Founder of the Canada Permanent Mortgage Corporation, and building it to great heights, Mason showed that he excelled in business. He also cared deeply for education as shown by his involvement in the founding of both Wycliffe and Ridley. In 1889 he sat on the first Board of Governors, was a Director from 1899 and Ridley's President from 1900 to1911. But perhaps the thing that Mason valued most, upon which he continuously laid emphasis, was a man's character. In his 1903 indenture endowing two awards for the school - for the Upper School it was the Mason Medal and the second for the Head Boy of the Lower School - he defined the qualifications as: cheerful submission to authority, self-respect and independence of character, readiness to forgive offenses, desire to conciliate differences with others and moral courage and unflinching truthfulness. The Mason Gold Medal since its inception has been voted on by the students for the Prefect who best exemplifies these qualities. Mason died in 1911.