Joseph Flavelle

Who was Joseph Flavelle?

Sir Joseph Wesley Flavelle, 1st Baronet was a Canadian businessman.

Born in Peterborough, Canada West, he married Clara Ellsworth in 1882. By the 1890s Flavelle made his fortune in the meatpacking business as president of William Davies Company, which was the British Empire's largest pork packing firm. He subsequently became prominent in finance and commerce as chairman of the Bank of Commerce, National Trust and Simpson's department stores. He was Chairman of the Imperial Munitions Board during World War I and it was for reorganizing the industry that he was awarded his baronetcy in 1917. His was the last hereditary title to be granted to a Canadian resident due to the passage of the Nickle Resolution in 1919.

Upon his death in 1939, he left his Queen's Park mansion to the University of Toronto, where it now forms part of the Faculty of Law.