The other founder of Loblaws also had an estate in Mimico Beach.
John Milton Cork was born in Picton, Ontario in 1870 but the family soon moved to Toronto where his father William opened a grocery store on King Street. He grew up in the business and became a friend of Theodore Pringle Loblaw when he worked for this father. Working together they created the self serve grocery store that would make them both wealthy men. Cork's genius was the creation of the distribution system that would ensure that the Loblaw stores worked at peak capacity and maximum profitability.
He established his Mimico Beach estate in the late 1910s. His estate was between those of Colonel Harry McGee and Thomas Goldring.
He was married to Adelaide Apted and had three children (2 sons and one daughter). Adelaide died in 1928 and he married Lillian Bates in New York City in February 1933. While he was on his honeymoon in the Caribbean Loblaw died on March 31, 1933 and he had to rush back to Toronto.
After the death of Loblaw, Cork became the president of Loblaw's and chairman of the board. He remained with the company until he sold his stock to the Weston family in 1947.
Cork sold the estate to the bandleader Luigi Romanelli in 1941. The estate was the last one to be built on in Mimico and remained until 1963. I have heard that the owner at that time offered to sell it to the Town of Mimico for parkland but that the town turned him down.
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