Coutts, William E.
Social Communications Pioneer ~ 1882-1973
William Coutts was born near Maxwell in Osprey Township in 1882. When William was four months old, a team of runaway horses killed his father. His mother then took William and his three sisters to live with his grandmother in nearby Feversham. Four years later his mother died. He and one of his sisters were sent to live with an uncle in Wareham. At the age of 16, he married Charlotte Robinson and the young couple moved to Toronto where William began to work in the stationery business, and developed an idea for a greeting card company. He acquired a collection of 125 quality designs and added social communications to them and started Coutts-Hallmark one of the most familiar names in the greeting card business. The company he founded in 1916, grew from a one-man operation to a major concern employing nearly one thousand people. He also started the Coutts-Hallmark Foundation, granting art scholarships to senior High School students and encouraged many young artists. William Coutts changed the look of social communications. In 1958, he sold his company to Donald Hall of Kansas City, owner of Hallmark Cards with whom Coutts-Hallmark of Canada had had an informal international agreement for 35 years and the company became known simply as Hallmark. William Coutts died in 1973.
Additional information:
Dorothy Vick, From Quill to Ballpoint, RBW Graphics, Owen Sound, 1988.
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