Kickstart

StatsCan report confirms that many students are switching schools and programs

Back on July 15th, the Globe and Mail ran a story that officially confirmed something that we and most young people have known for ages: fewer and fewer of us are finishing off at the academic institution where we first enroll, graduating before the five year mark, or avoiding time off from school to get some thinking done.

Statistics Canada’s Youth in Transition Project has been tracking a group of young Canadians since 2000, the year the three of us entered university. That research is the centre of a paper by StatsCan’s Theresa Qiu and University of Ottawa economist Ross Finnie which will be officially released later in the month.

It’s findings:

- Roughly one quarter of college students take time off, take more than five years to graduate, or change their minds about their school or area of study.

- About 10 per cent leave school without graduating.

- 2.8 per cent are moving from university to college (Not shocking at all. In fact, we assumed this might be higher.)

- 1.4 per cent do the opposite and switch from college to university.

Before anyone starts freaking out and pointing at today’s commitment-phobic, chronically ADD “Twixters” who have been spoiled to the point that they’ll never know what they want, let’s slow down a second.

Young people have always been restless. That’s what they do. And though their parents weren’t necessarily as prone to bounce and stop and ponder and bounce again, there’s a good reason why. Not to sound whiny, but we’ve grown up watching our parents and friend’s parents divorce, suffer mid-life breakdowns, and look back on past mistakes with great regret. As we approach an uncertain future, the way of life that so many have taken for granted for so long suddenly seems in dire need of an overhaul (remember that boomers?), but few have put forward viable new paradigms for living in the 21st century.

How does one measure their own success?

I know we’re supposed to taylor the first few blog posts to the central theme of being young, having graduated and trying to find your way in the world, but something came up which I couldn’t resist writing about. Not to worry, there will be plenty of blog posts recounting some incredible stories from the early lives of well-known Canadians — from astronaut Roberta Bondar to children’s performer Raffi, and beyond.

But last night I saw a movie; or , rather, a “film.” It was called Amal. It is a Canadian film, already in theatres (or, more accurately, “in theatre“) for the past five days, that follows the events surrounding the death of an eccentric Indian millionaire, his misguided — and surprisingly cruel — children, and the title character, an autorickshaw driver whose heart is so golden, it weighs him down endlessly, as he weaves his way through the congested streets of Delhi.

Director Richie Mehta tells a simple story. One could even call it a fable. It was put together for less than a million dollars, no small feat for a film these days. The ending comes as a surprise, though it makes absolute sense. And the theme of wealth reverberates throughout the story. Who has more of it — the heirs of a rich man or the one who leads a peaceful, altogether happy, existence?

That question was one we tackled while conducting our interviews for Kickstart. We set out to learn the early stories of Canada’s most “successful” citizens. But how does one measure success? Is it an individual’s net worth (think of billionaire Jim Pattison)? Or is it the amount they give away (think of entrepreneur and philanthropist Peter Munk)? Does it mean leading a balanced life (a lesson passed on from so many of our interviewees, including Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Beverley McLachlin)? Or being happy within yourself?

We hear these questions buzzing around Amal’s rickshaw as he escorts his patrons in and out of the city’s byzantine centre. The ultimate result of Amal’s insouciant quest is that he never knows how close he may come to attaining wealth, unless of course he’s had it all along. “The wealthiest person is a pauper at times,” goes the song, performed by everyone from The Byrds to Johnny Cash and Jeff Buckley, “compared to the man with a satisfied mind.”

The film is touching in its poignancy, believable in its intimacy and endearing in its home-made style. My co-author Paul could go on at length about how important it is to support local films in their first few days: if the theatre senses a lack of audience, it will immediately withdraw the film, letting it flounder and end up in a vault somewhere, unseen by the masses.

Do yourself a favour: go and see this movie. It’s well worth the investment.

Alexander Herman is co-author of Kickstart: “How Successful Canadians Got Started,” a book based on interviews with over fifty well-known people from across the country. He has studied at Trinity College Dublin and is currently studying law at McGill University. He has also written a work of fiction called “The Toronto Trinity.”

