'Could we have a minute, please?" Galen Weston asks, dismissing his public relations handler and a Maclean's photographer from the airy boardroom atop the George Weston tower in midtown Toronto. For the past hour, the executive chairman of Loblaw Cos. has been fielding questions about the embattled supermarket chain he was parachuted in to rescue in September 2006. Tall, whippet thin, with a wide open face, Weston is a boyish 35, possessed of graciousness undercut by steel. His thoughtful answers indicate careful schooling in the machinations of the supermarket industry — profit margins, volumes, price-cutting, merchandise mix.

Now he's veering off script. When will the story run, he asks. Told the next week, he says there might be news a couple of weeks away, closer to the annual meeting in early May, that could make the story more interesting. "I don't want you to be disappointed if you run with it now." His motive is unclear. Is he just being the nice guy from the Loblaw TV ads that have made him the Stuart McLean of Canadian groceries? Or is it a clever strategy to put a more upbeat spin on the story?

Certainly good news has been in short supply at the country's largest food retailer, a $28-billion enterprise that employs some 140,000 people, and operates more than 1,000 stores across the country. Last year, Loblaw reported its first loss in 19 years. Fourth-quarter 2007 earnings were 43 cents per share, compared with 58 cents the previous year. The stock price, down from a high of $78.34 in 2005, is trading at just above $32, near its 10-year low. The Westons, the second richest family in the country, have seen their 62 per cent stake drop some $7 billion.

Yet Weston calls being handed the toughest job in Canadian business the "opportunity of a lifetime." "Everyone says to me, 'God, the pressure, why would you do this to yourself?' But the last thing I wanted to be was part of a family that's custodian of a business that went from strength to strength. This is a challenge and something that will prove whether I'm good enough to do it."

The dynastic imperative lies in his DNA. His great-grandfather George founded Weston Bakeries in Toronto in 1882. His grandfather Garfield built the company into an international food conglomerate. His father Galen Willard presided over Loblaw's 30-year rise and added posh retailers Holt Renfrew and Britain's Selfridges to the family's private holdings. Growing up, Weston expected to assume the mantle. Classmates at Upper Canada College were treated to tours of Weston factories. Before a visit to its Neilson Cadbury plant, the group was asked to sign mock contracts that forbade them from ever eating any other candy, Weston recalls. As a teenager, he worked holidays delivering bread to convenience stores. Saturdays were spent accompanying his father on store visits. Even his family nickname, G2 (Weston Sr. is G1), suggests brand extension. "With all of this wealth comes responsibility," says one who knows the family. "It's like Spider-Man. He can't just be Peter Parker."

Anyone familiar with the story of Loblaw, a tale that has assumed mythological stature in Canadian business lore, will see a perverse symmetry in Galen Weston Jr.'s current quest. In 1971, Garfield Weston asked his 31-year-old son Galen whether the family's run-down, money-losing grocery chain should be sold or salvaged. The younger Weston took a go at it, replacing his father's advisers with a group of young mavericks whose greatest strength was their lack of grounding in the calcified conventions of an industry run then, as it is now, by middle-aged men who don't shop for groceries. Richard Currie, a Harvard M.B.A., masterminded business strategy. Dave Nichol, Weston's former college roommate, developed President's Choice, a premium brand that took on Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble and delivered fat margins. When William Shatner dropped out as company spokesman in the 1970s, Nichol fell into the role and proved a natural. Leading the market with product innovation was an obsession to Nichol, who brought to the Canadian mass market extra virgin olive oil, gourmet pet food, the Decadent Chocolate Chip cookies and Memories of Szechwan Spicy Peanut Satay Sauce. By the late 1980s, Loblaws had become destination shopping, and an industry trailblazer advising Wal-Mart on its burgeoning grocery program.

By 1993, Nichol was gone. Loblaw continued to grow under Currie, who left in 2002 to become chairman of BCE. Before he went, he recommended the company be sold as a mature asset with limited growth potential, particularly given encroaching competition from Wal-Mart. Galen Weston Jr., armed with a Harvard B.A. and Columbia M.B.A., was four years into his apprenticeship at the company. The Westons hung tight, and appointed Loblaw veteran John Lederer president. The company shifted into discounting and non-food merchandising, and lost some competitive ground on the food side. A massive, disruptive overhaul of its supply chain in anticipation of the arrival of Wal-Mart supercentres in Ontario left shelves understocked. The business suffered.

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