Donald Smith, known to most Canadians as Lord Strathcona, was an adventurer who made his fortune building railroads. He joined the Hudson's Bay Company at age eighteen and went on to build the first railway to open the Canadian Northwest to settlement. As his crowning achievement, he drove the last spike for the nation-building Canadian Pacific Railway.
Donald Smith, known to most Canadians as Lord Strathcona, was an adventurer who made his fortune building railroads, including the Canadian Pacific Railway.