When he finally did find his mother lode-at Kirkwood Lake, Ontario, where Harry was convinced a bonanza awaited beneath its frozen surface-it took eight years of legal, logistical and financial struggles to make it happen; but eventually his Lake Shore Mines made him the richest man in Canada.

Foskett’s eyes were tight and gleaming; that flexible mouth savored every Southern-fried word he spoke. “Nathan-we’re talking about an individual who could write a check for two hundred million, and cash it-in any bank, anywhere.”

Despite his reputation as a cantankerous loner, Harry was also renowned for paying his debts: a Chinese laundryman who had grubstaked him when everyone else turned their backs was lavishly rewarded by the now wealthy Oakes. On the other hand, a hardware store owner who had refused Oakes credit suddenly found a new competitor opening next door, underselling him item for item, putting him out of business within three months.

More charitably, a teenage shopgirl Oakes had dated in Sydney, Australia, who once lent him money for passage back to America, was rewarded years later with a marriage proposal on a world cruise. He was forty-eight; Eunice was twenty-four. Five children were the happy result.

For business reasons, Harry had become a Canadian citizen in the early twenties; by the late thirties he’d taken Bahamian citizenship, due to the skyrocketing taxes in Canada, and the conspicuous absence of taxes in the Bahamas.

“You must understand,” Foskett said, pleading his client’s case earnestly, “that Sir Harry was one of Canada’s most generous philanthropists, above and beyond the jobs and prosperity his Lake Shore Mines had brought his adopted country. Even before the latest tax hikes, he was already Canada’s largest single taxpayer. He felt…plundered.…”

Now a Bahamian, Oakes shifted his charitable giving to London and Nassau, and the title of baronet was conferred upon him by the King in 1939. In the meantime, he became the uncrowned king of the Bahamas, a one-man development boom-adding an airline and airfield to Nassau, purchasing and renovating the British Colonial Hotel, increasing wages, expanding employment through the islands. Giving millions to island charities.