Elias Rogers Explained

Elias Rogers (June 23, 1850 – April 11, 1920) was a Canadian business magnate, banker, and politician. He was a major coal dealer in Canada and founder, with his brother Samuel, of the Elias Rogers Company in Toronto.[1]

His great-grandather was Timothy Rogers (1756–1834), a Canadian pioneer and Quaker leader who founded settlements in what became Newmarket and Pickering.

Biography

Rogers was born in Whitchurch, near Newmarket, to a Quaker family.[2] He began in the lumber business before switching to coal, purchasing the first coal mines in Jefferson County, Pennsylvania.[1]

Rogers was elected to Toronto City Council in 1887 as alderman for St. Lawrence Ward. He ran for mayor of Toronto the next year on a temperance platform but was defeated by Edward Frederick Clarke, after one of Clarke's supporters, Member of Parliament Nathaniel Clarke Wallace, accused Rogers of being involved in a coal price fixing ring.[1] [2]

He was president of National Life Assurance Company and vice-president of the Imperial Bank of Canada. He died in 1920 and is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto.[1]

Rogers' nephew, Albert Stephen Rogers, was the father of Edward S. Rogers Sr., founder of the Rogers Vacuum Tube Company, whose son Ted Rogers, founded Rogers Communications.[3] [4]

Notes and References

  1. Book: Filey . Mike . Mount Pleasant Cemetery: An Illustrated Guide . June 1999 . Dundurn Press . Hamilton, Ontario . 9781554882335 . 183 . 2024-01-15 . Google Books.
  2. MacFadyen . Joshua . Supplying Fuel Wood to Central Canadian Urban Markets . Histoire sociale /Social History . September 2021 . LIV . 111 . 283–309 . 10.1353/his.2021.0044 . October 5, 2023.
  3. Web site: Historicist: An Illustrated Business Quartet. 23 January 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20210801003442/http://torontoist.com/2010/01/historicist_a_business_quartet/ . 2021-08-01 .
  4. https://about.rogers.com/news-ideas/ted-rogers-a-titan-and-a-visionary/