Sir Rodolphe Forget (1861-1919)

He was born and educated at Terrebonne, Quebec. He became a stockbroker working alongside his uncle, Louis-Joseph Forget, in Montreal's largest firm that became known as Forget & Forget after he was made partner in 1890. In 1901, when President of the Royal Electric Company, he approached Sir Herbert Holt to merge with the Montreal Gas Company, creating the Montreal Light, Heat & Power Company and monopolizing the supply of gas and electricity to Montreal until 1944. Forget was Vice-President and the majority owner while Holt served as President. In the same way, he worked with J.W. McConnell to finance the Quebec Railway, Light, Heat & Power Company that he established with J.N. Greenshields. He owned the Toronto Railway Company, co-founded Canada Cement with Max Aitken, and was President of the Manoir Richelieu Hotel (built by his uncle) at Pointe-au-Pic in the Charlevoix. He served two terms as President of the Montreal Stock Exchange and was the Conservative M.P. for Charlevoix in 1904 and Montmorency in 1911, representing both constituencies until 1917.

Still today, Forget manages to get away with being described as, at worst, "controversial". Aside from using politics for his own financial gain and ruthlessly holding the Quebec populace to ransom by driving up prices in the Depression for their electricity and gas, L'Action outwardly called him out as a "crook" who would, "end up completely ruining Canadian credit in France". He was charged with fraud in a French court after establishing the Banque Internationale du Canada (BIC) in Paris only to float it to provide capital for his own Canadian ventures. The incident saw him pocket $10-million while for the French shareholders (who owned 80% of the stock) the result was "disastrous". In 1911, La Liberté of Paris published "a furious article" against Forget and his enterprises, accusing him of stealing FF60-million, and when the French sent out investigators to Montreal they were physically barred from the director's meeting. The scandal also revealed that the BIC pursued illicit activities that it covered up by falsifying returns to the Federal government, but far from tarnishing Forget in Canada, the Conservative government gave him a seat on their Banking and Commerce Committee that was supposed to uphold Canadian financial morality. Prime Minister Borden did state that, "for certain reasons, I thought it undesirable that he should enter the Government," and so gave him a knighthood instead.
 
He had one daughter by his first marriage and four children by his second. The family lived between their 40-room townhouse at 67 Ontario Avenue (now 3685 Avenue du Musée), Montreal, and "Gil'Mont" at Saint-Irénée-Les-Bains, Quebec (see images).