(18 Aug. 1915-13 Feb. 1995), businessman. (Gerard Lefebvre) Born at Glen Robertson, GC. Parents: Mr and Mrs Josephus Lefebvre. Josephus Lefebvre was a farmer and cheesemaker, and was a cheese factory owner at Glen Robertson. Sometime after Gérard Lefebvre’s birth, the Lefebvre family moved to Rigaud, Que., where Josephus Lefebvre farmed. Gérard Lefebvre’s education included primary school and one year at Rigaud College. For about a dozen years, Gérard Lefebvre worked as a truck driver in a small, family-based trucking business which his father had begun at Rigaud. In Aug. 1947, Gérard Lefebvre and his brother-in-law Ovide Brabant bought the Shepherd Brothers’ Transport and Cold Storage business, in Alexandria, from George and Louis Shepherd. (Standard Freeholder 30 Aug. 1947) Ovide Brabant left the firm about a year later.
The company began with only three regular trucks, one tractor, and one 22-foot trailer. The cold storage business soon passed into oblivion, but the tiny trucking enterprise grew vigorously, in one of the great success stories of GC history. The company was at first called Glengarry Transport Registered, but was later known as Glengarry Transport Limited. In 1977, it was operating over 1300 trucks. In 1985 it was described as having “2,000 employees and up to 4,000 truck and trailer units.” (Glengarry News progress supplement) Glengarry Transport operated throughout southern Ontario and southern Quebec, and to a more limited extent in New York State. It maintained terminals in Montreal and Toronto and at other points in its operating territory, but its headquarters were at the big Glengarry Transport yards at the southern end of Alexandria. Other companies were taken over in the process of expansion. Glengarry Transport Limited had employees throughout its operating territory, but its importance as an employer in job-scarce Alexandria ranked large in GC eyes. Gérard Lefebvre’s sons worked with him in the business. For years, motorists on Highway 401 and other major roads were familiar with the Glengarry Transport trucks, with their lettering GTL and GLENGARRY. From the beginning of the 1990s, under the impact of market forces or as some thought of deregulation, the GC trucking giant was in what appeared to be irresistible decline.
Gérard Lefebvre commuted from Rigaud during his first two years in business in Alexandria. Afterwards he lived in Alexandria till 1969, and thereafter in Toronto, Montreal, and Cornwall. He remained active in the firm till about 1987. He died at his winter home in the Bahamas. By the time he died, trucks with the familiar GTL and Glengarry lettering were still sometimes seen on the highways, but they were growing rare. Soon, people would think it worth mentioning in conversation that they had spotted one. Gérard Lefebvre stated in an interview in 1977 that he did not learn English till he began business in Alexandria in 1947 at the age of 32. Only Ralph Connor did more in the twentieth century than Gérard Lefebvre to publicize the name of Glengarry.
Glengarry News 15 Feb. 1995 * many refs. to the GTL company in the GN since 1947 * MacGillivray & Ross 548, 696-700 (portrait) * interview with Gérard Lefebvre recorded for the Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 16 July 1977 * Marin: index * Rayside: index * operations map of GTL, Glengarry Highland Games, Souvenir Program, 1986 * articles on GTL in the progress supplements to GN 10 April 1985 & 13 May 1987 (with maps) * Joe Banks, “The Fall of a Glengarry Giant,” GN 17 April 1991