The Big Book of Canadian Trivia

When he started his office supplies business in Toronto in 1882, he would gather orders, buy paper on credit, and deliver products by wagon door to door. In fact, Grand is believed to be the first person in Toronto to sell stationery to customers this way.

He was the eldest child of an officer of the Regiment of Royal Engineers from England who settled in Toronto. At age 14, Grand began working in the publishing business. By 1882, Grand had a wife and infant son to support and decided that going into business for himself was the solution.

When he started his stationery/office supplies business, Grand used his mother’s kitchen table as a counter and set up shop on the second floor of a building at 4 Leader Lane. By August 1883, business was so hectic he realized he couldn’t continue single-handedly. Enter Samuel Toy, Grand’s brother-in-law. The two formed the partnership Grand & Toy and within three years, total annual sales cracked the $15,000 mark.

By 1895, Grand & Toy moved to better headquarters at Wellington and Jordan streets, and four years later they had about 12 employees, including Grand’s son Percy. The company expanded their delivery area beyond Toronto’s downtown. Then what was a catastrophe for the city in 1904 turned into a bonus for Grand & Toy.

In April that year, a fire raged through the city’s core, destroying buildings and causing $10 million in damage. Thanks to Percy’s vigilance in dousing any flaming debris from the Grand & Toy roof, the company’s store was not damaged. That left Grand & Toy as the only office supplier in the downtown area, and customers flocked there to replenish their supplies. They were handed wastebaskets to hold their supplies as they moved around the store, likely making it the first time self-serve shopping occurred at a stationery store.

Toy was the brains behind introducing the company’s catalogue that same year, which also helped boost sales. Despite Toy’s death two years later, the firm continued to flourish. James Grand’s health began to fail in 1913, and Percy took over more responsibilities. In 1922, when James died, Percy became president, with his brothers, Arthur and Ernest, placed in senior roles. Grand & Toy opened its first branch store in Toronto in 1926, and as skyscrapers became popular in the following years, the company began landing contracts to furnish these new office centres.

When Percy died in 1954, his son, James R. Grand, succeeded him as head of the firm, and a year later the company opened a store in Hamilton, the first one outside of Toronto. Grand & Toy continued to blossom and expand through the next couple of decades, especially in western Canada. In 1995, it was purchased by Boise Cascade Office Products, and today there are 43 Grand & Toy locations, 22 commercial sales offices, and seven distribution centres in Canada employing 2,200 people. Sales are in excess of $120 million. From its humble beginnings on the second floor of a Toronto building, it is now North America’s leading office products dealer.

Anyone with well-stocked cupboards has likely shopped at Loblaws, a company launched by Theodore Pringle Loblaw. The Alliston, Ontario, native moved to Toronto in 1889 with just 20 dollars and the dream of following in the footsteps of department store mogul Timothy Eaton.

Biz BITE!

The next time you use a pencil, think of Percy Grand. In 1927, he was looking for a pencil that wouldn’t roll off his desk, like the hexagonal ones that were popular at that time. But he wanted one that was more comfortable to use. He filed down the sharp edges of a hexagonal pencil to create the Roundedge Pencil, which was smoother to hold but still didn’t roll. It’s the prototype for virtually all pencils today and is still sold in vast quantities by Grand & Toy.

Soon, however, he found the grocery trade more delicious. He plunged into groceries in the late 1800s, taking night courses in accounting and book keeping, and eventually became one of the millionaire co-owners of Loblaws. In the early 1900s, he felt it was time to launch a food store chain. For a time, he operated 19 traditional-style grocery stores in Toronto but eventually sold out and formed a partnership with Milton Cork. Together, they opened two self-serve Loblaws stores. Ten years later, the company had expanded to 95 outlets in Ontario, with annual sales of $18.4 million.

Loblaw innovations included: abandoning the pre-First World War system whereby food processors and producers set retail prices; opening self-serve, cash-and-carry stores, and the introduction of systems that tracked sales and bought most products with cash direct from farmers or manufacturers to get the best discounts. Loblaws also manufactured many of its own brands of butter, bacon, coffee, and other products, an early version of the “no-name” products trend that became popular years later.

In 1933, with more than 100 stores, Loblaw died suddenly at age 61 from an infection acquired after a minor sinus operation.

In 1947, the firm was sold to Toronto-based George Weston Ltd. These days, the smallest Loblaw store is about five times the size of a typical outlet operated by Loblaw in 1928.

Today, there are more than 1,000 corporate and franchised Loblaws stores operating from coast to coast and the company employs more than 140,000 people.

Sometimes the person who starts a company isn’t part of its famous brand name. While the name Holt Renfrew today conjures up a sense of quality clothing, it was actually William Samuel Henderson who got the firm started. Messrs. Holt and Renfrew would show up later.

Henderson came from Londonderry, Ireland, in 1834 to Quebec City to sell a variety of hats and caps. The first firm he worked for was Ashton and Company, but by 1837 he had taken control and set up shop on rue Buade.

