Forgotten But Not Gone

By Penny Sandleman

THERE ARE MANY WAYS to feel like an insignificant speck in the universe: contemplate the galaxy; go to your spouse’s company dinner; get on a train in Mumbai. Another way is to consider the powerful of yesteryear. In Vancouver, where few people remember the building that stood on the corner for half a century before the bulldozers arrived, fame and influence can be similarly impermanent. Fully half of our 2005 Power 50 have fallen off the 2006 list. Herewith, a decade-by-decade guide to some of the titans of yesteryear.

1970S

He flipped real estate to create an empire worth millions, signed up a 17-year-old Wayne Gretzky to his Edmonton Oilers, and played racquetball for $10,000 stakes. Nelson Skalbania was a somebody in the way that epitomized 1970s Vancouver; the adjective “flamboyant” was welded to his name. He and BC Lions general manager/MLA/nightclub owner/man-about-town Herb Capozzi played the famous racquetball match in a town where the new-generation of good old boys who ran everything spent the nights in Howe Street bars and saloon chroniclers like Jack Wasserman and Denny Boyd immortalized their comings and goings. Skalbania hasn’t been on anyone’s power list for a long while—empire collapse, $30 million in creditors, and a one-year jail sentence for improperly using $100,000 deposited in trust will do that. But unlike Capozzi, who’s living a relaxed life at his mansion in Okanagan Mission, Skalbania is still going, if not going strong. Like a post-election Al Gore, he’s keenly interested in global warming and alternate energy, working with three companies researching ways to create energy that’s clean and commercially viable.

1980S

In the late 1980s, Bob Ransford was the deputy to the man who effectively ran the province: David Poole. Poole was the principal secretary for a premier, Bill Vander Zalm, who didn’t want to have anything to do with messy details—which meant pretty much everything. “We used to laugh about how much power we had, the way we could just do things that would affect the whole province” recalls Ransford, who now works hand-in-glove with the yuppie-green non-profit group Smart Growth. Poole and Ransford wrote policy, decided who would see the premier and generally ran the province like a division of the Roman Empire. Ransford says he doesn’t miss it at all. “The stress was unbelievable.” Poole died of a heart attack at age 56 in 2000.

And while we’re in the ’80s, what of Vander Zalm’s nemesis, Faye Leung—the spectacularly behatted realtor who brought him down? Leung, now retired, has become something of a pillar to the local Chinese community. She’s busy writing a history of Chinatown, she supports Chinese writers’ events, and she was one of the stars of the recent Gung Haggis Fat Choy celebrations.

1990S

The 1990s were dominated by huge shifts in the national media scene, and by tech and biotech. Julia Levy was one of the stars. The former university professor founded QLT in 1981 to produce photodynamic drugs that would combat cancer and eye diseases. She gave up being CEO in 2002 and, like so many others who’ve stepped out of the spotlight, says, “I’m enjoying life a lot more. I sleep at night. I was an unwilling CEO—and when the company became profitable, I found it really tedious.” Dr. Levy still sits on QLT’s board, but what she’s most excited about these days is her writing; she’s completed one novel to date.

Quite a different path from the two men who dominated Vancouver media in the ’90s. John Cruickshank at the Sun and Michael Cooke at the Province, then part of Conrad Black’s media empire, brought new styles to the city: Cruickshank aimed for a classy New York Times image; Cooke tried his best to recreate a brash British tab. As unlikely a pairing as it seems, the two—sometimes referred to as Stuffy and Fluffy—now work together again at the Chicago Sun-Times, also once part of the Black holdings.

2000S

On to the new century, and the years when UBC president/empress Martha Piper ended her phenomenal reign and Vancouver mayor Larry Campbell joined the ever-growing pantheon of former Vancouver mayors. Unlike Mike Harcourt, who has made a career out of promoting sustainability, or Philip Owen, who continues to champion new solutions for drug addiction around the world, Campbell hasn’t yet found a particular post-office religion. But he, too, is a happier person. “My blood pressure’s back to normal, my weight is down,” says Campbell, who enjoys an eclectic life these days of judging pumpkin-carving contests, tackling fish and aboriginal issues in the Senate, writing a blog, and occasionally lending a hand to his many friends in civic politics.

As for the mysterious Martha Piper, well, she must still be powerful: she was the only person we couldn’t reach, directly or even indirectly, within a few hours. She’s currently on the boards of BMO and power-generating company TransAlta—and, perhaps the most enticing post of all, she’s been appointed to the Trilateral Commission. Ah yes, but is she happy?

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