Izaak Walton Killam was one of Canada’s most eminent financiers. He was known as “the mystery man” of Canadian finance because of the low public profile he maintained.
Killam was born in Yarmouth in 1885. Here he had his first experience in business selling newspapers. At the age of 18, he started his career as a junior clerk in the Yarmouth branch of the Union Bank of Halifax.
In 1961 the Killam sisters, Miss Constance Killam and Mrs. Elizabeth Rodgers offered to donate the funds for a new library building in memory of their late brother Izaak Walton Killam. The library is now called the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Library.