Thomas George Shaughnessy, 1st Baron Shaughnessy, was an American-Canadian railway administrator who rose from modest beginnings as a clerk and bookkeeper for the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad to become the president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, serving in that capacity from 1899 to 1918. In recognition of his stewardship of the CPR and its contributions to the war effort during the Great War, Shaughnessy was elevated to the Peerage of the United Kingdom on 1 January 1916 as Baron Shaughnessy, of the City of Montreal in the Dominion of Canada and of Ashford in the County of Limerick.

Sir William Cornelius Van Horne, is most famous for overseeing the construction of the first Canadian transcontinental railway, a project that was completed in 1885, in under half the projected time. He succeeded Lord Mount Stephen as president of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in 1888. He was responsible for launching the sea transport division of the CPR, which inaugurated regular service between Vancouver and Hong Kong in 1891. He also presided over the expansion of the CPR into the luxury hotel business in the 1890s. He was also a prominent member of the syndicate that created the Cuba Railroad Company in 1900. He lived at the Van Horne Mansion in Montreal's Golden Square Mile.