REUBEN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-11-13 published
LEEPER,
Muriel (née
REUBEN)
Passed away on November 11, 2007. Age 90. Predeceased by her
husband Robert. Survived by her children; Desmond, Cyril, Michael,
Patricia, Paul, Marian and James, as well as her loving sister
Lucille. Will be sadly missed by her many grandchildren, nieces,
nephews and music students that studied with her. Resting at
Bates and Dodds Funeral Services (931 Queen Street West, Toronto).
Visitation on Thursday, November 15, 2007 from 9: 30 a.m. until
funeral service at 12 noon. Interment Holy Cross Cemetery.
R... Names RE... Names REU... Names Welcome Home
REUBEN - All Categories in OGSPI
REUBER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-09-12 published
Headstrong Chief Executive Officer saved Churchill Falls and
rescued the Bank of Montreal
An emergency boss who took over after a plane crash wiped out
everyone else, he brought the power project in on time before
moving to a troubled Bank of Montreal, where he ruthlessly cleaned
house
By Gordon PITTS,
Page S8
Besides banking and family, William
MULHOLLAND's grand passion
was raising Hanoverian riding horses, which, according to one
of his nine children, are "headstrong, able and smart." Those
adjectives can just as easily be applied to her demanding father,
said Caroline
VAN
NOSTRAND.
Those traits helped propel Mr.
MULHOLLAND, a U.S.-born outsider,
into one of Canada's most exciting and controversial management
careers. He was the emergency boss who came in to save the massive
Churchill Falls power project in Labrador. Then he turned around
the Bank of Montreal, Canada's oldest bank, and as a financial-services
innovator helped change the country's banking industry.
As an agent of change at the lacklustre Bank of Montreal, he
fired executives who didn't measure up, winning a reputation
as a tough, uncompromising boss. He tightened credit policies,
led technological innovation and bought a Chicago bank in a far-sighted
move that anticipated a North American market. He helped lead
the Canadian commercial banks' march into investment banking
with the purchase of brokerage Nesbitt Thomson.
Like many turnaround managers, he was accused of staying too
long as Chief Executive Officer and losing touch with a rapidly
evolving industry. Yet he reached down into the ranks to develop
a new generation of Bank of Montreal leaders that included future
Chief Executive Officers Matthew Barrett and Anthony Comper.
He was a complicated man who was seen as remote, autocratic,
introverted and eccentric, but he was regarded as brilliant for
some of his strategic moves. He could become deeply absorbed
in detail and alarmingly inattentive to people's feelings. In
describing him, Friends often fall back on that old cliché: "He
did not suffer fools gladly."
"My father was not always easy," said Ms.
VAN
NOSTRAND, who lives
in Toronto. "He had exacting standards and he upheld them for
himself and expected others to do their best to get that same
quality.
"But you can't mistake that for a lack of true caring and love
and a huge commitment to family."
Still, for all his high standards and strategic thinking, Mr.
MULHOLLAND's
own career was almost haphazard, the product of tragic circumstances,
timing and managerial agility.
He was born in Albany, New York the
son of a civil servant who
became New York's director of parks. Even at birth, he had a
Canadian connection - his maternal great-grandmother was a French-Canadian
from Trois-Rivières. He attended Christian Brothers Academy,
a Catholic military school in Albany, where he became an expert
rider, marksman, and fly fisherman -- interests he pursued throughout
his life.
He graduated from high school, joined the U.S. Army during the
Second World War and trained as a weapons instructor before being
posted to the Philippines. After discharge, he entered Harvard
College, got his B.A., then earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business
School, while working in the summers as a park ranger.
He then parlayed a social connection with the financier Morgan
family to join the investment banking house Morgan Stanley and
pursue a career on Wall Street.
He married the daughter of a family friend, Nancy
BOOTH, on June 22,
1957. Their rearing of nine children (four daughters and five
sons) has been attributed by his wife to the consequences of
a union between an Irish Catholic and a Free Methodist.
Mr. MULHOLLAND thrived in investment banking. One of his clients
was Brinco, a Montreal firm of British-Canadian origins that
was building the $1-billion Churchill Falls hydro project. He
placed a $500-million bond issue for the company - at that time,
a record sale of securities by a corporation.
But on November 11, 1969, Brinco's executive jet crashed, killing
six members of its senior team, including the president and finance
vice-president. The company was leaderless at a critical juncture
in the Churchill Falls project. Mr.
MULHOLLAND "was the last
man standing who knew what it was all about," said Richard
O'HAGAN,
who was later his public-affairs specialist at Bank of Montreal.
In January, 1970, at the age of 43, he moved to Montreal to become
Brinco's president and Chief Executive Officer. He also joined
the board of the Bank of Montreal, which was the principal commercial
banker for the Churchill Falls project. He brought the project
in five months ahead of schedule and under budget.
