That was fine with her. She wanted to keep her affairs separate from those of the family, lest bankers view her as a pipeline to Thomson money. Step one was to sever ties with the Royal Bank — Canada’s largest — since family members sat on its board of directors. She hired a legal advisor, Stuart Butts, who steered her to the Bay and Richmond branch of the CIBC and introduced her to his assistant manager. Tom Johnson opened an account for her. Brian Molony inherited the account when he succeeded Johnson.
Brydson divided her money, placing half with an investment counsellor and half with the bank. She got into the stock market, developing a particular interest in oil and gas. She and her partner, Barb Elson, set up a Thai importing company, Eastern Accents, and began looking for a Victorian space in which to establish a Thai restaurant.
One potential site was a decrepit, unoccupied, four-storey building on Elm Street, a stone’s throw from the raunchy Yonge Street Strip. The Elmwood Hotel had been home to many things in its ninety-year history, including the first YWCA in Canada, a halfway house for women discharged from mental institutions, an antique store, an optical factory, and a downtown youth centre. Its owners had tried to get permission to tear it down; it was so derelict that its occupancy permit covered only the ground floor and the basement. The building came with a ten-page list of outstanding work orders.
Brydson needed 8,000 square feet for the restaurant. If she bought the building, what would they do with the other 34,000 square feet? They had earlier done a feasibility study for a women’s club, and the plans could easily be adapted to the Elmwood. They would put a spa on one floor, a French restaurant on another. Possibilities were endless. Encouraged by Barb Elson, Brydson became enchanted by the idea of The Elmwood Club. She purchased the building for $640,000, believing it would take $3.5-million to transform it.
Brydson planned to sell the club to its members, so The Elmwood was incorporated as an autonomous company that could be hived off. The Thai restaurant, Bangkok Garden, was incorporated separately. Soon she had a welter of companies: Toronto Health and Beauty Centres (the spa on the second floor of the building), Eastern Accents Trading (the importing operation), Feung Fah Holdings (the real estate company, which owned the building and other Toronto properties), Feung West (which owned properties in Calgary and Canmore, Alberta), Willowbank (an oil-and-gas exploration company she created), Springbank (an oil-and-gas company she bought into and wound up owning), and Brydson Management (the operating company). The funding arm, which provided capital for each company, was called Westerkirk, after the Scottish town her maternal ancestors — the Thomsons — had come from.
Brydson’s father, it turned out, knew Brian Molony’s father. Glen Brydson had been an NHL hockey player, mostly with the Chicago Black Hawks, before putting together a stable of thoroughbreds. Dr. Molony was a familiar and well-liked figure at the morning workouts, and the two men became friendly. When Glen Brydson developed cancer in a lymph gland in his throat, Terry Molony did the surgery. Though delicate and uncertain, the operation was a success. Sherry told her father that Brian Molony was her banker. Glen Brydson said, “Terry Molony saved my life. If you’re with his son, you’re in capable hands.”
Sherry Brydson didn’t know what bankers were supposed to be like, but she was rather fond of Molony. Unlike many bankers, he had a sense of humour and enjoyed exercising his wit. She ribbed him about his ill-fitting suits and godawful ties. She was surprised he didn’t smoke: burn-holes in his lapels would have fit his rumpled image. In a way they couldn’t have been more different. She was a feminist, he a male chauvinist. Her tastes were cosmopolitan, his parochial. She was a graduate of the Cordon Bleu cooking school in France, a former food editor in Australia, and a budding restaurateur. He ate nothing but fast food and Coca-Cola. Over lunch they traded barbs, Molony making a face at each plate of Asian delicacies (“I’m a meat-and-potatoes man, myself”), Brydson refusing to let him off the hook (“You flatter yourself, Brian”). She got him to try satay by assuring him it was fast food in Thailand.
When Brydson decided to invest in a cosmetics company, she went to Molony to negotiate her first loan. The company was badly managed but the product was good. There was talk of marketing the cosmetics through the spa at the women’s club. Brydson set a limit on what she was prepared to lose: $50,000. Maybe it was a gamble, but she wanted to be an entrepreneur and entrepreneurs took risks. She needed to learn how to deal with the bank, how to manage people, how to handle an ailing enterprise. Wasn’t that how Roy Thomson had made his fortune, by resuscitating businesses on the verge of bankruptcy? Maybe the talent was in her genes. If it wasn’t, well, she would have got the equivalent of an MBA.
Her relations with Molony grew increasingly cordial. Because her stock certificates went directly from her broker to the bank, she alerted him each time she bought or sold shares. She traded actively; they spoke often. Molony was keenly interested in the market and happy to exchange street talk. When she did a loan proposal for the cosmetics company he was encouraging and helpful, recommending the loan. Alex Osborne recommended against it. The two men discussed it and Molony’s enthusiasm carried the day — or so it seemed to Brydson. In fact, she kept term deposits as well as stock certificates at the branch, assets she planned to liquidate to pay for construction of the Elmwood. This abundant security and her personal guarantee meant the bank was not at risk.
Still, Molony’s work delighted both his customer and his boss. Osborne was impressed that he had obtained Brydson’s personal guarantee, and Brydson was impressed that he had got her the loan. In December, Molony found himself in desperate need of cash. He and Brenda and another couple were leaving for Florida on Boxing Day, and he was determined to settle his loans first. The idea of being away for two weeks — turning over his post to Steve Richardson, his credit officer — nearly made him retch with anxiety.
He had debited the Koharski account a second time, taking another $35,000, and did not want to risk tacking on more. Shortly before Christmas he opened a new account in Sherry Brydson’s name. This seemed natural enough: Brydson had been looking at deals in Oklahoma, and there was talk of merging her oil-and-gas companies with a U.S. exploration firm. For tax reasons, many corporate borrowers have two or three loan accounts — investment loan; operating loan; term loan. In this case it would seem the existing Westerkirk account was for Canadian dollars, the new Sherry Brydson account U.S. dollars. Like most corporate customers, she had presigned a number of promissory notes and lodged them with the bank, to be used as loan advances were required. The signed notes did not specify Westerkirk Holdings. If she had opened a second account — others at the branch assumed she had instructed Molony to do so — the notes could conceivably apply to it as well.
Molony created the documentation for a loan of $48,000 U.S., keeping it below $50,000 because of the trouble he’d had with the Sun Crown U.S.-cash parcel. The girl in the foreign-exchange department asked if the funds were to be credited to a branch account. No, he said, the customer wanted cash. He went to the head teller to order it.
The head teller reported the request to the branch accountant, who asked Molony about it. Caught off guard, he said Sherry Brydson needed cash to pay Christmas bonuses to her staff. Instantly he saw his error. Why, when Brydson’s employees were in Toronto, would she need American currency? The branch accountant didn’t think to ask.
Brinks brought the cash in its Friday delivery. The money was on hand, his story satisfied everyone, the documentation was done. But Molony had said Brydson would pick it up. How could he obtain it? Suppose Brydson happened to call or drop by. Had he made the fatal blunder? Was there some other way to raise money? He could say Brydson had changed her mind, didn’t need cash after all. No, that might arouse suspicion. Too rattled to think, he procrastinated. At closing time the teller asked him, “Is this lady coming or not?”
“She said she’d be here,” said Molony. Brydson was viewed by some of the female staff as flighty — it figured s
he’d be late. “I’ll phone her.”
At ten after six the girl asked again.
“I just got a call from her,” said Molony. “She’ll be another half hour. Why don’t you girls go ahead.”
“You want me to give you the cash?”
“I’ll sign for it,” said Molony.
Half an hour later, pockets bulging, he locked the branch and headed for the races. Do-or-die weekend. Beck stood at $68,800 plus $27,000 U.S., Sun Crown at $50,000 U.S., Koharski at $54,500. And now there was Brydson’s $48,000 U.S. Passing through the turnstiles at the track, hurrying up to where Beck and Colizzi were waiting, Molony felt a tremendous surge of emotion. For three months he’d been living a nightmare, but it was undeniably thrilling. Here comes the Banker along the rail, should be quite a finish…
At the races he lost $7,000.
After midnight he shot craps with a dozen other men in a Yonge Street hotel room and won $12,000.
Saturday morning he flew to Las Vegas, went to the casino nearest the airport, and played baccarat. He gambled through the afternoon, breaking only to bet basketball, hurrying from casino to casino, pausing to see who’d won the games, trying his luck at craps, heading up to the Tropicana beneath a canopy of stars, emerging into dazzling sunshine, the Barbary to bet the Sunday games, the Dunes to try his luck there, Caesars to play baccarat, the Barbary to check the scores, dice at the Flamingo, baccarat at the Marina, catching a hot streak that fizzled just in time for him to catch his flight home.
Dazed and dishevelled, his back sore from leaning over the crap table, eyes irritated by the cigarette smoke and processed air, knuckles burned from the baize, he looked like someone coming off a bender. He hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours. In the cab to McCarran Airport he counted his money.
He had forty dollars less than the $48,000 he’d started with.
Brenda loved Christmas, and this year promised to be special. Brian’s family was in Florida — his parents took a place in Fort Lauderdale — so he stayed Christmas Eve at the apartment. In the morning they exchanged gifts. He gave her a jewellery box, she gave him shirts and a sweater. They went off to see her family. Her father still worked for the manufacturing company, her mother part-time at the CIBC, but they had both developed serious health problems. Brenda spent as much time with them as she could. They had come to like Brian; Brenda’s father made a point of inviting him to his monthly poker game, which Molony attended out of politeness. One of the other players was a police sergeant. The betting limit was twenty-five cents.
