Then Ontario Progressive Conservative party leader John Tory, left, watches father John Tory Sr. cast his ballot in the October, 2007, Ontario election.Reuters
Over the past five decades, as the Thomson business empire grew into a global communications giant, Toronto lawyer John Tory Sr. emerged as the quietly powerful background player whose steady hand guided the reins.
But that doesn't come close to describing his legacy. He was also a trusted adviser to Ted Rogers in the building of another of Canada's corporate kingpins, Rogers Communications Corp. He was a confidant to many companies that dominate the ranks of the Report on Business 1000.
There may be no more influential figure in wealth creation in Canada than this wise, gentle Bay Street lawyer. He built models of succession planning and governance that are emulated, with varying success, throughout Canadian corporate life.
Most impressively, he did it with calmness, patience and lack of personal animosity that set the standard for corporate advisers.
"There was never a hill that was worth dying for - or a sense of negativism towards what anyone else is doing," says Geoffrey Beattie, who 13 years ago succeeded Mr. Tory as president of the Thomsons' holding company, Woodbridge Co. Ltd.
Mr. Tory died on Saturday at 81 from a sudden stroke at his winter home in Florida.
He was often described as the consummate consigliere, the Italian term for trusted advisers to powerful families. But the term diminishes his true significance, as a strategic player, mentor and family friend.
He advised three generations of Thomsons as they built a fortune now estimated at more than $20-billion - the largest in Canada - and helped guide their interests through economic convulsions and technological change to form today's information empire, spearheaded by Thomson Reuters Corp. (and which also includes The Globe and Mail)
He was a trusted adviser and director in the enterprises of Mr. Rogers, the late communications czar who built the largest wireless and cable TV businesses in Canada - and he guided Mr. Rogers through succession planning to the next generation.
But Mr. Tory's roots were planted in a family law firm, which he founded with twin brother Jim, and which has grown into Torys LLP, an iconic Bay Street institution - and in a family ethic of service and hard work that reaches back to a farm in Nova Scotia from which his grandfather emerged to join the insurance business in Toronto.
John A. Tory's son, John H. Tory, the former leader of Ontario's Conservative Party and onetime Rogers Cable president, says the same standards were ingrained early in him, his two brothers and a sister - and supported by their mother Liz, a force in Toronto philanthropy.
"I'm a little better at what I do because I was exposed to someone who wore his values on his sleeve," the younger Mr. Tory says.
Dating from his children's youth, the senior Mr. Tory would write a year-end epistle, summing up his year, with a bit of commentary on how each offspring had done. There was always a piece of advice expressed "in a way in which you didn't feel you were put upon," John Jr. said.
That was the way John A. Tory operated. Right to the end, he put in hours most days at Woodbridge headquarters in Toronto. He kept informed on everything happening, but never imposed his views, Mr. Beattie said. If someone asked, he would have a constructive opinion,
Last week, he left the office and headed to Florida. On Friday night, Mr. Beattie, as he usually does, phoned his mentor with the big news - the approval of a deal by which Woodbridge and other partners would sell their interests in television network CTV to telecom giant BCE. Mr. Tory went to bed content, and died the following day.
Significance in the corporate world is measured in dollars, and Mr. Beattie points out that the value of CTVglobemedia was about $3.3-billion. The first Thomson transaction for Mr. Tory was the $1.5-million purchase of the Sudbury Star in 1955. He represented Roy Thomson who was building a media company from a base in Northern Ontario. Mr. Tory was just three years out of law school and working with his lawyer father and brother Jim.
After their father's death, that original law firm broke up and the brothers founded their own firm in 1963, which is now Torys. But Mr. Tory was increasingly pulled into the orbit of Roy Thomson. In 1973, at age 43, he left the law firm to become president of Woodbridge, from which he worked on the Thomson family's evolution through North Sea oil and travel companies, and out of a newspaper focus into electronic information.
His contribution was to help separate the ownership function, which the Thomson family filled, from the management function, for which they employed skilled professionals. It was immensely successful as a model and many business families pay lip service to it - although few have the discipline to carry it through, as did Ken Thomson, Roy's late son, and now Ken's son David, chairman of Thomson Reuters. "He was my father's closest associate and friend, and a mentor to me," David Thomson said.
Early in his career, Mr. Tory got to know a brash aspiring lawyer named Ted Rogers, who articled at the original Tory firm. Mr. Rogers was a natural entrepreneur and bought a pioneering FM radio station in Toronto called CHFI. Mr. Rogers asked Mr. Tory to join his board, leading to the query by Liz Tory about why he would ever work for a little radio company.
That company grew into Rogers Communications Inc. All the time, Mr. Rogers watched how Mr. Tory had constructed the Thomson model of governance, and asked him to help build his own version. There are debates whether it has been as successful, but the generational change in ownership has included hiring a non-family CEO, Nadir Mohamed.
It was different advising Ted Rogers because he liked to live on the edge, making acquisitions and adding loads of debt. Rogers' executives would get frustrated as Mr. Rogers laid on another risky deal - and they knew who to call for advice.
At the end of the day, they sought out Mr. Tory. They would vent their frustration, and ask for input. Mr. Rogers never knew these conversations took place.
But Mr. Tory, always the quiet pillar of reason, would know what to say. And most of all, he would listen.
A full obituary will follow