George Stephen was the son of a carpenter and was born, in 1829, in Dufftown, Banffshire, Scotland. His youth was not rose-coloured. He was educated in the parish school (the world owes much to many an unknown school-teacher), served for a season as herd-laddie on the glebe at Mortlach, and then was sent to Aberdeen to learn the drapery business. One day a customer from Montreal noticed that the clerk signed his name “George Stephen,” and it turned out that the customer and clerk were cousins. As a result the young clerk was taken out to Montreal and showed such devotion to business and such capacity, that he became President of the great Bank of Montreal when he was a little over forty years of age. He was a man of a high sense of honour and of intense powers of concentration. He had public gifts and could speak well on political and other topics, but all through life he applied himself principally to business and the development of the country. Years afterwards, when the one-time “herd laddie” at Mortlach and draper’s apprentice had become a man of wealth and a peer of the realm, recognized amongst the foremost as a builder of the Empire, he was presented with the freedom of the city of Aberdeen. In his reply to the address of presentation, he shattered some modern theories as to the making of men by saying: “Any success I may have had in life is due in a great measure to the somewhat Spartan training I received during my Aberdeen apprenticeship, in which I entered as a boy of fifteen. I had but few wants and no distractions to draw me away from the work I had in hand. I soon discovered that if I ever accomplished anything in life it would be by pursuing my object with a persistent determination to attain it. I had neither the training nor the talents to accomplish anything without hard work, and, fortunately, I knew it.” All of which would be a good motto for every young lad to paste in his hat, so that he would see it frequently. It is well also to remember that Sir George made good use of the wealth he gained in later years by laborious effort. His benefactions were wide-spread, amongst them being the contribution of half-a-million, to go with a like amount from Lord Strathcona, into the establishment of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. And when Dr. Barclay retired from St. Paul’s Church in the same city, it was Lord Mount Stephen who supplemented the donations of others by a princely gift in bonds to the minister of his Montreal days.