Alexander Cameron (1827-1893)

He was born in Ireland, the son of a soldier in the 79th Highlanders who settled in Upper Canada after being discharged. He supported himself to pay for his education and was quickly noticed as a clever and driven individual. He became a lawyer and started to show interest in politics almost as quickly as he came to dislike it. He made a fortune of $1.5 million through land speculation in Upper Canada, though when he died he left just $700,000. His second wife, Kate, was the widow of Detroit's first millionaire and through her he was the stepfather of the eccentric Princess de Chimay. Initially they lived in Windsor but his wife grew fed up with small town life and so in an effort to placate her they moved to Toronto in the 1880s. That too proved too dull for Kate and for the last few years of his life she lived in Paris while he remained in Toronto where he was a frequent guest of Goldwin Smith's at The Grange.