Sir Frederick William Borden, KCMGPC (May 14, 1847 – January 6, 1917) was a Canadianpolitician. While he was the Minister for Militia and Defence, he was the father of the most famous Canadian casualty of the Second Boer WarHarold Lothrop Borden.[1] Historians credit him with creating and financing a modernised Canadian militia with a staff and medical, transport, and signals that proved important for allowing Canadian ground forces to deploy with their own support services as self-contained national contingents, albeit in an imperial framework. In this sense, he helped to create the foundations for the Canadian Expeditionary Force of 1914–1918.[2]
Career
Born in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, the son of Dr. Jonathan Borden and Maria Frances Brown. Borden received a Bachelor of Arts degree from University of King's College in Windsor, Nova Scotia in 1866. He joined the militia as a cadet at King's College and then as an assistant surgeon in the 68th (Kings) Battalion of Infantry in 1869. He earned a M.D. in 1868 from Harvard Medical School and practiced as a physician in Canning, Nova Scotia. Borden soon added business to his medical practice, acting as a bank agent, buying real estate, ships and helping found the successful Cornwallis Valley Railway from Canning to Kentville in 1887. He formed his own company the F. W. Borden Company in 1895, later known as the Nova Scotia Produce and Supply Company, to oversee his various business ventures in agriculture, lumber, shipping and investment.
While Sir Frederick Borden was the Minister of Defence, his only son Harold died at war
As Minister of Militia and Defence from 1896 to 1911, Borden implemented a series of reforms that gave the militia the ability to act as a formed army with its own supply and medical services. He also increased the rate at which Canadian officers attended British and Indian staff colleges at Camberley and Quetta and used these staff-trained graduates to help create professionally-trained staffs at the Royal Military College of Canada, and regional divisional headquarters.
He increased pay and retirement benefits, equipped the militia with modern weapons, established rules regulating tenure of command, and decentralized command and administration. Miller (2010) presents evidence that Borden saved himself from financial ruin by stationing three battalions of soldiers to Halifax in 1900 in order to make a profit for his faltering supply company.
Borden died in Canning in 1917, and is buried in nearby Hillaton Cemetery,[8] His two principal houses survive, the former Stadacona House (now the High Commission of Brunei, Ottawa), and Borden Place, in Canning, which is a National Historic Site.[9][10]