Business was good, and 12 years later Henderson began expanding the company by getting into the fur business. Three years later, he sold the shop to his brother John. In 1860, G.R. Renfrew, an employee, became a partner to form Henderson, Renfrew & Co. After another change in partnership in 1867, John Holt joined the company, and he too, eventually took a controlling interest. The two bought Henderson out, and the name Holt Renfrew & Co. Ltd. would become official in 1908.

In the 1880s, the company was appointed Furrier-in-Ordinary to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and its association with the British royalty continued with three other monarchs. In fact, in 1948, Holt Renfrew was asked to create a Labrador wild mink coat as Canada’s gift for then-Princess Elizabeth’s wedding.

By 1889, Holt Renfrew had opened a second store in Toronto at Yonge and Adelaide Street. More stores in other cities followed and to meet their shoppers’ sophisticated tastes the company became the exclusive representative of such haute couture lines as Christian Dior and Valentino. In fact, in the 1930s and 1940s Holt Renfrew secured the oldest existing contract with the house of Christian Dior. When Yves Saint Laurent opened his own maison in Paris, Holt Renfrew promptly procured the exclusive rights in Canada for Saint Laurent Haute.

Ownership of the firm changed hands a couple of times between American companies in the 1960s, but in 1986 Holt Renfrew returned to its Canadian roots when it was purchased by Wittington Investments Ltd., chaired by Galen Weston, whose company, George Weston Ltd., of Toronto, has vast holdings, including Canadian companies Weston’s Bakery, Loblaw, Neilson Dairy, and Connors Brothers Ltd. fish processors. Several stores were renovated and different marketing styles were introduced to appeal to a broader range of shoppers.

Today, patrons can buy a wide selection of designer and private label women’s and men’s fashions, cosmetics, fragrances, jewellery, accessories, and home furnishings. In addition to several stores in Montreal and Toronto, there are others in Ottawa, Quebec City, Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton.

If you’ve done a load of laundry or cooked a meal, you’ve met John Inglis in a roundabout way.

Since the end of the Second World War, his surname has been a fixture in Canadian kitchens and laundry rooms, where it can be found on washing machines, clothes dryers, stoves, refrigerators, and dishwashers built by the company he founded in 1859.

But Inglis is known for more than just household appliances. His name is connected to a diverse range of goods, including guns and fishing equipment, which have played a role in the lives of generations of Canadians since before Confederation.

In 1850, at age 36, Inglis immigrated to Canada from England and worked in Hamilton, Oakville, and the Niagara Peninsula, where he honed the metalworker and patternmaker’s skills he’d learned in England and Scotland. Nine years later, he moved to Guelph, Ontario, and with two partners founded Mair, Inglis & Evatt, which built machinery for grist and flour mills.

Biz BITE!

Inglis’s Toronto plant on Strachan Avenue has been called “Canada’s most important factory.” Few Canadian factories ever manufactured the range of products this one did; few have seen as many generations of workers pass through the same factory gates; few have played such a major role in equipping other industries as this one did; it was one of a small number of plants to have witnessed so many changes in manufacturing over the course of their existence. The plant was a snapshot of worker history over 108 years in the same location.

Within 10 years, Inglis and his counterparts were also making pulleys, fly wheels, steam engines, and water wheels — the basic technology of Canada’s industrial revolution — as well as chains, window grates, and manhole covers. A decade later, Inglis, a native of Castleton, Rox-boroughshire, Scotland, and a new partner, Daniel Hunter, were making engines and mill machinery under the name Inglis & Hunter.

Having outgrown its Guelph factory, the company moved to Strachan Avenue in Toronto in 1881 and soon took advantage of the city’s growing manufacturing sector. Within a year, output was five times that of the Guelph enterprise; by 1885, a new factory had been built that eventually dwarfed everything in the neighbourhood but the churches.

Two years later, Hunter left and the company’s name was changed to John Inglis and Sons, with William Inglis, one of John’s five sons, playing a large role. At the time, John Inglis was a prominent member of the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association.

In April 1899, with his company growing by leaps and bounds and in the midst of diversifying its products, John Inglis died. William took over and, under his direction, John Inglis and Sons began manufacturing marine steam engines and waterworks pumping engines, at the same time discontinuing production of its other products. In 1904, the company was forced to rebuild after a major fire.

Biz BITE!

Toronto’s Central Prison was located next to John Inglis’s early Toronto factory on Strachan Avenue. More than once, public hangings and lashings were conducted during factory hours. Prisoners made brooms in the prison.

In 1935, when Inglis was a key manufacturer of equipment used by other industries, William Inglis died. Reeling from the effects of the Depression, and without an Inglis at the helm for the first time in 75 years, the company closed the doors of its Toronto factory, which over the years had provided jobs for thousands of Torontonians. Shortly after, American-born industrialist Major J.E. Hahn purchased the company and obtained the right to use the name John Inglis Co. Limited. In 1938, Inglis began manufacturing guns for Canada and other countries.

When the Second World War ended in 1945, Inglis continued to make heavy equipment such as boilers, pumps, and tanks for the mining, brewing, and steel industries.

And for the first time, the company began manufacturing consumer products, such as fishing tackle, house trailers, lipstick holders, and home appliances.

