Mysterious MR. THOMSON

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/10/2009 (6004 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

5Thomson is the very quiet part-owner of True North Sports and Entertainment Ltd., the company that owns the MTS Centre, the land upon which it sits and the building’s primary tenant, the Manitoba Moose,

Because True North is a private company and its two principal owners — Thomson, through his company, Osmington, and Winnipeg businessman Mark Chipman — are publicity shy, little is known about the business arrangement between the two men, other than that Thomson has what is described as a “significant stake” in True North and a “major say” in its operations.

More curious than the mystery that shrouds Thomson’s involvement in True North, however, is the mystery that shrouds the man himself.

Despite being the richest man in Canada and the 24th richest in the world (according to Forbes magazine), surprisingly little is known about the man and his business dealings.

While his empire was built upon the media holdings first amassed by his grandfather Roy Thomson and then further consolidated by his father Ken Thomson, precious little has been written in the media about the man.

Indeed, there are so few articles written about Thomson that one of the few major pieces ever attempted — a cover story published by Maclean’s in 2006 partly about the collapse of his second marriage — seems to have become a foundation piece for what little has been written about him since.

The only extended interview he’s ever granted was for the book, Old Boys: The Powerful Legacy of Upper Canada College, about the exclusive private boys’ school which he attended. The interview is widely quoted in any extended journalism about Thomson for the same reason as the Maclean’s story — it’s about all there is.

Pictures of the man are also extremely scarce. Save for the occasional public appearance on behalf of his many companies or charities, there seem to be just a handful of publicly available photographs of the man.

And that’s not by accident. Maclean’s reported in its story that the Globe and Mail, which Thomson continues to own through Bell Globemedia, will not sell any photos of their owner to other media, referring photo requests to Thomson’s private investment company, Woodbridge.

All that privacy may be about to change for Thomson, however. The Maclean’s story and his public divorce of his second wife, Laurie Ludwick, were the first cracks in the vault that surrounds Thomson — but will likely not be the last.

He is now involved with actress Kelly Rowan, a Gemini winner and star of the former Fox series, The OC, in an off-again, on-again romance that has provided all kinds of fodder for the gossip media in Toronto. An engagement that was announced, presumably by the couple, on People magazine’s website in 2007, was later reported to have been called off even though Rowan gave birth to the couple’s daughter in 2008. The couple have been linked again in recent months and there was even a paparazzi photo taken of the two together at an event in September.

The sex of the couple’s baby, a girl, is one of the few things publicly known about the child. If the name of the baby has been reported somewhere, it’s hard to find.

That kind of aversion to publicity would seem counterintuitive for the prospective owner of a hockey team in a rabid hockey market like Winnipeg. So it poses the biggest question all: Why would a reclusive Toronto billionaire like Thomson want to own a publicity magnet like an NHL team, particularly in a league where such teams have so often proven to be siphons for good money after bad?

And — even more curious — why Winnipeg, of all places?

No one, including the folks in True North, seem to know the answer to that question definitively. The two men who would know, Chipman and Thomson himself, either refused to speak for this story (Chipman) or rebuffed a request for further information through a spokesman (Thomson).

But what is clear is that Thomson does not appear to be a man in search of a vanity play and would in all probability treat an investment in an NHL team for Winnipeg like every other investment in his business empire — if he does it, it would be because he thinks he can make money at it.

And that, of course, is the biggest — and thorniest — question of all: Can an NHL hockey team in Winnipeg even break even, much less actually make money?

The answer to that question — just like the man who would surely be an owner of such a team — remains shrouded in mystery.

Thomson Assorted

“When you try to live a more balanced life, traditional businessmen think that you are not a real man. But who is not the real man? You are telling me? You have not taken a weekend with your wife, you have no spare time that you use constructively, you do not have any hobbies, you do not know how to spell Mozart. And here you are telling me that I am weak?”

— Thomson, speaking to author James FitzGerald, in the book, Old Boys

“ö “ö “ö

So what was it like growing up in Canada’s richest family? David Thomson tells this story in the book, Old Boys: The Powerful Legacy of Upper Canada College.

A seven-year-old Thomson was riding his bike with a friend in 1964 when the other kid turned to him and said, “My mother is so happy that we are friends because you are going to be able to do so much for me later in life.”

Thomson said he was baffled by the statement and thought: “I wonder what it is that I am going to be doing for this chap?”

“ö “ö “ö

David Thomson still has plenty of money to buy an NHL team, if he so chooses, but not nearly as much as he did just a few years ago.

The Thomson family fortune, according to Forbes magazine, has lost almost $10 billion in value in just the past two years. According to Forbes, Thomson and his family had a net worth of $22 billion in 2007, $19 billion in 2008 and $13 billion in 2009.

“ö “ö “ö

Growing up loaded isn’t all its cracked up to be, Thomson has said.

“Probably I was driven too hard,” Thomson is quoted as saying in Old Boys. “You accepted the challenges and you won the game, but you lost so much in the process… There was no enchantment.”

“ö “ö “ö

It is unwise to cross Thomson. Just ask Thomson. “I’m not mean but I do not hide anymore from anyone. In fact, I seek out places where I can go straight on in situations with people. I love it. In fact, it is almost sick, to the point where it has driven a lot of my learning.”

It’s a starkly revealing quote — culled, as almost all Thomson quotes are, from the pages of Old Boys. And it perhaps illuminates a particularly unusual anecdote about Thomson in a 2006 cover story Maclean’s magazine published about him.

According to Maclean’s, Thomson seems to have a thing for what seems like deliberate timing when it comes to breaking up with former wives. He and his first wife, Mary Lou La Prairie, separated on Oct. 15, 1996 — their eighth wedding anniversary. And Maclean’s says he served his second wife, Laurie Ludwick, with a divorce petition just three hours after she’d been released from the hospital after giving birth to their son, Benjamin.

“ö “ö “ö

The two men couldn’t be more different, but Thomson does share one character quirk with the man who would be the leading candidate to run an NHL team in Winnipeg — Manitoba Moose general manager Craig Heisinger.

Thomson, just like Heisinger, reportedly favours wearing shorts, even at the office and even in the dead of winter. That’s exactly the same as Heisinger, who likes to joke that the only difference in his winter apparel is “I wear longer shorts.”