The life of Senator John Macdonald is a rags-to-riches history of a self-made man. To the people who met him in passing, he may have appeared as a very wealthy, self-centred man but in fact his Victorian exterior probably disguised his underlying reason for living -- his Methodist beliefs. He was a successful wholesaler, an active church promoter, a politician during the formation of our Dominion, organizer and financial supporter of the YMCA, Toronto General Hospital and Victoria College, a poet and a well-traveled, worldly gentleman.