Over the years, Applewood Acres certainly has not been at a loss having some very interesting and notable people in our midst. Such was Colonel Harland Sanders, who was one of the world’s most recognizable people.
Col. Harland Sanders owned a home at 1337 Melton Drive and would occupy it for about four months of every year from the mid 1960’s until his death in 1980.
In the early 1960’s the Colonel would often visit the Applewood home of Edward Gogoff, President of Kentucky Fried Chicken of Canada.
One day in 1964 while walking through Applewood, the Colonel made up his mind to move into the area. Coincidentally, there was a home for sale immediately beside the Gogoff’s. Since he was the roving ambassador for KFC and literally hated staying in hotels, this presented Col. Sanders with an opportunity to have a home he could enjoy while in Canada. He decided to purchase the home and retained Toronto lawyer Terry Donnelly to handle the transaction.
In an interview years later, the Colonel quipped that he loved the area and the home he had here was like a ‘doll house’ compared to the one he and his wife Claudia shared back in the United States.
In 1998, Edward Gogoff, who acted as the Colonel’s ‘right hand man’, carried out one of the final wishes of the late Col. and presented the Mississauga-Queensway Hospital with a cheque for one million dollars for its Family Care Centre. The donation was the largest single donation in the hospital’s history. According to Mr. Gogoff, the Colonel considered Mississauga his adopted Canadian hometown and he wanted to do something significant for the community.
The Family Care Centre brings together a wide range of services including mammography, an unscheduled primary care service and specialized children’s programs including pediatrics, diabetes and asthma education. The centre has a special focus on education, promotion of personal and family health, wellness and prevention of illness. This concept met with the Colonel’s wishes to support families and children.
Harland Sanders was born in Kentucky on September 9, 1890. He actively began franchising his chicken business at the age of 65 and today, even long after his death, the quick-service restaurant pioneer is recognized as a symbol of entrepreneurial spirit.
When the Colonel was six, his father died, his mother was forced to go to work, and young Harland had to take care of his three-year old brother and baby sister. This meant doing much of the cooking. By age seven, he was a master of a score of regional dishes.
At age 10, he got his first job working on a nearby farm for $2 a month. When he was 12, his mother remarried and he left his home near Henryville, Indiana, for a job on a farm in Greenwood, Indiana. He held a series of jobs over the next few years, first as a 15 year-old streetcar conductor in New Alban, Ind., and then as a 16 year-old private, soldiering for six months in Cuba.