Sir Neil Shaw grew British firm Tate & Lyle into one of the world’s largest sugar businesses

Neil Shaw was the Canadian outsider who ran the British company, Tate & Lyle, one of the largest sugar businesses in the world when he was in charge. When he took over in 1980, Tate & Lyle was worth £60-million; when he left 15 years later, it was worth £2-billion.

For his work with the company and charities in Britain, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1994, one of the last Canadians to receive a knighthood after then-prime minister Jean Chrétien advised that Canadian citizens should not be given British honours.

His eldest son, David Shaw, says his father was successful because he was curious and he connected with people.

“He had no problem engaging with you regardless of walk of life. When you were talking to my father, it was like you were the only person in the room. You got his undivided attention and it was his curiosity wanting to know what you were going to do.”

Sir Neil, who has died at 93 after a long illness, was born in Montreal in 1929. His father, Major LeRoy Shaw, was general manager of The Travelers Insurance Company. His mother, Fabiola McGowan, was a francophone in spite of her English name – a mixture of Irish and French, not uncommon in Quebec because of the shared Catholic religion. She made sure her children learned French.

“I was very fortunate because so many of my friends who grew up in Westmount don’t speak French. It has been one of my greatest assets. Particularly in Europe, I get great value out of my French,” Sir Neil said in a biographical sketch recorded later in his life.

Young Neil lived an upper-middle-class existence, attending Lower Canada College, a private school in Montreal. But when he was 11 years old, life changed dramatically for the family when Major Shaw became ill and had to leave the city. The family sold their house in Montreal, their country home at the Hermitage Club near Magog, Que., in the Eastern Townships, and moved to the nearby village of Knowlton.

At first, they lived in the Lakeview Hotel, then moved to a modest house near the public school, Knowlton Academy, which was both a grade school and a high school at the time. To help make ends meet, two schoolteachers boarded in the upstairs bedrooms of the house.

Mrs. Shaw was known by the nickname “Grand-mère” in the family and to Neil’s friends in Knowlton.

Though life in Knowlton was a comedown for the Shaw family, Neil adjusted in a hurry. He made friends at school, rode his bicycle to the boat club in the summer and played hockey in the winter. He was very popular.

“He was good-looking, athletic and nice. What you saw was what you got,” said Joan McKinnon, a childhood friend who stayed close to him all her life. “You never took Knowlton out of Neil. It was always part of his life.”

After his mother’s death, Sir Neil commissioned a stained-glass window above the door at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Knowlton. There will be a memorial for him at that church in June, and he will be buried in the local graveyard beside his parents.

Major Shaw died at the age of 69; he had married late in life and only had children in his early 50s. Neil was 16 when his father died, and after graduating from high school, he went to work as a teller at Royal Bank in Montreal – the president of the bank was a family friend – then switched to Crown Trust.

In 1952, Neil Shaw married Audrey Robinson, a childhood friend from Knowlton.

In 1955, Sir Neil and his young family moved to Chatham, Ont., where he worked in the sugar refinery owned by the Canada and Dominion Sugar Company.

At the time, sugar in eastern Canada was made from sugar beets, and along with tobacco, they were the biggest crops in the fertile farmland of southwestern Ontario.

“We lived in a company house right across from the refinery, and I can always recall big trainloads of sugar beets coming in to be refined,” said David Shaw.

Sir Neil was an executive assistant to a man he described as the “autocratic chairman of Dominion Sugar.” That relationship formed his attitude to working with people, which was being kind most of the time and tough when needed. The senior management must have seen something in his work ethic because he rose rapidly in the corporate hierarchy. Tate & Lyle bought the company, and at the age of 40, Sir Neil was in charge of a division. The man running the business at the time was Saxon Tate, a member of the controlling family.

Sir Neil then worked for Redpath Sugar in Toronto – Dominion Sugar had merged with Redpath – but in 1963 he moved with his family to London, to the corporate head office of Tate & Lyle, which owned 50 per cent of Redpath.

