David Thomson, 3rd Baron Thomson of Fleet

[8] He was born on June 12, 1957, in Toronto, Ontario, the eldest child of the 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet and his wife, Marilyn Lavis.

In 1978, Thomson received his Bachelor of Arts (subsequently upgraded to an MA (Cantab)) at Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he studied History.

Thomson started his business career as a junior associate at McLeod Young Weir in Toronto.

Osmington acquires and manages commercial real estate assets on behalf of institutional shareholders, such as the Thomson empire.

In 2023, Osmington revealed that it was bringing the fast food chain Shake Shack to Canada with plans for 35 outlets.

Thomson is a noted art collector and owns works by Rembrandt, J. M. W. Turner, Paul Klee, Hammershoi, Edvard Munch, Patrick Heron, Joseph Beuys, E. L. Kirchner, and Egon Schiele.

Thomson owns the world's largest collection of paintings and drawings by the English painter John Constable.

In an interview with Geraldine Norman in The Independent in 1994, Thomson said he bought his first Constable drawing at 19, giving the seller "an oil painting in exchange and quite a lot of money".

In 2012, Thomson broke the record for the most expensive 18th-century British watercolour when he paid £2.4 million for a small landscape by John Robert Cozens.

And in November 2016 he paid a record C$11.2 million to buy a painting at auction by Group of Seven artist Lawren Harris entitled "Mountain Forms".

Thomson was estranged from his eldest daughter, for five years, with her eventually suing her father over mismanagement of the family trusts.

"The only substantial interview he has given was to James FitzGerald, who wrote a book about the elite private school (Upper Canada College) they both attended in Toronto", according to a 3 July 2006 article in The New York Times.

"[10] Thomson lives in Rosedale, Toronto, in a ravine compound that houses an underground art gallery.