Born in London, Ontario, to John Sackville Labatt and Elizabeth Anne Lynch, Labatt studied business at UWO for one year in 1953, and he also briefly studied at McGill University, where he joined the Kappa Alpha Society.
He was expected to take over the Labatt brewery, but by the time he was an adult, the business had been sold outside of the family.
Instead, he became an accountant with Clarkson Gordon and later worked in the securities industry and investment management.
He succeeded Eleanor Clitheroe as chancellor of UWO on October 28, 2004, and he served until 2008.
[2] On February 7, 2007, the Labatt family donated $30 million to Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children—the largest donation in the hospital's history—in order to establish the Labatt Family Heart Centre (which will provide care for children with congenital heart disease), and to support the Brain Tumour Research Centre, which the Labatt family helped establish with a previous donation.