In the beginning, it was the Hudson’s Bay Company that largely influenced Victoria’s social life. Later it was the colonists settling the land who led the way socially. As we have seen, some of these men came from influential backgrounds, while others were, for various reasons, simply considered to be suitable. They had all arrived with the intention of finding a better life.
Before the gold rushes of 1858 and 1862, life in the colony was reasonably quiet and pleasant, and certainly not particularly conducive to business and commerce. By the beginning of the 1860s, this situation began to change rapidly. A need grew for merchants, real estate investors, storekeepers, and speculators in general.
And Victoria was now playing host to a completely different type of settler, both adventurous and ambitious, out to seek his fortune and make his mark. Entrepreneurs were arriving and setting a new course for Victoria’s development. Eventually they even infiltrated the all-powerful establishment. Where class and background had always played the most important role, suddenly money did. These entrepreneurs were making a great deal of it, and their money was doing the talking.
In effect, Victoria was slowly becoming a “San Francisco in miniature.”62 This new gold rush society proved to be very cosmopolitan, and, given Victoria’s already strong commercial ties with San Francisco and the many Americans entering the colony, it was inevitable that this new breed of entrepreneur would also share in Victoria’s expansion, success, and ultimately its social life.
Robert Paterson Rithet was one of the best examples of this new breed of settler and one of the first to secure a foothold in Victoria’s commercial centre. The son of a farmer, he was born in April 1844, in Scotland. Before coming to British Columbia in 1862, he had tried his luck in Liverpool, working for a merchant, and then the lure of the Cariboo brought him to North America. He fully intended to join in the gold rush, but soon began to realize that more money could be made in the business of mining the miners than it could by mining the actual gold.
He began work in Victoria as a stevedore and was offered the position of bookkeeper for the wholesale provision firm of Sproat & Company. He was soon running the Victoria office, since owner Gilbert Sproat was often absent in London directing the Committee on the Affairs of British Columbia. By 1869, at age twenty-five, Rithet had proved himself worthy of a promotion and was sent to San Francisco to deal with the company’s interests there.
While there, he made one of the most important business connections of his life, one that set him firmly on the road to commercial success. He was introduced to Gilbert Sproat’s San Francisco partner, Andrew Welch, already a very wealthy and prominent member of the elite. Welch had business dealings in many areas, including some from the time he had spent working with Sproat in an Alberni sawmill. He later did much to develop the shipping trade between Victoria and San Francisco and, before his death in 1889, had become a multimillionaire. Young Robert Rithet learned a great deal from him.
On one of his many trips back to Victoria, Rithet had formed an alliance with a young lady whose mother strongly disapproved of his attentions. In a rather typical Victorian manner, Rithet decided to break off his engagement to her, and he did this by writing a formal letter to her mother in very proper and stilted terms:
Victoria, Vancouver Island. 16th April
Saturday.
Mrs. Sutton,
View Street.
Madam: Referring to the conversation I had with you yesterday morning, the leading points in which, in order to avoid any misunderstanding, I condense as follows:
1. You refused to allow Miss Sutton to keep an appointment to go out with me on that day (yesterday).
2. You informed me that it was your intention not to allow Miss Sutton to go out with me in future unless some other members of your family accompanied us.
3. You stated that you regretted Miss Sutton had formed an attachment for a gentleman who hated the other members of your family.
After careful consideration of the foregoing, of your general conduct toward me of late, and of the fact of Miss Sutton’s acceding to your demands, thereby ignoring my position, I have come to the conclusion that to carry out the engagement existing between Miss Sutton and myself would result in nothing but unhappiness under such circumstances, and I have therefore decided that it would be more to the interest of all concerned that the engagement referred to should be cancelled, and I will from this time consider it so, and beg to request that you will intimate my decision to Miss Sutton.
Regretting the intimacy which has existed betwixt Miss Sutton and myself and wishing you and all members of your family every happiness.
I am, Madam,
Your obedient servant,
R.P. Rithet63
His decision to end the entanglement may have been for a reason other than merely taking heed of an angry mother’s warning. He had already met and fallen in love with one of the three daughters of Alexander Munro, chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company in Victoria. Young Elizabeth (Lizzie) Munro was tall, slender, and exceedingly beautiful, and from the moment Robert first laid eyes on her when she was sixteen, he was in love. They were eventually married on October 27, 1875, when Lizzie was twenty-two.
Rithet had left Sproat’s company in 1870 to join forces with J. Robertson Stewart, another well-established British merchant in Victoria, and by May of the next year he was managing the business during Stewart’s illness. When Stewart decided to sell his business and retire to Scotland, Andrew Welch, with Robert Rithet’s strong backing, bought him out.64
Soon afterward, the newspapers announced a new firm under the name of Welch, Rithet & Company, successors of Robertson Stewart. At that time, Rithet wrote to his new partner, Andrew Welch:
We began under very favourable auspices, when the colony seems to be about to enter an era of improvement and progress . . . and with houses in San Francisco and Liverpool we should be able to make a business, and our outside connections are also tip-top.65
Robert Rithet’s fortunes were now definitely on the rise and, by the time of his marriage to Elizabeth Munro, he was already an established businessman in Victoria.
