Sir David Lewis Macpherson

Macpherson, Sir David Lewis

Sir David Lewis Macpherson, politician, businessman (b at Castle Leathers, near Inverness, Scot 12 Sept 1818; d at sea 16 Aug 1896). After a successful start in his elder brother's transportation firm, he combined his administrative skills with the engineering expertise of Casimir Gzowski in the early 1850s on a number of key construction projects, including the Grand Trunk Railway west of Toronto and the International Bridge across the Niagara River. Macpherson was elected to the legislative council in 1864 and appointed to the newly created Senate in 1867; he was a valuable Conservative organizer and fund-raiser in the province of Ontario. However, in the early 1870s, he withdrew his support of Macdonald over the granting of the Canadian Pacific Railway contract to the Montréal-based syndicate. He later resolved his differences with Macdonald and was appointed Speaker of the Senate in 1880 and minister of the Interior in 1883. His single-minded obsession with reducing costs and increasing revenues made him an excessively rigid administrator of the politically sensitive land policies in the North-West. The outbreak of the North-West Resistance in 1885 demonstrated his weaknesses and worsened his failing health, and lead to his resignation from public life.