John L.N. Bitove, Sr., CM (born 1928 in Toronto, Canada) is a Canadian businessman of Macedonian descent.[1]
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John L.N. Bitove, Sr. was born in Toronto to Macedonian immigrants Nicholas and Vana.[2] His parents immigrated to Canada after World War I in 1919 from Gavros, a village located in the Kastoria Prefecture of Macedonia (Greece), Greece.[3]
John Bitove, Sr. built, operated and developed many restaurants across Canada, including the JB's Big Boy Family Restaurants and Roy Rogers Restaurants. In 1982 one of his companies obtained all of the food and beverage catering at the Toronto Pearson International Airport. In 1983 he obtained the catering rights to Toronto's SkyDome, now Rogers Centre and in 1989, he merged his existing companies to form the Bitove Corporation, at that time one of Canada's largest privately held food service companies. In 1989 he was made a member of the Order of Canada.[4]
He is a director of several companies, including Oppenheimer & Co. He also organizes, and is involved in, many charitable activities, most notably the founding of Canadian Macedonian Place, a home for the aged people of Macedonian descent in Canada[5] as well as ProAction, a partnership with the Metropolitan Toronto Police to fund programs in high-risk youth areas of Toronto.[6]
The library of the University of Western Ontario Law School is named after John and Dotsa Bitove.[7]
He is married to Dotsa and has five children — Vonna, Tom, Nick, John and Jordan.