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 hen Timothy Eaton (1834-1907) founded the T. Eaton Company in 1869, he set it firmly on three pillars – Business, Family and God. And heaven seemed to bless the Eatons in return.
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Over the next few decades, his little shop grew into one of the richest and most powerful family businesses in Canada. Some referred to the Eatons as “Canada's Royal Family.”
Timothy Eaton came to Canada in 1854, a penniless youth, and, over the next half century, created the single most powerful retailing engine in Canada. A devout Methodist, he believed in honesty, hard work and clean living. He was devoted to his wife and children and prided himself on caring for his employees as though they too were his children – though he was ruthless to the competition, unions and employees who let him down.
Timothy Eaton's first venture took him to a village near St. Mary's, in what is now southwestern Ontario. There, in 1856, he founded a shop with his brother James. In 1869, he moved to Toronto on his own and opened up a dry goods shop. The operation prospered under his imaginative management. By the dawn of the new century, Timothy Eaton had 2,475 employees in Toronto and annual sales approaching $4 million. |
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Timothy Eaton, 1890
Creator: William (E.G.) & Bro.
Toronto Public Library (TRL)
X66-25
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It was the beginning of the empire that revolutionized retailing in Canada.
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![Photo: Eaton's stores and factories, Toronto, [between 1900 and 1925]](pics/12625-eatons-factories-520.jpg)
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Eaton's stores and factories, Toronto, [between 1900 and 1925]
T. Eaton Co. fonds
Reference Code: F 229-308-0-371
Archives of Ontario, I0012625
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The founding father
“Mr. Eaton had unlimited determination, was a hard fighter and would never be beaten. He never said a harsh word to me during the four and three quarter years I was with him; he was very just and kind to all employees who were fair to him in their work. He never smoked, played cards, danced or drank, and would not have those who drank about him if he could help it.”
Head Clerk, 1871-75, in Face to Face, Canadian Museum of Civilization,
quoted in Timothy Eaton, by G. G. Nasmith (1923), p. 90 |
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 he company remained a family business for most of its history. From the beginning, Timothy Eaton employed a steady stream of cousins and nephews and groomed a son to succeed him. Jack – later Sir John – Eaton mounted the throne after Timothy's death in 1907.
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Timothy Eaton, left, and son John Craig. Toronto, 1899
T. Eaton Co. fonds
Reference Code: F 229-308-0-2209
Archives of Ontario, I0027786
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John Craig Eaton, left, shown with his father, was groomed from earliest childhood to inherit the business. As president from 1907 to his death in 1922, he oversaw a period of massive expansion in the Eaton's empire.
A much glossier version of his father, Sir John delighted in cigars, whisky, nightlife and the trappings of wealth. He presided over the enterprise in its heyday and oversaw the company's expansion to Winnipeg.
Sir John died young, in 1922, while his children were still minors, and leadership of the enterprise passed into the hands of a caretaker president – R. Y. Eaton, one of Timothy's Irish nephews. Labelled a “working Eaton,” he was generally disliked by the “owning Eatons.” |
A shy, bland, unsmiling man, R. Y. ruled the empire for 20 of his 45 years at Eaton's – a period that included the Depression and government investigations into Eaton's excessive profits and labour practices. One of his greatest dreams – the 1930 opening of the luxurious College Street Store in Toronto – turned into a nightmare when the Depression set in.
With R. Y.'s departure in 1942 and the accession of Timothy's grandson, John David Eaton, cracks continued to widen in the quasi-imperial façade of the T. Eaton Co. Ltd. In 1998, after a string of ineffectual family and non-family presidents, the company went public, but it was already too late. The next year, the company closed. |
“A greater merchant than Timothy Eaton never lived in any age or in any country…. The position taken by Mr. Eaton in shortening the hours of work was an immense boon to all who are employed in the retail trade of Toronto.”
The Toronto Daily Star, January 31, 1907 |
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