The Story of a Man from Palestine

For this holiday edition of The Booster, I’ve selected a story with a universal theme for all beliefs and cultures during this season of giving. It’s a story about one man’s generosity.

He was born in Palestine, though not the Palestine you’re thinking of at this time of year. This Palestine was a village, founded in the early 1820s, at what is today the intersection of Derry Road East and Tomken Road. The devout Methodist farm families here gave the village a name befitting their faith.

When I was in high school his name appeared in every textbook in my desk. And always on the first page. Sir William James Gage was his name, although he wasn’t “Sir” when he made his millions, and I only knew of him by the name of his business, W. J. Gage and Company. Gage made millions, but the main story here is how he spent his money.

In his twenties, Gage was a teacher at USS #21 school in Malton, but he wanted to be a doctor. He managed to save enough money from his meager teaching salary to enroll at the Toronto School of Medicine in 1870. A bit squeamish at first, he considered leaving on account of this. But ultimately he was forced to drop out when he ran short of tuition money. He found a job as an accountant at a stationery supplies company in Toronto. He intended to stay only long enough to pay his way through medical college, but this job changed his career path.

A year after joining Adam Miller and Company, its founder died and Gage, seeing more promise in the company’s small school text publishing division, formed a partnership with Mrs. Miller and turned the small paper goods company into a major printing and publishing firm.

Gage published the first dictionary for Canadian schools, with preferred Canadian spellings. It included more entries related to Canadian geography, history and culture than were typically seen in the British and American dictionaries already in schools. The red-covered Gage Canadian Dictionary has been a familiar sight in classrooms for generations and is still an annual best seller in bookstores.

But the real money was in textbooks. School books were approved by provincial education ministries and each time Gage’s book made the cut, he found himself with a captive market. School books had to be purchased in quantity and school boards didn’t have the option to pass on approved readers.

Also, teenagers had a particular habit of damaging books, and that meant additional money for Gage from frequent replacement purchases.

History was a particularly appealing subject for Gage because, like milk, history has an expiry date. History textbooks required constant updating with current events, so schools were constantly replacing old textbooks with new ones.

To be fair, Gage had to produce quality textbooks in order for them to receive government approval, so Gage’s success was due much to his insistence on quality and on Canadian content.

And it was due to Gage’s Methodist upbringing that he felt compelled to distribute his wealth in the community. Sir William’s father, Andrew Albert Gage moved to Palestine, from Dixie, in 1845 when he married. Andrew’s wife, Mary Jane Grafton was born in Palestine. In addition to his work with the church, Andrew provided land and money for a new brick school in Palestine in 1886.

Sir William married in 1880 and in 1917 he and his wife, Ina established an organization to provide housing for widows and orphans of soldiers who died overseas during WWI. But it was through Gage’s unrequited desire to help the sick that his philanthropy really showed.

In 1894 Gage donated $20,000 to construct a sanatorium for patients suffering from tuberculosis. He had hoped to build his health care facility in Toronto, where there was a concentration of TB sufferers, but even his influence as the head of the Toronto Board of Trade was not enough to convince city council to permit him to build the sanitarium within the city limits.

On the belief that solitude would help heal TB sufferers, Gage decided instead to build Canada’s first sanitarium in Gravenhurst, 160 km north of Toronto, in 1896. In 1902, a second tuberculosis recovery centre – the Muskoka Free Hospital – was completed nearby. In 1904, a sanitarium was finally built closer to Toronto, on land Gage bought in Weston.

Beginning in 1910, Gage began offering scholarships in tuberculosis research and in 1914, he presented the City of Toronto with a dispensary where TB sufferers could receive free medicine. Today it is known as the Gage Institute.

Gage was knighted in 1918 for his humanitarian activities. His altruistic life was at its peak. But then, three years later, one of the Gravenhurst hospitals burned. The loss was obviously devastating for its founder. William Gage died at his exclusive Wychwood Park home days later.

Gage’s son-in-law took over the business and completed W. J.’s goal of turning the company into Canada’s premiere supplier of educational material.

Two years ago, a new school in Brampton (near the site of his long-gone Mississauga village) was opened. It was slated to be called Kimbark Middle School, after a nearby street, but was renamed Sir William Gage Middle School.