AARP Muscle Babe

Ben Weider, OC, bodybuilder and author, was born on February 1, 1923. He died on October 17, 2008, aged 85.
With his older brother Joe, Ben Weider was one of the important influences on the popularisation of bodybuilding as an international sport. The son of Polish immigrants who settled in Montreal, he and Joe began lifting weights as teenagers hoping to even things up in the street fights that were common in the largely French-Canadian Plateau-Mont-Royal district of their native city. Using discarded axles and wheels from railroad cars when conventional barbells proved impossible to find, the brothers soon found fewer challenges coming their way.

While still in his teens, Joe Weider entered and won several local competitions, leading other lifters to inquire about his training routine. When he tired of repeating himself, the brothers began producing a mimeographed newsletter, Your Physique. Within months, circulation had reached five figures.

The Second World War suspended their business activities but the brothers returned in earnest after the end of hostilities. They expanded their publishing activities and began offering nutritional supplements and exercise equipment.

They founded the International Federation of Body Building in 1946, Ben holding the presidency for the next 60 years. Originally representing physique athletes only from Canada and the US, the IFBB now oversees the activities of 170 national organisations.

Their name firmly established as body building’s dominant brand, the Weiders brought a young Austrian to the US, a move that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a household name, raised the sport’s profile and sent the Western world flocking to their gym.

Ben Weider’s financial success allowed him to indulge his lifelong interest in Napoleon Bonaparte. Immersing himself in Napleonic lore, Weider became convinced that he had not died of cancer, as universally acknowledged, but had actually succumbed to intentional arsenic poisoning. Written with the Swedish dentist Sten Forshufvud, Assassination at St Helena: The Poisoning of Napoleon Bonaparte was derided by historians when released in 1978, but it went on to sell more than a million copies in several languages. The founder and president of the International Napoleonic Society, in 1998 Weider endowed Florida State University’s Institute on Napoleon and the French Revolution.

Support for his theory that Napoleon was surreptitiously fed arsenic over an extended period leading up to his death in 1821 has increased significantly since it was first hypothesised. In 2000 France appointed Weider to the Légion d’Honneur. A member of the Order of Canada since 1975, he was advanced to officer (OC) in 2006.

A devout Jew, Weider donated gyms to numerous communities in the Middle East, with Jews, Arabs and Palestinians all benefiting from his generosity. Closer to home, he supported or built numerous community centres around his home town, without regard for the ethnic or religious affiliations of those who would make use of them.

Over the years Weider amassed the world’s largest collection of privately-held Napoleonic memorabilia, including a trademark bicorne hat from Bonaparte’s ill-fated Russian campaign of 1812, and several locks of hair. Three weeks ago it was announced that the entire 60-piece collection had been donated to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Weider published several other books on Napoleon, notably (with General Michel Franceschi) The Wars Against Napoleon (2007), whose thesis was that rather than merely pursuing a career of military glory, Napoleon fought a defensive struggle on behalf of an enlightened revolution against reactionary European regimes, among them that of Britain.

Benjamin Weider is survived by his wife, Huguette, whom he married in 1959, and by three sons.

–Source: The Times Online, Oct. 24, 2008

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