In the late 1940s, John Inglis and Co. affiliated with the company that evolved into American-owned Whirlpool Corporation, eventual owners of Inglis. The product line changed to wringer washers, and later, automatic washers, electric and gas dryers, dishwashers, and refrigerators.

In 1972, Inglis produced its one-millionth automatic washer and began manufacturing appliances under the Whirlpool brand name. The next year, the company name became Inglis Limited. In the mid-1980s Whirlpool Corporation of Ohio assumed majority ownership and in 1989 closed the Toronto plant, which at the time made only washing machines. Factories in the Ontario communities of Stoney Creek, Cambridge, and Mississauga were also closed.

Biz BITE!

Among the guns made at the Inglis factory in Toronto was the Inglis Browning High Power pistol, Canada’s first and only mass-produced handgun. It was produced only briefly, but has provided more than half a century of service in numerous armies and remains the official sidearm of the Canadian Forces.

Since 2001, Inglis has been known as Whirlpool Canada Ltd. Despite the new name, plants in Quebec and the U.S. continue to build and sell appliances which bear John Inglis’s name.

The name Timothy Eaton evokes treasured memories of gaily decorated store windows, a parade that delighted generations of children every November, and the company’s famous mail-order catalogue. And it’s no exaggeration to say Eaton is Canada’s version of retailing superstars Rowland Macy in the United States and Charles Harrod in the United Kingdom. All founded tremendously successful department stores that became central to the lives of those who love to shop.

Eaton’s climb to department store stardom began in 1854, when he arrived in Canada and took a job as a junior clerk in a general store near Georgetown, Ontario. Two years later he and his brother James, sons of an Irish tenant farmer, started the J. and T. Eaton General Store in a log building in Kirkton, a small community near Stratford, Ontario. In 1860, they moved to nearby St. Marys to sell dry goods, boots, farm tools, and kitchenware. Timothy married Margaret Wilson Beattie in 1861.

Eight years after tying the knot, Timothy decided to try his luck in the big city. When his business partnership with his brother James dissolved in 1868, Timothy took his store-keeping experience and his wife to Toronto and in 1869 purchased a dry goods store at 178 Yonge Street for $6,500 in cash.

Before long, the shop was taking advantage of a growing market brought on by increasing urbanization and industrialization in Toronto, not to mention rising living standards.

In 1883, Eaton moved to larger quarters on Yonge Street and three years later the store doubled in size. To meet the product needs of his rapidly expanding business, Eaton in the 1880s and 1890s set up his own companies to manufacture clothing, paint, and chemicals and purchased farms to supply dairy products to his store and feed for his delivery horses.

In the years that followed, Eaton and his company were an integral facet of daily Canadian life as a full-line department store with a broad selection of goods, including jewellery, carpets, sporting goods, clothing, and appliances. A visit to an Eaton’s store was a major happening for generations of Canadians, especially around Christmas when the stores’ windows were filled with lights and holiday scenes.

They Said it!

“A man who works longer hours than meets his needs will have a margin of profit; that gives him comforts and he and the whole country prosper.”

— Timothy Eaton, when asked about the slim margin between cost of living and wages.

Known as a pious, teetotalling Methodist who could be abrupt, gruff, and outspoken, Eaton was an innovator from the start: he was the first merchant in Toronto to sell goods for cash only and at one price; he coined and stood by the motto “Money refunded if goods not satisfactory” and he shortened store hours to ease his employees’ long work week. He manufactured products under various house brand names; introduced the Santa Claus parade; and in 1884, launched the Eaton’s catalogue, which came to hold a position second only to the family Bible in many Canadian households.

Originally called The Wishing Book, the catalogue carried just about everything, from farm tools, wedding rings and lace, to prefabricated homes, home remedies, and clothing. The 1896 version included a hand-powered washing machine for $3.75 and a year’s supply of food for a man going on the Klondike gold rush for $68.69.

As Eaton’s business prospered, his wife and five children (three other children died in infancy) adopted the comfortable lifestyle of other well-off Torontonians. They lived in a large home at the corner of Spadina Road and Lowther Avenue and spent summers at a lakefront property in Muskoka, north of Toronto, where they owned several steam yachts. Despite its wealth, the family never gave up its simple ways, which meant social vices such as cards, dancing, drinking, and smoking were no-nos.

In January 1907, about two years after opening a second store in Winnipeg, Eaton died of pneumonia. He left behind an estate worth $5.3 million and an empire that author Rod McQueen wrote in his book The Eatons: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Royal Family, “would weave itself into the very fabric of the land and the vital fibre of its people.”

The company was taken over by Timothy’s son John Craig and later by several of Timothy’s relatives, who until the 1980s kept Eaton’s at the forefront of Canadian department stores. In the 1950s, Eaton’s laid claim to more than half of all department-store spending in Canada; in the 1990s, the company had 85 stores; and at one point, sales hit $2.1 billion.

