Sydney Robert Bellingham

Sydney Robert Bellingham (August 2, 1808 – March 9, 1900) was an Anglo-Irish businessman, lawyer, journalist, military and political figure in Canada East.

By 1824, Sir Alan Bellingham had run into financial difficulties and leaving his family in Ireland, he fled his debtors to France, taking up residence at Châtillon-sur-Loire.

Arriving in Quebec, he travelled widely throughout Upper Canada until 1827 when he took a job in the timber business at Montreal under another Anglo-Irishman, the brother of George Hamilton.

A few months before his marriage, he started an import-export business with his friend James Wallis (1807–1893), formerly of Drishane Castle, County Cork, who had settled at Fenelon Falls.

During the Lower Canada Rebellion, Bellingham served as a captain with the Royal Montreal Cavalry and the aide-de-camp to Lt.-Col. George Augustus Wetherall.

He studied law with Alexander Buchanan, and was called to the Lower Canadian bar in 1840, entering into practice with William Walker at Montreal.

In 1853, he bought a tract of land on the north brow of Mount Royal overlooking Montreal, where he and his wife made their home, Dunany Cottage, named for the house in which he grew up at Castlebellingham.

In 1877, he was appointed president of the Lovell Publishing Company of Montreal, but the following year he and his wife returned to Ireland to take up residence at his ancestral home, Castle Bellingham, which he had inherited in 1874 after the deaths of his elder brothers.