Percy Waters Florist

General information

Percy Waters is the oldest business on the Danforth and professionally creates floral gifts for you. Customer service has always been a priority, treating our customers the way we would like to be treated -with dignity, courtesy, respect and the understanding that you are offering your heartfelt sentiments along with your purchase of flowers. In 1911, Percy Waters bought the store at 445 Danforth Avenue with his wife Lulu and their four children. Despite mud roads, the lack of street cars, uncultivated lands, scarcity of houses and despite the neighbouring merchants who predicted ultimate failure, Percy Waters pursued his dream. He was the first florist-nurseryman on the Danforth and the first business man to outfit his premises with electric lights. Three or four times a week Percy Waters would have his delivery man hitch up the horse and wagon and set out to receive an express shipment of peonies, geraniums, iris bulbs, seeds and garden rakes down at the old River Station. In 1917 Mr. Percy Waters passed away but not before he had seen his small beginning flourish into a very successful business. When Mr. Waters decided to open the flower store, he had an able assistant in his wife, who, from the start, became actively engaged in the business with him.
His widow Lulu carried on that business with all the fortitude she could muster with the help of her two sons Russ and Victor. After Mr. Waters death, Mrs. Waters took charge of the store and lost no time gaining all the new ideas possible, while at the same time carrying out the old principles of a dollar’s worth for a dollar, but gradually trying to educate her clientele to buy something better in flowers.
Few people played so prominent and important a role in the formative years of the Canadian florist industry as Waters. Not only was she an excellent florist and a designer of international reputation, she was equally an enthusiastic worker for the betterment of her chosen profession.
After her young family grew, she was able to combine the roles of mother, father, and businesswomen with unprecedented vigour. She found time to take an active role in the Toronto Florists Club, the Florists Telegraph Delivery Association, and the Canadian Florists and Growers Association. Always a keen believer in trade cooperation, advertising and flower sales promotion, Waters was instrumental in running many of the big floral events of the twenties and thirties;
The Toronto convention of the FTDA, the great International Flower Show at the CNE, the many publicity affairs like special “Shut-in Days.” Under joint sponsorship of FTDA, Canadian Florists and Growers Associations, she operated floral design schools across Canada. She passed away on March 16th, 1961.
Mrs. Waters proved to be eminently successful. She became a regional Director of FTD (Once known as Flourist Telegraph Delivery Association) now known as Florist Transworld Delivery and she was instrumental at bringing this world wide delivery service into Canada.
Mrs. Waters son Victor ran the business for many years after his mother's death. In 1977 Victor chose to retire, he was very selective as to who he would let take over the business. He was looking for a person who would take care of his business and his customers the way the Waters family always had. The store was sold in 1977 to Bruce Adamson & his family who owned 2 flower shops and greenhouses. Bruce retired in 2012 and passed on the business to the new owners who were proud and exited to carry on the legacy that the Waters family had created.
Over a century later Percy Waters Florist remains a trusted and well respected business in the community he helped build and in the city of Toronto and its suburbs. We are voted one of Toronto's top Ten preferred Florist, by Toronto Life Magazine and cameo'd in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."