Who really calls the shots at Canadian Tire? Meet Martha Billes

I was 20 minutes early for my interview with Martha Billes, the controlling shareholder of Canadian Tire, at the company headquarters in Toronto.

- ROD MCQUEEN

When I was invited to meet her, I was taken to a room attached to the very area where I'd been sitting She had been waiting there all that time and more. Martha's icy blue eyes suggested a wary woman who trusts no one at first, and only a very few people over time.

During the next two hours, Martha, daughter to Canadian Tire founder A.J. Billes, guided me through two thick volumes. The first, from 1989, set the terms for shared ownership with her two brothers, Fred and David, of Tire not the Tire, just Tire - as Martha calls the company. The second, from 1997, recorded how she bought out both and bid them goodbye.

I also saw a copy of the corporate history, family and business photo albums, as well as advertising material for a musical she backed about Napoleon that flopped, costing her $1 million. Billes looked for all the world like the leading lady in her own life.

All of which corroborated my advance research that she was one of the most complex people I would ever meet in my many years of business journalism.