Harold Shipp at his home with dog Ranger and a portraits of his late wife, June, in 2005 shortly after he donated $6 million to the Trillium Health Centre.
Rene Johnston/TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO
Pat Brennan
Special to the Star
Harold Shipp was a young man in his 20s when he asked a tombstone maker to carve a small headstone for him.
Shipp is 86 today and still going strong. Over the decades, thousands of his memorial markers have been installed in homes throughout Ontario.
“Shipp-Built” reads the black, brick-size granite marker that gets installed near the front door of every house and highrise condominium his firm has built since 1951.
That “Shipp-Built” brick has earned thousands of extra dollars for homeowners who sold their homes on the resale market. It is recognized by realtors as similar to the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
When Shipp graduated from Etobicoke Collegiate in 1945, his father, Gordon S. Shipp, refused to hire him into the family’s well-established homebuilding firm — so the teenager started an operation in competition to his dad.
He built four homes on The Kingsway and made a tidy profit when he sold them quickly at $7,200 each. His father soon took him in as a partner.
At age 25, his youthful ambition appeared to be out of control. He had the nerve to ask the family’s principal banker — Prudential Insurance of America — for a $40,000 loan to buy 23 acres of apple orchards on the south side of the Queen Elizabeth Way at Dixie Rd. The sober accountants at Prudential just laughed — to think a young man could build and sell homes that far out from Toronto.
So Shipp approached Canada Life with his idea. They dared to take a chance, but insisted all the homes be built with attached garages, “because anybody who would live way out there was certainly going to need a car.”
Shipp got his money and eventually built 900 homes on the site he called Applewood Acres. For many years it was Canada’s largest housing project developed and built by one firm.
Toronto buyers leapt at the chance to own a single-family home on a large lot. To get to their homes they drove west on the QEW and turned left onto Dixie Rd.
Yup — turned left off the QEW.
Back then, it was a four-lane highway with traffic lights at major intersections all the way to Hamilton.
Toronto Township became Mississauga and as it grew into Canada’s sixth-largest community with 720,000 residents, Shipp grew along with it.
He says he has lost track of how many “Shipp-Built” bricks he has installed — but it’s in the many thousands.
Cars were certainly important in the suburbs, so Shipp also launched Applewood Chev Olds to sell new cars to new home buyers.
He combined those two functions in 1959 when he unveiled three new car models for that year by putting them on the roofs of three model homes at his Riverview Gardens project in Streetsville.
The stunt got worldwide coverage. In the same model homes, he placed mannequins doing things in various rooms. Two children were brushing their teeth in the bathroom. The woman of the home was wearing a nightie and reading a book in her bed. The husband, of course, was watching TV.
To help sell the homes, Shipp worked closely with a young woman who sold advertising for the Streetsville newspaper — and he continues the 53-year strong working relationship with Hazel McCallion, now Mississauga’s mayor.
Shipp has the longest history of building homes in Mississauga and the Shipp-Built brick has made its way to Sault Ste. Marie and Florida, too. Shipp’s Landing is the appropriate name of a luxury highrise condo project sitting on one of the most southern spits of land in America. The 15-acre project stands at the south end of Marco Island, 20 minutes south of Naples, Fla.
He has erected many storeys of commercial office space as well. The Shipp Centre at Islington Ave. and Bloor St. W. was once the largest contributor to Etobicoke’s tax coffers.
He also built MEC — the Mississauga Executive Centre — which shares the intersection of Highway 10 and Burnhamthorpe Rd. with Square One Shopping Centre. When Shipp lived on that corner, he had the prettiest farm in Mississauga. MEC now shares the former farm with Absolute — also known as the Marilyn Monroe building — and the skeletons of some of Shipp’s favourite riding horses.
Harold and Gordon S. Shipp are the only father-and-son team to serve as presidents of the Greater Toronto Home Builders’ Association, now known as the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD). Gordon was president in 1954, Harold in 1960. Gordon Jr. is now president of Shipp Corp.
Gordon Sr. is the only non-American to be inducted into the U.S. National Association of Home Builders’ Hall of Fame.
As well as on thousands of bricks, the Shipp name can also be found on plaques, scholarships, playgrounds, schools, team sweaters and awards throughout Mississauga and Etobicoke. One of those plaques notes a $6 million donation Harold Shipp made to the Trillium Health Centre in 2005.
One of his most prized possessions is a globe he keeps in his office. It is filled with pins that mark each of the cities and countries he has visited.
“Travel is the best education a person can get,” says Harald.
Star Contest
In 1977, the first New in Homes section appeared in the Toronto Star.
Back then, most new homes were detached and built in the suburbs; today, condos have overtaken new home sales, both in the city and the 905 regions, according to a recent report by RealNet Canada.
Here at the Toronto Star, we’re celebrating a special anniversary of 35 Years of New in Homes with special new features — and a surprise or two.
And I’m going to tell you about one today.
The Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) is offering a hefty $35,000 toward the purchase of a new home or renovation to help us celebrate. All you have to do to enter is go to ww.thestar.com/contests and tell us what a new home or renovation means to you.
Aside from the contest, we’d love to have your feedback on what you think makes a great community, what you love about your home and your neighbourhood.
We will post the best online at www.yourhome.ca — and perhaps even print a few in the paper.
Send your submissions to newhomes@thestar.ca and put “35 years” in the subject line.
You can also read all the profiles of our Industry Innovators at www.thestar.com/specialsections/newinhomes35years
— Gale Beeby, Real Estate Editor
