Our History
George Cedric Metcalf established the Foundation in 1960. Metcalf's fortune was the result of a remarkable career in the grocery business. His family immigrated to Toronto from northern England at the turn of the century. Metcalf, the eldest of ten children, left school at an early age to assist in the support of the family. He began his working life as a stockboy at William Neilson's ice cream plant. He was a gifted amateur athlete who played semi-professional baseball, boxed and played soccer. A deeply devout man, his other great interests were the church and the bible class that he founded and led for most of his life. His drive and tenacity led him to sales, where he frequently crossed paths with Garfield Weston, who was building his grocery business in Toronto. In the late forties, Weston acquired both Neilson's and Loblaw, and persuaded Metcalf to join Loblaw as a vice-president. By 1954 he was president and managing director of George Weston Ltd. and Loblaw Companies. He spent the next fifteen years leading Weston's on an enormous acquisition campaign, which created a North American food empire. A prodigious work ethic, thrift and self-denial characterized his career.
In 1967 Metcalf endowed the Foundation with a gift of $10 million. His philanthropy focused on social, educational and health issues within Ontario and, in its early years, the Foundation's grants were made to social agencies and research institutions concerned with health and education.
In the early 1980's Mr. Metcalf's son George, a professor of history at the University of Western Ontario, assumed primary responsibility for the Foundation. Assisted by family and friends, he broadened the Foundation's interests and geographic scope. The Foundation made grants across the country towards a wide range of activities, with a focus on social services. The common denominator in the grants was an emphasis on grassroots organizations, a willingness to support the operational costs of groups, and a modest, unassuming view of the role of a granter. Upon George Metcalf Jr's death in 1990, the Foundation was directed by his wife, Johanna Metcalf, his children and an advisory board. In 1998, after a lengthy illness, George Cedric Metcalf died and left his estate to the Foundation. The gift had the effect of increasing the Foundation's assets from approximately $20 million to almost $110 million.
In 1999 the Foundation's Board began a review of its activities to determine the principles and priorities that would guide the opportunity presented by Metcalf's bequest. The directors’ determined that the Foundation would focus its resources primarily in three areas: performing arts, the environment and low-income communities. At that time, the Foundation hired its first Executive Director and began to develop programs to support each of its areas of interest. The board also wished to preserve the Foundation’s traditional willingness to respond to a compelling idea or organization, whose focus may lie outside the parameters of the new programs.
Over the next five years the Foundation created focused programs in each of its three areas of interest. The Arts Program was launched in 2000, the Environment Program in 2002, and the Community Program in 2005. Once in place, each program was supported by a program manager and advisory committees. The advisory committees are composed of leaders in the fields served by the programs. They provide the Foundation with peer assessment of applications and advice on strategic directions.
Each of the Foundation’s grant-making areas is concerned with certain overlapping themes: a belief that non-profits are catalysts for positive community change; an interest in working with organizations that are working collaboratively to cultivate long-term solutions to issues; a desire to foster broad thinking in pursuit of comprehensive approaches; and engaging communities to take meaningful roles in decisions which affect their lives. The Foundation pursues three different strategies that cut across all of its programs to effect change: supporting dynamic leadership, nurturing new ideas and practice, and fostering opportunities for on-going dialogue and collaborative learning to build new knowledge and inform action.
The Foundation has continued to reserve a certain portion of its funds to support extraordinary initiatives or projects which emerge outside its program areas. Increasingly, these are projects which the Foundation invites into its deliberations and which contain elements which amplify and augment the work it is pursuing within its programs. The Foundation is intent upon learning from its work and will continue to adapt its work to its ongoing sense of the challenges and opportunities ahead.
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