Macaulay remained with Canada Life for 16 years, rising to chief accountant. Even for the most prudent companies, investment of premiums was a delicate affair in the depression-prone mid 19th century. Contemporary sales techniques were often patently unethical and life insurance policies were riddled with escape clauses.
The industry was weak on reputation and dominated by British and American companies. Life insurance in the 1850s was an ironic choice of career for a young man who placed such store by personal integrity and social responsibility. As a perceptive commentator later noted, life insurance for Macaulay was the “medium through which he expressed his ideals”: it united his faith and his business sense in a socially beneficial way.
On answering a notice for an accountant placed by the Canada Life Assurance Company of Hamilton, Upper Canada, in 1856, Macaulay embarked on a career in insurance. In 1854, at age 21, he set sail for Quebec. He remained for six years, but success did little to dampen his wanderlust. The death of his father in 1847, when he was 14, cruelly reinforced this idea.Ībandoning law, Macaulay worked briefly for the Hudson’s Bay Company before venturing to Aberdeen, where he soon obtained a junior clerkship in the respected dry goods firm of Barker and Company. The experience convinced him that economic security was the bedrock on which the well-being of families rested. As an officer of the court, he was obliged to evict crofters. Macaulay’s foray into law awakened his social conscience. He promptly secured an apprenticeship to the local solicitor and procurator fiscal. Possessing only the rudiments of education but imbued with the Scottish penchant for self-improvement, he devoted his evenings to unremitting study, concentrating on mathematics. Adventurous by nature and fortified by the deep religious sentiment his mother had instilled, he began work at age 12 as a construction labourer at Stornoway, Scotland. Robertson Macaulay’s independent spirit was tested early. 1859 in Hamilton, Upper Canada, Barbara Maria Reid of Edinburgh, and they had one son d. 27 Sept. 1915 in Montreal. 1833 in Fraserburgh, Scotland, eldest son of Captain Kenneth Macaulay, a mariner, and Margaret Noble m. MACAULAY, ROBERTSON, insurance company executive b.
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