William Cornelius Van Horne place of death Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal
Personal life
Van Horne married Lucy Hurd in 1867, and the couple had three children. The elder son, William Cornelius Van Horne Jr., died at the age of five, while their daughter, Lucy Adeline "Addie" Van Horne, and younger son, Richard Benedict "Benny" Van Horne, survived into adulthood. Benny married Edith Molson, of the Montreal Molsons, and the couple had a son, named William for his grandfather.Sir William purchased and enlarged a house in 1889 later known as the Van Horne Mansion in Montreal, Quebec. In 1891 he began building his summer estate, which he named "Covenhoven", on Minister's Island, adjacent to CPR's resort town of St. Andrews, New Brunswick. The island estate is accessible by a natural sandbar road during the Bay of Fundy's low tide.Van Horne served as a governor of McGill University from 1895 to 1915 and was one of the first in Canada to acquire artworks by members of the French impressionist movement. He was himself a painter, with his surviving works now residing in museums such as the Montreal Museum of Fine Art and Covenhoven itself. His other talents included sculpture, architecture, playing the violin, fossil collection, farming, botany and gardening.Following Van Horne's death at the Royal Victoria Hospital, in Montreal, Quebec in 1915 at the age of 72, his remains were interred at Oakwood Cemetery in Joliet, Illinois. His Montreal home in the Golden Square Mile was controversially demolished in 1973.
location of death death place place where they died place of passing final resting place