James Reid was born in 1769 in Scotland and died in 1848. He came to Canada around 1788. In 1808, he married Elizabeth McGillivray, the sister of William McGillivray, and two years later, purchased a large property situated in the Faubourg, in Montreal. Reid was called to the bar of Lower Canada in 1794 and was appointed a judge of the Court of King’s Bench in Montreal in 1807. He became a Chief Justice by 1825 and was an active member of the Executive Council in 1838 for a few months, before he resigned from the bench. Reid handled many of the North West Company’s contractual and litigation matters.