A frugal life with lavish last wishes
Called best fiscal watchdog Toronto ever had, 1920s mayor Thomas Foster spared no expense in death
Big families are happy families, Margaret Thompson was saying. But when you have10 kids, well, “we have our troubles,” the 28-year-old mother confided to the Toronto Daily Star in 1959.
“Allan ran a wire into his hand, Jimmy ran up a temperature of 106 and Jackie had to get her head sewed up when she rammed against a door,” the otherwise upbeat Mrs. Thompson said of her three youngest.
But winning more than $1,000 for having the most babies in 10 years would sure help ease their woes, she allowed. “There are lots of things we can do with the money.”
And for that she had Thomas Foster to thank, although the busy mother had never heard of the former Toronto mayor, who started the stork derby when he died Dec. 10, 1945, inspired by an earlier version.
“I approve of large families,” the 93-year-old’s will stated, “and desire to extend some benefit to the mothers of such families.” A fund provided for four separate contests three years apart to reward married women for their procreational abilities.
Generous and eccentric in life, Foster was even more so in death.
When the self-made millionaire’s last wishes were revealed, bequests were scattered in all directions: $3,000 gifts to charwomen; $100 each to 10 newsboys; $5,000 to feed the city’s wild birds in winter; $2,000 to reward conscientious Bible class students; money for children’s picnics, scholarships and a school flagpole; and — the mother of all his charitable donations — $600,000 for cancer research.
With numerous other trusts and inheritances to assorted relatives, the total rang in at $1,168,555, or roughly $15 million in today’s dollars.
But in life, Foster had his frugal side, doing his own repairs on the properties he bought as a young man and eschewing a decent suit until he became Toronto’s 40th mayor in 1925.
“You would never know he was so wealthy to look at him,” said Mrs. E. Hermann, one of dozens of tenants who was bequeathed a month’s free rent.
Born in the Toronto area to poor English immigrants, Foster grew up in the village of Leaskdale in Uxbridge, where he soon tapped into his entrepreneurial spirit.
One of the stories he told was about his plan to sell peanuts outside the grounds of a visiting circus. But an elephant in the parade smelled them and gobbled his entire stock.
When he was 15, Tom left home to become a butcher’s apprentice in Toronto. A few years and $50 later, he started his own meat business on Queen St. E., then investing his profits in real estate, eventually buying 65 properties and making a pile of money.
After almost 20 years in the business world, he entered municipal politics, later becoming a member of Parliament before returning to city hall as mayor. He served three oneyear terms, during which he earned the moniker “Honest Tom” for his integrity and tight purse strings.
“It got to be a saying,” according to alderman Harry Hunt, that “no nickel could pass out the door until Tom passed in.”
Called “the best watchdog of the treasury the city ever had,” Foster reportedly saved taxpayers $2 million with his tough economic policies.
He often dug into his own pocket to help citizens, once flying over the city dropping $1 bills that entitled the finder to redeem for $5. Another time, Foster offered to pay all the expenses so a 105-year-old resident could visit his 110-year-old brother in New York City.
“You have not seen your brother for some years, and I do think it would be a pity if two brothers who have lived to such an age were not able to meet again,” Foster told him in a letter.
The mayor added he would be “delighted” to drive the elderly man and a caregiver to the train station.
Foster had a soft spot for the young as well, treating as many as 25,000 disadvantaged children to summer outings on Toronto Island.
But for all his good deeds, he found himself on the Star’s bad side during what would be his last year in office. Arise in armed robberies had people on edge, but Foster balked at hiring more police, suggesting it was cheaper to compensate victims.
“Citizens must vote against the mayor,” the Star urged in a frontpage editorial on the eve of the election, Dec. 31, 1927. “He is not a leader. . . . He has made many mistakes.”
At the polls, the Star’s much-vaunted choice, Sam McBride, left Foster in his dust and the butcher-turned-philanthropist left the political world to explore the wider one.
Awed by the Taj Mahal in India, he decided to build his own temple as a monument to himself and permanent resting place for his wife, Elizabeth, who had predeceased him in 1920, and only child Ruby, who had died at the age of 10.
Two years in the making, the $200,000 Byzantine mausoleum built by imported Italian craftsmen in rural Uxbridge drew such a huge crowd of gawkers at the dedication in 1936 that police had to restrain them.
Nine years later, the proud owner joined his family entombed inside.
Thanks in part to $80,000 Foster earmarked for its maintenance, the ornate domed structure still stands. The fund has since dried up and the memorial is in need of repairs, prompting the township and fundraisers to cover at least some of the costs.
Also still standing are countless trees along Toronto roadways, paid for from the $100,000 fund Foster bequeathed for that purpose. In the first year, 1,500 saplings were planted, leaving enough cash for decades to come.
“This is a very far-sighted plan and one that will stand as a perpetual memorial to Mr. Foster’s ideas of beauty,” declared A. Kingsley Graham, chair of the roads commission in 1946.
There’s no word on whether his stork derbies spawned a similar mini population boom.