Edward Hayward
Australian businessman (1903–1983)
Sir Edward Waterfield Hayward (10 November 1903 – 13 August 1983) was an Australian businessman, best known for owning and managing John Martin's, a chain of department stores in Adelaide, South Australia, and for instigating the Adelaide Christmas Pageant.
Hayward was born in Adelaide and was educated at St Peter's College, Adelaide, where he took up polo among other sports in which he excelled. After completing his education, Hayward worked as a jackaroo in New South Wales for several years. He started in the retail sector for the first time in 1929, working for Sydney Snow and Co. Ltd., and moved back to Adelaide in 1931 to join the family business, John Martin's.
One of his first jobs at John Martin's was to visit Canada and the United States to gather ideas from department stores in those countries. It was on this trip that he came up with the idea to start the Adelaide Christmas Pageant, being in particular inspired by the Toronto Santa Claus Parade and by Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. Since the first pageant in 1933, it has become a much loved Adelaide tradition.
During the Second World War, Hayward served in the Australian Army; he was 36 when he enlisted in 1940. During the war Hayward noted the popularity of the soft drink Coca-Cola with the Americans.
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This entry incorporates text from “Edward Hayward” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.