The Untold Story of How One Jewish Family Went From Peddling To a Billion-Dollar Steel Empire

How did a sixteen-year-old Jewish cabin boy from Hull start a Toronto business that is older than Canada itself, and still standing more than 170 years later? In 1844 Lewis Samuel worked his passage to New York, peddled through upstate farm country, then opened M & L Samuel with his brother Mark in Toronto's Coffin Block. This video tells the full story: Toronto's first synagogue, above Coombe's Drug Store in 1856; Sigmund Samuel, born in 1867, the year of Confederation; the ROM's 1951 Canadiana Gallery and the 1954 Sigmund Samuel Library; the Samuel stable's 1968 Olympic gold; Dance Smartly's undefeated 1991; Ernie Samuel's Order of Canada. It ends where the story stands now — six generations on, a head office in Oakville, and revenue that passed four billion dollars.