But like its renowned catalogue, which disappeared in 1976, the business Timothy Eaton founded was erased from Canada’s retail landscape, the victim of years of mismanagement, stiff competition from aggressive American retailers such as Wal-Mart, and an economic downturn in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

On February 27, 1997, the department store chain announced that after 128 years as a Canadian institution, it could no longer pay its bills. Twenty-one stores were closed, and on May 18, 1999, Eaton’s hung a for sale sign on its remaining assets, including its flagship store in Toronto’s Eaton Centre. As McQueen noted in his book, the family’s Irish luck had run out.

Biz BITE!

On January 1, 1985, Nancy Eaton, the great-great-granddaughter of Timothy Eaton, was found dead in her Toronto apartment, a victim of multiple stab wounds.

“If Timothy Eaton were alive and saw this he’d be a pretty sad man,” one bargain hunter said during an auction where cash registers, desks, and well-worn chairs from Eaton’s better times were up for grabs.

Despite the company’s downfall, the Eaton name survived, though only briefly. When Sears Canada Inc. acquired 16 Eaton’s stores in 1999, it kept the Eaton banner on upscale department stores reopened a year later in Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver, and Victoria. But early in 2002, Sears dropped the Eaton name.

He could sell just about anything while she had a knack for figures. What started out as a two-person operation in 1926 selling souvenirs and other small items eventually became the number one toy company in Canada.

Anyone growing up in the 1950s and beyond probably knows the Irwin name. Among the toys the company has sold over the years are the Slinky, the Yo-Yo, Pound Puppies, and Pro Star tabletop hockey games.

Biz BITE!

When Timothy Eaton’s private rail car the Eatonia was destroyed by fire a new car was built in 1916. The Eatonia II was 78-feet-long, had four staterooms panelled in Cuban mahogany, an observation area, a dining room with seating for 10 on leather chairs, a full kitchen, and servants’ quarters. The car was eventually sold to Canadian National Railways for use by VI Ps such as royals and cabinet ministers. In 1972 Eaton’s repurchased and restored the car, before donating it to Calgary’s Heritage Park.

Samuel Irwin grew up on a farm near Orangeville, Ontario. He would visit future wife Beatrice Whiteside, who lived in Alliston, Ontario, by driving his jalopy over the rough roads of the time. As a young man, he worked as clerk for Hill’s General Store in Orangeville and then moved to Toronto, where he was an employee at Eaton’s, Simpson’s, and then a wholesale dry goods firm.

After serving overseas in the First World War, Sam found work selling business courses. That led to a job selling specialty items such as souvenirs for Rumsay & Company, and Sam thought he could make more money with a similar business of his own. He and Beatrice married in 1924 and decided two years later to open their shop, Irwin Specialties, near Yonge Street and St. Clair Avenue in Toronto.

“My dad was really a salesman and good at it,” Arnold Irwin told us from his winter residence in Florida. “My mother was more meticulous and kept the records.”

By 1935, there were five salesmen employed to cover the country, and the firm was specializing in selling toys, games, and souvenirs. The company did well, due in part to Sam’s knack for taking chances and his penchant for travel that took him around the world seeking business opportunities. In the late 1930s, while in England, he bought up old and unwanted souvenirs of King George VI’s coronation ceremony at a cheap price. Employees back home were surprised at how much he shipped back, Arnold says, but by placing them in Christmas stockings that the firm sold to other companies, Sam managed to move all the merchandise.

The Irwin Company, which was a wholesale firm, had other successes thanks to Sam’s knack for spotting bargains. After the Second World War broke out, there was a lot of public pressure on stores not to sell German- and Japanese-made goods. Samuel saw this as an opportunity. He bought up the goods, mostly toys, at bargain prices, and within a year the shops realized they were low on stock and had to buy the merchandise back from him. “He made a fortune,” Arnold says.

After the war, however, the company was running into financial difficulty and Sam suffered a nervous breakdown. A friend suggested that Sam bring his two sons, Mac and Arnold, into the business. Both were still in university and managed to finish their studies even after they went to work for their father around 1950.

It was Mac and Arnold who started moving the company even more into the toy business. They allied themselves with several strong manufacturers and secured rights early on to sell products that became successes. As the company grew, both Sam and Bea continued to take an active role. Both worked hard and would often take work home with them on weekends and holidays, Arnold says.

But tragedy struck in 1968. Sam, who was always a “hesitant swimmer,” drowned in the swimming pool at his North Toronto home. It was never clear what happened.

Arnold says his father, like many of his generation, quit school at an early age, but “he was very much in awe of people who had an education.” When Samuel died, his sons set up a fund that would help pay for employees’ children to attend university.

Irwin Toy went public in 1969 and had a long string of profitable years. Like their parents, Arnold and Mac, who were president and vice-president respectively in the company, believed in putting in an honest days’ work. “We were really hard working. We spent a lot of time in the business. We thrived on it, and we enjoyed it. It didn’t seem like work.”

Arnold describes the company of that era as one big family, with low turnover and many long-term employees. His mother stayed on as a company director for several years, and when she got older they made her an honorary director. She died at age 89.

Irwin Toy, meanwhile, continued to expand, initiating direct sales of toys in the United States in 1991, and setting up in Australia in 1997. In April 2001, an affiliate of Livgroup Investments Ltd. bought the company and turned it back into a private company.

