ManufacturerMacdonald Tobacco Company
Macdonald Tobacco Company
The Macdonald Tobacco Company (originally called "McDonald") was founded in 1858 in Montréal, Canada East (now Québec), Canada, by brothers William Christopher and Augustine McDonald. Their fledgling company achieved major success during the American Civil War, when the Union states were unable to directly receive tobacco from the secessionist Conferderate states. Tobacco from the Southern states was shipped by boat to McDonald's factory in Montréal, where they processed it into plug and chewing tobaccos, and shipped them to the tobacco-starved Northern states.
In 1866, Augustine McDonald was bought out by his brother, and the name of the company was changed to W. C. McDonald, Tobacco Merchants and Manufacturers. The company adopted a heart-shaped logo which appeared on their products, along with their slogan, "The Tobacco with a Heart". In 1876, McDonald moved into a newer factory in downtown Montréal. In 1898, W. C. McDonald was knighted by Queen Victoria; at that time, he changed the spelling of his name to 'Macdonald'. W. C. Macdonald was a major philantrophist, in part because he felt ashamed at having made his fortune through tobacco, and wished to put his money to uses which would benefit his fellow man. To this end, he contributed a lot of money to McGill University in Montréal, giving $13 million to endow a chair that would later contribute to funding the research by nuclear physicist Ernest Rutherford. Macdonald would go on to have no less than four buildings on the McGill campus named after him, as well as Macdonald Park, on which Molson Stadium, McConnell Arena, and several other buildings were built.
Macdonald died a bachelor in 1917, and bequeathed his company to Walter and Howard Stewart, who worked for him as clerks and were the sons of his trusted manager David Stewart. Walter would become president of the company after Macdonald's death, and he would begin to branch the company out into the manufacture of fine-cut tobacco and cigarettes, which Macdonald had eschewed.
