William Maxwell Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook; 1879-1964) was a Canadian businessman and politician who left an indelible mark on politics and journalism on both sides of the Atlantic. Aitken rose to prominence as a merger king in Canada before gravitating into British politics and mass-circulation journalism. In 1916 he was elevated to the peerage as Lord Beaverbrook.

William Maxwell Aitken was born in Maple, Ontario, on May 25, 1879, the fifth of ten children of Jane and William Aitken. His father's itinerant career as a minister of the Church of Scotland left a moral and geographic imprint on young Max, who grew up in New Brunswick on Canada's Atlantic coast. He imbibed Presbyterian values in a region that was seeing its once strong prowess in the wood, wind, and water industries eroded by technological and regional shifts in the Canadian economy. Max's early personality displayed a bumptious opportunism brought on by the...