WE DON’T SEE AN UPSIDE LIMIT AT ALL.

a home with Four Seasons branding and design, as well as access to hotel services and amenities.

The hotel chain now has some stand-alone residential properties, including one under construction in London, a market the company first entered in 1970 with a high-end hotel that became the “prototype of what we build to this day,” Sharp said.

The son of Polish Jewish immigrants, Sharp started adult life working for his father’s construction business after getting a degree in architecture. He chose to stay in Canada’s largest city in spite of blatant discrimination at the time.

“This golf course wouldn’t allow me to walk out there back then,” he said, gesturing to the Rosedale Club out his living-room window.

Today, after decades of new immigrant arrivals, the now culturally diverse Toronto is a “great city because there are no minorities.”

Four Seasons Chief Executive Officer Allen Smith, hired four years ago to help the hotelier expand, says people are often surprised to learn the global company is based in Toronto.

“I occasionally meet people in Toronto who are surprised we are Torontobased,” said Smith, a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen who grew up in the U.S.

“There is a groundedness and real decency associated with Canadians in general in my experience. The principles that underlie the culture of the company, the Golden Rule, is very reflective of that.”

Many aspects of today’s standard hotel service were started by Sharp. Four Seasons was first in providing shampoo and other toiletries, hair dryers and monogrammed bathrobes. It opened the first hotels in North America with a fullservice