‘Financial wizard’ cast a generous spell

Kevin McGarry may not have been magic, but to some, he was a financial wizard.

Before ground was broken on several large Manitoba builds, including the Steele Business Park in CentrePort, McGarry was asking questions: Who might the tenants be? How much can they pay? How long may the site be vacant for? And, how will this affect the balance sheet?

McGarry and his finance-focused mind helped shape Manitoba’s real estate sphere. He co-founded a major commercial real estate firm in the ’80s and later worked with his brother at Cushman & Wakefield Stevenson, another prominent business.

“He had an incredibly steady hand,” said Martin McGarry, Kevin’s youngest sibling and former colleague. “We called him king of the sheep.”

That nickname stems from a birthday card: on front, one sheep led a flock, and that sheep was labelled — in his sister Geraldine’s handwriting — “Kevin.”

The other five sheep represented his younger siblings.

“Even if he didn’t know what he was doing, you would think he knew what he was doing because he exuded confidence,” Martin said with a laugh.

And so, Kevin McGarry led.

A two-year-old McGarry immigrated to Canada from Ireland in 1955. He was born in England to an English-Irish family.

He sped through school, skipping a grade and becoming a university lecturer at the age of 22. Before he hit his post-secondary years, he met Betty Friesen.

The two starred alongside each other in a Shakespeare play — not as lovers, but as identical twins in Twelfth Night. The 1969 St. Paul’s High School production was the first of several plays the two acted in together.

They were married in 1976. They snuck in a months-long trip to Europe before they began “life as grown-ups,” his wife said.

After travels that included the duo swigging wine in northern Italy with friends, McGarry began his path toward commercial real estate upon returning to Winnipeg and landing a job at J.J. Gibbons, where he met his longtime business partner Wayne Pratt. In 1984, the men started their own firm, Pratt McGarry.

“It’s a lot to grow and build a company from zero,” said Martin McGarry, who later did it with MMI Asset Management. “It’s commitment.”

McGarry brought his financial acumen; Pratt led the sales side. Real estate’s financial challenges likely kept Kevin interested, his brother said: “Every transaction has its own complication. It’s very much like a jigsaw puzzle.”

Pratt McGarry blossomed and fused with Colliers, becoming Colliers Pratt McGarry.

In a single 2010 Free Press advertisement, Colliers Pratt McGarry promoted five properties for lease or sale, including the revolving restaurant in Winnipeg and a golf course development near Niverville.

Earlier, in 2008, Colliers Pratt McGarry hinted at Manitoba Hydro “coming soon” to a building downtown. It listed five properties nearby, on Graham and Portage avenues, that it was ready to lease.

McGarry left the company around 2002, opting to delve into the world of biotechnology research.

“(He had) the guts, at that point, to say… ‘I need a change,’” Betty McGarry recalled. “To do something that was so far removed from real estate — he loved it.”

He worked to secure funding for several businesses, including one focused on non-invasive laser brain surgery.

Martin McGarry, meanwhile, became co-owner of Cushman & Wakefield Winnipeg and its Stevenson property management division in 2015. The company is now known as Cushman & Wakefield Stevenson.

“We sort of dragged (Kevin) back into real estate,” he joked. “He had a good nose for what’s a good deal, what’s a bad deal.”

He was a “financial wizard,” Martin said. McGarry also worked with his brother at MMI.

The brothers spearheaded projects together, such as the Sherwin Park Condominiums — Manitoba’s first large-scale commercial condo conversion.

“I’m like, ‘How did he have time for us?’ Always had time for us,” said Kate McGarry, one of Kevin’s three children.

“He never missed a beat with us. If we were off, he was off.”

He was there to help with mental math practice at the kitchen table and to drive the family west for spring break ski trips.

He made time between the boards and committees he sat on — CentreVenture, Resource Assistance for Youth, St. John Brebeuf Parish — and the palliative care patient he visited weekly.

He had a motto taken from the Bible: to whom much has been given, much will be required.

“(He) used to say that all the time,” Martin McGarry said, adding that his brother’s sense of giving shows in his kids and grandchildren.

His reputation in philanthropy and business preceded him, said Jon Einarson, executive director of the Grace Hospital Foundation — a board McGarry sat on for a year.

“He was a very, very bright person,” Einarson recalled.

The McGarrys’ father had been a Grace physician; Kevin asked to read the organization’s audited financials.

“Frankly, I think after reading one time, he was probably as well-versed with our enterprise as I was, and I’ve been here for 20 years,” Einarson said. “He was just that kind of a sharp mind.”

McGarry had “robust thoughts” about how to raise $10 million for the hospital’s intensive care unit, Einarson continued.

“He was Captain Kevin,” Betty reflected.

That moniker was literal — Kevin, Betty and their friends would sail around the Caribbean every few years. McGarry went to Munich for the 1972 Olympics — not to participate, but to represent Canada as a sailing up-and-comer.

“There was always one crisis in every sailing trip, but we chalked it up to experience,” Betty laughed. “In a crisis, it was Kevin who everybody looked to.”

He ran a water ski camp in the 1990s off the dock of his Lake of the Woods cabin and he was commodore of a local yacht club. The cottage later became a summer meeting place for the couple’s kids and seven grandchildren.

McGarry died of pancreatic cancer last August.

Seeing family remains a big priority, Kate said, because her father made it important.

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com