BCBusiness

July/August 2022 - The Top 100

With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.

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"A generous man will himself be blessed for he shares his food with the poor." — Proverbs 22 : 9 M y parents Win and Bernie Legge immigrated to Canada with their only son, me, in March 1954 — almost 60 years ago. We settled in New Westminster, B.C. I believe my father was drawn to that spot in the Lower Mainland because the name reminded him of Westminster, England. It most certainly has been an adventure. More than 45 years ago, I co-founded Canada Wide Media Limited, which has become the largest, independently owned media company in Western Canada with a stable of magazines and online properties with a combined readership that numbers in the millions. You could say my entire business life has been in media. One of my first jobs was in sales at the radio station CJOR owned by the Chandler family (today the station is part of the Jimmy Pattison radio division in British Columbia). One of the major accounts assigned to me when I worked at CJOR was the Fields department store chain. The head office of Fields was in store No. 1 at Hastings and Abbott streets, right opposite Woodward's on the Downtown Eastside. In a small office in the corner of the store was the boss: Joe Segal. This was in the early 1960s. As Fields was one of my accounts, it was my responsibility to convince Joe to buy an advertising campaign that would air on the station. Sales manager Arnie Nelson had assigned the Fields account to me and his last words of advice were, "Do your homework before you call on Joe Segal, or he will eat you alive." While I was a brash young man of 20, I was a bit intimidated by the prospect of being eaten alive. So, shiny briefcase in hand, I plucked up all my courage and I went off to sell a radio campaign to Joe Segal. When I arrived, Joe was sitting in his small office at the back of the store and he made me feel welcome. "So, what have you got for me?" Joe asked after the initial pleasantries had been exchanged. I went through my "bag of tricks," extolling the merits of radio. Joe listened to my entire spiel, paying very close attention to everything I had to say, then as I was finishing, he looked me in the eye and said, "Come back and see me next month and we'll talk." No sale, but at least he didn't eat me alive. I went back the next month and repeated my performance, and the month after that, and every month for six months in a row, but still no sale. Joe even went so far as to tell me, "Peter, you're an excellent salesman, but I'm not buying." Finally, I spoke up. "You've said that before," I told him. "But I can't be that good. In the past six months you haven't bought anything." "And I'm not going to," said Joe. "All you've done is to try to sell me what you want me to buy; you haven't once asked me what my needs are." Wow! What a lesson. From that moment on, Joe and I hit it off and I always listened closely to all the advice he has been kind enough to offer. That was almost 50 years ago. Over those 50 since, I never sold anything to Joe Segal; however, we partnered on a number of charitable endeavours. After all, Joe was of the most generous and giving people I know. Of course, we have also had many, many lunches over the past few decades. I always came away from my conversations with Joe with renewed vigour, enthusiasm and a sense of purpose about life. Ask anyone who knows him—Joe just had that effect on you, where you feel rejuvenated, as if you could take on the whole world. I also had pages of notes and quotes after a luncheon with Joe, fodder for my many speeches and presentations, sometimes even an entire book, as was the case with The Runway of Life, which was inspired by Joe and published in 2005. No matter the circumstance, Joe was always polite to everyone, up- lifting, encouraging and, I might add, one snappy dresser—he had a collection of suits and ties that rivaled anything you could find at a first- class clothier like Harry Rosen or Holt Renfrew. There was no one whose advice I trusted more than Joe's. So what was a two-hour lunch with Joe Segal like? Joe was humble, caring, kind, full of beans, interested, inquisitive, enquiring; he had a suburban taste in clothes and after the odd glass of wine, it's like being with a kind professor who was a true master of what a meaningful life is all about. We talked about the importance of marriage and family, giving back to the community, business, lifestyle, aging, commitment, regrets, the standard of living, the disenfranchised, our community and most definitely the future. It's unlikely that theologian John Wesley, born in England on June 28, 1703, had Joe in mind when he wrote the following words, but that doesn't make them any less appropriate to the man whom I am proud to call my friend and mentor: Earn all you can Spend all you can Save all you can But for heaven's sake Give all you can. *Edited version from the book "Lunch with Joe"

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