 He took the greatest pride in sitting on the boards of the "World's Greatest Transportation Company", the Canadian Pacific Railway, and on the oldest commercial organization in the world, the Hudson's Bay Company.On the board of the CPR, he joined F. E. Meredith, with whom he shared the same uncle and godfather in Edmund Allen Meredith.Nanton was one of a small group of Winnipeg businessmen who directed the massive financing of and servicing for the influx of over a million settlers then pouring into the newly opened Canadian West.