Very very ordinary.  No, not the stuff of  history books or even good caricature, although it would be easy to characterize Norman as the quintessential penny pinching Scot (someone who believes  his bank book to be the best kind of reading) but that characterization would be totally unfair.

Norman Nicholson may have been a practical man:

Price of ash for 1899: 8 cents for 12 inch;10 cents for 13 inch; 12 cents for 14 inch.

1913 Trip to Boston to see Grand Lodge: ticket to Montreal, 2.55, street car 05, ticket to Newport, 3.25. Dinner on train .60

with a  petty side:

number of times Dr. Kellock was away from his congregation in year 1897: 24 January in Boston; 21 March in Spenserville; 24 October in Toronto;

October 18, 1899. Date McMorine had his water cut off in his store by M. McDonald tinsmith.
But he also was open-minded and pragmatic:
I think women's suffrage is one of the changes that will happen in the near future. Too absurd to think that a woman cannot exercise her franchise with as much intelligence as some of the male sex. And that they are making this so hard is so many countries when you have to drag some of these supposedly intelligent men to the polls as you would cattle..... I note what you said about the Titanic. It is one of the worst accidents I ever heard. With such a lot of important men to go down with it that the country cannot afford to lose in a way but, I suppose, their places will be filled and in a short time and they will not be missed.
See? An  ordinary man of conflicting passions, just like you and me, the kind of man who has but one chance to have something flattering written about him and that's at the end of his life:
From the Richmond Guardian June, 1922:
The death occurred suddenly last Friday morning  in Montreal of Mr. Norman Nicholson, one of the most respected citizens of this place…
And then that's it, finito, no more, except, perhaps, for an epitaph on a tombstone in a far-flung country cemetery no one ever visits.
RIP  Norman Nicholson, my husband's great grandfather. An oh-so ordinary man, except for this one extraordinary trait, this compulsion to keep track of things, to leave a paper trail for posterity - if mostly in list form.

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Click to read about the amazing year 1967 the year I imitated Emma Peel, spy extraordinaire and ignored by British Grandmother who had been a genuine spy--at Changi Prison