Item 0012 - Letter, 7 May 1881

William Weir was born on October 28, 1823, in Angus, Scotland.

He was a businessman, newspaper publisher, and author. He was educated in Scotland, and in 1842, he moved to Canada to live with an uncle, a brewer and distiller in Lachute, Quebec. He taught in nearby Chatham Township and then moved to Saint-Laurent, where he worked as a bookkeeper. In 1847, Weir established himself as a commission merchant in Montreal. He became an exchange broker in 1849 and then a salesman of leather goods in 1852. In 1857, he left for Toronto and published the Canadian Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review. When the magazines discontinued in 1859, Weir returned to Montreal and re-established himself as a broker. In the mid-1880s, he formed a firm W. Weir and Sons, which functioned until 1899. Weir served as Secretary of both the Association for the Promotion of Canadian Industry and the Tariff Board Reform Association. He was also a Government Agent for the Exportation of American Silver Coin. As a result of the closing of his private Banque Ville-Marie in 1899, he was convicted and sentenced to two years in jail. In 1903, he published the account of his life, "Sixty Years in Canada.”

In 1849, he married Elizabeth Somerville (1831–1896), and in 1903, he remarried Eunice Clark Barnes Scoville (1829–1919). He died on March 25, 1905, in Ottawa, Ontario.