Can't Buy Me Love: How Martha Billes Made Canadian Tire Hers

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

For much of the 1990s Martha Billes (rhymes with Phyllis), daughter of
Canadian Tire founder A.J. Billes, was in the news because of a court
battle with a former lover, Paul McAteer. In 1990 she had fallen in love
with the handsome real estate promoter, broken up his marriage, loaned
him millions of dollars, and, when the relationship soured, called the
loans, forcing him into receivership.

Although the main title trades on Billes’s reputation in the bedroom,
the book’s emphasis is on Canadian Tire and Billes’s relationship
with it. Founded in 1922 as Hamilton Tire and Garage, the company that
came to be known as Canadian Tire was owned by J.W. and A.L. Billes.
Martha was born in 1940 and until 1980 was not allowed anywhere near the
company, unlike her brothers Fred and David who were brought onto the
board shortly after A.J. took control of the company following his
brother’s untimely death in 1956. In 1980, Martha joined the
boardroom; by 1997, she was not only the company’s controlling
shareholder but also one of the wealthiest women in Canada.

Written by Rod McQueen, one of Canada’s foremost business
journalists, the book races along while being remarkably informative.
The story of the first 40 years of Martha Billes’s life is a
fascinating case study of the effects of sexism on the career of a
talented woman. In between are lots of stories that will interest anyone
who has ever set foot in Canada’s best-shopped retailer. The book’s
only weakness is that it was published shortly before Billes’s lawsuit
against McAteer was decided. (For the judgment, issued on Nov. 7, 2001
see McAteer v. Devoncroft Developments Ltd. [2001] A.J. No. 1481
AltaQB).