George Cohon OC (April 19, 1937 – November 24, 2023) was a visionary American-born Canadian corporate executive, lawyer, and philanthropist who achieved international renown for bringing "hamburger diplomacy" to the Soviet Union. Born in Chicago and educated with a law degree from Northwestern University, he practiced law before relocating to Toronto in 1967 after purchasing the eastern Canadian franchise rights for McDonald's. He scaled the operation into an empire of over one thousand restaurants across Canada, eventually surrendering his regional rights to become the corporation’s second-largest individual shareholder. Cohon entered the global geopolitical spotlight by navigating fourteen years of grueling bureaucratic negotiations to open Moscow's historic first McDonald's in 1990—a breakthrough billed at the time as the world's largest McDonald's and praised by Mikhail Gorbachev as an enduring symbol of international goodwill. A monumental philanthropist, he served as the founding patron of Ronald McDonald House Charities across Canada and Russia, earning Canada's highest civic honors including an appointment as an Officer of the Order of Canada. To document his extraordinary corporate journey, Cohon collaborated with acclaimed author David Macfarlane to write his bestselling 1997 autobiography, To Russia with Fries: My Adventures in Canada and Russia.
This profile is awaiting source review; collected books are already linked below.
