From the archives: Lady Rose blossomed after scandal

This story was first published on Dec. 15, 2012, in the Montreal Gazette.
In December 1883, word arrived in the city that the wife of Sir John Rose had died in London. Many Montrealers would instantly have recognized Rose’s name: once a Montreal MP and Sir John A. Macdonald’s finance minister, he was then a well-regarded banker in the British capital. As for Lady Rose, however, perhaps only a few older Montrealers would have remembered her place in a scandal nearly half a century bef