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Manitobans Who Made a Difference

(Courtesy of the Archives of Manitoba)

Businessman, real estate speculator, and politician James Ashdown established a retail and wholesale hardware empire with a chain of stores across Western Canada. Often described as a thoroughly self-made man, and as Winnipeg's "Merchant Prince" and "first citizen", he was one of the pre-eminent members of the English-speaking, Protestant commercial elite of Winnipeg in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and was identified as one of the city's famous "nineteen millionaires" in 1910.

Ashdown was born in London, England, and came to Canada West (after 1867, Ontario), with his parents, William and Jane (Watling) Ashdown, at the age of eight. After working in his father's store and on the family farm, he apprenticed for three years to tinsmith and hardware merchant John Zryd in Hespeler, Canada West, and then went to work in Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas. In 1868, after a 19-day walk from St. Cloud, Minnesota, Ashdown arrived in the Red River Settlement. The following year, he bought out the local tinsmith, George Moser. During the Red River Resistance of 1869-70, Ashdown was one of John Christian Schultz's "Canadian Party" "citizen guards" and was imprisoned from December, 1869, to March, 1870, by Louis Riel's Provisional Government.

After two temporary locations, in 1871 Ashdown relocated his small hardware store, "James H. Ashdown Hardware Merchant and Tinsmith", to the northwest corner of what became Bannatyne Avenue and Main Street in Winnipeg. By 1875 Ashdown had begun to do some large contract work and his wholesale trade had so increased that he established two separate businesses, one retail and one wholesale. By 1881, he was worth over $150,000, had established branch stores at Portage la Prairie and Emerson, and was employing more than 75 people in his three divisions, including manufacturing.

Ashdown married Elizabeth Allen of Portage la Prairie in 1872. Following her death in 1873, he married Susan Crowson of Winnipeg in 1876, and they had three daughters and a son. Ashdown constructed a large house in the Point Douglas area of Winnipeg in 1877-78 and built a second warehouse in the city in 1896. He also sent out hardware trains to serve areas that did not have hardware stores. His top quality products soon made him a household name. Ashdown's company was the dominant force in wholesale hardware in Western Canada, with branches in Saskatoon, Calgary, and Nelson, supplying individual merchants with goods until the rise of department store chains and mail order businesses.

Ashdown, appointed a Justice of the Peace for Manitoba in 1871, was chairman of the committee in 1873 which obtained Winnipeg's incorporation as a city in 1874. Opposed to a steamboat monopoly on the Red River, in the 1870s he helped to organize the competing Merchants' Line. A founding member of the Winnipeg Board of Trade 1879, Ashdown sat on its council for 40 years, and as its president in 1887, successfully fought against the Canadian Pacific Railway monopoly and the federal disallowance of competing provincially chartered railways. Ashdown served as a Winnipeg alderman (1874, 1879), school trustee, mayor (1907, 1908; the latter year he was elected by acclamation) and chairman of the Greater Winnipeg Water District Board. He was a proponent of Winnipeg School Division adult evening classes. Originally a supporter of the Conservative Party in politics, he switched to the Liberal Party. Ashdown was defeated seeking a seat in the House of Commons as the Liberal candidate for Winnipeg in the federal election of 1911.

In addition to being president of the J.H. Ashdown Company, Limited (the combined retail and wholesale business was incorporated in 1902), Ashdown was an officer, director, chairman, or president of several financial companies, including the Great-West Life Assurance Company, the Bank of Montreal, the Northern Crown Bank, the Northern Trust Company, the Northern Mortgage Company, the Indemnity Exchange, and the Canadian Fire Insurance Company, and of various religious, educational, health, and social welfare organizations. Greatly influenced by the Methodist missionary efforts of his friends, Reverend and Mrs. George Young, Ashdown left the Anglican Church in the 1870s. A member of the board of directors of Grace Methodist Church for several decades, Ashdown was one of the founders of Wesley College (later United College, now the University of Winnipeg) and was a member of its board of governors. He was a Mason, and a member of Winnipeg's Canadian, Commercial, and Manitoba clubs. Ashdown also participated in the meetings and discussions of the Historical and Scientific Society of Manitoba.

When he died, Ashdown left substantial endowments to several educational, religious, medical, and charitable institutions in Winnipeg. His funeral was held in Broadway Methodist Church, of which he was a charter member and trustee, and Ashdown was buried in the cemetery of St. John's Anglican Cathedral in the Manitoba capital. Today, his former palatial home in Crescentwood (now a restaurant), store (now a multi-purpose office building),and second warehouse (now condominium apartments), are recognized heritage buildings in Winnipeg.