Kenneth Thomson

Kenneth Roy Thomson, known in Canada as Ken Thomson, was a Canadian-British businessman and art collector. Born September 1, 1923, in Toronto, Ontario, he was the son of Roy Thomson, who founded the Thomson Corporation. He attended Upper Canada College, earned a degree in economics and law from St. John’s College, Cambridge, and served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. After the war, he entered the family business, starting as a reporter for the *Timmins Daily Press*, then working as a salesman and later general manager for the *Galt Reporter*. In 1953, he became head of Thomson Newspapers, based in Toronto for thirteen years.

When his father bought *The Times* in September 1966, Thomson moved to London as vice-chairman of Times Newspapers Ltd., becoming chairman a year later. He returned to Toronto in 1971 to serve as joint-chairman of the Thomson Organization alongside his father. Upon his father’s death in August 1976, he inherited the title 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet and became chairman of the Thomson Corporation. He never used the title in Canada or took his seat in the House of Lords, explaining in a 1980 interview that he had two sets of Christmas cards and stationery—one for London as Lord Thomson, one for Toronto as Ken.

At age fifty-three, he took control of a media empire with over two hundred newspaper and television holdings, plus profits from a North Sea oil investment his father had made. He bought the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1979 and *The Globe and Mail* in 1980. During the 1980s and 1990s, he oversaw major divestitures: selling *The Times* to Rupert Murdoch in 1981, the North Sea oil holdings in 1989, and Thomson Travel in 1998. In 2001, *The Globe and Mail* was combined with BCE’s cable and TV assets (including CTV and TSN) to form Bell Globemedia, with Thomson as a minority shareholder. The company then sold all its community newspapers, transforming into a financial data services and academic publishing giant, now based in Stamford, Connecticut. In 2002, the Thomson Corporation began trading on the New York Stock Exchange as TOC. Forbes listed him as Canada’s richest person and the world’s fifteenth richest in 2005, with $17.9 billion; by his death in 2006, he ranked ninth globally at $19.6 billion.

Thomson distinguished himself as a leading North American art collector, starting in the 1940s with paintings by Cornelius Krieghoff. In 1977, he made headlines after quietly inviting English art forger Tom Keating to his Thomson Tower office to check his Krieghoffs for fakes. Keating, under investigation by Scotland Yard for selling fake Krieghoffs, denied finding any of his own pastiches and called the collection marvelous. In 1989, Thomson opened a namesake gallery in downtown Toronto to display some pieces. In November 2002, he announced a trust donation of about two thousand artworks to the Art Gallery of Ontario, including two major purchases from that July: Paul Kane’s *Scene in the Northwest: Portrait of John Henry Lefroy* for CA$5.1 million (a record for a Canadian painting) and Peter Paul Rubens’ *The Massacre of the Innocents* for CA$117 million. The collection includes essential works by over a dozen 19th- to mid-20th-century Canadian artists, such as three hundred paintings by Tom Thomson (no relation) and the Group of Seven, 145 habitant scenes by Krieghoff, a hundred landscapes by David Milne, and pieces by Paul Kane, Paul-Emile Borduas, and William Kurelek. A lesser-known European collection features 17th- to 20th-century British ship models, Medieval and Baroque ivory carvings, and the 12th-century Malmesbury châsse. The donation, valued at CA$300 million, helped lure architect Frank Gehry to design a major AGO expansion, toward which Thomson gave an additional CA$50 million, plus a CA$20 million endowment.

In 2002, Thomson stepped down as chairman of Thomson Corporation, succeeded by his elder son David, but remained chairman of The Woodbridge Company, the family holding company that controlled Thomson Corporation. He spent his final years at a gated estate on Castle Frank Road in Toronto’s Rosedale area, and died in 2006.