Ron SOUTHERN, the Calgary-based head of Atco Ltd., was supplying
Brinco with housing for its Churchill Falls work force. He was
also negotiating to build housing factories in the Soviet Union
and invited Soviet president Alexsei Kosygin to tour his facilities
in Montreal. Mr.
MULHOLLAND agreed to provide testimonials for
the Atco products, and impressed Mr.
SOUTHERN with his ability
to hold his own in intense geopolitical discussions.
It was the beginning of a Friendship that was cemented in the
mid-1970s, when Mr.
SOUTHERN opened his Spruce Meadows equestrian
centre near Calgary. Mr.
MULHOLLAND attended the first major
equestrian event, impressing Mr.
SOUTHERN with his own riding
skills. Each year, he would take a long country ride on the morning
of the big event.
With
Churchill
Falls complete, Mr.
MULHOLLAND was recruited to
become the Bank of Montreal's president in 1975. He found another
organization in crisis mode. "It took him about a year to get
a grip on the bank, but he was a bulldog and he got it done,"
Mr. SOUTHERN said.
The new banker became immersed in Bank of Montreal's liquidity
problems and cost-control challenges, as well as its struggles
to move from manual systems to the computer age. After the incumbent
Chief Executive Officer retired, he took the top job in January,
1979, adding the chairman's role 2½ years later.
He was involved in hiring Mr.
O'HAGAN, who had served in the
Prime Minister's Office under another eccentric legend, Pierre
Trudeau. Mr.
O'HAGAN recalled how his job interview with Mr.
MULHOLLAND
stretched to more than two hours, until he finally telephoned
his next interview party to beg forbearance. Mr.
O'HAGAN was
fascinated by this brilliant, obsessive man and joined the Bank
of Montreal team.
That extended interview was a harbinger of the
MULHOLLAND style.
He was notorious for unpredictably long meetings, forcing managers
to queue up for hours, awaiting audiences that lasted long into
the evening.
He was determined to weed out the perceived dead wood that had
allowed the bank's problems to build. In his zeal to cleanse
the ranks, he was accused of creating a demographic crisis in
the bank. One unidentified manager told Report on Business magazine
in 1989 that "an entire generation of management has been cremated."
"Those judgments were not made whimsically - they were made on
the basis of performance," insisted Grant
REUBER, the bank's
president during the
MULHOLLAND era. "I don't think he relished
letting people go, but if they hadn't measured up and they hadn't
recovered, they probably didn't survive."
Jeff CHISHOLM, a retired Bank of Montreal executive, said he
never saw this side of his former boss - Mr.
MULHOLLAND simply
demanded honest answers from his managers. He said his positive
traits never came to light because the Chief Executive Officer
did not really care what critics thought of him.
Mr. MULHOLLAND also pulled off a deal that transformed the bank:
the 1984 purchase of Harris Bank, a U.S. Midwest regional powerhouse
based in Chicago. Some critics have contended that once the deal
was done, the bank didn't really capitalize on its new U.S. platform
- but at minimum, Mr.
MULHOLLAND created the potential platform.
"He had a vision about what was going to happen to the North
American economy and to financial services within North America,"
said Mr. Chisholm, a former Harris Bank executive who joined
Bank of Montreal.
Later, Mr.
MULHOLLAND moved quickly on the deregulation of Canada's
financial industry by acquiring Nesbitt Thomson, the foundation
of today's Bank of Montreal Nesbitt Burns Inc., the bank's investment
subsidiary.
Whether he stayed too long is much debated; it's a common problem
with strong leaders in politics and business. But Mr.
MULHOLLAND's
saving grace was to leave the bank in good hands.
Mr. Barrett, his successor, was a charming people person who
provided a sharp contrast with his more aloof predecessor. Mr.
MULHOLLAND
"knew he was not Mr. Popularity with everybody," Mr.
O'HAGAN
said. "He recognized there would be a contrast and that Barrett's
personal style would register differently. I think that was part
of the reason he chose him."
Mr. Barrett, now retired from banking, said in an e-mail message
that "Bank of Montreal shareholders and employees owe a debt
of gratitude to Bill for stepping into the bank at a difficult
time in its history. Those that succeeded him benefited greatly
from his legacy.
"He once joked that he built the Stradivarius that others played
beautifully. I certainly agree with that."
After he retired in 1990, Mr.
MULHOLLAND had time to focus on
family, horses and his beloved Windswept Farm near Georgetown,
west of Toronto. He worked to develop the Hanoverian breed in
Canada.
But in recent years, Parkinson's disease took its toll. At the
MULHOLLANDs' 50th wedding anniversary party in early July, Friends
felt he almost willed himself to attend. It wasn't long afterward
that he was admitted to hospital.