Known as IToys since 2003, the toy and game manufacturer is now led by the Irwins’ sons, George and Peter, who have effectively reshaped the business for a new generation of children. In just five short years, Itoys Inc. has emerged as a leading international manufacturer of homegrown and licensed toys available at leading retailers around the globe.

Biz BITE!

The education fund set up by the Irwins proved to be a blessing many years later when Arnold’s wife had to be rushed to the hospital. The doctor who treated her was an employee’s son who had had his schooling paid for partially by the company.

It wasn’t exactly rags to riches, but like many prosperous Canadian companies, Reitmans, the large chain of women’s wear stores, had humble beginnings.

Herman and Sarah Reitman were both born in Romania and came to Canada for a better life. In the early 1900s, they operated a small shop called American Ladies Tailoring and Dressmaking Company in Montreal. It catered primarily to the dressmaking needs of ladies, specializing in made-to-measure garments.

About 1914, they decided to move away from the dressmaking field and turn their business into a dry goods general store. They sold hosiery, gloves, some house furnishings and housewares, clothing, fabrics, and ribbons by the yard, all from a small department store of about 15,000 square feet.

Their second store in 1926 was located on St. Lawrence Boulevard in Montreal, and the couple got help from their children, Louis, Sam, John, and Jack. It soon became apparent that the most popular items in the dry goods store were hosiery, gloves, and lingerie, so the Reitmans decided to specialize in ladies’ wear.

It was a good decision. Under the simple name Reitmans the store prospered, and by 1929 the family had four outlets in Montreal. The company expanded, first to Ottawa in 1936, and then three years later it opened a store in Toronto. By this time, Reitmans had 22 stores with annual sales of almost $1 million.

Herman died in 1941, while Sarah’s death came nine years later, but the company was firmly in family hands. In 1947, with sales exceeding $2 million, the company went public and was listed for trading on the Montreal Stock Exchange. By 1950, Reitmans had 15 stores in Quebec and 20 in Ontario. A year later the head office and distribution centre was moved to a 25,000-square-foot facility at 3510 St. Lawrence Boulevard, across the street from the first store.

Reitmans opened its first store in western Canada in 1958 in Calgary and the following year moved into eastern Canada with an outlet in Halifax. The company continued to grow and prosper from the 1960s onward, opening Smart Set stores and acquiring others such as Penningtons, which caters to larger-sized women. In the fall of 2008, the women’s wear retailer launched a new chain called Cassis that caters specifically to 45- to 60-year-old women, what they view as a growing and potentially lucrative market. The stores will provide shoppers with ampler sizing, better quality, and higher prices. So far, 16 stores have opened under the name in Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick.

Today, president Jeremy H. Reitman oversees an operation that has over 900 stores operating under eight divisions, and of which more than 350 bear the Reitmans name. Annual sales in 2008 were in excess of $1 billion.

$ Rolland Dansereau and Napoléon Piotte
(RONA L’entrepôt/RONA Warehouse/RONA Home & Garden)

The next time you’re shopping for two-by-fours at a home improvement centre with RONA on the sign, think of Rolland Dansereau and Napoléon Piotte. The two Quebeckers founded the RONA chain back in 1939, and it’s their names — in part, at least — that are in front of retail building supply stores in many parts of Canada. RONA is a combination of the first two letters of each man’s first name.

The firm’s foundation dates back to 1939 when several Quebec hardware stores led by Dansereau and Piotte formed Les Marchands en Quincaillerie Ltée (The Hardware Merchants Ltd.). Twenty years later, they incorporated as Quincaillerie Ro-Na Inc. with a mandate to promote business collectively.

The company moved outside Quebec in 1982 by acquiring the Botanix network and negotiating purchasing alliances with Canada’s Home Hardware stores and the Do-it-Best chain in the U.S. In 1988, Ro-Na merged with Dismat, which specialized in the building materials sector and the name was changed to Groupe Ro-Na Dismat Inc.

In 1994, RONA L’entrepôt (RONA Warehouse big box outlet) was launched and soon after, the RONA name was officially adopted. Seven years later, RONA purchased Ontario-based Cashway Building Centres and a year after, took over the British Columbia-based Revy Network, which included stores formerly operated in B.C. and Ontario under the Revelstoke, Revy, Lumberland, and Lansing Buildall banners.

Today, the company founded by Mssrs. Dansereau and Piotte is known as RONA Inc. and is based in the Montreal suburb of Boucherville. It is the largest distributor and retailer of hardware, renovation, and gardening supplies in Canada, operating stores in eight provinces. RONA and its dealer-owners run a Canada-wide network of over 600 home improvement stores operating under 15 different banners, including RONA L’entrepôt, RONA Warehouse, RONA Home & Garden, RONA Revy Home Centres, RONA Revelstoke Centres, and RONA Lansing.

With more than 16,000 employees and some 10 million square feet of retail space, the stores ring up annual sales of nearly $3 billion. About 62 percent of the company’s shares are held by RONA dealer-owners and employees. Dansereau and Piotte have not been associated with RONA since the 1960s.

For the better part of 100 years you couldn’t mention Eaton’s department stores without mentioning Simpson’s in the same breath. Eaton’s stores continued on until 2002, but the Simpson’s name disappeared before the 20th century ended.

