A refugee from Nazi-occupied Hungary who built the world's largest gold mining company
Peter Munk
Peter Munk fled Hungary as a teenager in 1944, eventually building Barrick Gold into the world's largest gold mining company from a Toronto base, and donating hundreds of millions to the city's institutions.
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Peter Munk fled Hungary with his family in 1944 as Nazi forces occupied the country, eventually settling in Canada and studying engineering at the University of Toronto. After early business ventures in consumer electronics that ended in failure, Munk pivoted into resource investment and founded Barrick Gold in Toronto in 1983, building it over the following decades into the largest gold mining company in the world by production, headquartered in the city's financial district.
A major Toronto philanthropist
Munk became one of Toronto's most significant philanthropists, donating hundreds of millions of dollars to local institutions, including a major gift that established the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto and substantial funding for cardiac care at Toronto General Hospital's Peter Munk Cardiac Centre. His name is attached to enough major Toronto institutions that it has become, for many residents, more familiar as a building or school name than as the mining company that funded it, before his death in 2018.
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