The zeal with which he has devoted his energies to his profession, the careful regard evinced for the interests of his clients and an unrelaxing attention to all the details of his cases, have won him an enviable and well merited reputation. His acquaintance is wide, and he has a host of friends whose high regard he has gained through his professional ability, his deference to the opinions of others, his genial manner and unfailing courtesy.
Mr. Rinfret was married to Miss Georgine Rolland, a daughter of J. B. Rolland, of Montreal, where they make their home. Mr. Rinfret holds membership in the Catholic church.
CLARENCE I. DE SOLA.
The great industrial undertakings which have led to the substantial development and upbuilding of Canada have found a prominent representative in Clarence I. de Sola, today regarded as one of the foremost men engaged in public works and in shipbuilding in Canada. Moreover, he is prominent in the consular service and is a recognized leader in various movements for the improvement of the economic condition of the Hebrew people, some of his work in that direction being of world-wide significance. Montreal numbers him among her worthy and honored native sons, his birth having occurred here on the 15th of August, 1858. He is a member of an ancient and illustrious Jewish family that long resided in Spain, where it produced many distinguished men. He is the third son of the late Rev. Abraham de Sola, LL. D., who was one of the most eminent and scholarly exponents of orthodox Judaism in America and an author of international repute.
Liberal educational opportunities were accorded the subject of this sketch, and his life has been one of steadily expanding and increasing usefulness. Step by step he has advanced in business connections, and in 1887 he was made managing director of the Comptoir Belgo-Canadien, a syndicate of the leading Belgian manufacturers of steel and other structural material and builders of bridges, railroads and canal locks. The syndicate includes the famous Cockerill Works, of Seraing, employing eighteen thousand hands. His duties and responsibilities in this direction are most important. He secured and executed contracts in the building of the Soulanges and Trent canals, in re-laying large portions of the track of the Inter-Colonial Railway and the Prince Edward Island Railway, and in the construction of many of our largest public bridges. He was associated with the engineers Lafontaine and Lemoine in the construction of the Brock Street tunnel. It was largely due to his efforts that hydraulic lift locks were first used in American or Canadian canals.
It was in recognition of the ability he had shown in developing commercial relations between Belgium and Canada that Mr. de Sola was appointed, in 1904, vice consul for Belgium at Montreal, and his work in helping to negotiate the arrangement between the Belgian and Canadian governments, whereby the benefits of the intermediate Canadian customs tariff was secured for Belgian manufacturers, was rewarded by his advancement, in 1911 to the full rank of consul.
Extensive as have been Mr. de Sola’s efforts in connection with Belgian trade, he has also employed his energies in other fields, for he is the managing director of the Canadian office of Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson, Ltd., the great shipbuilders of Wallsend-on-Tyne, and he has undertaken and executed many contracts for the building of a large number of ships for traffic on the Canadian Great Lakes, the River St. Lawrence and the Atlantic oceans, amounting in all to quite a large fleet. The Canadian government has also had several ships built for its service by contracts awarded to Mr. de Sola, including some very fine vessels for hydrographic survey work, that have made their way through the ice-bound waters of Hudson’s Bay in dangerous seasons. The first ship ever seen in American waters, or that ever crossed the Atlantic ocean propelled by oil combustion engines, was built by Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson for Mr. de Sola as consignee. It was the ship Toiler, and it was run by Mr. de Sola on the St. Lawrence and lake route until sold by him to James Playfair. An improvement on the Toiler, the ship Calgary, was built during the following year and these were the first Diesel oil combustion engined vessels to run in Canadian waters.
Clarence de Sola is a director of the Reid-Donald Steamship Company, of which he is the Canadian manager, and he is also a director of the Farrar Transportation Company.
Mr. de Sola has become widely known as a leading factor in the world-embracing Zionist Movement, for the settlement in Palestine of the persecuted Jews emigrating from Russia and other eastern European countries and for the restoration of the Holy Land as the national home of the Hebrew race. He was for a long period on the Actions Committee, which is the supreme governing council of the Zionist Movement, and for many years has been president of the Federation of Zionist Societies of Canada. This federation is a huge organization having branch societies in about sixty different cities and towns throughout the Dominion, and is the most representative Jewish body in Canada. It was through his initiative and foresight that the Zionists of Canada, at their eleventh convention, established a special fund for purchasing land in Palestine on which to settle Jewish colonists and two Jewish colonies in the Holy Land owe their existence entirely to this measure. The Canadian Century has aptly styled him “the head and shoulders of the Zionist Movement in Canada.” He has also figured prominently in the Zionist International Congresses.