Cynthia Findlay Fine Jewellery & Antiques

Cynthia Findlay has fond memories of playing in the attic of her childhood home in New Brunswick. It was where she first discovered her love for treasures of the past. “There were trunks and trunks of linens and china and shelves of old shoes with boot hooks and what not,” Cynthia remembers. As a teenager, she worked in the family store, which specialized in fine china. “My grandmother would teach me a lot about the best of the English china companies," she recalls. After graduating from university, in PR for Royal Doulton, she gradually acquired her own collection of antique plates and figurines.

The treasured items sat in boxes until the summer of 1978, when George, Cynthia’s boyfriend at the time and now her husband, suggested she set up her own operation at the city’s popular Sunday Antiques Market along Toronto’s Harbourfront. “We booked a space on a picnic table and had a really successful Sunday,” she remembers of that first day. “At that time there was no shopping on Sunday so people came in droves.” Over the years, Cynthia and George’s antique business would evolve from picnic table to shared retail spaces with other antique vendors until they finally established their store in 2009 on King Street West under the name Cynthia Findlay Antiques.