Henry Morgan

Career

After apprenticing in a Scottish wholesale house, Henry Morgan came to Canada 1845 and opened a dry-goods store with David Starke Smith on Saint-Joseph Street (now Notre-Dame Street) in Montreal. (See also Immigration to Canada; Scottish Canadians.) When David Starke Smith retired in 1852 Morgan was joined by his brother James Morgan and the firm became Henry Morgan & Co. By 1874 the store employed 150 clerks with each department responsible for its own management, buying and overhead expenses. The business moved several times until in 1891 it found its final location in a large new building at the top of Beaver Hall Hill on Sainte-Catherine Street - a move regarded by the Montreal mercantile community as a commercial catastrophe and an unwelcome invasion of a select residential neighbourhood. Convinced that Montreal would expand northward from the waterfront, Morgan was vindicated when his competitors followed him to what would become Montreal's main shopping area.

Legacy

In the 1950s, branches of Morgan & Co. were opened in many large centres in Ontario and Quebec, and a Morgan continued to head the company until it merged with the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1960.