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The Canadian Navigation Company (1861-1875) WALTER LEWIS Although, in essence, Great Lakes shipping was and is the story of business, very few of its histories have seriously examined it as such. The few serious studies of steamboat operations on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes have tended to focus on one principal element, the capitalist. In tune with recent trends in business biography these ex plore the social and ethnic origins of the entrepreneurs, their political associations, their patterns of investment and, in some instances, the management of their steam boat affairs,1 This bias towards the entrepreneurs, to which Tulchinsky's analysis of the origins of the Richelieu Company is an exception, reflects the highly individu alized ownership pattern which characterized much of the prerailroad period. But they rarely provide insights into the patterns of entrepreneurial interaction, and they end too soon to discuss the impact of the railway on marine activity and the response to this threat. At the same time, the Canadian Navigation Company was a pioneer in the development of the joint stock com pany on Canada's inland waters. While on one hand a business threat, the railways of the 1850s were part of what some have called a `managerial revolution,' the takeover of the operations of the business firm by professional managers who had little stake in the ownership of the company.2 This transition was facilitated by a change in government's attitude towards the incorporation of business firms.3 Businessmen like Hugh Allan of Montreal quickly took advantage of the privileges of limited liability to invest in a broad range of incorporated business firms.4 Throughout its brief history, the Canadian Navigation Company confronted railway competition. Its principal route stretched from Montreal to Hamilton, parallel to the Grand Trunk Railway and the Toronto and Hamilton branch of the Great Western, Until the completion of the Grand Trunk Railway in 1857 the steamers on this route had carried the Royal Mail, and as the Mail Line it would continue to be known until late into the century. At the same time, the Canadian Navigation Company was a response to a specific opportunity, the bankruptcy of the Hon. John Hamilton. Since 1825, when he purchased the Frontenac at a Kingston auction, Hamilton had been a major figure in the steam navigation of Lake Ontario and the upper St. Lawrence. At his own risk and in co operation with others he had managed the region's lines from the awarding of the first mail contracts. But four years of competition with the Grand Trunk, coupled with a sharp and prolonged econom ic depression, had bankrupted him. Now his assignees, a group which, sur prisingly, included his son Clarke, were faced with the responsibility of disposing of his steamboats . 5 It would be wrong to label the collapse of John Hamilton's business interests a classic tragedy, with the pro tagonist succumbing in the end to the overwhelming power of the forces aligned against him. The finality implicit in such an interpretation would be a dangerous oversimplification. Indeed, the elements of continuity are striking In 1861 and for years thereafter the same personnel ran the same fleet on the same routes. Despite the startling news of Hamilton's insolvency, some cautious optimism seemed justified in the spring of 1861. Other steamboat proprietors were finding solutions to the problems which had beset them over the previous few years. The Ontario Steamboat Company was repair ing its aging steamboats rather than replacing them.6 This strategy succeeded because its American rival had gone out of business.7 A few, like Capt, Thomas Dick, were shifting their steamboat investments out of the lower Lakes and away from their railway competitors.8 For those remaining in the lower lake and upper St. Lawrence a new market was emerging: the excursion and `pic-nic' trades. In the maturing Upper Canadian economy, twenty years after the development of the New York-centred `Northern Tour' a similar phenomenon was appearing The Canadian objectives were the bathing beaches of the lower St. Lawrence and the sporting grounds of the Saguenay River. 9 Not only was the passenger trade resurgent by 4