During the 1870s and 1880s, his importance continued to grow. With Welch, he became involved in the sugar trade with the Hawaiian Islands and soon controlled a number of plantations there. He also acted as agent for the Moodyville Sawmill on Burrard Inlet and quickly began importing groceries and liquor into BC. The wealth he was accumulating was not wasted. He began investing in mills, in the Albion Ironworks in Victoria, and in sealing, whaling, and farming endeavours. In fact, his business interests spread so rapidly and he was responsible for so many BC outlets in wholesale, insurance, lumber, shipping, and canning that it would have been difficult to keep pace with him.
When Andrew Welch died in 1888, Rithet not only purchased his half interest, but also renamed the company R.P. Rithet & Co. Ltd. He was by then one of the wealthiest businessmen in the Pacific Northwest.
Hawaii was an independent country with its own queen, and Robert Rithet acted as Hawaii’s consul-general in Victoria. In addition, he became one of the foremost sugar importers in North America. When Canadian sugar tariff laws changed in 1891, allowing sugar to be imported from China at a considerably lower price, he took advantage of the situation.
This move became the forerunner of the “sugar war” that raged between Victoria and Vancouver for three years. Rithet was bitterly opposed to the Rogers sugar refinery being located in Vancouver and fought for one in Victoria, trying at the same time to put the Vancouver operation out of business. When his Chinese sugar (imported from Butterfield & Swire in Hong Kong) suffered a loss on the BC market, he tried to organize a price-fixing arrangement with Vancouver. He was turned down and later, when the newspapers began a smear campaign against Chinese sugar because, they claimed, smallpox germs were being carried by bugs found in it, the whole thing proved too much for Rithet. He decided it was no longer worth the fight, reluctantly gave in to the pressures, and began to concentrate on his other, more profitable business ventures.
These other ventures were legion, ranging from the construction of the Outer Wharf in James Bay in the 1890s, enabling ocean-going liners such as the CPR Empress ships to dock there, to insurance connections throughout the world. Rithet served as general agent for the Queens Insurance Company of America, and the National Fire Insurance of Hartford, and as marine insurance agent for the Standard Marine Insurance Company of Liverpool. He also held a major interest in the BC Cattle Company and, having a love of horses, maintained a large farming acreage in the Broadmead district of Victoria where he bred and developed champions. It is believed that the name Broadmead was that of a stallion that Rithet brought from Australia.
Rithet also became briefly involved with engineer Sandford Fleming who developed standard time in North America; the two men made an unsuccessful attempt to lay a telegraph cable across the Pacific. Their project was aborted when they were chased off a remote island near Hawaii by a United States ship.
Despite all his many and varied business interests, Robert Rithet found time to enter politics. In November 1884, he put himself forward as a candidate for mayor of Victoria, and an editorial in the Colonist supported him strongly:
For the position of mayor we know of no citizen who is better qualified to discharge the duties honestly and well than Mr. R.P. Rithet. He is a leading business man, a public spirited, useful and energetic citizen who, having made his money in this city, has invested it here. Under the circumstances of an increasing population and enlarged revenue the presence of a man like R.P. Rithet at the helm is indispensable. We hope he will consent to stand.66
Rithet’s campaign for mayor was based on the issue of drainage, stating that the city “must be drained of its filth or it will be drained of its wealth and populace.” He easily won the position, for he had always been very community minded and the citizens of Victoria had great respect for him.
In 1872, his honesty and integrity had brought him an appointment by the lieutenant-governor, Joseph Trutch, to the board of trustees in charge of lands at Ogden Point, and the following year he was made a justice of the peace. He also served one term as a member of the legislative assembly from 1894 to 1898 under then premier John Turner.
Though his involvement in business and politics often caused long absences from home, Robert Rithet still managed to maintain a happy and successful family life. His love affair with Lizzie Munro lasted a lifetime. They were a devoted couple and their marriage produced three children: Edward, who died young; John (known as Jack); and Gertrude, who married Lawrence Genge in 1904, her wedding being one of the most fashionable of its day.
Rithet and his bride had moved into Hollybank, a wedding gift from Elizabeth’s father, soon after their marriage, and there the three children were born and raised. The house, at 952 Humboldt Street, was certainly one of the most elegant in Victoria, surrounded by a beautiful iron fence and the numerous holly trees from which it took its name. When Gertrude married, a house was built for her nearby on her parents’s property, at 998 Humboldt, as a wedding gift. Gertrude and her mother were often seen riding their horses around their own property or across the open countryside surrounding Victoria.