EXCERPT “Kickstart: How Successful Canadians Got Started”

Christopher Pratt is one of Canada’s
best-known and most beloved painters.
His meticulous prints depict the stark
landscapes of his native Newfoundland
and explore the province’s ambivalent
relationship with modernity. His work is
synonymous with Newfoundland; in 1980,
he even designed the province’s new flag.

A Practical Degree

I took to painting, but it never occurred to me that I could pursue it professionally. I was going to be an engineer: my father was in the hardware business, my mother’s family was in construction, and as a child I spent my time with Tinkertoy and Meccano sets. I liked the look of bridges and structures. My marks in school suggested I had a certain aptitude, so I enrolled in the engineering program at Memorial University.

Though I ended up only taking one year of pre-engineering, two things I learned there still serve me to this day. First off, I learned the fundamentals of perspective. Secondly, I learned how to survey. The surveying we did was basic triangulation — no satellites, lasers, or anything like that — with a transit and a level. It not only gave me a sense of measurement and inspired me to see the environment in a new way but also provided me with a trade for summer employment. At that time, if you could run a level, you had no problem getting a job.

Unfortunately, I ended up failing a lot of my classes. I had to consider other options. One fall, a couple of buddies decided they were going off to Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. My mother always wanted me to be a doctor, so I used the pre-med program at Mount Allison as an excuse to go away with them.

I had no intention of enrolling in the school’s fine arts department, but I thought I could drop by every so often, stand on the side, and receive some instruction. By that point, I had my own watercolours to take along. When I arrived, I showed them to the professors in the department — including Lawren Harris and Alex Colville — and they were immediately enthusiastic. Lawren Harris even wrote my father, suggesting I switch from pre-med to fine arts.

After a year of pre-med, I couldn’t stop thinking about painting. The idea of being an artist was growing on me, but I was too scared to go all the way. Instead, I switched into a general arts program.

“Kickstart: How Successful Canadians Got Started”, © 2008 by Alexander Herman, Paul Matthews and Andrew Feindel. Published by Dundurn Press, www.dundurn.com

EXCERPT “Kickstart: How Successful Canadians Got Started”

When he was six, Matthew Coon Come was taken
away from his family in Northern Quebec and sent to
a residential school run by the Anglican Church. As a
young adult, he became chief of his band, challenging
many development projects, both by Hydro-Québec and
private business, that threatened to tread on Cree land.
In 2000, he became national chief of the Assembly of
First Nations, a position he held until 2003.

The Call of Community

While at McGill law school, I was continually intrigued and challenged. It had to do with my willingness to be coached, to be taught, to sit at somebody’s feet who was smarter than I was. I didn’t believe in hanging out with people who were my age: I would learn nothing. If I was with people who knew more, then it rubbed off on me. Sitting in lectures and listening to professors fit well with my personality.

I also became increasingly concerned about the issues affecting Native people across the country. I learned about treaty relationships, the recent court cases in our favour, and the agreements between the Crown and aboriginal peoples, which were known as land claims. I never understood the term “land claim”: we had been living on the land for hundreds of years; who exactly were we claiming it from?

During my second year, an election was called back in my community. I was in the middle of writing exams when some of the elders of my band asked me if I wanted to run. There were eighteen other people nominated; I didn’t think my chances were that strong. It was a difficult decision: as band chief, there was no salary, only an honorarium of $200 a month; if I finished law school and became a lawyer, I would make a lot of money, which I could send back to the community. The pull was strong. I consulted my father and other trustworthy people. In the end, the incumbent chief claimed he was stepping down in order to allow young people into leadership positions. It was an important declaration. The elders were now letting their children, the ones who had gone to school, take over. The shift in the direction of the community was enough to convince me that I needed to play a part.

In the end, I only had to run against one other person. I dropped right out of law school (never to return) and went up north to give my first speech. The community hall was packed. I arrived late, after my opponent had already spoken, and saw the faces of everyone in the community — my grandfather, my father, my uncle — everyone who I respected in this world. I was just a kid of twenty-four and here I was presenting my ideas to them.

I began by talking about the stories my grandfather used to tell me, as I sat with him by the riverbank, and the important role he played as a hunter. Then I spoke about the proposed activity in forestry and mining in our area, that our lakes would be used for reservoirs. And I proposed a plan. We could work on having our own structures, our own entities, and we could govern ourselves and manage our own businesses. We could re-examine our financial arrangements and bring capital into our community. We could control our land and resources and improve our standard of living to ensure long-term prosperity. I talked about possibility, co-operation, and commitment — and the crowd loved it.

