For the first few years, Gault and his younger siblings were sustained by the sale of family properties in Ireland, although further heavy losses were incurred when the savings bank where they kept most parts of their money failed.

Many of the investors in the syndicate which controlled the society were to remain associated with Gault in other enterprises; they comprised a cross-section of Montreal merchants, bankers, and industrialists.

He was the warden of Christ Church Cathedral for four years and played a significant role in collecting the $44,000 to wipe off the debt on the building subscription.

They were the parents of sixteen children, eleven of whom lived to adulthood: In 1881, Matthew Hamilton Gault, then a prosperous businessman and Member of Parliament, remitted to the Belfast Banking Company (Ireland) the sum of £156.5.0.

The Directors consider an act so honourable and unusual deserves more than a formal acknowledgement of the receipt of the money and have much pleasure in assuring you that they appreciate your action in the highest degree as an evidence that there exists in your community a principle of honesty which is not satisfied by the discharge of one's own obligations but embraces also those of others which only in exceptional circumstances continue to be even morally binding.