End of the Line. Don McIver

joined him, for he arranged her burial at St. David a short while before his own death. A brother, Martin, partnered his Niagara property development — but, curiously, was not listed as a director of the Zimmerman Bank, Samuel’s other Niagara initiative, which he appeared to run for his sole benefit.

      On his arrival in Canada, Zimmerman quickly found construction work on the Welland Canal and before long was bidding, with a partner James Oswald, for the job of rebuilding, in stone, several wooden locks in the region of Thorold. He and his partner were quickly recognized as effective organizers, tough masters who brooked no interruption of the work. His success brought a rising income and his natural acquisitive instincts led him, six years after his arrival, to begin making large land purchases on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Travels to England and the continent gave him a taste for fine living. His marriage in 1848 to Margaret Ann, daughter of wealthy Niagara-region businessman Richard Woodruff, perhaps gave him the incentive and improved means to acquire a residence truly reflective of his chosen lifestyle. The marriage, however, was short-lived. Margaret Ann died in 1851, after bearing two sons.

      By 1853 Zimmerman owned much of the property in the vicinity of the Falls and pushed the incorporation of the town under the name Elgin, to honour then-governor general, Lord Elgin, who had established his residence nearby. A few years later the town was expanded and renamed Clifton. Later it became the modern city of Niagara Falls, Ontario.

      There is no doubt that Zimmerman was the true father of Niagara Falls. In 1856 the Welland Herald claimed: “Perhaps no place in Canada has made such progress in so short a period of time, and I believe in few towns of the same population is there a greater circulation of ready money.” The development of the town typified the Zimmerman approach. Everything was done on a grand scale. Water and gas works were constructed and streets laid out — then he began selling lots. Having purchased Clifton House, a local landmark hotel, Zimmerman proceeded to renovate it so that by the time he was finished the dining room could accommodate three hundred and the ballroom no less than one thousand. The Herald reporter was able to gasp with unrestrained local pride: “A year or two past, we had one grocery store, now about fourteen or fifteen, with upwards of twenty saloons and hotels, some of these equal to any kept in large cities.”

      Just how lavish the scale on which Zimmerman lived and entertained was can be judged by a celebrated dinner he gave in honour of his friend, the newly appointed governor of Barbados, Francis Hincks. As inspector general of the Canadian union, it was Hincks who had shepherded the Municipal Loans Act through the legislature. By that act, municipalities were empowered to borrow from the province funds for subscribing to railways running through their districts. That opened up a vast pot of money, making many railway projects viable and offering generous pickings for influential and determined contractors. It was Hincks, too, as Canadian premier until his defeat in 1854, who had been the most influential member of the Board of Railway Commissioners that screened applications for charters. The dinner, given on October 31, 1855, at Clifton House, was one of the ways Zimmerman chose to express his appreciation to so dear a friend. Included in the three hundred-strong men-only dinner guest list were the then-premier, Sir Allan MacNab, and the man who, after Confederation, would become the country’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald.