What we Give: a Memoir by Terry Salman
Terry Salman is one of Canada’s most dedicated philanthropists. Born in Montreal, he served as a sergeant with the US Marines during the Vietnam War before becoming a legend in mining finance.
In his rich memoir published in November 2022, ‘What We Give – From Marine to Philanthropist: A Memoir,’ Salman reflects on his remarkable life and offers guidance for others seeking to build their own legacies.
Below, we have the opportunity to read an excerpt from his inspiring new book:
My interest in mining started with my father working in mining towns. I often travelled with him, sometimes in a car, occasionally on a horse, to visit his mining clients and students. I still think, today, of mining headframes as an artform. Years later at Salman Partners, I gave an oil painting of a wooden headframe to Norm Keevil as a gift for allowing me to do the first bought deal preferred share of Teck Resources in the 1980s. That deal was the largest preferred share offering for a mining company up to that point. I have a picture of Chris Simpson and me giving Norm Keevil a $50 million cheque. Later, when I decided to terminate Salman Partners’ Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada membership, and essentially stopped being a broker dealer, Norm Keevil brought that painting to the dinner that Ross Beaty, Brad Cooke, and other mining executives hosted for me.
[…] My practice in mining started with Canadian Pacific interests in mining companies. Nesbitt Thomson did not like exploration companies at the time, because of the risk involved, but Teck was large enough for them. The larger mining companies paid the bills as I tried to convince Nesbitt Thomson to finance junior exploration companies. One day after returning from a business trip, I attended a closing dinner, an investment banking ritual to celebrate the closing of a financing. When I got to my table at Umberto’s, I found that I was seated next to the director of a company called Orvana, one of the first underwritings of a junior under Nesbitt Thomson. He introduced himself as John Patterson, and when I told him my name, he asked if I was any relation to Professor Salman. It turned out that he had been my father’s first PhD student at McGill University, and he was now the head of metallurgy at Queen’s University. John went on to work for Robert Friedland, who convinced him to leave Queen’s after many years.
Before the evening ended, I invited John to attend my daughter Krista’s graduation at McGill, fifty years after my father graduated with his master’s in mining engineering. Much to my surprise, John drove from Kingston, Ontario, to Montreal to celebrate Krista’s achievement. Sadly, he passed away from a heart attack while he was working with Robert Friedland. I still appreciate his attendance at the closing dinner at the Ritz-Carlton hotel that evening, that outdoor setting with the legendary swans swimming in front of us.
[…] Financing junior mining companies had several problems, as it often attracted the wrong kind of people in the nineties, which gave the Vancouver Stock Exchange a bad name, especially after numerous articles appeared in the New York Times describing how investors had been ripped off, for lack of a better term. But mining was in my blood, so I tried to associate myself with good mining promoters that found resources and built mines. I spent a long time convincing Nesbitt Thomson to look at mining exploration companies, which were a hard sell in the earlier years. However, we created a mining team and became a major factor in the mining sector.
I also went into mining by necessity, because Canada’s junior mining centre is Vancouver and our traditional investment banking business had almost disappeared. One day, Brian Aune and I visited Austin Taylor of McLeod Young Weir to see if we could get a piece of the Westcoast Transmission syndicate. Austin was a big name in BC business; Taylor Way, the road you take in West Vancouver on your way to Whistler, was named after his grandfather, who owned most of the property off it. Westcoast was a big issuer, and it would have helped our BC business, which was quite small. Sadly, we didn’t have enough underwriting at the time and were left out of the financing.
[…] In 1985, I was trying to raise money to buy Nesbitt Thomson shares, as Brian Aune was taking the company public and offering a large amount of stock. Brian’s long-term goal was to build up the company and sell it to a Canadian bank; but before that happened, he wanted to take the firm public. In that offering, Brian made fifty millionaires; I was one of them.
party, February 2011.
I knew it was a smart investment, but unfortunately, I had too much debt and was maxed out with RBC. When I went to my banker, Core Dewitt, on the ground floor of the Royal Centre, and told him I needed a million dollars, he replied, “We all need a million dollars.” Growing desperate, I asked him if I could go see the man upstairs, the head of RBC in BC, John Cleghorn, a banker I had known in my times as a research analyst in Montreal, when he was president of Mercantile Bank of Canada. I made an appointment to see John, and I told him to call Brian Aune in Montreal and ask how important I was to his organization. A few weeks later, John called me back to his office and told me I had the million dollars I had asked for. I thanked him and said, “I have no idea how I will ever pay you back, but every shareholder bonus I get, I will give it to you.”
Unheard of today, the loan had no security, except the shares I was buying; no fixed payment schedule; and a very low interest rate of only prime plus 1 percent. Two years later we went public, and I went to see John again to give him a cheque for $900,000, keeping $100,000 as a loan with RBC. John went on to become the president of RBC and governor emeritus of McGill University. I saw him one last time when he came to Vancouver on his retirement tour. I told Peter Newman this story in front of John, and he said he remembered it like it was yesterday.
Brian completed the process in 1987, selling Nesbitt Thomson to the Bank of Montreal (now BMO); Brian Steck was appointed as president and CEO. The sale was made possible by Canadian government regulatory reforms made that year that broke down the four pillars—banks, trust companies, insurance companies, and broker dealers—and allowed banks to purchase investment houses. The deal was historic, the first time a Canadian chartered bank had bought a Canadian investment firm.
The deal was a $175 million public offering—part secondary, part treasury. Not bad for a guy who couldn’t pay his American Express bills in the early seventies.
In the Bank of Montreal’s elegant architectural masterpiece in Old Montreal is a museum which features a plaque acknowledging the contributions of three men who figured so prominently in my life: Brian Aune, Brian Steck, and Jacques Ménard.
Editor’s Note: You can pick up your own copy of ‘What We Give – From Marine to Philanthropist: A Memoir’ wherever books are sold.