Edward Wentworth Beatty was born in Thorold, Ontario on October 16 1877, the third son and fourth child of Henry Beatty and his wife Harriet M. Powell. Harriet was from Coburg, Ontario and a relative of the Masseys, a prominent Canadian manufacturing family. Henry was an Irish immigrant who immigrated with his parents to Thorold in 1843, at the age of nine, and later worked as an apprentice in the hardware business. He was described as a man of unusual ability and vision, qualities Edward would inherit.

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Front Street, Thorold Ontario, 1852. Image: Archives of Ontario.

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After his apprenticeship, Henry Beatty followed the gold rush to California and then British Columbia. He returned to Thorold with $40,000 in his pocket and then joined his uncle's steamship business on the Great Lakes, named the Beatty Line of Sarnia. In 1882, Henry left the company to manage the Canada Pacific Railyway's (CPR) lake shipping interests. The CPR eventually purchased the Beatty Line and the vessels became part of the CPR's trans-Atlantic steam line. After his retirement in 1892, Henry chose to remain with the CPR as a marine advisor.

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The United Empire at Kincardine, Ontario, ca 1880s. Image: Toronto Marine Historical Society.

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As newspapers would one-day highlight, Edward Beatty was born into the CPR. But despite these CPR roots, his early ambitions had nothing to do with the railways or steamships that his father managed. "I really wanted to be a doctor but my older brother, with not the slightest regard for my own feelings, decided that he was to be a doctor, and that left the law for me since I felt not the call for the Church, and I couldn't think of any other profession," he is quoted as saying.

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Edward Beatty, University of Toronto football team captain, 1897. Image: CRHA/Exporail.

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The Beatty family moved to Toronto when Edward was ten years old in order for the Beatty children to pursue higher education. Edward was expelled from his first preparatory school for poor behaviour, but thanks to a tutor was able to complete his education at Upper Canada College. As Edward Beatty later recalled, "This man told me I could amount to something. That was news to me and it was an inspiration." He then attended the University of Toronto where he graduated with a degree in political science in 1898.

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Edward Beatty holds the ball as team captain, 1897. Image: University of Toronto Archives.

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Although he was more at home on a rugby pitch than behind a stack of books, Beatty studied law at Osgoode Hall Law School and then read law in the Toronto office of McCarthy, Osler, Hoskin & Creelman. He was called to the Ontario bar in June 1901. A month later, a partner in the firm was appointed general counsel to the CPR and Beatty moved with him to Montreal to work as his assistant at the company's national headquarters located at Windsor Street Station.