Seagram Company. - Distilled: a memoir of family, Seagram, baseball and philanthropy

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CHARLES BRONFMAN is the former co-chairman of Seagram. As chairman and majority owner of the Montreal Expos, he brought Major League Baseball to Canada. Until 2016, he chaired the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, which oversaw groundbreaking work in Canada, Israel, and the United States. Among his signature philanthropic achievements are Heritage Minutes and Birthright Israel. He divides his time between Montreal, New York, and Florida.

HOWARD GREEN is an author and broadcaster. A founding anchor at Business News Network, he spent fifteen years at BNN, where he hosted Headline, the networks flagship interview program. Green is also the author of the bestseller Banking On America and is an award-winning documentary maker.

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Cover photograph: Eyal Izhar

Cover design: Amy Frueh

DISTILLED

Copyright 2016 by Charles Bronfman.

All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

FIRST EDITION

EPub Edition: September 2016 ISBN: 9781443448499

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

2 Bloor Street East, 20th Floor

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication information is available upon request

ISBN 978-1-44344-847-5

RRD 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my grandchildrenI love you all so very much.

In the days of my youth, Father William replied

I remember that youth would fly fast

So I thought of the future

Whatever I did

So I never might rue oer the past

SAM BRONFMANS VARIATION ON ROBERT SOUTHEYS

THE OLD MANS COMFORTS AND HOW HE GAINED THEM

I m now eighty-five. Thankfully, Im fitboth mentally and physically. My life, like most peoples, has been a mixed bagsubstantial achievements, serious disappointments; great loves, poor ones; various careers, some exciting, others mundane; critical illnesses, wonderful health. I wrote this memoir not to enhance my ego, but to indicate to others the possibilities that we all have, whether entrepreneur, inheritor, or whatever. It was time to reflect on all these and the other conditions and influences that have shaped, and will continue to shape, my life.

Ive met and come to know many, many people. Most were bright; very few were wise. And wisdom, it seems to me, need not be reserved for those in their later years. However, it does take years to be honed. As George Bernard Shaw was wont to say, Youth is wasted on the young. He also said, A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.

Despite being born with the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth, I have not suffered that hell on earth. I have endured the horrid pain of suddenly, with no warning at all, losing a beloved wife, Andy, with whom I had spent twenty-five years. And the loss of Seagram was a huge blow for what it meant to my family and me, even more emotionally than financially.

Today, though, Im one of the happiest of people. As you read this memoir, I hope you have discovered that I was often anything but. Yet I am now married to a wonderful woman. My children, as well as my stepchildren, have brought me great naches, and my grandchildren give me tremendous joy.

People probably know me best for what I call entrepreneurial philanthropy. Certainly that has been the incredibly rewarding hallmark of my long career. These accomplishments, though, were based on business principles I learned from my father and my colleagues, both at Seagram and our family businessesCEMP, and later Claridge. I really believe that, both for my loved ones and me, the best is yet to come.

O ver the years, I hadnt had much luck getting an interview with one of the Bronfmans. I recall a request I once made to speak with Charles, son of Mr. Sam, only to receive a tart letter from a lawyer saying no.

By virtue of their enormous wealth, the Bronfman family were equivalent to Canadian royaltyand later international royaltybecause of what they controlled in the corporate sphere, their philanthropic heft, and their influence in certain circles, particularly in the Jewish community in Canada and globally. Sam Bronfman, who died in 1971, had turned Seagram into a global powerhouse and set the stage for a dynasty. This was the company that stocked the worlds bars with Crown Royal, Chivas Regal, V.O., and many other well-known names like Martell cognac and Captain Morgan rum. Liquor sold, and sold well. The company gushed cash. Mr. Sams sons, Edgar and Charles, took the family-controlled firm a step further, into the realm of chemicals and plastics, when Seagram became the largest shareholder of DuPont, one of the best-known companies worldwide. The Bronfmans were billionaires many times over and, in certain respects, on a pedestal because of their wealth.

My luck changed in the fall of 2012. One of my colleagues at Business News Network knew Charles Bronfman from a past interaction and convinced him to come on my program for an interview. The agreement was that the subject matter would be his philanthropy because he was joining the Giving Pledge, started by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffettagreeing to leave more than half of his wealth to charity. I was pleased to hear we would have such a marquee guest. However, I was uncomfortable with only discussing philanthropy. For sure, Charles was, by any measure, a huge donor to many causes. But there was an elephant in the room. We had not heard other aspects of the Bronfman storyin particular, firsthand insights into the demise of Seagram after Charless nephew Edgar Jr. pivoted the company toward entertainment and media, finally selling Seagram to Frances Vivendi during the height of the 2000 technology boom for a huge stake in the French firm. Vivendi quickly withered, taking a chunk of the Bronfman fortune down with it. It was a shattering loss for the familya humiliation and an embarrassment. To my knowledge, in all our years at the network, we had not had one of the key Bronfmans on the air to discuss what happened. The story had virtually gone away.

I thought it over. Most certainly we would honour our agreement to talk about philanthropy, but I felt that if we were sensitive and fair, we could reserve a segment to devote to other matters. On the appointed day, I went to the greenroom to meet Charles and we seemed to hit it off instantly. There was chemistry, as he would say. The section of the interview on philanthropy went well, so as we entered the final block of the show, I shifted to another topic, the separatist government in Quebec. That was my bridge to turn the interview away from philanthropy. Then I made the big turn. I told Charles we only had a few minutes lefta signal that he would not have to endure me for longand with the greatest respect, I wondered all these years later what he thought about what happened to Seagram. The floodgates opened. He said he thought the same now as he did back thenit was a terrible tragedy and the family lost its identity. Did he speak with his nephew much? I asked.