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T

he story of Douglas Lorne McGibbon is the story of the forgotten benefactor of Ste-Agathe and of tuberculosis treatment in Canada. D. Lorne McGibbon may well have given all he had to Ste. Agathe in his fight against the disease.

The McGibbons were Scottish immigrants who settled into farming in Cote de la Visitation (currently the Botanical Gardens) of Montreal in the 1820's. Lorne's father, Alexander, left the farm and set up a grocery store called the Italian Warehouse but he was subsequently called to arms during the Northwest Rebellion. He served as quartermaster to General Middleton before becoming Inspector of Indian Affairs. Lorne was born in Montreal on November 24, 1870, the eleventh of thirteen children. His mother was Harriet Davidson.

Lorne McGibbon graduated from Montreal High School four years after Mortimer Davis. He began his business career in insurance and coal in St. Paul, Minnesota but his first notable success came back in Medicine Hat in western Canada in the early 1890's. According to an article by Augustus Bridle in the Canadian Courier, July 1912, McGibbon began work there for a man named Tweed. Thanks to McGibbon's industry the trading company grew rapidly, but Mr. Tweed was unwilling to share in his new profits. As a result, McGibbon helped organise a competing firm, the Medicine Hat Trading Company.

While working in Medicine Hat he married Ethylwin Waldock of Woodstock Ontario. This marriage back east might have made it easier for his brother to lure the newlyweds back to Québec. In 1897 he became purchaser for Laurentide Paper in Grand'mère, Quebec. McGibbon's brother was legal council for the firm then run by Sir William Van Horne. In 1898 Lorne became General Manager. Van Horne was a mentor as much as his employer as McGibbon began his mercurial rise to head the Canada Rubber Company from which he formed Consolidated Rubber. He then began a series of acquisitions which included Ames Holden and McCready, A.E. Rea and Co., Consolidated Felts and Larose Consolidated Mining. He was considered one of the great 'consolidationists' in the early years of the century. The movement was a forerunner of the mergers and acquisitions period that occurred in the 1970's.

McGibbon was a tall, imposing man who drove himself beyond his limits. As a result, ill-health dogged his working life and dictated the kind of work he could do. In 1908 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and on February 19th was hospitalised in Saranac Lake, New York. There he came under the care of Dr. Hugh Kinghorn. During his stay at Saranac Lake he asked Dr. Kinghorn why he could not take the 'cure' in Canada: "Near Montreal. Ste-Agathe, for instance." Kinghorn responded by telling him that there was no sanitarium. J. Roddick Byers, a doctor from Sherbrooke who was also a patient in Saranac Lake, reported that McGibbon turned to him and said "Let's start one, Rod. You go up there and get some land. Get lots so that we can expand." Byers was being discharged the next day. "With his cheque in my pocket I took the train to Ste. Agathe the very next day," Dr. Byers recalled. He purchased 200 acres of land north of Ste. Agathe. The three men subsequently created the Laurentian Society and, with help from Dr. Trudeau of Saranac Lake, opened at the corner of Albert and Préfontaine Streets in 1908. In order to obtain the zoning changes they needed, they had to overcome reticence on the part of the town council of Ste. Agathe. TB was very contagious and many people had been arriving unannounced in Ste. Agathe to 'take the cure' causing a lot of concern on the part of the residents. McGibbon offered the whole council a week-long trip to Saranac Lake to see for themselves how beneficial the San would become, and, according to Dr. Grignon's Album historique de la Paroisse, the council consented upon its return. Subsequently McGibbon and his associates engaged Scopes and Feustman, Architects, to build the San on the large parcel of land they had secured. The best view of the original building is from rue des Ardoisés off rue Godon at the top of Albert Street. It currently houses the administrative centre for the hospital.

According to the records of the founding of the society, McGibbon contributed $50,000 of the initial $72,800. In a letter written to Dr. Learn Phelps, medical director of the Laurentian San in the 1950's, Dr. Byers wrote that McGibbon contributed $150,000 capital in the construction of the first hospital and that he (McGibbon) and Dr. Kinghorn picked up the annual deficit for some years thereafter.

In May 1909, a few months after his release from Saranac Lake, McGibbon acquired a farm on the shore of Lac des Sables from a past mayor of Montreal, R. Wilson Smith. He built Stonehaven and it became one of the best known of the greathouses of Ste. Agathe. It sat practically side by side with the stone mansion of Mortimer Davis with only the property of Lord Shaughnessy in between.

McGibbon is quoted in an article written about him in the Canadian Courier, July 1912, as saying that earning money was hardly the point of his working life. It was the game. Sadly, it was a game he was doomed to lose. In the 1920's his health failed again and he is said to have lost his mental health as well. The records show that in 1921 McGibbon put Stonehaven up as collateral to protect a bond issue that was due. According to local legend, he tried to sell the country property and when it became evident that his sale would not make him solvent, he responded in a dramatic and colourful way. Sometime in the mid-twenties Mr. McGibbon hosted the largest party ever held in Ste.Agathe. He was perhaps the only person who could get everyone to come to his party. He was loved and respected by all. According to Georges Lortie who attended the party as a child, everyone went: the municipal councillors, the second-home owners, the town families. There were fireworks on his lakefront peninsula and revelry and rejoicing. Who could refuse to attend the party of such a great benefactor? Only McGibbon knew that the coffers were empty.

When he died on the 20th of April 1927 his wife renounced his estate. The debts were greater than the assets. Even so, perhaps his spirit governed the title to Stonehaven as it found its way into the hands of the Oblate order: they used it as a cure centre for tuberculosis.

Thanks to Barbara McGibbon, Georges Lortie, Historic Saranac Lake, Album historique de la Paroisse de Ste-Agtahe, Centre hospitalier Laurentien and Marion Constantine at the Montreal Chest Institute.

Joseph Graham has written a book that features a select number of stories of Laurentian places and how they got their names. To learn more, click here.

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This material may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the author. © Joseph Graham