The passing last week on his 80th birthday of media executive Phil Lind was a profound loss to British Columbia, even though he lived and worked and was born in Toronto. The Rogers Communications Inc. vice-chair was a loyal, determined and prolific contributor in this province – his home away from home – in not only the expected realm of business but in education, arts, environment, First Nations, discourse and sport.
Jimmy Pattison, at 94 the province’s most accomplished businessperson, told me Phil provided Ted with “common sense, which is not that common, by the way,” in regular instalments. “He was a really good balance. He was there with him all the time. He was the person who would say, ‘This is a very good idea, but . . .”
Of that $26 billion deal to buy Shaw Communications, Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri called him a “key architect” and “a force to be reckoned with” in negotiating with the Shaw family, in articulating new investments in B.C. and Alberta, and in cultivating deep relationships.
“It turned out he was an intellectual peer,” Piper said. Unlike many benefactors, “he didn’t want a building – he wanted programs.” It would have been understandable had he done so, due to another defining event that made his life so remarkable. For a quarter-century, Lind contended with the effects of an intense stroke that seized him on Canada Day in 1998 and rendered extensive right-side paralysis. Within a year, he was back in the office. He rebuilt his capacity to speak and walk and had taught himself how to write with his left hand – more legibly, he reported. He demanded he be treated no differently.
Which is not to suggest he wasn’t anything but persuasive. Take, for example, how his love of sport extended from his love of business, and how he brought Ted Rogers in 2000 to buy the Toronto Blue Jays – “no small feat,” Kerr said, “because Ted knew nothing about baseball.” The acquisition was part of Lind’s vision for Sportsnet as a national sports network; it would later become the Jays’ television home and, in time, the dominant National Hockey League broadcaster.