Of the larger than life characters in the chapters of Toronto Free Press, none stand so tall as local businessman Harold Perry.
Never having faced a problem he didn't try to lick, anecdotes about Perry are legendary.
There's the one about when his children were young, how they wanted to join a prestigious ski club near the family winter cottage. Problem was the ski club proved adamant about not taking on any new members. "That's okay," said Perry, who told ski club management he would now have time to build from blueprints his proposed pig farm on the lot next door. Early the next day, his youngsters were out on the slopes.
Another H.P. anecdote details how when the principal of a private school was giving parents a difficult time over curriculum, Perry attended a meeting where the principal was shouting the parents down. Overnight, he bought the school and fired the principal.
That's the effervescent Harold Perry who gives new meaning to the description colourful. I met him in 1995 when he was appointed to the Toronto Harbour Commission, which ran the city waterfront, where he worked for $1 a year.
Ignoring the big guns at the mainline media, Perry gave Toronto Free Press its first scoop about the dubious dealings taking place down at the local harbour lands. Hounded by big-name reporters, Perry kept his word and allowed what was then an obscure little monthly, to break stories about the triple-dipping ways of Toronto Economic Development Corporation Organization (TEDCO) chairman Reggie Lewis.
Head honcho of the successful Mandrake, 'Canada's Executive Search Specialists', Perry is one of those rare people who says what he means and means what he says. Imbued with the spirit of Papa Hemingway while away on rare vacation jaunts, he hunts tigers and rides camels.
Self-made and in-yer-face, Perry took his considerable business smarts down to the Toronto Harbour Commission. With elected politicians and would-be-politicians blocking his every move, the new commission chairman drove revenues up to $7.5 million from $3.2 million.
The first to give credit to those around him, the driving force behind 'Save the Toronto City Centre Airport', is affectionately known in some quarters as, "The Commodore".
Daring to dream big dreams, Perry wanted to turn the waterfront into a major destination for luxury cruises. He was well on his way to accomplishing just that when patronage appointments made by a federal cabinet minister came along and knocked him off the dream wagon. Of all people, the federal cabinet minister was none other than Perry’s once close personal friend, David Collenette.With the Liberals out of power, and Collenette down and out, Perry hired him for several years at Mandrake.
Collenette's patronage appointments were made in Canadian ports from Halifax to Vancouver. The feds reneged on their promise of local control, handing power back to Ottawa. Only Perry is taking the trouble of challenging the patronage appointments in a lawsuit.
Recently adding a second lawsuit, Perry is now trying to recover the money he says he provided to Collenette so that his wife, Penny, could go to law school.
In colourful Perry vernacular, he says the amount he advanced to the minister is somewhere "north of $50,000 and south of $150,000."
The minister's wife has hotly denied having received north or south of any amount from Perry.
Between law school, Mrs. Collenette took a year off to work as national director for Jean Chr�tien's leadership campaign.
It's no secret that Perry raised about $65,000 for Chretien's first leadership bid. Of the minister's and wife's denials, Perry says: "I will take a lie detector test if they will go and take lie detector tests. And let's let the lie detector tests stand on their own."
Love him or loathe him, Perry is big enough to own up to his mistakes.
To detractors who lament that he spent $100,000 of public money from the Harbour Commission purse on forensic detectives to track down any possible link between waterfront developers, the city and federal politicians, he admits he goofed.
"Yeah, they got me on the detective one," he conceded in a National Post story. "It's my Achilles heel. It was a debacle, but I was trying to prove that millions of dollars went to developers and back to politicians. They couldn't prove it."
It's only been three months since the Toronto Harbour Commission was replaced by the new Toronto Port Authority and two months since Robert Wright, a Liberal fundraiser and former law partner of Jean Chretien, replaced Harold Perry.
In three short months, the Toronto port lands have become a bleaker place without Perry's colourful presence. It was June 8 when the commission was eclipsed by the port authority. By August 5, U.S. Airways Express pulled out of the City Centre Airport. From a business perspective, without firebrand Perry, there was no guarantee the fixed link to the mainland would ever be built.
Yet only last December everything was go for the bridge linking the mainland to the TCCA. For the first time in their history, Torontonians could look forward to soon being able to drive to their own downtown airport.
Save for his portrayal in Toronto Free Press as a port land pirate, Collenette has emerged relatively unscathed.
With the Liberals already trying to squelch the suit, only the future will tell the outcome of the lawsuit against the minister's patronage appointments filed by Perry.
But as far as the war between Perry and Collenette is concerned, Perry is already the winner, as a courageous, dynamic visionary admired by many, while Brutus Collenette is just another lousy Liberal politician.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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