Three Generations of the Weston family dynasty buried at Mt. Pleasant Cemetery
On my visit to Mount Pleasant Cemetery in midtown Toronto, I found the family plots of three generations of Weston’s. A dynasty started by George Weston and eventually passed on to his son, W. Garfield Weston, and finally to his son, Galen Weston.
George Weston
It began years earlier when the Weston family relocated from Oswego, New York to Toronto in search of greater opportunity.
Opened in 1874, Wellesley Public School was once on the north east corner of Bay and Wellesley Streets in downtown Toronto.
George attended Wellesley Street School in downtown Toronto, but by age 12 he was apprenticed to a local baker, where he picked up both bread-making and sales and delivery skills. That experience led him, in 1882, to buy a bread delivery route in Toronto with a horse and cart. By 1897 he had opened the “Model Bakery,” Canada’s largest and most modern bread factory at the time, producing over 3,200 loaves a day with a 6,500-loaf capacity, and eventually co-founded the Canada Bread Company, merging with bakers from Toronto, Montreal, and Winnipeg, while also expanding his biscuit and cake operation under the George Weston Limited name. A company that still exists today.
George Weston died at his home at 469 Palmerston Avenue in Toronto on April 6, 1924. He was 60.
The home of George Weston today on Palmerston Avenue, Toronto.
W. Garfield Weston
When George Weston died in 1924, his son, Garfield who was 26, took over the operations at George Weston Limited and four years later took the company public and quickly went on acquiring businesses. In 1933 he moved to England and soon became the country’s largest biscuit manufacturer forming a new company, Food Investments Ltd. Like his father, he had strong entrepreneurial skills that served the family extremely well. He would also be elected to the British House of Commons, serving as an MP from 1939 to 1945 — all without ever giving up his Canadian citizenship.
W. Garfield Weston died while visiting his hometown of Toronto, Canada on October 22, 1978. He was 80.
WITH GODS HELP AND GUIDANCE NOT THE GALES, BUT THE SET OF YOUR SAILS THAT DETERMINE THE WAY YOU GO
Galen Weston
Galen was born in 1940, in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, England, the youngest of Garfield’s nine children and grew up largely in England during his father’s UK expansion years. The family returned to Canada in 1945 as Garfield pursued various ventures, including supermarket chains in North America and Europe.
As a young man Galen worked in the stores that made up his father’s retail holdings as hands-on exposure to the business from an early age was expected of the family and in 1972, at his father’s request, Galen returned to Canada to take over Loblaw, which was in financial trouble and years later turn Loblaw’s into Canadas most successful food retailer.
In conclusion, standing among the Weston family plots at Mount Pleasant, it struck me how each generation built on the last in its own distinct way. George Weston was the founder — a baker’s apprentice who turned a bread route into Canada’s most modern bakery of its day. His son, W. Garfield Weston took his father’s regional success and carried it across the Atlantic, turning a Toronto bakery into an international food conglomerate and Garfield’s son, Galen Weston, the retail visionary who rescued a failing Loblaw from near-bankruptcy and reinvented it. A true Canadian and international success story.
W. Galen Weston died at home in Toronto on April 12, 2021. He was 80.
The wives of The Weston Family also buried at Mt. Pleasant.
George’s wife, Emma, Garfield’s wife, Reta and Galen’s wife, the former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, Hilary Weston.
See my related grave visit to the founders of Loblaws grocery stores.
Founders of Loblaws and Canada’s first self-serve grocery store