William MULHOLLAND was born in Albany, New York on June 16, 1926.
He died of complications from Parkinson's disease and other medical
problems at his home near Georgetown, Ontario, on September 8,
2007. He was 81. He is survived by his wife Nancy, nine children
and 11 grandchildren.
R... Names RE... Names REU... Names Welcome Home
REUBER - All Categories in OGSPI
REURINK o@ca.on.middlesex_county.london.london_free_press 2007-08-10 published
Help sought to find body
Sarnia police have charged the slaying victim's common-law husband
and his sister.
By Jennifer
O'BRIEN, Sun Media, Fri., August 10, 2007
Sarnia -- Police are urging rural landowners to search properties
between Watford and Wyoming for a slain woman believed dumped
in the area in the spring.
But even without the body of Shelley
MATHIEU-
READ, 45, Sarnia
police said yesterday they had enough evidence to charge her
common-law husband, Thomas
MOFFIT, with second-degree murder.
MOFFIT, 36, is in custody on the charge. His sister, Kathy
LONG,
54, of Wyoming, is charged with being an accessory after the
fact.
"I can't get into the evidence, but there is certainly evidence&hellip
to determine Shelley
MATHIEU-
READ has met a violent death," Sgt. Scott
MacLEAN said at a news conference yesterday.
MATHIEU-
READ, formerly of London, and
MOFFIT, her partner of
about six months, have a "history of domestic violence," he said.
MacLEAN said police believe there was a "domestic disturbance"
in mid-May and
MATHIEU-
READ was killed.
Police have a daunting task in the search for
MATHIEU-
READ's
body. They think she was dumped in mid-May, when the terrain,
now blanketed by tall cornfields and overgrowing bush, was sparse.
More than 20 officers from Sarnia police searched a 39-hectare
woodlot in the area yesterday.
"That's just one small sample of the area we're searching,"
MacLEAN
said. Earlier in the week, Lambton Ontario Provincial Police
assisted Sarnia police in a search on Churchill Line between
Wyoming and Watford.
"It really is overwhelming. The landowners know their properties
better than anyone, so we are asking for their assistance,"
MacLEAN
said.
"We are looking for any signs of disturbances on their property
tire tracks or areas that may have been disturbed as a possible
gravesite."
MATHIEU-
READ, a mother and grandmother known as a heavy drug
user, was last seen by a neighbour on May 10, police said.
"Shelley was a sibling, a mother and a grandmother," said
MacLEAN.
"She struggled her whole life with drug addiction, but she kept
in contact with her family. She was a very loved person."
MATHIEU-
READ's daughter, Robin
HARDMAN of Saint Thomas, reported
her missing on July 29.
HARDMAN hadn't seen her mother since
May.
MATHIEU-
READ moved to Sarnia from London in March. She and
MOFFIT
moved into a Finch Street apartment building in a well-kept complex.
Though MATHIEU-
READ's daughter has said her mom moved to Sarnia
to get "clean," neighbours in the 10-storey apartment building
said yesterday both she and
MOFFIT were known drinkers and drug
users.
"We would hear them fighting all the time," said a woman who
lives next to
MOFFIT's apartment on the building's fourth floor.
The neighbour said
MATHIEU-
READ had been there only a short time
when the two women shared an elevator.
"She was holding a PlayStation, and she had a book bag on her
back, and she was bawling," the neighbour said.
In the elevator,
MATHIEU-
READ said she was sick of her boyfriend's
drinking.
"She was crying and she said, 'I'm so lonely, I'm from London
and I don't know anybody around here,' " said the neighbour,
who asked not to be named.
After that, the woman said, another woman seemed to be living
with MOFFIT, who remained in his apartment until last week.
Police said
MOFFIT had once been charged with assaulting
MATHIEU-
READ
but she didn't appear in court and the charge was dropped.
MOFFIT is known to Lambton Ontario Provincial Police, said spokesperson
Const. John
REURINK.
"We did investigate a sudden death where he was involved in the
relationship with the deceased, but it was deemed that no foul
play was suspected,"
REURINK said.
He said that case could be reopened if there were enough similarities
to the MATHIEU-
READ slaying.
How To Help Police
- Police believe a black 4X4 Ford F250 was used to to dump Shelley
MATHIEU-
READ's body somewhere off Churchill Line between Wyoming
and Watford. They ask Churchill Line landowners in southeast
Lambton County and western Middlesex County between Wyoming and
Watford to check their properties.
- They also ask anyone who saw the truck to call Sarnia police
at 519-344-8861 ext. 6077 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
R... Names RE... Names REU... Names Welcome Home
REURINK - All Categories in OGSPI