Founded in Montreal, Quebec as The Sun Insurance Company of Montreal in 1865 by Mathew Hamilton Gault, an Irish immigrant who settled in Montreal in 1842, its operations actually began in 1871. By the end of the nineteenth century it had expanded to Central and South America, the West Indies, Japan, China, India, North Africa and other international markets. Over the next five decades the company grew and prospered, surviving the difficulties of World War I and the large drain on its finances through policy claims arising from the large number of deaths caused by the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918.