Entrepreneurs in Canada!: Who Knew?

By Harvey Miller

The book assesses approximately 50 Canadians from the perspective of whether they should be considered entrepreneurs within the context of Joseph Schumpeter's 5 definitions of entrepreneurial activity. These assessments are set against the background of 6 time segments that briefly describe and define Canadian economic history from the European invasion to current day.

The book adopts an unabashedly free market capitalist approach. That is, wealth creation is a good and necessary activity in an economy that fuels growth making better conditions for its citizenry. Entrepreneurs are the generators of wealth creation and that Canada's economic development has been led by entrepreneurs.

The benefit to readers will be the revelation of Canada's rich entrepreneurial heritage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Oct 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9780228817963

Harvey Miller

Harvey Miller writer is currently the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of a Canadian based international consulting firm. He has been the CFO of various privately held mid-sized companies in North America since 1990. Prior to that he worked in corporate finance, corporate banking, agricultural construction and "on-the-line" at GM's automotive manufacturing facility in Oshawa. Mr Miller holds a B.A. and M.B.A, both from the University of Toronto and he holds the certification of Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) but is currently non-practicing.

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Entrepreneurs in Canada! – Who Knew?

Copyright © 2019 by Harvey Miller

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-1797-0 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-1795-6 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-1796-3 (eBook)

To my three daughters, they know who they are, who encouraged me to undertake this book. They make life worth living.

Table of Contents

INTRO

•Definitions and Key Theorists

•Economics, Economy, Adam Smith, Capitalism, Capital, Socialism, John Maynard Keynes, Mixed Economy, Crony Capitalism, Entrepreneurship, Joseph Schumpeter

Chapter One

The Early Years (17th century - 1860s)

•The Early Years

•The Staples Industries:

•The First Industrialists

•What Was Up With The Country During This Period

•People: John Guy, Charles Robin, Marie-Anne Barbel, Philomen Wright, EB Eddy, John Booth, John Molson, Samuel Cunard.

Chapter Two

The Emergence of a Country

(1860s - 1900)

•Industrialists Continued

•The Building of Canada

and the National Policy

•A Clutch of Others

•People: John Redpath, Ganong Bros, Hart Massey, Hugh Allan, AG Bell, Skookum Jim & George Carmack & Frederick Trump, James Williams,

Chapter Three

The Gilded Age? (1900 -1914)

•The Retailers

•The Financiers

•Car Guys

•Battle of the Century: Man versus State, who will prevail?

•People: Timothy Eaton, Peter Larkin, Alphonse Desjardins, George Cox, Edmund Walker, Gordon McGregor, Col. Sam Mclaughlin, Henry Pellatt vs Adam Beck

Chapter Four

World War I - World War II

(1914 - 1945)

•Extractive Industries

•The Families

•People: William Herron, HR MacMillan, Noah Timmins, Karl Springer, Richardsons, KC Irving, Bronfmans, Roy Thomson

Chapter Five

Boom and Stagflation (1945 - 1980)

•Staples Redux

•Conglomerate Men

•Merchants

•Real Estate

•People: Steve Roman, Frank MacMahon, Doc Seaman, EP Taylor, Jim Pattison, Tomas Bata, McCains, Honest Ed, Reichmanns, Bob Campeau

Chapter Six

The Emergence of Modern Entrepreneurialism

(1980-current)

•Paper Miners

•Pill Poppers

•Wired to Wireless

•The Consumer Caterers

•The Immigrants

•Paul Desmarais, Lassonde&Schulich, Leslie Dan, Barry Sherman, Eugene Melynk, Ted Rogers, JR Shaw, Mike Lazaridis, Ron Joyce, Izzy Sharp, Chip Wilson, Prem Watsa, Michael Lee-Chin, Lino Saputo, Cindy Lee

Outro

•Canada’s Natural Resources

•Extraordinary People

•Government and Entrepreneurship

•Capitalism and Entrepreneurship

•The Current Environment

•In Closing

Addendum

An Entrepreneur’s Scorecard

INTRO

Something has been bothering me for some time. I know what it is but I did not know what to do about it. When I discussed this with my children, probably more than necessary, they finally got fed up and told me to do something about it - in other words quit complaining, get off your ass and write a book about it or develop a podcast - this afterall being a new age in m edia.

