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W.G. Galen Weston, the entrepreneur who built an Atlanticspanning business network that made him one of the richest Canadians, has died. He was 80.

Weston died Monday “peacefully at home after a long illness faced with courage and dignity,” the Weston family said in a statement.

“In our business and in his life he built a legacy of extraordinary accomplishment and joy,” his son, Galen G. Weston, chief executive officer of George Weston Limited, said. His daughter, Alannah Weston, the chair of Selfridges Group, added, “The luxury retail industry has lost a great visionary.”

A friend of Prince Charles and lover of polo and art, Weston oversaw and expanded a highend family retail empire that includes Britain’s Selfridges, Canada’s Holt Renfrew, Brown Thomas in Ireland and de Bijenkorf of the Netherlands. Through George Weston Ltd., the company named for his grandfather, the family holds the biggest stake in Canada’s largest food retailer, Loblaw Cos.

Willard Gordon Galen Weston was born in Buckinghamshire, England, on Oct. 29, 1940, the youngest of nine children in a prominent family. His father, Willard Garfield Weston, had helped expand the family’s bakery company into a multinational food empire.

After living in Ireland, Weston returned to Canada in the early 1970s, taking the helm of Loblaw Cos., which he is credited with saving from near-bankruptcy and subsequently turning into the country’s largest grocer.