Robert Simpson was born in Speymouth, Scotland, in 1834, the son of a general store owner. When he was about 20, he arrived in Upper Canada, having apprenticed to a shopkeeper in his homeland. He worked in a general store in Newmarket, Ontario, and in 1858 he and two others bought the business and sold dry goods, boots, hardware, and groceries. It was the trend at the time to deal only in cash, and the partners offered the lowest prices around.

The partnership only lasted four years, but Simpson soon linked up with another businessman, M.W. Bogart. Two fires caused damage to the enterprise and in the mid-1860s Bogart left Simpson to run the business on his own. Fortunately economic times were good during that decade, and Simpson opened a new shop said to be the finest north of Toronto.

Hurt by still another fire and some slack accounting, Simpson once again regrouped before selling his store to a cousin in 1872. He moved his family to Toronto and opened a dry goods store, this time on Yonge Street north of Queen. Simpson’s business grew along with Toronto, which was becoming increasingly industrialized during those years. Like his rival Timothy Eaton, Simpson established a wholesale operation to complement his retail store. By 1881, however, he had abandoned the wholesale business and concentrated on his retail business in premises that were adjacent to Eaton’s.

Though the two competed for business, both were able to prosper in busy Toronto, and by 1885 Simpson’s employed 60 clerks and sold a variety of goods. Simpson, who was reportedly a heavy drinker, managed to keep his firm profitable through the rest of his life. When he moved the company into new headquarters in 1896, there were 500 staff, a restaurant on the premises, and a mail order department.

Biz BITE!

The connection between Canada and the Sweet Marie candy bar that’s smothered with chocolate and nuts began in 1893 when American-born author Cy Warman was living in London, Ontario, and walked his girlfriend Marie to her home at Queen’s Avenue and Colborne Street. The book The North and the East by historian John Lutman says Warman then strolled to Victoria Park in the city’s downtown and wrote a love poem to her called “Sweet Marie.” It opens with the lines “I’ve a secret in my heart, Sweet Marie/A tale I would impart, love to thee /Every daisy in the dell/Knows my secret, knows it well/And yet I dare not tell Sweet Marie.”
A few years later a composer named Raymon Moore put the words to music, and the result was a hit song that became popular across North America. It was said that Marie was the best-known London resident on the continent thanks to the tune, which was later featured in the 1947 film Life with Father starring William Powell and Irene Dunne.
A chocolate company capitalized on the song by naming one of its products the Sweet Marie bar. Today, you can still wander into most shops that sell candy and buy a Sweet Marie, which is made by William Neilson Ltd. and bears the Cadbury name.
As for Marie and Warman? The poet proposed to Marie and they married and settled in London, raising four children. Their house still stands in the city’s north end on Cheapside Street.

Simpson died suddenly on December 14, 1897. Eaton and his son attended Simpson’s funeral and flew flags at their stores at half-mast that day. Simpson had a daughter, but in those days business usually didn’t get passed on to female heirs. So without a son to inherit the business, Simpson’s was sold a few months later to three Toronto businessmen.

Simpson’s thrived as a major department store with outlets across the country for most of the 20th century. It was bought by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1979 and some years later the Simpson’s name was removed from the storefronts. But for older shoppers the name remains memorable as one of the most famous retail stores in Canadian history.

Bata and his son Thomas are behind an Ontario-based company that has put footwear onto the feet of millions of people and provided jobs for thousands more.

The Bata Shoe Organization dates back to 1894 when Thomas (sometimes spelled Tomas) Bata was an apprentice in his father’s shoemaking shop in the small community of Zlin in the former Austria-Hungary Empire (now the Czech Republic).

He persuaded his elder brother and sister to use $350 bequeathed by their mother to launch their own shoemaking company in Zlin, and despite a brush with bankruptcy in the first year, the business was soon thriving under Bata’s leadership. Six years later it had a staff of 120.

As a youthful shoemaker, Bata’s business concept was to use assembly line technology and innovative human resources in footwear manufacturing. He was driven by a desire to provide shoes to people around the world and the business goals of selling shoes where they were not available, reducing production time, and supplying stylish footwear at affordable prices.

In 1904, Bata spent six months working at a mechanized New England shoe factory. When he returned to Czechoslovakia he introduced the assembly line to his company, and soon the firm grew so large that Zlin resembled a company town. In 1905, Bata was making 22,000 pairs of shoes per day. Eventually, factories were established in Poland, Yugoslavia, Holland, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and the United States.

Bata’s moral testament was that his business was not to be considered as simply a source of personal profit but rather as a vehicle of public trust: “We were motivated by the knowledge that our enterprise was providing an entire region with new previously unknown advantages, that its growth was contributing to the wealth and the education of the nation.”

Unfortunately, Bata would not live to see his vision come to fruition in its entirety. In July 1932, he was killed in a plane crash while flying to Switzerland, leaving behind his son Thomas Jr. and his wife Marie. “Every nation has its heroes,” read the eulogy at Bata’s funeral. “The Czech nation’s hero was a shoemaker.” The company was left in the hands of his half-brother Jan and was later taken over by Thomas Jr.

