John Bitove, Sr.
| John Bitove | |
|---|---|
| Born |
John Louis Nicholas Bitove March 19, 1928 Toronto, Ontario |
| Died | July 30, 2015 (aged 87) Toronto, Ontario |
| Occupation | businessman |
| Children | John Bitove |
| Awards | Order of Canada |
John Louis Nicholas Bitove, Sr., CM (March 19, 1928 – July 30, 2015) was a Macedonian Canadian businessman.
Bitove was born Lazar Nikola Bitov, in Toronto to Macedonian immigrants Nicholas and Vana. His parents immigrated to Canada after World War I in 1919 from Gabresh (today Gavros), a village located in the Kastoria region of Macedonia (Greece).
John Bitove, Sr. built, operated and developed many restaurants across Canada, including the JB's Big Boy Family Restaurants and Roy Rogers Restaurants. In 1983, a company of which he owned 50% (York County Quality Foods) was awarded the food and beverage catering contract at the Toronto Pearson International Airport. In 1987 he obtained the catering rights to Toronto's SkyDome, now Rogers Centre and in 1989, he merged his existing companies to form the Bitove Corporation, at that time one of Canada's largest privately held food service companies. In 1989 he was made a member of the Order of Canada.
He was director of several companies, including Oppenheimer & Co. He also organizes, and is involved in, many charitable activities, most notably the founding of Canadian Macedonian Place, a home for the aged people of Macedonian descent in Canada as well as ProAction, a partnership with the Metropolitan Toronto Police to fund programs in high-risk youth areas of Toronto.
The library of the University of Western Ontario Law School is named after John and Dotsa Bitove.
In the early 1990s, John Bitove founded an International Macedonian Lobby to assist the newly procaimed Republic of Macedonia on its efforts for international recognition. As a result, former advisors of two United States presidents and one Canadian prime minister were hired to lobby foreign governments, as well as the European Community and the United Nations, to recognise the Republic of Macedonia as a sovereign and independent state. At the same time, Bitove formed the first World Macedonian Congress, an ultranationalist organisation created to promote the interests of the Republic of Macedonia and the ethnic Macedonians throughout the world. John Bitove provided significant financial resources to the United Macedonian Diaspora, and has spent "millions of dollars" for the promotion of the Republic of Macedonia's interests. He also supported and promoted the United Macedonia, an irredentist concept among ethnic Macedonian nationalists that aims to unify the transnational region of Macedonia into a single state with the Greek city of Thessaloniki as its capital.
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