Elias Rogers (June 23, 1850 – April 11, 1920) was a Canadian

business magnate A business magnate, also known as an industrialist or tycoon, is a person who is a powerful entrepreneur and investor who controls, through personal enterprise ownership or a dominant shareholding position, a firm or industry whose goods or ser ...

, banker, and politician. He was a major

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

dealer in Canada and founder, with his brother Samuel, of the Elias Rogers Company in Toronto. His great-grandfather was

Timothy Rogers Timothy Rogers (1658–1728) was an English nonconformist minister, known as an author on depression as a sufferer. Life The son of John Rogers (1610–1680), he was born at Barnard Castle, County Durham on 24 May 1658. He was educated at Gla ...

(1756–1834), a Canadian

pioneer Pioneer commonly refers to a person who is among the first at something that is new to a community. A pioneer as a settler is among the first settling at a place that is new to the settler community. A historic example are American pioneers, perso ...

and

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...

leader who founded settlements in what became Newmarket and Pickering.

Biography

Rogers was born in Whitchurch, near Newmarket, to a Quaker family. He began in the

lumber Lumber is wood that has been processed into uniform and useful sizes (dimensional lumber), including beams and planks or boards. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, window frames). ...

business before switching to coal, purchasing the first coal mines in

Jefferson County, Pennsylvania Jefferson County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 44,492. Its county seat is Brookville. The county was established on March 26, 1804, from part of Lycoming County and later organiz ...

. Rogers was elected to

Toronto City Council Toronto City Council is the governing body of the municipal government of Toronto, Ontario. Meeting at Toronto City Hall, it comprises 25 city councillors and the mayor of Toronto. The Toronto City Council 2022–2026, current term began on Nove ...

in 1887 as

alderman An alderman is a member of a Municipal government, municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law with similar officials existing in the Netherlands (wethouder) and Belgium (schepen). The term may be titular, denotin ...

for St. Lawrence Ward. He ran for

mayor of Toronto The mayor of Toronto is the head of Toronto City Council and chief executive officer of the Municipal government of Toronto, municipal government. The mayor is elected alongside city council every four years on the fourth Monday of October; t ...

the next year on a temperance platform but was defeated by

Edward Frederick Clarke Edward Frederick Clarke (April 24, 1850 – March 3, 1905) was a Canadian journalist and political figure. He was Mayor of Toronto for four one-year terms, from 1888 until 1891 while also representing Toronto in the Legislative Assembly of O ...

, after one of Clarke's supporters, Member of Parliament

Nathaniel Clarke Wallace Nathaniel Clarke Wallace (May 21, 1844 – October 8, 1901) was a Canadian politician and Orangeman. Born in Burwick, Canada West, the third son of the Nathanael Wallace and Ann Wallace, natives of County Sligo, Ireland, who came to Cana ...

, accused Rogers of being involved in a coal

price fixing Price fixing is an anticompetitive agreement between participants on the same side in a market to buy or sell a product, service, or commodity only at a fixed price, or maintain the market conditions such that the price is maintained at a given ...

ring. He was president of National Life Assurance Company and vice-president of the

Imperial Bank of Canada The Imperial Bank of Canada was a Canadian bank that operated from 1873 to 1961. In 1961, Imperial merged with the Canadian Bank of Commerce to become the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. History It was founded in 1873 as the Imperial Bank ...

. He died in 1920 and is buried in

Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto Mount Pleasant Cemetery is a cemetery located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and is part of the Mount Pleasant Group of Cemeteries. It was opened in November 1876 and is located north of Moore Park, a neighbourhood of Toronto. The cemetery has k ...

. Rogers' nephew, Albert Stephen Rogers, was the father of

Edward S. Rogers Sr. Edward Samuel Rogers Sr. (June 21, 1900 – May 6, 1939) was a Canadian inventor and pioneer in the radio industry who founded the Rogers Vacuum Tube Company and the CFRB radio station in Toronto, Ontario. His only child, Edward S. Rogers ...

, founder of the

Rogers Vacuum Tube Company Rogers Vacuum Tube Company (formally named Radio Manufacturing Corporation Limited) was founded as the Standard Radio Manufacturing Corporation in 1925 by Edward Rogers (1900–1939) to sell Rogers "Batteryless" radios using vacuum tube technology. ...

, whose son Ted Rogers, founded

Rogers Communications Rogers Communications Inc. is a Canadian communications and media company operating primarily in the fields of wireless communications, cable television, telephony and Internet, with significant additional telecommunications and mass media ass ...

.https://about.rogers.com/news-ideas/ted-rogers-a-titan-and-a-visionary/

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rogers, Elias Canadian Quakers 1850 births 1920 deaths Toronto city councillors Burials at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto Canadian energy industry businesspeople 19th-century Canadian businesspeople Rogers family (Canada) Coal in Canada Canadian temperance activists 19th-century Canadian municipal councillors