Canadian Tire Biography
Woman of means: Canadian Tire's Martha Billes is locked in a legal battle with her ex-lover. It's not the first time. In business and in love, she takes a controlling interest |
Copyright Saturday Night May 13, 2000
IT WAS THE VERY MODEL OF THE modern marriage breakup. Paul, forty-one years old, told his wife, Pamela, forty-two, and their three children that he had fallen in love with another woman, Martha, and wanted to marry her. Paul and Martha were soon engaged and Pam and Paul separated amicably, splitting the custody of the kids, and living a block away from one another in Calgary's Mount Royal neighbourhood to better facilitate the sort of social intermingling that modern divorcees consider civilized. Pam, a brisk, blonde public-relations …show more content…
Few ever expected her to occupy this position. Canadian Tire had, perhaps not surprisingly, always been a man's world. Martha's father, Alfred Jackson Billes (always referred to as A.J.), was the junior partner to his elder brother, John William (J.W.), when they bought a service station at the corner of Gerrard and Hamilton Streets in Toronto in 1922, selling and repairing a new product known as "balloon" (pneumatic) tires. The empire had expanded to more than 100 stores, and the two brothers had become very rich, by the time Martha Gertrude Billes was born, in September, …show more content…
Dennis, sixty-nine, refused to speak at length about the matter. Sounding a bit sad, and more than a little embittered, he would only say of Martha, "She's evil."
MARTHA BILLES WILL NOT TALK about it. In fact, Martha will not talk about anything with reporters just now. Jim Eamon, Martha's lead lawyer in the battle with Paul McAteer, has given her instructions to keep quiet. So although she is willing to exchange pleasantries, although she will countenance the odd off-the-record conversation, and although she admits she will be taking "offers" to write her biography after this is over, Martha Billes's lips are, for the time being, officially buttoned.
Her friends, however, are not so restrained. After receiving the OK from Martha, they will phone, sometimes unbidden, to tell you how Martha has been misrepresented in the coverage of the trial, and how the Martha that they know is not a vindictive person but a warm and caring friend, nice to her dogs, fair with her business associates, and muddling along as best she can under the weight of all that money and those scoundrels who would separate her from
Copyright Saturday Night May 13, 2000
IT WAS THE VERY MODEL OF THE modern marriage breakup. Paul, forty-one years old, told his wife, Pamela, forty-two, and their three children that he had fallen in love with another woman, Martha, and wanted to marry her. Paul and Martha were soon engaged and Pam and Paul separated amicably, splitting the custody of the kids, and living a block away from one another in Calgary's Mount Royal neighbourhood to better facilitate the sort of social intermingling that modern divorcees consider civilized. Pam, a brisk, blonde public-relations …show more content…
Few ever expected her to occupy this position. Canadian Tire had, perhaps not surprisingly, always been a man's world. Martha's father, Alfred Jackson Billes (always referred to as A.J.), was the junior partner to his elder brother, John William (J.W.), when they bought a service station at the corner of Gerrard and Hamilton Streets in Toronto in 1922, selling and repairing a new product known as "balloon" (pneumatic) tires. The empire had expanded to more than 100 stores, and the two brothers had become very rich, by the time Martha Gertrude Billes was born, in September, …show more content…
Dennis, sixty-nine, refused to speak at length about the matter. Sounding a bit sad, and more than a little embittered, he would only say of Martha, "She's evil."
MARTHA BILLES WILL NOT TALK about it. In fact, Martha will not talk about anything with reporters just now. Jim Eamon, Martha's lead lawyer in the battle with Paul McAteer, has given her instructions to keep quiet. So although she is willing to exchange pleasantries, although she will countenance the odd off-the-record conversation, and although she admits she will be taking "offers" to write her biography after this is over, Martha Billes's lips are, for the time being, officially buttoned.
Her friends, however, are not so restrained. After receiving the OK from Martha, they will phone, sometimes unbidden, to tell you how Martha has been misrepresented in the coverage of the trial, and how the Martha that they know is not a vindictive person but a warm and caring friend, nice to her dogs, fair with her business associates, and muddling along as best she can under the weight of all that money and those scoundrels who would separate her from