Cliff Murphy

FEARLESS LEADER

Born in St. Paul, Alberta and spent my first 5 years living in an RCMP detachment. Moved to Edmonton, went to school and then into the Canadian Army Signal Corps at 16. Left the army and went back to school in Edmonton. At 20, with one of my friends, decided to see what the world held for us. I packed a small sports bag and put $ 300 [my life savings] in my pocket. We hitchhiked down to Los Angeles and out to Key West, Florida. The timing was not that great although they were certainly exciting and historical times. This was November of 1962 just when Kennedy forced Khrushchev to get the missiles out of Cuba. It was also the time of the civil rights movement and freedom riders. An example we encountered was how tough it was to get rides in Florida as we headed south for Key West and everyone was getting as far away from Cuba as possible. My friend ran out of money before I did, so we decided to meet up in New Orleans. He never showed up. Turns out he got deported because of a civil rights event, unbeknownst to me. I spent a week looking for him without any luck so I headed back to Los Angeles. I had a number of relatives there [15 first cousins] so I had a bit of a safety net. Needless to say, I did not contact them until I had a job and was settled in. I was out of money, so I needed a job – Quickly. I applied with the LAPD, the LA Times and a couple of banks, but I took the first job I could find! It was as a shipping and receiving clerk for a company from Massachusetts, Ilco, that had a warehouse in Los Angeles. After about a year, they closed the warehouse and put me into sales training in Southern California, Washington State, and Utah. My first actual territory was San Francisco and a couple of years later I took over Southern California and Nevada. After a few years, the president of the company asked me to move to back east as National Accounts Manager. I would be responsible for approximately 15% of the total sales and since the company was on the verge of bankruptcy, it was a critical responsibility. While doing that job, I took on many additional responsibilities like product manager on a couple of product groups to packaging chairman. Ilco was purchased by Unican in 1971, a Montreal Company. One of the prime objectives of the owner, Aaron Fish, was to take over Dominion Lock that basically owned the Canadian market. I was sent to Montreal in 1976 to take their market share. In 1985, they became a part of our Company. During that period, I was named Vice President of Sales and Marketing. From my employment in 1962 until we were sold, our Company grew from about $12 million to over $500 million in sales volume. I was ultimately responsible for a little over $300 million in sales. I retired in 2001, the day before the company was sold to a European Company. I never did get to write up a resume!

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Norm Birman

IF YOU LIKED IT AT 100$,

YOU’RE GOING TO LOVE IT

AT 50$

Still waiting for Norm to tell us about himself.

John Brown

Buy Low, Sell High

Born and raised in Calgary, moved to Montreal after graduation from U of Calgary in 1974. Civil Engineer, MBA McGill. Worked for Shawinigan Engineering, Redpath Consultants in Ivory Coast and Cameroun, Shawinigan Lavalin (3 years in St. Vincent and the Grenadines), and SNC- Lavalin. Ended carreer as VP Marketing for the Montreal Hydro Division. Travelled extensively to about 30 different countries for work and many more for pleasure. Married to Nathalie Asselin. We moved to La Malbaie from Pointe-Claire in 2021. Mostly retired but doing odd jobs as Hydro Consultant for an investment company. Joined the Investment Seminar at McGill in about 2002 and the iShare Group in about 2013.