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Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/394777
the fold was a real signal of change." As for the dissenters who thought that Bennett should never be allowed back into the party, Clark's message was simple: "Listen, folks. If all of you hope to win the election, and I know that all of you do, then we must heal our internal divisions fi rst." eing kicked out of cabinet and caucus was, says Bennett, "the most traumatic thing I've ever been put through." But rebelliousness—and its consequences—was not h- ing new. Born into a family of small-business people in Ontario (his parents owned Bennett's Home Furnishings in Campbellford, two hours east of Toronto), he was asked to leave school in Grade 9 by teach- ers who didn't want to deal with a perpetual troublemaker. "I don't know if I had attention defi cit syndrome or what it was," he says, "but I just truly didn't give a shit whether I passed or failed. I would argue with teachers—and I could win the debates at least half of the time. I didn't lack for confi dence in my own ability, but I just didn't care about the formal stuff ." He spent summers with his father, hunting and fi shing at the family cabin in Northern Ontario. When he went look- ing for work in his late teens, his grandfather hooked him up with a friend who had a fl y-in fi shing lodge near Red Lake, Ontario—an experience that shaped his life. He worked at the lodge from 1968 to 1976, then managed it. "And then the light bulb went on that I had some business acumen. I realized I should own my own place." Borrow- ing from friends and family, he and his wife, Beth (a dairy farmer's daugh- ter and his high school sweetheart), scraped together $75,000 and bought "a rundown, crappy little busi- ness" in northern Manitoba. "I knew what I was looking for. It had to be a big lake, virtually untouched, really top-quality fi shing and a long ways beyond where anybody else is." Bennett travelled North America to promote the lodge at sportsmen's shows. "I was this young, brash Cana- dian guy who wasn't letting his custom- ers take these big fi sh out. The lodge was written up by conservationists and outdoor writers who put two and two together and realized, shit, he must have really good fi shing." He built Nuel- tin Fly-in Lodges into one of the premier luxury fi shing lodges in the country and Canada's fi rst catch-and-release opera- tion. He sold it a decade later for "a B 48 BCBusiness November 2014 courtesy biLL beNNett COMEBACK KID Bennett sworn into cabinet with Lieutenant-Governor Judith Guichon in June 2013; introducing Christy Clark to constituents in June 2012. Bennett, like many of his caucus colleagues, had concluded shortly after the 2009 election that their leader, Gordon Campbell, had lost the plot. He had grown increasingly erratic and bullying at cabinet meetings, and reorga- nized the energy and mines ministry without even talking to his minister.