W. Garfield Weston
Private in Canadian Army
March 1917

Garfield Weston was born above his father's Toronto bakery in 1898. The eldest son of George and Emma Weston, he attended Harbord Collegiate and played both football and hockey.

At age eighteen, Garfield enlisted as a sapper with the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals. He was sent to France, where he helped drive a six-horse wagon, laying telegraph cables for battlefield communications. He spent his army leaves visiting English bakeries to learn more about the business in which he had grown up and would return home to join.

At the end of the war Garfield went back to the small family company in Toronto, George Weston Limited. Only twenty-six when his father died, he became President & General Manager and expanded the business in Canada and the United States. In 1933, he entered the British market, later moving into Australia, South Africa and Europe.

Throughout his life, Garfield remained strongly committed to Canada and its citizens. He contributed to numerous humanitarian causes personally and through his companies. Since he had nine children of his own, Garfield was particularly interested in Canada's youth. He believed that young men and women could make Canada greater by broadening their horizons with education and travel.

A description of the life and achievements of Garfield Weston is incomplete if it does not refer to his personal motto, which he lived to the full:

'Tis the set of the sails and not the gales,
that determines the way they go.