The Consummate Canadian. Mary Willan Mason

      Charles Wilfred Paul, orn 1900, pictured circa 1925 in New York City.

      In June of 1926, a damaging story concerning Sam made the front page of the London Free Press. “HOLD-UP IS CHARGED IN HOTEL SITE” trumpeted the paper. Sam had acted as Trustee in an Indenture of Mortgage dated October 1920 and duly registered in London, made to him by the Benson Hines Company Limited securing the sum of $50,000 with interest, trustee’s compensation and costs against the lands. The committee for the Lloyd George Hotel Site on Richmond Street refused to pay what in Sam’s opinion and what in fact was the cost of administration of the mortgage over six years. The Free Press thundered in bold face type, “Demand for what is alleged ‘handout’ bar to million dollar proposition…Hotel committee refuses to make ‘donation’ on grounds of moral right.”

      Sam sued the London Free Press for $10,000 libel claiming damages and costs. By September of 1927, the case was settled with an apology to Sam in the Free Press and $50.00 for Sam’s costs. Sam claimed that the story libelled him and damaged his reputation. He had retained John McEvoy of Toronto to represent him, showing his distrust of the legal fraternity in London. Sam was sure that somehow there had been a misrepresentation tipoff by person or persons unknown. He wrote to the editor demanding to know the source of the story, but was unsuccessful. His notation at the bottom of the docket with its angry initials, so angry that the pen almost sliced through the paper, gives evidence that Sam felt there had been backbiting envy and a vicious attempt to discredit him. That there was some justification for Sam’s thinking can be appreciated when it is remembered that to many of his contemporaries he was still ‘Little Monkey,’ the boy who had come to school in tattered clothing, the upstart young lawyer without a bachelor’s degree who was making a habit of winning his cases. It had been someone’s delight to spread the rumours that Sam’s father had been the town dog catcher and that his mother was half red Indian, both of course untrue and viciously meant to discredit him in the environment of a small Ontario town’s attitude in the twenties and thirties.

      Sam and John McEvoy, later the distinguished judge, had come to know each other the year before when they both acted for a Mr. Brownlee, plaintiff, in a suit brought against a Mr. Zinn. Zinn’s automobile had collided with Brownlee’s horse drawn waggon and Brownlee subsequently died of his injuries. The fate of the horse is not recorded.

      While on one of his many business travels, Son of the Pioneers, a painting by Marc Aurele de Foy Suzor-Cote (1869-1937) caught Sam’s eye and he bought it forthwith. He immediately wrote to Suzor-Cote and the letter was answered by Suzor-Cote’s brother who handled his brother’s affairs while the artist was living in France. A close relationship developed over the years, first with the brother, then with Suzor-Cote’s widow. Sam, by now a collector in the truest sense of the word, conceived the idea of acquiring an example of each one of Suzor-Coté’s bronzes, a project in which he almost succeeded. Naturally a relationship with Roman Bronze Casting of New York developed on very cordial terms. Roman Bronze had a contract with the Suzor-Cote family to make all of the artist’s castings.

      Sam’s clients often complained of overly lengthy waits to get their work done. His somewhat jaunty replies were usually to the effect that he had been or was about to go on holiday. Sometimes he blamed illnesses and chest problems, and it is true that pneumonia and flu attacks did bother him frequently. However, procrastination was a habit which would aggravate clients and sully his reputation as a brilliant advocate, although his meticulous thoroughness in preparation and attention to detail would win the day in the end. As well as making himself an expert of outstanding ability in the legal side of obtaining mortgages, Sam’s natural bent for doing everything with the uttermost thoroughness led him into the adjacent field of the legal aspects of home building. By 1927, he had built the last house on the property acquired from his father, at profit to himself. London had grown and there were no more cows in the back garden.

      Sam was also instrumental in forming Canadian Mortgage Investment Trust with Wilbur F. Howell as President, three other directors and himself as Secretary-Treasurer. Even though his reputation as an able counsel in mortgage and insurance matters and as a winner in various court cases was growing, there was no acceptance of him in London society. Because of insensitive treatment he had received earlier, social acceptance assumed an importance for him that was to become an obsession and a source of great bitterness. He had bested some of London’s legal scions in court and that would never do. Becoming wealthy and thumbing his nose at the town’s social set was his answer to the snubs.

      Always with a keen sense of where to invest, Sam formed London Home Builders, the first housing development in the city and became its secretary in the boom days of early 1929. Wilbur was also on the board and the head office was located in New York City, presumably with the intention of attracting American capital. From 1929 until 1940, Sam caused his name to be put on every law list he thought germane to his area of expertise, British, Irish and American.

      Early in his career he had been invited to join a law firm in Baltimore as a partner, but declined with regret. He could not take his parents along and he felt he could not leave them alone. His practice was going well in 1930, even with the onslaught of the Depression and he very prudently invested whatever he could spare in United States securities, although there was always something left over for his growing art collection. Many of his mortgages were foreclosed in the dark days of early 1930, but nevertheless Sam always seemed to come out on top.

      As has been noted, even from childhood Sam had a deep love for beautiful flowers and shrubbery. Characteristically he read widely and informed himself in the study of horticulture and botany. It was to be typical of Sam’s way of getting exactly what he wanted that, when he decided to have a showy bed of iris in the garden, he contacted the two best known firms in Paris, France, the world leaders of the iris trade, and ordered a total of seventy five rhizomes, specifying in great detail the specimens that he wished. It was in the last year of prosperity, 1928, prior to the stock market crash, that Sam began to order flower stocks in profusion.

      Two significant works of art were added to the collection in 1930. Laurentian Landscape by Franz Johnston was bought by Sam at an auction at Waddington’s in Toronto for $21.00 and Canada West was acquired from a London dealer, who subsequently was asked to look out for legal portraits, an embellishment Sam probably had in mind for his office.