“Kickstart: How Successful Canadians Got Started”, © 2008 by Alexander Herman, Paul Matthews and Andrew Feindel. Published by Dundurn Press, www.dundurn.com

Learn how to kickstart your career from successful Canadians

As the founder of Barrick Gold, the world’s largest gold mining
company, Peter Munk is one of the highest rollers in Canadian
business. During the 1960s, Clairtone, the high-end
electronics company he founded with his partner, David Gilmour,
grew at breakneck speed and became synonymous with the
youthful style of the age. Its ultimate collapse in 1970 is still a sore
spot for the man many people once considered a potential
prime minister, but Munk’s story bears lessons for anyone looking
to make their mark.

The Birth of Clairtone

My future business partner, David Gilmour, was a central figure in the social scene I ran with. He came from one of the country’s oldest and most connected families, and his sister ran the hippest and most successful furniture business in Toronto’s Yorkville district. She sold sleek and modern Scandinavian designs before anyone else caught on to the trend. David worked as a buyer for her before starting a business called Scantrade, which imported Swedish and Norwegian furniture to stores across the city.

As it became increasingly clear that people wanted hi-fi stereos stored in fashionable, modern furniture units, David approached me about handling the components that would go in his cabinets. After I had provided him with a few installations, we starting talking about a more ambitious endeavour. “I can get these cabinets wholesale,” he said. “Do you think it’s worthwhile to buy ten and standardize a product?” I went around to see what Simpson’s and Eaton’s and the other big retailers were selling. I was astounded. They got $400 a pop for poor-quality merchandise. I knew that with his designs and my engineering, we could do much better. At our company, we’d sold around five hundred machines in two years. I knew people would pay for quality and David’s success proved that people loved beautiful, high-end designs. We stood to make a huge margin.

David and I spent six months at the end of 1957 perfecting our models. Then, when we were sure we had a great product, we incorporated Clairtone. The company consisted of the core staff from Peter Munk & Associates, plus David. I was president and David was a vice president. At the beginning, we offered two standard models: a monaural high-fidelity unit and a stereophonic unit, both housed in low-slung Scandinavian cabinets with sliding doors. We charged $599 for the hi-fi and $695 for the stereo design, knowing that we could target people who wanted quality and had the money to pay for it.

After showcasing the models to the major distributors, orders began flooding in. By November of the next year, we had to move into a five-thousandsquare-foot factory space. We were too busy to even think about our finances. We started the company with $3,500 in capital, and after a seven-month period, we had made a net profit of $28,555, before taxes.

The problem was that every cent coming in the door went toward buying new components. Not only did we go without earning any salary, but we were heavily overdrawn, with many outstanding cheques. Luckily, the numbers were good enough to impress our banker and secure an extended loan. Clairtone’s success was a whirlwind. We were winning design awards and getting all kinds of positive attention. The press loved that David and I had recognized our different and complementary skill sets. They loved our enthusiasm too.

Almost right off the bat, we began gunning for the American market and soon we were succeeding there as well.

“Kickstart: How Successful Canadians Got Started”, © 2008 by Alexander Herman, Paul Matthews and Andrew Feindel. Published by Dundurn Press, www.dundurn.com

EXCERPT “Kickstart: How Successful Canadians Got Started”

After her father had a serious heart attack, a thirteen-year-old
Annette Verschuren was forced, along with her siblings, to take
over the affairs of the family farm on Cape Breton Island. Her
adolescence included regular high school pastimes — classes,
parties, and sports — as well as agricultural chores, from birthing
calves to arranging the farm’s finances. After finishing university,
Verschuren moved steadily up the corporate ladder and, in 1996,
became the president of Home Depot Canada.

Being Prepared

Four companies wanted to hire me out of university, including an accounting firm and a radio station, but I wanted to work for a particular coal mining company back home. Four people from my graduating class applied for the job at the Cape Breton Development Corporation, some with connections in the mining business. I thought my chances of getting it were pretty slim. I did my homework and spent three days preparing for the interview. I read all the annual reports of the corporation and became very informed. When I went in for the interview, I spent an hour and a half telling the guy what I’d do to turn the Cape Breton tourism industry around. That just blew him away. They gave me the job. It taught me the four critical factors to succeed in an interview: be prepared, be knowledgeable, respect your interviewer, and be clear about the direction you want the organization to take.

