Section N | mount-pleasant-cem

Harry "Red" Foster
Plot N, Section 11, Lot 22
Birth: Mar. 1, 1905
Death: Jan. 18, 1985
Athlete. Broadcaster. Businessman. Began his career in sports, as half-back on the Grey Cup-winning, Balmy Beach football team in 1930, and later got his start in radio by selling advertising time for sports programs. His voice was soon heard across Canada, as one of the first to master the art of play-by-play broadcasting, covering everything from hockey to baseball, from swimming to wrestling. He delivered the first national broadcast of a Canadian football game from Molson Stadium in Montreal. The show travelled by radio signals to Toronto, and by phone lines to Vancouver and Sydney. At the time he also hosted a bi-weekly radio series called Sporting Aces where he interviewed celebrity atheletes of the day. While he continued to broadcast throughout the 40s and 50s, heading up such radio programs as the Victory Bonds radio program, and playing a key role in airing the first televised broadcast of a Grey Cup game in 1952 for CBC, he was also running a highly successful advertising company. Foster Advertising was earning upwards of $70 million annually prior to 1972, at which time he retired, selling the stock off to his employees. In the 1950s he set up the Harry E. Foster Foundation, a charity devoted to the rights and needs of the mentally retarded. Among his accomplishments was setting up the first Canadian Special Olympics dedicated to giving mentally handicapped a way to compete in sports. Numerous awards and citations were bestowed upon him, including the Order of Canada in 1971, and his induction into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame in 1984.

Sir Byron Edmund Walker
Plot: N 4
Birth: Oct. 14, 1848
Death: Mar. 27, 1924
Banker and Philanthropist. From 1907 - 1924 Edmund Walker was the president of the Canadian Bank of Commerce. Over his life he helped found and nurture many of Canada's landmark cultural and educational institutions, including the the Champlain Society, the University of Toronto, National Gallery of Canada, Appleby College, Art Gallery of Ontario and Royal Ontario Museum. He was knighted by King George V his contributions to Canadian business and the arts in 1910. In 1874 Edmund Walker was living in New York. He married Mary Alexander during this time, and they went on to have four sons and three daughters. Walker developed the first set of written regulations for dividing a bank into a complex array of departments. He is credited for the centralized banking system, through his revision of the Canada Banking Act. Walker held many key posts both nationally and internationally: Chairman, bankers' section of the Toronto Board of Trade (1891–1892); Vice-President of the Canadian Bankers Association (1893) and President (1894–1895); Chairman, 1899 Royal Commission on the financial position of the province of Ontario; and Chairman of the Section of Money and Credit for the 1904 Universal Exposition in St. Louis. He was a fellow of: the Institute of Bankers of England, and; the Royal Economic Society of England.

William Ward
Plot N, Section 39, Lot 9
Birth: Jun. 7, 1846
Death: Jan. 24, 1912
Ward was born on Toronto Island in 1846. His father had emigrated from Yarmouth, England seventeen years earlier and had settled on a desolate part of what was still technically a peninsula. The area soon took on the name Ward’s Island. William Ward was a renowned oarsman and for a time held the single skiff championship of America. He also had the distinction of rescuing 142 people from the often treacherous waters of Toronto Bay and Lake Ontario. The first rescue was performed when he was just 15. Ward also helped recover victims of 11 shipwrecks and was made captain of the Dominion life saving crew in 1881. Sadly, he was unable to rescue his five younger sisters, when the rowboat in which the children were travelling, capsized as they crossed the bay after visiting the city. Ward died at his home, 68 Brunswick Avenue, on January 25, 1912 at the age of 65.