So that is what I endeavoured to do with the result being this modest effort. I am not a writer by trade nor historian or economist and I have found writing to be a humbling, difficult and time consuming exercise. But I have done it and now I hope it finds an audience.

By now you must be wondering what has been bothering me so long. I will come to that briefly, but first I must tell you who I am. I am a Canadian, born and bred, with three wonderful, now adult, daughters. I am a capitalist by nature and have worked in a variety of private sector jobs - mostly banking and finance - for large corporations and small businesses. Some roles have been managerial, and some have been more of an entrepreneurial nature. As with many other people, I have met and dealt with successful, interesting and very capable individuals as well as those that dwell on the other end of that spectrum, regardless of how successful they are or have been.

Through these experiences the people I have come most to admire are entrepreneurs - now the point of my intellectual discontent is this. Why does Canada, or Canadians generally speaking, not celebrate its rich entrepreneurial history unlike other cultures, especially our friends immediately south of Canada in the great republic of the United States of America?

Canada has a rich heritage of entrepreneurship and a cast of characters worth knowing. Currently, or at least for the past 20 years or so, there has been a substantial increase in entrepreneurial activity, not only in Canada, but also around the world. This is fantastic, and I believe that in better understanding this activity, it is important to understand and celebrate those who came before this generation.

The goal of this book is to identify past and current Canadians who have operated in the Canadian private sector and to assess whether they qualify as entrepreneurs - these people are the wealth creators.

Wealth creators fund an economy but I am getting a little ahead of myself in that the use of these terms require more detailed definitions. For the moment though wealth creators can be defined as two (2) types of people: entrepreneurs; and managers. For simplicity entrepreneurs are individuals who create commercially successful products and/or companies. Most successful entrepreneurs share a common trait - they are not managers. Once an entrepreneurial undertaking grows to a certain size (revenue, assets, employees, etc), managers must be recruited to takeover functional operations lest the company lose control of its activities. Managers continue the process of wealth creation commenced by entrepreneurs.

It is reasonable for a reader to inquire about who these Managers are. For the most part until the end of World War II, Managers were lawyers, engineers and accountants recruited into growing companies due to the skill set they possessed. Joining those professionally prepared individuals were talented tradespeople that worked their way into positions of responsibility due to their native intelligence, hard work and opportunity. In the USA Andrew Carnegie is a classic example of an uneducated but talented Manager who rose to great success - in Canada the successful, but lesser known, George Cox is a further example.

Post World War II saw the emergence of a new class of professionals produced by the burgeoning post-secondary education system. Increasingly many graduate students were attracted to business management and acquired, after attending a two (2) year program, a MBA degree (Master of Business Administration). These MBA students, women as well as men, more and more occupied Management and Executive positions within Corporations as founders/entrepreneurs were pushed aside or retired, hopefully with their fortunes intact. (1)

An example of this distinction between entrepreneurs and managers is a company that most Canadians would recognize: Rogers Communications Inc. The founder Ted Rogers Jr was most definitely an entrepreneur (more on Mr Rogers later) but Rogers Communications would not have become as successful and large as it has become without a multitude of truly talented individuals who managed operating divisions as well as administrative functions such as finance/accounting, taxation and human resources.

Although Ted Rogers Jr died in 2008 his entrepreneurial legacy lives on through the publicly traded entity of Rogers Communications led by professional Managers.