I was twenty-one when I started working there and had an amazing time. I was involved in trying to leverage the coal mining industry by supporting secondary businesses in Cape Breton. Because the company was central to the area, they needed to set up secondary industries and create jobs for displaced workers in order to make the region more diverse for the working population. There were many industries I tried to develop for this purpose — including metal fabrication plants, sawmills, and tourism — helping them expand, working with them on business plans, and securing government loans. The work seemed to enrich the area. I remember giving a loan to a woman who wanted to buy a sewing machine and start a business — a business that is still operating today.

When I started, I was in way over my head and didn’t have a clue. But I loved drowning in situations: those were the environments in which I thrived. Very often my boss would invite me into his office. “Look,” he’d say. “I don’t know how to do this. You figure it out and develop a program on your own.” That’s what I would do; and for three years I was the only woman working in an extraordinarily male-dominated business.

Then I was transferred to the coal side, the corporation’s primary industry, as director of planning, and, eventually, assistant to the president. They would continually put me in pressure situations. Since we were a Crown corporation, we had to deal with top levels of the federal government in Ottawa. I remember one particular presentation when my boss didn’t have the confidence to get up in front of a group of deputy ministers and convince them to spend more money in our sector. I had to do it instead. Here I was, twenty-seven years old, answering all sorts of questions on the viability of an underground coal mining operation in Cape Breton. It was fascinating. Of the four presidents I had in two years, I survived them all.

“Kickstart: How Successful Canadians Got Started”, © 2008 by Alexander Herman, Paul Matthews and Andrew Feindel. Published by Dundurn Press, www.dundurn.com

EXCERPT “Kickstart: How Successful Canadians Got Started”

A crusader for social justice and a witty spitfire, June Callwood
has been called “the conscience of Canada.” When she passed
away in 2007 at the age of eighty-two, Callwood left an undeniable
legacy of integrity and caring. Despite having
no formal education past the age of sixteen, she became one of
the most prolific and respected magazine writers in the country, as
well as the host of CBC-TV’s In Touch.

Pushing the Envelope

It’s tough for young people to imagine, but there used to be a lot of public pressure for a journalist to write happy and supportive stories. I remember doing a magazine piece on the Happy Gang, a team of CBC radio DJs. The story revealed that in reality, the Happy Gang hated one another. I got a lot of hostile mail after that story ran.

The first time I realized my duty to present more than an airbrushed version of reality was when I was writing about a young virtuoso pianist named Patsy Carr. She was eleven or twelve years old and I could see how her mother dominated her and how unhappy she was. Instead of writing about how amazing this young girl was, I wrote the truth: that she was a miserable child prodigy. That was very much ahead of its time in Canada. Back in the 1950s, no one was doing much honesty. From that point on, I was a much better reporter.

Gradually, my work focused more on the ails of society and the people who were being ignored or tossed aside. As a journalist, you can only do so much. There is a Chinese wall between journalism and social activism. The journalist cannot cross it. You can’t write about the people you’re trying to help. You can’t write about the things you’re doing on the other side of the wall. What you can do, however, is take off your journalism hat and make a difference. It’s a tricky line to walk, but it’s important.

In the 1970s and 1980s, I was writing a social criticism column for the Globe and working shifts in a women’s hostel. Some of the stories of the women who came through the door were so poignant, they were a journalist’s dream. But while working there, I never wrote about any of it.

I couldn’t imagine getting started into journalism today. A person like me wouldn’t have a chance in journalism school. Besides, I’m not sure they’re good places to learn journalism. They’re technical — they can’t teach you how to learn or feel. All they teach is the stuff everyone knows anyway: how to write a lead and how to write a paragraph. You need a heck of a lot more than that to be a writer.

“Kickstart: How Successful Canadians Got Started”, © 2008 by Alexander Herman, Paul Matthews and Andrew Feindel. Published by Dundurn Press, www.dundurn.com