Robert Rithet’s additional ventures in life included numerous mining activities, as well as railway development throughout BC’s interior. The building of the new dock facilities through his Wharf and Warehouse Company in Victoria ultimately led to the founding of the Canadian Pacific Navigation Company in 1883, in close association with Captain John Irving, another leading Victoria entrepreneur. Captain Irving had taken over his father’s steamship company in 1872 when he was only eighteen, and by 1883 had successfully managed to merge it with that of his chief competitor, the Hudson’s Bay Company. It was hardly coincidence that both Rithet and Irving had married daughters of Alexander Munro. One of their new line’s fastest ships was appropriately named the R.P. Rithet and was the first coastal steamer equipped with hydraulic steering gear.
Rithet maintained many of his close business ties with San Francisco, and he and his family made frequent trips to that city. San Francisco’s great earthquake in April 1906 caused the Rithets much grief; it was a calamitous experience to live through because of their special affection for the area. Today, a leatherbound book once kept by Robert Rithet (now in the possession of his descendants) shows that many of his business records were destroyed as a result of that earthquake and the subsequent fires in the city.
A notation in the book, signed and dated “R.P. Rithet, 6th June, 1906,” reads:
I hereby certify that the records appearing herein were taken from a Book containing the original records now transcribed herein which were so obliterated and charred by the fire which took place in San Francisco on the 18th day of April 1906, as to be useless for record purposes, and for purposes of reference the paper being brittle and breaks when used. After transcribing, the original Book was all broken and destroyed.67
While Robert Rithet was obviously scrupulous in his record keeping, Lizzie Rithet, like many other ladies, was equally particular in keeping scrapbooks of her favourite poetry. Cutting out and pasting such works in daintily decorated Victorian scrapbooks was a popular pastime of the day.
The Rithet family remained something of an institution in Victoria for many years, especially because they were now the new social benchmark in the city. As monied people, they were an important part of Victoria society leading into the Gay Nineties, part of a new social set that held its numerous soirées beneath gaslight chandeliers in the drawing rooms and ballrooms of all the best homes in Victoria. Their wealth had bought them the prestige that previously only a suitable background could have earned them.
Lizzie Rithet herself was regal in appearance. She was a tall, elegant woman who preferred to dress in black, and she appeared almost haughty as she swept into gatherings. She enjoyed wearing a great deal of jewellery, notably gold chains, often strung like massive ropes around her neck and hanging down to her tiny waist.
The only tragedy in the long and happy Rithet marriage had been the early death of their son Edward. Their son Jack became an exceptional athlete but was also rumoured to be a heavy drinker, and perhaps for this reason he did not inherit his father’s business when Robert died in 1919 at the age of seventy-five. It was in fact Rithet’s son-in-law, Lawrence Genge, and later his grandson, J.R. Genge, who took over the operations of R.P. Rithet & Co. Ltd.
Lizzie Rithet outlived her husband and all three of her children. Jack died in 1942 and Gertrude in 1945. Lizzie herself died at Hollybank in 1952 at a hundred. Since her husband’s death in 1919, she had lived with a hired companion who looked after her, and had continued to hold fashionable tea parties in her drawing room until she was well into her eighties. For the last few years of her long life, she hardly ever left her bedroom suite. Only on very rare occasions would she take a walk down to the gates of her property, always supported by her two canes.
Her memory was still very clear and sharp, and she could accurately recall stories from her childhood. She remembered the day she had arrived in Victoria aboard the Princess Royal with her mother, sisters, and brother, to be greeted by her father, Alexander Munro, who had preceded his family to the colony. She was five years old at that time.
She remembered the acreage next to Beacon Hill Park where the Munro house had been built and where she had met and fallen in love at the age of sixteen with the handsome and gallant Robert Rithet, who came to call one day. She could also recall the building of Hollybank near her parents’ home, and the many social functions within its walls through the years when she acted as hostess for her husband. In addition, she talked of the occasions when she had been a guest at some of the most elegant Nob Hill mansions in San Francisco.
A year after Lizzie Rithet’s death, Hollybank was demolished to make way for commercial development, but a piece of the original iron fence was preserved and placed in the grounds of the Royal British Columbia Museum. The stables at Hollybank were one of the last remaining in Victoria. The Rithet family is commemorated throughout the city: The building at 1117 Wharf Street, which housed the offices of R.P. Rithet, was a familiar Victoria landmark; Rithet Street in James Bay and Rithetwood in Broadmead are both named for Robert Rithet; and the valuable seven hundred acres, Broadmead, where he once bred champion horses, is now a subdivision of fine homes.
The Rithets’ contribution to Victoria’s social life was unique. Other than the Dunsmuirs, they were the first of the entrepreneurial families to take their place in Victoria’s high society. Wealth had obviously played a large part in this change of affairs. In addition, marriages among influential families such as the Munros, Rithets, and Irvings cannot be overlooked as a contributing factor.
Money and prestige had broken through the barrier of class, proving that good old-fashioned enterprise can also find a place in high circles.