Donald Smith (AKA Lord Strathcona) was born in Forres in 1820. He was an able pupil at the local school, the Anderson Institute. In 1838 Donald sailed from Aberdeen to London and thence to Canada, where he had a letter of introduction to Edward Ellice, head of the powerful Hudson’s Bay Company. Donald’s uncle John Stuart had been a trader in Canada, and had arranged his passage. Smith never forgot Forres, and in 1892 provided £9,000 for the building of Leanchoil Hospital in the town. He was given the freedom of the burgh in 1900.

Smith was appointed to Labrador, the bleakest of all the bleak Hudson’s Bay Company outposts, with temperatures of minus 50 in winter and swarms of mosquitoes and black flies in summer. His work involved trading with native peoples and trappers for pelts and furs. Smith recorded that he was’ apprenticed to counting rats’ tails’. At each posting he collected savings from fellow workers, gave them three per cent guaranteed return, and invested their savings at a much higher rate. After 30 years in the Company, when he took only one holiday home in 1864, his hard work paid off and he was appointed Chief Factor in 1868. It could not have been at a better time.

At this period the British and their supporters in Canada were increasingly worried about the growing power of the United States, whose Civil War had just ended. Relations between the British Canadian territories and the USA were traditionally bad and many feared, with good reason, that the newly emerging power to the south was intent on expanding northwards to link up with its Alaskan territory, incorporating Canadian and unclaimed land on the way.