Frederick Widder

Who was Frederick Widder?

Frederick Widder was a Canada Company Commissioner, son of a Canada Company London director, with family connections to royalty and the right Anglican connections. His moderate approach and financial innovations for the Canada Company would give him good standing with the pioneers of the Huron Tract and the reformers of Upper Canada. Widder's administrative talents and dedication to hard work allowed him to overshadow Thomas Mercer Jones and take the lead in the Canada Company.

Widder's home, Lyndhurst, became a social hub of Toronto. Widder's wife, Elizabeth, entertained in style providing upper-class residents of York with refined entertainments redolent of British aristocratic and middle-class life.