Horseleap-born businessman who funded library in Canada

Eilís Ryan

A man who left Horseleap for London in 1950 and wound up making his way to Canada has been honoured through an online feature on the website of the museum of the town where he made his home, and hailed for his dedication and service to his community.

Jim Gaynor – 95 this month – became a successful businessman in the town of Selkirk, in Manitoba, and among his contributions to the country which has been his home for the past 72 years is ‘The Gaynor Family Regional Library’, a project currently about to carry out a large expansion programme.

It all began from Jim on a farm in Horseleap in July 1931, when he entered the world as the youngest of the 12 children of James and Mary (née Berry) Gaynor, originally from Mount Temple and Bealin respectively.

At 17, he decided it was time to begin making his own way in the world, and he began an apprenticeship in Tullamore.

“It was on a Monday morning in 1948 with a change of clothes in a little case on the carrier of my bicycle and a few coins in my pocket that I peddled my way to Tullamore, for a 9am start as an apprentice to the bar and grocery business, getting paid the princely sum of one-half crown plus room and board per week,” Mr Gaynor recalled in an interview.

Two years in to his apprenticeship in Tullamore, he was feeling restless, and keen to expand his horizons, so with a friend, Brendan Lawless, who worked across the road from him in Tullamore, he decided to move to the UK.

“My parents were not happy but I persisted, and in 1950 took the ferry to Holyhead, then a train to Birmingham, where I was met by Michael Lowbridge, who I had worked with in Tullamore,” says Jim.

Initially, he got a job with the British Motor Corporation picking car parts for the assembly line, and then moved to London to his sister Tessie and her husband, Kevin Barry. In London, he got a job that ultimately proved to be the one that would shape the direction his future career was to take, just down the street from the Old Vic Theatre, working with Cater Bros, a firm engaged in the retail food business.

The thought of moving to Australia began presenting itself in Jim’s mind, and in 1953, back in Birmingham for the wedding of his friend Michael Lowbridge to a young lady from outside Tullamore, he mentioned to Brendan Lawless that he was considering a move to Australia.

To that, Brendan revealed that he too was thinking of moving, but he had Canada in mind, and so the two pals decided to head to Canada together.

“Passports were arranged, US Visa secured and passage was booked on the Queen Elizabeth II for the end of March 1954, all without letting anyone in Ireland know what I was up to,” recalled Jim.

“I mailed a card to my parents from France as the ship docked there to pick up passengers, to let them know I was on my way to Canada and [I] said I would come home in two years. I would have been away five years by then.”

April 5 of 1954 saw the 23-year-old Jim and his friend Brendan disembark in New York. They then got a train to Buffalo and, a coach to Toronto.

Remarkably, straight away, they had good fortune. As they began walking with their suitcases in Toronto to the address for two lads they knew from the UK, a passing motorist noticed them and stopped to offer them a lift. On learning they had just arrived, he suggested that Jim, because he had been in the retail food business, should apply to a firm known as Loblaws as they were in major expansion mode and opening a lot of new supermarkets.

“ I followed his advice, applied to Loblaws and spent the next 20 years with the company,” says Jim.

Within two years, Jim was making considerable progress at Loblaws, and was first appointed manager at one store and then given responsibility for the operation of two stores.

By 1965, he became general manager of the central division of Loblaws, which meant responsibility for 12 stores, 10 of which were in Winnipeg, and so he moved to Winnipeg, which suited also from a family point of view as that was the home city of the love of his life, nurse Elizabeth (Betty) Anne Flynn, whom he married in 1961.

Ten years after the move to Winnipeg, Jim and Betty-Anne decided they would like to have their own grocery business, and when the opportunity arose to purchase a store in Selkirk, they seized it. Within four weeks, they had doubled the business, and by the end of that year, they were able to expand into the neighbouring building.

Jim brought a strong sense of civic duty to play in his new environment. In 1977, he started Senior Citizens Week; he became involved in the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce, later spending time as president of the chamber. Over the decades that followed, he also served as a member of the Manitoba Marketing Network; as a volunteer for the 2003 Western Canada Games; and he was a Knight of Columbus member. In recent years, he was awarded both a Coronation Medal and a Commemorative Canada 150 Coin.

Jim and Betty-Anne were dealt a devastating blow on June 28 1985, when a local youth started a fire in a storage area of their shop. His hope had been that he would then extinguish the fire, and get praised for his actions and for saving the store. That wasn’t how things panned out, however, and the store was destroyed – although happily, there were no injuries.

The damage was extensive, but Jim took advantage of the setback to build a larger shop on the site – which he opened on October 28 1985, four months to the day after the fire.

In what is almost an unprecedented action, John showed his loyalty to his staff by not laying them off during the months the replacement store was being built: instead he paid them 80 per cent of their salary – and in fact, when Gaynor Foods reopened, the doubling of business activity led to him taking on extra staff.

Two years after reopening, Jim became national chairman of the 6000-member-strong Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers, and two years on from that, he expanded the store by 13,000 square feet to become the largest independent grocer in Selkirk and District.

He said at the time: “I love coming to my store, working there, and talking with my customers every day. I feel as though my wife and I have built up thousands of friendships by having this business.”

In the late 1980s, he received two significant business awards: in 1987, he was named by the Manitoba Chamber of Commerce as Business Citizen of the Year, and in 1988, he won the Manitoba Chamber of Commerce award.

In 1998, following an approach by another major food retailer who was keen to buy Gaynor Foods, Jim agreed to sell the store, and the handover took place the following year, on the 24th anniversary of the day that he had become owner of the business. The store still operates today, now under the name Red River Co-op.

Jim and Betty-Anne didn’t stop giving back to their community after retiring from business: they donated $6m to a number of local projects, including the new Gaynor Family Regional Library, as well as to the Gaynor Family Inclusion Centre, which is an independent living centre for adults with intellectual disabilities. They also provided support for the Nova House Building Project, intended to provide shelter and programming to women who have experienced domestic abuse and to the Youth for Christ drop-in centre.

The couple also set up a number of endowments including the Gaynor Family Education Fund which provides bursaries and scholarships to students.

Jim and Betty-Anne have a daughter, Eileen, and a son Tommy, both of whom live in Winnipeg, and the couple keep contact with the many members of Jim’s family still around Westmeath, including the nephew who still lives in the Gaynor farm at Horseleap, as well as others now living in Roscommon, Dublin and England.

The family held a reunion at the Grand Hotel in Moate not long before the Covid-19 pandemic, and Jimmy and Betty-Anne travelled over from Canada for it.

• This article is based on a longer biography of Jimmy Gaynor, written by Mary Shumilak for the City of Selkirk online museum. The original can be read at selkirkmuseum.ca/people/jim-and-betty-anne-gaynor.