R.J. Devlin was born in 1842 in Londonderry, the son of an Anglican priest. After his father died when Devlin was 12, a guardian took the young Robert and his $30,000 dollar inheritance to London, Canada. When Robert was out one afternoon as a volunteer water-carrier for the London Fire Brigade, his ‘guardian’ absconded with the inheritance, leaving Devlin penniless. 

He soon found a job in a fur factory and later worked as a journalist for the London Free Press, writing a humorous column called Korn Kob Jr. He came to know Mark Twain during this time, and at some point, he also met the Hon. John Carling, later Sir John Carling, a prominent London businessman who represented the city in both the provincial and federal governments. Carling advised Devlin to start a furrier business in to Canada’s new capital of Ottawa which was growing rapidly. 

Devlin arrived in 1869 and set up a fur and hat store on Rideau Street. He later moved to No. 37 Sparks Street, across from the Russell House Hotel. Devlin’s store sign was a large tin hat upon which was written the store’s motto — “Hats that R Hats.”

Devlin’s three-story shop at 37 Sparks Street sold hats on the ground floor, a fur salon on the second floor, and the fur workshop on the third floor where Devlin’s manufactured all their fur products. The store itself was famous for its mirrors that were angled in the stairwell to allow a person on the ground floor to see the second-floor fur salon.

In 1891, Devlin built a four-storey building at 76 Sparks Street between Elgin and Metcalfe Streets. Before the growing company occupied the entire building, Devlin’s rented space to a number of tenants, including Ahearn & Soper, Robert Masson’s Shoe Company, and the Ottawa Citizen newspaper. By 1900, the store expanded its merchandise to include women’s and men’s clothing.

R.J. Devlin & Co. advertising was prepared by Devlin himself and often took jibes at Ottawa politicians and residents. He frequently complained about the state of Ottawa’s roads, especially Sparks Street. In one of his ads, he quipped that “fishing was recorded as good on a ravine called Sparks St — but if any of my patrons will come to the opposite bank and shout, I well send over a boat and ferry them across.” Another read “my business is located behind a rut on what is known as Sparks Street — not the small rut over on Elgin Street but the large one near the middle of the block [i.e. in front of Devlin’s store].” Sparks Street was finally paved in 1895. Devlin didn’t spare himself either. For one sale he advertised: “There is a surplus of furs which I should not have and a chronic deficit in my bank account which the manager says he won’t have — so — betwixt the Devil and the Deep Sea, etc.” Another read, “For sale — Grey goat coats $6 — they are grey and they are goat and they are six dollars, which is all I can truthfully say about them.” Another went, “Waterproof coats $5 — they are not even good coats, unless they possess some hidden virtue of which the undersigned is unaware.”

Robert Devlin’s greatest advertising coup occurred on November 11, 1889. His advertisement predicted that winter would start in Ottawa on November 27 with a major blizzard accompanied by howling winds. To prepared for the coming storm, men and women should purchase fur coats and warm sleigh robes from his store before it was too late. True to his prediction, the 27th began grey and dull with a stiff wind. The temperature was in the upper thirties, Fahrenheit. Through the morning, the temperature dropped. The occasional snow flurry changed into a heavy and persistent snowfall. By evening, the snow was so deep that the street railway stopped working. The first sleighs of the season appeared on city streets. The snow continued for close to twenty-four hours, with more than a foot on the ground, just like Devlin had predicted. Devlin was crowned by the public as Ottawa’s “prize weather prophet.”

Devlin’s advertisements were collected by his sons and given to the Women’s Canadian Historical Society of Ottawa. The three leather-bound volumes are currently stored in the City of Ottawa Archives.

In 1901, an association of Canadian women presented the future Queen Mary with a mink and ermine wrap made in the Devlin workshop. In 1918 Robert J. Devlin died at the age of 78. The store passed to his sons, W.F.C. (‘Ted’) Devlin and Brian Devlin. In April 1951, the brothers sold the landmark store to Montreal’s Henry Morgan & Company. Morgan’s ran the store under the Devlin name for the first six months before changing the name to the Henry Morgan Company. In 1960, Morgan’s was purchased by the Hudson’s Bay Company for $15.4 million. On March 23, 1973, the Hudson’s Bay Company closed the Sparks Street store closed for good.