The Canadian connection to Bata Shoes was made in 1939, as the Nazis steamrolled their way across central Europe at a time when the company was making 10 million pairs of shoes annually. Recognizing that the family empire was in danger, the young Bata, then in his mid-20s, smuggled the company’s equipment to Canada where a new company town called Batawa was built near Trenton, Ontario, on land purchased from farmers.

In his book Bata: Shoemaker to the World, Bata said he picked Canada because it was “the best of two worlds, a blend of British traditions with the progressiveness and dynamism of the United States.”

From its new base 160 kilometres east of Toronto, Bata began building the empire he and his Swiss-born wife Sonja would run for years from the company’s headquarters in Don Mills, Ontario. Bata, who like his father began his working life as an apprentice, rebuilt the business by tapping into a huge global market for practical, sturdy shoes. One story says he once fired a salesman who returned from Africa with the gloomy view that the shoe market there was minimal because everyone walked around barefoot.

The company grew rapidly in the 1940s and 1950s by setting up fully integrated shoe industries, from tanneries to shoe shops, across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Many of the factories were located in company towns in rural areas.

The company prospered despite its share of troubles, including slow times, which forced the closure of the Batawa factory in 2000. Bata’s son Thomas George Bata took over the shoe company in 2001 but the elder Bata remained active in its operations.

In 2005, Bata closed the last of its retail outlets in Canada and decided to concentrate instead on its 160 Athlete’s World outlets. Thomas Bata died at age 93 in September 2008. At the time, Bata continued to operate over 5,000 retails stores worldwide, employed 40,000 people, and managed a retail presence in over 50 countries. The company is based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The Bata name is also found on the popular and world-renowned shoe museum set up in downtown Toronto by Sonja Bata. In September 2008, the museum welcomed its one millionth visitor.

Biz BITE!

Batawa, the eastern Ontario community where Bata Shoes set up shop, is a combination of the Bata name and the last syllable of Ottawa. A buyer from the Eaton’s department store chain suggested the name.

Alex Tilley had no special love of hats as a boy growing up in such places as Kitchener, Sudbury, and Vancouver. But in his mid-20s, he owned a favourite coat and got someone to make him a “Mississippi Gambler” style hat to match.

Little did he know that years later, hats would earn him a fortune and worldwide acclaim.

In 1980, Tilley was a self-employed art consultant and avid sailor. One day while sailing in his 30-foot sloop in Lake Ontario, his hat blew off and got soaked — again. Enough, he thought. Tilley put on his thinking cap and started researching ways to make better, longer-lasting headgear. With the help of a sailmaker, Tilley came up with the first of more than 1.5 million hats that bear his name.

Shortly afterwards, he tried the hat out on a trip to Belize but still experienced problems when the wind blew. While lying in bed one Sunday morning, Tilley came up with the idea of affixing a cord that went around the back of the head.

Within a year, Tilley had branched into sailing shorts and pants for travellers that would wear well and be comfortable. Today more than 13,000 retailers in 17 countries, including Australia, Finland, and Turkey sell Tilley Hats. The first one he ever sold, to Horst Berlin of the National Yacht Club in Toronto, is still around.

Most of Tilley’s clothing is manufactured in Don Mills, Ontario. “The hat represents me,” says Tilley of why he put his name on the product. Some 200,000 Tilley hats are made in Canada annually and come in more sizes than any others in the world. They’re known for their indestructibility; a hat belonging to Michael Hackenberger of the Bow-manville Zoo, for example, was still wearable after being eaten by an elephant three times. Among the celebrities who have worn Tilley hats are legendary mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary, former president George Bush, and members of the royal families in Great Britain and Denmark.

And Tilley still owns that Mississippi Gambler hat. “It’s interesting that even way back when, I was somewhat hat conscious.”

Karim Hakim has been helping people see more clearly since he was nine years old.

The founder of Hakim Optical got his start as a young boy in Iran, grinding magnifying glass from old windows to help support his family. He was obviously skilled at it because by age 19, Hakim was working in Germany grinding lenses for various instruments. He did the same work in Switzerland before immigrating to Canada in the mid-1960s.

Biz BITE!

Tilley Hats were worn by all of Canada’s armed forces during the Gulf War in 1991 to help protect them from harsh desert conditions, and the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary has adopted the product as its official sun hat.

Hakim set up a lab in the old Elmwood Hotel in Toronto and eventually began selling his lenses to opticians and optometrists. When people wanted to buy lenses directly from him, he saw a business opportunity and began making frames as well. Today, there are more than 100 Hakim Optical outlets in Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta selling as many as 1,000 pairs of glasses a day. In fact, since he began operations in Toronto, Hakim has sold more than 14 million pairs of glasses.

Harry Rosen’s sense of style and design in men’s clothes can be traced to lunchtime pinochle games when he was a high school student.

Rosen worked summers at a clothing manufacturer in Toronto and wanted to find out more about clothing design. That area of the business was off limits to most employees, but Rosen said he liked “sticking [his] nose into everything that was going on.” He started playing cards over lunch with the company’s designer and peppered the man with questions about how to make suits and what made for a good shirt.

