George Hilliard was a Canadian businessman and politician from the province of Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

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Born in Morrisburg, Upper Canada

Upper Canada

The Province of Upper Canada was a political division in British Canada established in 1791 by the British Empire to govern the central third of the lands in British North America and to accommodate Loyalist refugees from the United States of America after the American Revolution...

, the son of Christopher Hilliard, a British officer, and Catherine Meyer, Hilliard came to Peterborough County in 1847. He began working as a clerk in Peterborough

Peterborough, Ontario

Peterborough is a city on the Otonabee River in southern Ontario, Canada, 125 kilometres northeast of Toronto. The population of the City of Peterborough was 74,898 as of the 2006 census, while the census metropolitan area has a population of 121,428 as of a 2009 estimate. It presently ranks...

 in 1847. He opened his own general store with his brother and later managed a lumber business. In 1862, he purchased a saw mill and afterwards a large stone flouring mill.