This book is mostly focused on wealth creation within the borders that define the nation-state of Canada. By definition this excludes Canadians who have been successful entrepreneurs outside Canada and there have been many ranging from the railroad entrepreneur and manager James J Hill, the 1st and perhaps only person to build a transcontinental railroad without public funds, through to today’s internet examples of Jeffrey Skoll of eBay, and Garrett Camp of Uber. These are great Canadians and worthy of celebrating, but this book is largely a made-in-Canada story and Hill, Skoll and Camp created their wealth outside Canada.

Let me be clear this is not an academic exercise in research and for the most part secondary sources, not primary sources, are used. This is a layman’s undertaking intended to remind or instruct Canadians of a rich economic heritage and some of the individuals who participated or created it. If this book meets with any success at all then perhaps I have achieved what I set out to do and that certain something that has been bothering me will dissipate.

From a personal side I have been engaged in many instances of employee recruitment, including direct interviews with candidates. Of course, not all interviews are the same but two common themes emerged with these discussions, especially among younger people just commencing their work careers or climbing the career ladder.

The first theme is I want to be an entrepreneur or I want to work for an entrepreneurial company. My first thought is usually, OK here we go again. When I ask these prospective candidates what they mean the general responses are: i) I do not want to work for a large Corporation; ii) smaller privately-owned companies treat their employees better; or iii) large Corporations are heartless capitalist undertakings that focus on profit generation more than their products, customers or employees.

These comments are fair enough to a certain point but what do they have to do with entrepreneurship or even being an entrepreneur? Obviously, the answer is nothing.

The second theme that emerges is I want to work for an innovative company or I want to be an innovator. Well, that is all well and good but with innovation a person must prove it as the proof is in the pudding and companies hire people to undertake and complete specific tasks. New employees need to learn their company products and learn how to do their jobs well and, then perhaps, through experience innovation will evolve.

Of course, many companies do have research and development (R&D) departments focused on innovation but they tend to be larger Companies that can absorb unprofitable R&D activities within their other profitable operations.

Needless to say, many young people seem to consider that entrepreneurship and innovation are two sides of the same coin. I do not agree, as they are two separate and distinct undertakings even though both activities may be engaged in and result in wealth creation.

Many of the people I have considered as candidates for employment have indeed been hired and have had successful careers, but none have become successful entrepreneurs or innovators. There is certainly nothing wrong with that - being a good and valued employee is a terrific accomplishment in its own right. This book does not directly consider the theme of innovation, although it naturally emerges throughout the discussion of various Canadians and their activities.

Obviously, it is not just young careerists who pursue being an entrepreneur. Many people, we all have come across these individuals, that describe themselves as being entrepreneurs but are they really? By what objective standard are they enabled to consider themselves as such? Afterall there is no professional certification process for entrepreneurs unlike Doctors, Lawyers, Scientists, Engineers, etc. Look, I am all in favour of people considering themselves as they want to, but in my mind objective definitions should be applicable, and this book undertakes that task.

The concentration here is on entrepreneurship and to that end I need to digress into a discussion of definitions of economic terms in order to assess individuals in this book. This may be tedious for the reader but essential in assessing the following subjects’ entrepreneurial activity.

Definitions and Key Theorists

The reader would have some justification to inquire into why this section of definitions is necessary, why not just cut to the chase and get on with assessing the characters in the following pages? In my world that is both too easy and too subjective a road to undertake. Criteria need to be put in place to assess these individuals as wealth creators and potentially entrepreneurs. Readers may disagree with my identification of certain individuals as entrepreneurs but if we can all understand and accept the criteria used to make these assessments then at least that part of any argument is set aside. Besides interested readers could apply the entrepreneur scorecard provided in the Addendum to other individuals not mentioned, making it an interesting exercise all its own.

In all cases I endeavour to keep definitions, and descriptions of key theorists, light and breezy and not get bogged down in the esoteric debates upon which many academics have staked their careers. Hopefully this section will prove somewhat instructive and entertaining but bear in mind that this is a layman’s, non-academic, undertaking.

