Carl Cole

The late Carl Cole was a businessman, publisher, philanthropist and founder of Coles Bookstore. He grew up in poverty on a farm outside Barrie, Ontario, and spent time in an orphanage in Detroit, Michigan. He came to Toronto as a teenager and graduated from UC with a commerce degree in 1936. In the thick of the Great Depression, he operated a book-selling pushcart around the U of T campus to help pay tuition. He opened the first store under the Coles name in 1940 with his brother Jack, and by the late 1970s, they operated the largest book retail chain in the country. He also launched the Coles Notes series of study guides. The company eventually came to be owned by Indigo Books & Music, and he thereafter focused on philanthropy, supporting the United Jewish Appeal and the Mount Sinai Hospital Foundation, among other organizations.