THE BEAVER INSURANCE COMPANY.
In 1860, soon after my return to Toronto, I was asked by my old friend
and former partner, Mr. Henry Rowsell, to take charge of the Beaver
Mutual Fire Insurance Company, which had been organized a year or two
before by W. H. Smith, author of a work called "Canada--Past, Present,
and Future," and a Canadian Gazetteer. Of this company I became managing
director, and continued to conduct it until the year 1876, when it was
legislated out of existence by the Mackenzie government. I do not
propose to inflict upon my readers any details respecting its operations
or fortunes, except in so far as they were matters of public history.
Suffice it here to say, that I assumed its charge with two hundred
members or policy holders; that, up to the spring of 1876, it had issued
seventy-four thousand policies, and that not a just claim remained
unsatisfied. Its annual income amounted to a hundred and fifty thousand
dollars, and its agencies numbered a hundred. That so powerful an
organization should have to succumb to hostile influences, is a striking
example of the ups and downs of fortune.