George Brown


1818 - 1880

Politician and a founding father of the Confederation of Canada. Born in Alloa, Brown was raised in Edinburgh, where he was educated at the Royal High School. He emigrated with his family first to New York, where they established a textiles and haberdashery store and then an anglophile newspaper. Brown persuaded his father to move to Canada in 1843, where he felt such a newspaper would have more supporters. Here he founded the Toronto Globe in 1844. Brown was elected to the Colonial Parliament in 1857. As an Ontario politician, he favoured a federation of the British Colonies in North America and spoke against the French Canadians, developing the deep divisions which persist today. He died as the result of a gunshot inflicted by an embittered former employee, and was buried in Toronto Necropolis. His wife, Anne, returned to Scotland, where she died in Edinburgh in 1906. She lies buried in Dean Cemetery, where he is also commemorated.


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