By the time he returned to school, Rosen was starting to think the clothing business might be the right fit. The following summer he branched off into retail and “inside of a few weeks I was able to compete with the hotshot salesman on the floor. I made it my business to understand what the features (of a clothing item) were that the consumer would see as a benefit, and I knew how to articulate it.”

Sam Lelo, the store’s owner and Rosen’s mentor, wanted him to stay on staff, but the young man had another dream — to run his own shop. With a $500 loan from a relative, Rosen opened a small clothing store in 1954 on Parliament Street, which at the time was not the best location for that type of business because it didn’t have the kind of shops that would attract high-end shoppers. His brother Lou soon joined him.

Rosen, who was born in Toronto on August 27, 1931, had not been a clothes horse as a child, but once he got into the business he approached it with passion and zeal. In his first year of business, he did about $70,000 in sales as word spread about the store’s quality and service.

He soon met up with people in the publishing and advertising businesses who brought their money to his store and made it something of a hangout. Rosen recalled how they’d gather in late afternoons to “tell lies, drink coffee, and have a fitting. It was a warm, hospitable place.”

Rosen was adept at following up prospects and soon customers from outside Ontario started showing up. By 1961, Rosen had moved to larger, more upscale headquarters on Richmond Street. As the company prospered, Rosen’s name and quality men’s wear attracted attention across North America and beyond. Among his more famous clientele were actors Alan Bates and Christopher Plummer and newscaster Peter Jennings.

In 1982, he expanded outside of Ontario by opening a store in the West Edmonton Mall, and five years later opened his flagship store on Bloor Street in Toronto, introducing the idea of grouping clothing lines together in kind of a shop-within-a-shop concept that has been copied by others many times since.

Having dealt with customers for more than 50 years, Rosen once said that men today are more self-assured about their style, but “are still learning a lot about clothing. Men are essentially lazy, they don’t care to shop.” Harry Rosen Inc., which has more than 20 stores across Canada and sales of about $200 million annually, carries such designers as Hugo Boss, Armani, and Versace.

Rosen himself prefers the Kiton line from Italy with its soft, understated look and likes shades of blue, grey, and green/khaki. His business skills have led him to be on the advisory board of the Richard Ivey School of Business in London, Ontario, he was named Retail Marketer of the Year in 1987, and he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Retail Council of Canada in 2001.

Biz BITE!

Rosen’s successful Ask Harry ad campaign was introduced as a way of answering men’s questions about how to select and buy clothes. Because of his contacts in the business, Rosen was able to get top-notch advertising early on by bartering clothes. “I got the finest talent money could possibly buy for two suits per ad,” he once said with a chuckle.

Harry was also presented with an Honorary Doctorate in Commerce from Ryerson University in 2003 and was appointed as a Member to the Order of Canada in 2004. When he’s not selling clothes, Rosen likes to read, play chess, study history, and play the mandolin, “an instrument I love.”

When we spoke with him several years ago, he said, “I delight in looking after customers. I remember what most of them purchased from me.” Then he added with a laugh, “I don’t remember my wife’s birthday, but I remember the wardrobes I’ve provided to people over the years.”

Harry’s son Larry took over as president in 1997 and was appointed chairman and chief executive officer in 2000. The company sponsors annual charity runs in Toronto and Vancouver, both called “Harry’s Spring Run-Off,” that raise thousands of dollars each year to support prostate cancer research.

We take Canadian Tire for granted these days. With some 460 retail stores across Canada and a national presence as one of the country’s leading retailers, Canadian Tire is part of our culture. Who hasn’t gone off to one of these stores to buy auto parts, barbecue tools, or sports equipment? Who hasn’t stashed Canadian Tire money in a car’s glove compartment or made fun of the know-it-all actor featured in the company’s television commercials until early 2006?

But the road to becoming a national icon is long. Back in 1922, brothers John W. and Alfred J. Billes bought out Hamilton Tire and Garage Ltd. at the corner of Gerrard and Hamilton streets in Toronto, the first step in establishing the Canadian Tire company. The shop sold repair parts, tires, batteries, and homemade antifreeze at a time when there were about 40,000 cars in the city.

The brothers then moved operations to Bloor Street West, then to Yonge Street, installing a gas pump at the first of two Yonge and Isabella locations. In 1927, they incorporated the company as Canadian Tire, a name they chose “because it sounded big,” according to the company’s history. As other Canadians became interested in ordering from the store, Canadian Tire launched its first catalogue in 1928. The catalogue is still a common browsing material in millions of Canadian households today.

Although the company set up an associate store in Hamilton in 1924, it was three years later that it reached a notable milestone by establishing its first flagship store at 837 Yonge Street in Toronto. Canadian Tire gained a reputation as the store where clerks wear roller skates, a technique used in the store to speed up service from the large stock floor to the sales counter.

From then on the company rarely looked back, eventually spreading across Canada. As for that first flagship store, it was renovated and transformed in 2002 into a new, larger Canadian Tire on the same site. The new flagship store was officially opened April 24, 2003, with 65,000 square feet of retail space.