Mount Royal in the Province of Quebec and Dominion of Canada, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, on 23 August 1897, as part of the 1897 Diamond Jubilee Honours. He had already been made KCMG on 29 May 1886, promoted to GCMG on 20 May 1896, and was further made GCVO in 1908. He cooperated with Manitoba Liberal Clifford Sifton in opening the Canadian prairies to eastern-European immigration. He raised Strathcona's Horse, a private unit of Canadian soldiers, during the Second Boer War, and became one of the leading supporters of British imperialism within London. After the end of the war, he was appointed among the members of a Royal Commission set up to investigate the conduct of the Second Boer War (the Elgin Commission 1902–1903). He was involved in the creation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, of which he became the chairman in 1909. Lord Strathcona subsequently used his influence to make the company a major supplier of the Royal Navy. He was granted a second creation of the Barony, with a Special Remainder in favour of his daughter Margaret Charlotte Howard, as Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, of Mount Royal in the Province of Quebec and Dominion of Canada, and of Glencoe in the County of Argyll, on 26 June 1900. He was Lord Rector of the University of Aberdeen (1899–1902), and he received the Freedom of the City of Aberdeen in a ceremony on 9 April 1902. On 12 February 1902, he was appointed an Honorary Colonel of the 8th (Volunteer) Battalion, the King's (Liverpool Regiment), and the same month he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) from the Victoria University of Manchester, in connection with the 50th jubilee of the establishment of the university. He received the honorary degree Doctor of Civil Law (DCL) from the University of Oxford in October 1902, in connection with the tercentenary of the Bodleian Library. He was sworn in as a Member of the Imperial Privy Council in 1904. He received the Freedom of the City of Bath on 13 July 1911. Philanthropy Strathcona was a leading philanthropist in his later years, donating large sums of money to various organizations in Britain, Canada and elsewhere. His largest donations were made with George Stephen, donating the money to build the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal that opened its doors in 1893. Strathcona also made a major donation