David Ross McCord - A Portrait

• Birth

  In Montreal, in 1844.
  
  

• Background

  Irish. The McCord family, merchants and jurists for several generations, settled in Canada around 1760.
  
  

• Family

  Wealthy, cultivated, bilingual and open to the winds of social reform that were sweeping through 19th-century Montreal. His father, a jurist, was keenly interested in science and meteorology. His mother, a talented watercolourist, was an art-lover.
  
  

• Education

  Trained as a lawyer. Although not a professional historian, D. R. McCord possessed a wide knowledge of history: he read and critiqued everything published about the country's past. He was also an expert on Canada's material culture.
  
  

• Profession

  Lawyer, negotiator for aboriginal groups, magistrate.
  
  

• Dream

  To forge links between his country's various cultures.
  
  

• Favourite quotes

  "What we have loved, others will love, and we will teach them how" (William Wordsworth). "Where there is no vision, the people perish" (The Bible, Proverbs 29:18).
  
  

• Passion

  Collecting anything related to the history of Montreal, Quebec and Canada, from a diversity of realms: domestic, urban, religious, artistic, political, aboriginal...
  
  

• Life's work

  The McCord Museum, founded following the donation of his personal collection (15,000 objects).
  
  

• Death

  In Guelph (Ontario), in 1930.