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
Mary Dickens look no further nor are aware of the injury he does them." When Dickens decided to burn all his letters in 1860 in the field behind Gads Hill Place it was Mary and two of her brothers who carried them out of the house in basketfuls. These included correspondence from Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, Thackeray, Wilkie Collins and George Eliot. Mary asked her father to keep some of them, but he refused, burning everything. <br> In 1867 Mary was asked to name and launch a new ship at Chatham Dockyard, where her grandfather John Dickens had previously worked. She became