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.
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]