Simon McTavish (born c.1750 - died July 6, 1804) was a Scots-Quebecer entrepreneur and the pre-eminent businessman in Canada during the second half of the 18th century.

Born in Stratherrick , Inverness-shire, a remote area of the Scottish Highlands, his father had served with a Scottish unit fighting the French and Indian War in what was then British North America. From a poor family in an impoverished region, McTavish's opportunities were limited under the best of circumstances. However, the turmoil brought on by the Highland Clearances led to Simon McTavish leaving his homeland at the age of thirteen in search of a better life in New York City. Once there, he began an apprenticeship with a local merchant and learned the fur trading business. By 1773 he was actively involved in the industry, living at an outpost in Detroit.

Over the next few years, McTavish prospered in the trading of furs and around the time of the American Revolutionary War, the unmarried and therefore easily mobile twenty-five-year-old chose to move to Montreal, Canada. While he may have been a British Loyalist, his decision was likely motivated by economics rather than any high ideals. Under the French colonial empire, business had been tightly controlled by the social and political system of the Ancien Régime. As a result, Montreal was still a small town of a few thousand people but was situated close enough to the all-important New York city market. McTavish understood that in Canada he might have access to fur pelts that were found in much greater quantity and were of better quality in the colder climate north of the Great Lakes. Although at the time the Hudson's Bay Company controlled the prime north-westerly areas for fur trapping, there was still a relatively lucrative route from Montreal westward via the Ottawa River and out across Georgian Bay and the Great Lakes Region and into Manitoba. As such, with the capital he had managed to accumulate, Simon McTavish was able to put together a group of business investors and trapper/explorers to create the North West Company. With the Frobisher brothers he owned 37.5% of the company's shares and upon the death of Benjamin Frobisher in 1787 McTavish became the man in charge of the business. A restructuring of the company a few months later saw the shrewd McTavish gain control of eleven of the company's twenty shares. From his headquarters in Montreal, over the next sixteen years he built a business empire that stretched from the Labrador coast to the Rocky Mountains and in the process made himself a wealthy man.

In October 1793 Simon McTavish married Marie-Marguerite Chaboillez, daughter of an established French Trader. The couple had four children, all of whom died in their twenties.

In 1799, McTavish did something that gave him great personal satisfaction: the acquisition of the Dunardary estate in North Knapdale , Argyll, Scotland which had been the ancestral home for the heads of the McTavish (MacTavish) clan for several hundred years. Around 1718, a number of the McTavish clan left Dunardary and settled in Stratherrick where Simon McTavish was born.

As an astute businessman with great vision, McTavish recognized the need for industrialization of Montreal and that need presented opportunities to make more money. In 1802 he purchased the seigneury of Terrebonne where he built two modern flour-mills and a bakery and established a sawmill, encouraging other entrepreneurs to begin the manufacturing of wooden barrels.

Simon McTavish died in Montreal in 1804. In his will he bequeathed funds to a number of people as well as the Hôpital Hôtel-Dieu de Montreal and the Montreal General Hospital . McTavish Street, bordering the westerly side of McGill University was named in his honor.

External links

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online