Sir James Dunn

Sir James Hamet Dunn, 1st Baronet (October 29, 1874 – January 1, 1956) was a Canadian financier and industrialist during the first half of the 20th century. He is recognized chiefly for his 1935 rescue and subsequent 20-year presidency and proprietorship of Algoma Steel.

Dunn was born in the village of St. Peter's, now amalgamated into Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada. His father owned a shipbuilding company whose fortunes had been all but wiped out by the sharp decline in the demand for wooden ships, and died when he fell into the harbour when James was an infant. His widowed mother, who was a particularly devout member of St. Luke's Presbyterian church, raised him on her meager earnings as a telegraph clerk. The bereft family also had help from the Fergusons, owners of a large farm, where his mother exchanged household duties for room and board. In his post-humous biography, boyhood and lifelong friend Beaverbrook remarks on Dunn's exposure to the Shorter Catechism and the creed of John Knox through his mother's devotion. Specifically, Beaverbrook mentions the responses to Questions 74 and 75 as formative influences on the young Dunn.

From childhood, James Dunn was a voracious reader with an excellent memory. After completing his schooling, he left home to find employment and for a time he worked as a deckhand for an American shipping company on Lake Michigan. After this, he made his way to the east coast where he was employed by a manufacturing company in Lynn, Massachusetts. However, before long he returned home where a job as a clerk at the law firm of George Gilbert, where he worked alongside Richard Bedford Bennett, led him to the decision to apply to Dalhousie University Law School in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The small amount of money he had been able to save was not nearly enough to cover his education costs and Dunn worked at a variety of part-time jobs to pay his way through university, including a position in the university library. He graduated in 1898, then worked as a lawyer in Halifax before setting up a law practice in Edmonton, Alberta. Within a short time, Dunn was drawn to the booming economy of Montreal, Quebec where he landed a position with one of the city's prominent law firms.

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