BCBusiness

JULY/AUGUST 2019 BCBUSINESS 77 I t's always risky to judge a book by its cover—or a man by his plaid jacket. But everything you need to know about 90-year-old Jimmy Pattison is evident, instantly, in the grip of his handshake. You know what handshakes are like. Some are too weak, some too strong—some people hold on way too long. And, among men over 80, even the most robust usually offer something tentative—fragile bones wrapped in papery skin you wouldn't dare squeeze. But the ‚ve-foot-six-inch Jimmy Pattison still takes your hand with the strength and con‚dence of a 32-year-old car salesman. The grasp is rock solid—not a hint too pushy—and the minute you feel it, you know two things absolutely: ‚rst, you could do a deal with this man; and second, he's in amazingly good health. We're looking out from the 18th ‹oor of the Shaw Tower on Cordova Street, admir- ing Vancouver's harbour and the North Shore Mountains from the head o"ce of the Jim Pattison Group (holding steady at No. 3 on this year's Top 100 list). The recep- tion room is like a cluttered study, ‚lled with the awards Pattison has won, the books people have given him and, in the corner, models of every private aircraft he's owned since he brought the ‚rst Learjet to Canada in 1969. When I mention his age, he shrugs and says: "Ninety. Well, I never thought about it, but it showed up." And it's barely slowed him down. "I travel all the time in my job," he says. "Nothing's really changed for me. I try to work some part of every day. I come in early in the morning, and I go home a bit earlier than I used to—at 5:15 or 5:20." Every night he's in town, Pattison says, he takes his wife, Mary (née Hudson), out to dinner. They met at Bible camp when they were both 13 and have been married for 68 years. So, seriously, nothing's changed. Yet the private conglomerate that Pattison began to assemble in 1961 with the purchase of a General Motors Co. car dealership ("a two-car showroom and a three-pump gas station") now employs 46,000 people in 541 locations around the world and reported revenue of $10.6 billion in ‚scal 2018. There's no making sense of Pattison's mix of businesses. In addition to the car lots (25 locations, 12 brands, 24,000 vehi- cles sold in 2018), he owns grocery stores (Save-On-Foods, Buy-Low, Quality Foods), coal terminals (Westshore), radio stations ( Jim Pattison Broadcast Group), sign com- panies (Pattison Outdoor Advertising) and theme parks (Ripley Entertainment). And be¨itting a company that also owns the Guinness World Records operation, every Pattison asset comes with a superlative. His massively expanded Canfor Corp. (No. 12 on this year's list) is now the largest global producer of sustainable forest products. Canadian Fishing Co. annually harvests more than 100 million pounds. NO MATTER WHO IT IS, YOU PHONE BACK Asked what ties all these operations together, Pattison says only, "One thing's led to another." He seems to be the polar opposite of the modern corporate raider, the type who snaps up companies, strips their value and sends all the jobs to China. Rather, Pattison Group president and COO Glen Clark says that Jimmy's strate©y is: "Buy, keep management and grow the com- pany. We've been successful with that. We buy good operating businesses and try not to sell too many." Besides, Clark says, "We like the diver- si‚cation. At any given time, one or two companies might be going through trou- ble; diversi‚cation gives us strength." And as Canada's second-largest privately held company, Clark says, they get to make, and stand by, long-term decisions. "Being

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