Joseph E. Seagram

Joseph Emm Seagram (April 15, 1841 - August 18, 1919) was a British Canadian distillery founder, politician, philanthropist, and major owner of thoroughbred racehorses.

Son of Octavius Augustus Seagram and Amelia Stiles, who emigrated to Canada from Wiltshire, England in 1837, Joseph was born at Fisher's Mills, now part of Cambridge, Ontario. His parents died when he was in his teens and for several years, Joseph lived at William Tassie's boarding school (now Galt Collegiate Institute and Vocational School) in the city of Galt (also now part of Cambridge). He studied for a year at a business college in Buffalo, New York, then returned home where he worked for a time as a bookkeeper at a grist mill.

Offered the opportunity to manage a flour mill in Waterloo, Ontario, he learned about the distilling process, a small aside to the company's flour business, using extra grain stocks to make alcoholic beverages. In 1869, five years after joining the company, Joseph Seagram bought out one of the firm's three partners, then in 1883 became the one hundred percent owner and renamed it Seagram. Making whisky became the most important part of the business and Seagram built it into one of the country's most successful of its kind. His 1907 creation, Seagram's VO whisky, became the largest-selling Canadian whisky in the world.

Thoroughbred horse racing

A lover of racehorses, he founded Seagram Stables in 1888, building its bloodlines by importing mares in foal from English sires....
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