Charles Colquhoun Ballantyne (1867-1950)

He was born at Colquhoun, Dundas County, Ontario. From humble beginnings, he left school at age fourteen and went to Montreal where he found work to put himself through commercial college. A few years later, he entered the paint and varnish business in which he remained for the rest of his career. By 1901, he was Sales Manager of the Sherwin-Williams Paints Company in Canada (the parent company was based in Cleveland, Ohio) and that year made an opportune marriage to Ethel Maude Trenholm who was fifteen years his junior and a daughter of the founder of the Elmhurst Dairy, Montreal. Through her family's influence, he became Mayor of Montreal West (1903) and this led to him being appointed a member of the Montreal Harbour Board which he successfully reorganized so that by 1917 he was hailed as its "saviour". He was appointed President of the Canadian Manufacturer's Association (1906) and was soon to become a millionaire as President (from 1912) of Sherwin-Williams of Canada; Vice-President and General Manager of Canadian Explosives (that became the chemical manufacturing giant Canadian Industries Ltd.); and, President of Canada Cement.

In 1916, two years into World War I and in stark contrast to men such as fellow Montrealer Hamilton Gault, the Canadian Grenadier Guards persuaded Ballantyne - a provisional Lieutenant in the militia with no firsthand military experience - to take command of the 245th Battalion. His contribution of $30,000 financed the recruitment campaign but the results were decidedly underwhelming and "public meetings were absolute failures". After canvassing 5,000 eligible men, 1,200 agreed to undergo a medical exam but only 490 signed up. By the time Ballantyne embarked for England (1917) as Lt.-Colonel of the 245th, the battalion was comprised of just 259-men when a full battalion at that period should have consisted of just over a thousand. On its arrival, the pitifully small unit was broken up and the intensely ambitious Ballantyne now found himself as just another one of the several hundred unemployed senior officers afloat in London.

Humiliated, he returned to Canada in 1917 when the Minister of the Militia found him, "one of the most (angry) men I ever met". Heading to Ottawa, his political lobbying paid off when he was appointed Minister of Marine and Fisheries in the Borden government and before the year was out he was elected to Parliament as a Unionist. Perhaps exacerbated by his experience with the 245th, Ballantyne vehemently supported conscription without exemption and in 1918 threw his weight behind the government's decision to invoke the Military Service Act, forcing 404,385 men to be liable for military service from which 385,510 sought exemption. The vast majority of those who sought exemption were French-Canadians who felt allegiance to neither Britain nor France, only to Canada, and were deeply uncomfortable fighting under officers who spoke a language they didn't understand. The ensuing riots ended with five civilians dead as the soldiers were ordered to open fire on the crowds - a tipping point that brought about a mistrust in government and the bitter rift between the new Anglo elite and working class Quebecois.

As Minister of Marine, a major part of Ballantyne's remit was to drive forward the existing initiative to create a Canadian merchant naval fleet. The ships were built but it became immediately obvious that they had failed to further Canadian interests, demonstrating Ballantyne's lack of "sea sense". Kenneth S. Mackenzie put it that, "the perhaps cynical conclusion (was) that he (Ballantyne) may have been more interested in shipbuilding than in any other aspect of the fleet. After all, the project at its peak employed about twenty-five thousand men in his Montreal riding alone (St. Lawrence-St. George), in a shipyard he had been instrumental in bringing to the city" - a move that created "bitter resentment" among the shipyard workers in Vancouver and Halifax, and led them to strike in the summer of 1920. The Halifax Herald lambasted Ballantyne: "For (him) to establish himself an enthusiastic propagandist for Montreal, and no less at the expense of breaking promises, is an embarrassing situation for a minister of the Crown, responsible to all the people (of Canada), and not to interested citizens in Montreal only". 

During the same period (1917-1921), after the respected Harbour Pilot, Francis Mackey, was found by Judge Russell to have been falsely imprisoned over the Halifax Explosion (1917), Ballantyne then repeatedly and steadfastly refused to restore Mackey's pilot license, illegally turning down, "every application that was made by Mackey, his lawyers, the shipping community, and the other pilots to get him restored to service. Usually, he didn't even bother to answer or give his reasons why, it was just no, no, and no". Ballantyne preferred to keep Mackey as the scapegoat for the disaster to protect his own political career and that of Prime Minister Borden who was also the city's M.P. While Ballantyne spent $40,000 just on his re-election campaign, Mackey exhausted all his meagre savings vainly trying to win back his $1,700/year job to support his wife (who died in 1924 due to the stress) and six children. Mackey's story is told by Janet Maybee in her book: "Aftershock - The Halifax Explosion and the Persecution of Pilot Francis Mackey". 

Despite the $40,000 he spent on his re-election campaign, Ballantyne suffered an embarrassing electoral defeat in 1921 that saw him lose all his political appointments and almost certainly cost him the knighthood he might otherwise have coveted. But, he was returned to politics in 1932 when the Conservative Prime Minister R.B. Bennett appointed him to the Senate, a position he held until his death in 1950. From 1942 to 1945 he was the Senate's Leader of the Opposition. He lived with his wife and three children between 3484 Mountain Street in Montreal; his country home in Dorval at 2 Terrasse Ballantyne (now known as the Maison Jacques Lepage dit Roy); his 200-acre farm at Chesterville in Dundas County; and; a summer home "Bellenden" on Cedar Lane in St. Andrews, N.B. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not open any of his homes to injured soldiers returning from the trenches in Europe, nor did he lend himself to any philanthropic acts.