Sir Neil and his family moved back to Canada in 1966 when he became vice-president of Redpath Sugar, which still has a major sugar refinery on the Toronto waterfront, squeezed in between condos and a Loblaws, and across the water from a recreational area called Sugar Beach. David Shaw recalls working there as a summer student, shifting giant bags of sugar.

From 1972 to 1980, Sir Neil was chief executive of Redpath, before moving back to Tate & Lyle in London to run the company overall.

“When he went over to the U.K. in 1980, Tate & Lyle was on the verge of bankruptcy,” said his son David. There were many issues big and small that he dealt with, including that Europe made its sugar from sugar beets and Britain used sugar cane.

Sir Neil threw himself into his work and British life in general. He was chairman of a group called Business in the Community, which was concerned about the welfare of workers and their sense of community.

“I see the loss of community in big urban areas of London,” he wrote while running Tate & Lyle. “We have 20,000 employees in a big plant out in the East End. There was a time when all those employees lived within a few hundred yards of the plant. The company owned the houses, our employees all lived in them, and everybody knew what was going on. Sixty years later, they all drive in, work all day and drive home again and the local community is suffering.”

He was also involved with youth programs in Britain, including the Scout Association and the Advisory Council on Youth.

Sir Neil was unusual in the highest levels of business in that he did not have a university degree. Because of that, he said he looked for people with experience and common sense.

“If I send a young employee down to take on a project in a large plant in the East End of London, give him strong company support, and he succeeds in resolving the problem and motivating people, I’ll promote that person at Tate & Lyle much faster than someone who has got three degrees,” he said.

He was honest enough to admit that one of the benefits of hard work was making money, even though, at the start of his career, the pay wasn’t that great.

“Money had to be important. When I had no money, and without anyone to help me out, I put five kids through private schools. It was not important for its own sake but as a means to be able to educate my kids and buy a house and do a few other things,” he said in his biographical sketch.

His son said his father was a practical man, educated in the school of life.

“I don’t think he was intellectually brilliant. I would say it was much more common sense. He knew how to deal with people, and he knew how to get things done through people, and those were his hallmarks,” David said. “He kind of lit up the room when he walked in. There was never anything negative. He always approached problems or hurdles with a positive attitude. If there was anything that got him through life and his career, it was his positive attitude.”

Along with his role at Tate & Lyle, Sir Neil was heavily involved in helping with the near collapse of Lloyd’s of London in the 1990s. He was named chairman of the Association of Lloyd’s Members in 1992 and represented more than 8,000 underwriting members of the troubled insurance community.

Though he spent the pinnacle of his working career in England, he remained close to Canada.

“He was very down to earth and never made a big deal of his success,” said Robert Francis, who knew Sir Neil for 40 years. Dr. Francis bought his house in Toronto, and Sir Neil invested in and served on the board of Medcan, the private medical clinic Dr. Francis started.

One of Sir Neil’s hobbies was sailing both in Britain and in Florida, where he had a winter property near Vero Beach. After he retired, he bought a 56-foot Grand Banks boat and sailed what is known as the Great American Loop. It involves going up the eastern coast of the United States, eventually getting into the St. Lawrence River through New York State, then into the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi and back to Florida. He made that trip in 2014.

Sir Neil was married twice: to Audrey Robinson, the mother of his children, and then to Elizabeth Mudge, both whom he leaves.

Neil McGowan Shaw was born in Montreal on May 31, 1929. He died at home in Toronto on March 18, 2023. His siblings, Eileen Roy and LeRoy Shaw, predeceased him as did his grandson Michael. He leaves five children, David, Michael, Cynthia, Andrea and Toni; 13 grandchildren; and 21 great-grandchildren for a total of 39 descendants.

You can find more obituaries from The Globe and Mail here.

To submit a memory about someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page, email us at obit@globeandmail.com.