Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Art Canadian

The Consummate Canadian

A Biography of Samuel Weir Q.C.

by (author) Mary Willan Mason

Publisher
Dundurn Press
Initial publish date
Jan 1990
Category
Canadian, General, General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781896219387
    Publish Date
    Jan 1990
    List Price
    $29.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781896219400
    Publish Date
    Jan 1999
    List Price
    $49.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781554883202
    Publish Date
    Jan 1990
    List Price
    $9.99

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Description

Samuel Edward Weir Q.C. (1898-1981), a man both loved and reviled with scorn, was born in London, Ontario. Descended from pioneer stock, with roots in both Ireland and Germany, Samuel Weir possessed incisive wit, exceptional intelligence and a passionate zest for any subject that caught his eye. Over a period of sixty years he built an extraordinary collection of approximately one thousand works of outstanding art and sculpture.

This extensively researched biography of a talented yet quixotic lawyer who contributed much to Canada’s heritage begins in the early 19th century and covers well over a hundred years of our nation’s growth, until his death at his home, River Brink, in Queenston, Ontario.

Today, River Brink is the gallery in which The Weir Collection is exhibited and housed.

About the author

Mary Willan Mason was born in Toronto into a prominent musical family and graduated from University College at the University of Toronto. A lifelong and dedicated student of fine art, she has written extensively on the subject. The Consummate Canadian is her first biography of a collector.

Mary Willan Mason's profile page