The following definitions are in no particular order, certainly not alphabetical, but have been structured by the writer as a guide to determining what an entrepreneur is and the economic forces that are arrayed with and against them. Included are individuals, as well as definitions, as such people are closely identified with some of the definitions provided.

Economics: I already hear the groans. Oh no, not the dismal science! But yes the dismal science needs to be generally understood as it forms the foundation upon which all civilized societies have been built.

For many of the definitions used in this book I have relied on The Pocket Economist by Rupert Pennant-Rea and Bill Emmott published in 1983 by Oxford / The Economist, a fine and much utilized resource. The definitions used from this source shall not be noted but other sources will be.

So, what is economics? That is a difficult question to answer and the pondering of such has led many people to abandon the study of the dismal science. My answer is that - in its simplest, most general form, economics is the study of how the world works - how scarce resources are used to produce and distribute goods and services to meet human wants. While some people, including its practitioners, consider economics a science I do not since it is virtually impossible to set up an economics laboratory experiment in the way physical scientists do. Therefore, I consider economics to be more of an art, a philosophical understanding of how the world works than a science where complicated, abstract mathematical formulas seek to explain or support complex theories. Enough said on this topic - well almost but not quite yet.

It has become important in the modern world to distinguish between two (2) broad segments of economic theory, macroeconomics and microeconomics. The distinction between these two strands of study were never very relevant until the 20th century when the emergence of BIG GOVERNMENT began. Prior to that evolution things in the world of economics moved along nicely, thank you very much, but bigness has a way of complicating matters.

With the emergence of BIG GOVERNMENT and its associated policies things became more complicated as Governments developed large scale policies to deal with things like unemployment, balance of trade, economic growth, etc., virtually anything that policy wonks and aspiring politicians could turn into actual Government programs. This is macroeconomics. Deficits and debt became not only real but also the norm as did income taxes and consumption taxes as well as the use of government incentives to influence behaviour by actors in the economic marketplace. While these policies could and did distort market activity they also created opportunity for shrewd people to exploit (more on crony capitalism to come).

The other segment of economic thought that developed was microeconomics, the study of economics at the individual level. Although the distinction between macro and microeconomics may be considered esoteric and of interest only to egghead economists it really is of great importance to understanding wealth creation. Microeconomics explains how markets work at their most fundamental basis and therefore how wealth is created through the interactivity of the marketplace. Unlike politics or sports wealth creation is not a zero-sum game but a situation wherein everyone benefits by an ever increasing expansion of wealth in and through the markets. However, no-one has, or ever should, claim wealth creation is shared equally among people.

Basically, microeconomics examines how wealth is created and expanded whereas macroeconomics examines how to control, regulate and tax wealth. Naturally this is of interest to wealth creators of all types and macroeconomic policy, as practiced by Governments, can enhance or retard any economy.

Economy: Economics has been defined as a theory of how the world works but that is too broad an application for this book. Limitations need to be applied, and that is where an economy comes into being.

Simply stated an economy is a specific geographic area where and how scarce resources are used to produce and distribute goods and services to meet human wants. In the case of this book, the economy in question is the nation-state of Canada and its predecessor of British North America.

At this point I consider it relevant to step aside and consider the human inhabitants of the economy under study. What became known as the Americas was inhabited by people long before the northern Europeans arrived by crossing the vast Atlantic Ocean in their technological marvel, sailing ships. The then inhabitants of the Americas, whom I refer to as Indigenous, which I hope gives no offense, had been living here for over 10,000 years and had evolved into tribal societies of greater and lesser civilizations. These societies had forms of governance and local economies.

There is no reason to believe this Indigenous world would not have continued, but the arrival of the Europeans injected a revolutionary shock into their various societies ultimately leading to their collapse. That process is outside the scope of this undertaking and the reader will find that there are limited references to Indigenous individuals in this book. They, of course, existed