Donald Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal immortalised as the "Cheeryble Brothers" in Charles Dickens' book, Nicholas Nickleby. Donald's mother was the sister of the Canadian explorer John Stuart, partner of the North West Company who rose to become Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company. Smith was educated at Anderson's Free School and on leaving at age sixteen he was apprenticed to become a lawyer in the offices of Robert Watson, Town Clerk of Forres. By the age of eighteen, Smith chose another career path: offered entry into mercantile life at Manchester, and a career in the Indian Civil Service, his choice was to pattern himself
Racism in the work of Charles Dickens that while Dickens later in life became far more sensitive to unethical aspects of British colonialism and came to plead mitigation of cruelties to natives, he never lost his distaste for those whose life style he regarded as "primitive". Many scholars have noted the paradox between Dickens' support for various liberal causes and his racism, nationalist chauvinism and imperialist mentality. Biographer Peter Ackroyd in his 1990 biography of Dickens (the 2nd of four books on Dickens) duly notes Dickens' sympathy for the poor, opposition to child labour, campaigns for sanitation reform, and opposition to capital punishment. He also asserts that