Timothy Eaton and the Rise of His Department Store

Joe Cherwinski is a history professor at the Memorial University of
Newfoundland.

With the recent spate of books intent on either venerating or vilifying
modern captains of Canadian industry and commerce, it is refreshing to
examine a work on a true commercial giant that is both sympathetic and
balanced in its approach. The reason Santink is able to maintain her
detachment is that she deals only with the founding father of the
Eaton’s empire. The book ends with Timothy’s death in 1907. Santink
shows how, before his death, he had left his stamp on almost every facet
of the firm’s operations—from single pricing to the Santa Claus
Parade—thus creating a merchandising institution.

The highlights of the business’s rapid growth form the organizational
framework for this entrepreneur’s biography. The author describes
Timothy from his early venture into general merchandising in St.
Mary’s, Ontario (in 1861), through his move to Toronto in 1869 and the
various expansive moves there, to the opening of the store in Winnipeg
in 1905. Throughout, we see a man driven by a Horatio Alger-like
conviction that faith, honesty, and hard work would result in financial
and social triumph. As Santink clearly demonstrates, however, Eaton was
also an innovator, especially in the Canadian context. In fact, it is in
that context that this book shows its real worth. In the late twentieth
century we can see at work the historical forces that this entrepreneur
exploited to fulfill his objectives.

The rapid expansion of industrial output coincided with the rise of a
working class with disposable income who were seeking previously
unattainable consumer goods. The simultaneous improvement in
communications and distribution facilities contributed to the emergence
of the department store. Eaton, in turn, fine-tuned the concept through
vertical integration—purchasing directly from manufacturers, marketing
through mail-order catalogues, manufacturing in company factories, and
expanding to the rapidly growing northwest—all in the interest of
corporate supremacy and independence. Ironically, however, the creation
of “Canada’s Greatest Store” had its price for this austere though
surprisingly humane man. Expansion meant a gradual loss of control over
operations, first to family members and later to trusted outsiders.

This book is necessary reading, not only for those interested in
corporate development of a business dynasty on a national scale, but
also for readers concerned with popular culture, fashion, and the
rapidly changing face of Toronto’s turn-of-the-century urban
landscape. Once sincerely hopes that other books of a similar nature
will follow.