Now that ritual is over as his paper’s cryptic crossword cryptically has disappeared, upsetting many fans, though few, if any, could be an answer in a Canadian-business themed puzzle. Potential clues: name the mortgage industry titan who can quote Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice from memory; write computer code; skipped two grades as a kid; went bankrupt in his 30s; and has his name on the marquee of a top university business school.
Dressed in a blue blazer, but no tie, with trendy striped socks peeking out from his grey pant legs, Smith is refreshingly candid in laying his feelings bare. Ask him a question, and he thinks deeply upon it. He doesn’t betray any whiff of pretension, presenting instead as a polite, regular Joe, albeit one with an anything-but-typical story to tell.After getting an engineering degree at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.
Moray Tawse knows that story well because he is part of it. He and Smith co-founded First National Financial Corp. in 1988. The company is now the country’s largest non-bank mortgage lender and Smith is executive chairman. Underwriting agreements needed to be typed out in the 1980s, then retyped when interest rates changed. The process was cumbersome and slow, a drain on productivity for a startup that had five employees, including its two founders, working in an office that was so cramped the door wouldn’t close.
If that all sounds just a little bit remarkable, it really isn’t, not when you understand that Smith goes all in when he applies himself to something. Take backcountry skiing. It is not a sport for the faint of heart or the weekend hacker. He didn’t even ski until he was in his late 30s. Now, he flies out West four times a winter to rip it up on the slopes with his younger peers.Article content
. The red-hot housing market has gone cold. Home prices are falling and could drop further, and every pundit this side of Bay Street is predicting a recession in the new year. “When somebody is going to be partners, and they come up with a major-sized cheque, you kind of have an impression of what this person is going to be like,” Leech said. “But Stephen wasn’t what I was expecting at all. He was very shy and humble. He was not a name dropper. He was like this good, ordinary guy.”Article content