After breakfast they drove out to visit Sieg and Sheila at Dr. Molony’s farm. Dr. Molony had bought the place when it was in the middle of nowhere. The land was scrub, the farmhouse a mess, but over fifteen years he’d built it into a self-sustaining dairy operation, thanks largely to Sieg Stadler. Sieg was a barrel-chested German who had emigrated after the war and viewed Canada as a land of boundless opportunity. All the Molonys were fond of him, but Mrs. Molony had a special affection. She was grateful that, by running the farm so ably, he took pressure off Dr. Molony, and she shared his interest in the market. Each time they got together they discussed their investments. Dr. Molony gave his wife a monthly allowance to run the household. Whatever she was able to save, she sunk into stocks. Sieg, too, studied the market, and whenever he had a little extra he put on his suit and went to see his broker. They both preferred highly speculative ventures, searching for the ten-cent bargain that would one day be worth five dollars.
All the Molony boys worked with Sieg, and the farm had become a rich repository of lessons and memories. Brian had spent five summers milking and haying and ploughing. One day, early the first summer, Sieg asked him to clean out a big tub of debris. Brian was afraid of what might be slithering around at the bottom and asked why he was getting all the dirty jobs. Sieg told him, “I’ll never ask you to do anything I haven’t done myself.” Brian adopted the principle and applied it to his work at the bank.
After Brian’s last summer on the farm, the barn was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. All the family gathered to help out and commiserate. It was shattering to see the charred corpses of cattle huddled together in the ruins, one of the most affecting experiences of Brian’s life. Sieg, of course, was devastated. All his work had been wiped out. Rebuilding the dairy operation would have required a huge infusion of capital. There was talk of selling the place. Eventually they decided to turn it into a beef farm, and the hard work began all over again.
Sieg’s honest labour, diligence, and loyalty were a formative example; in some ways Brian felt closer to him than to his own family. When Brian joined the CIBC, Sieg — with Brian’s help — wrote one of the references the bank required of new employees (“I realize that six ‘outstanding’ marks may seem somewhat ‘fishy.’ However, anyone who starts work at six in the morning after finishing at midnight …”). When Sieg wanted a bank loan to play the stock market, he went to Brian for it.
Over Christmas drinks and Sheila’s chocolate chip cookies, Sieg recalled some of Brian’s misadventures. The Molonys all tended to be mechanically inept, but Brian was legendary. “He was all thumbs,” Sieg told Brenda. “Any piece of equipment he was using automatically broke down. And then he’d be completely stuck. When Brian was around you couldn’t take anything for granted. Things that are just commonsense were a mystery to him. But he was a bright boy, and nobody worked harder.”
Sieg told Brenda about the time Brian had been carting hay from a farm several miles up the road. On a steep grade, trying to gear down, Brian depressed the clutch. The wagon, loaded with five tons of hay, took off. Sieg, ahead on the tractor, was about to cross the creek at the bottom of the hill when he saw the wagon bearing down on him, out of control. The bridge was barely wide enough for one vehicle. It seemed certain they’d crash. Sieg braced himself, but Brian managed to cut in front of him, missing the tractor by inches and careering wildly across the bridge. The wagon came to a stop on the far side; Brian climbed down like a shell-shocked survivor of a bombing. Miraculously, he hadn’t even lost the load of hay. Everyone howled at the memory. It was Brian in a nutshell: saved from his ineptitude by his lifelong good luck.
Brenda couldn’t understand why, when it seemed they were going to crash, Brian wouldn’t have jumped off the wagon. Sieg shook his head. “Most people would have,” he said, “but Brian wasn’t the kind of boy who’d take the easy way out of something he’d got himself into. He’d see it through to the bitter end.”
Brenda found it a wonderful luxury to spend so much time in Brian’s company. She only wished he could be as happy as she felt. Back at the apartment, waiting for the late sports report, she fixed him a rum-and-Coke and tried to get him to open up. He assured her nothing was the matter. “What are you thinking about?” “Work,” he said. “Business I should have tidied up.” He was casting about for a way to back out of the Florida trip. Brenda was in such good spirits, though, that he couldn’t bring himself to ruin her holiday.
On Boxing Day they picked up Ian and Jackie Stewart and set off in the Buick that Brian had bought off his father’s lease. The customs officer in Detroit was amused that he was taking figure skates to Fort Lauderdale. His family exchanged gifts in Florida; the skates were for his sister. They drove straight through, taking turns at the wheel. Ian and Jackie felt the drive would have been more pleasant if the Buick’s cruise control hadn’t been broken, but there was no point even raising the idea of getting it fixed. Brian wouldn’t spend the money. He’d driven the old Datsun for six months with no brakes.
They stayed in a one-bedroom condominium. The year before another couple had gone with them, and they’d spent the holiday tripping over one another. Four people was more comfortable than six, and they got along well together. The girls went shopping or hit the beach, the guys tossed a football or watched sports on TV. Brian organized an outing to Pompano. Each race they split a two-dollar ticket four ways. At poolside Brian never wanted to get the drinks; at the track, th
ough, he always volunteered to go to the windows.
In the evenings they brought take-out food back to the condo. Everyone else was tired from the sun, so Brian went off by himself. He didn’t say where he was going but Brenda had a good idea. There were other racetracks in the area, as well as greyhound races and a jai alai fronton. Brian was Brian. He didn’t like doing nothing, got restless as a child. “Cabin fever,” he called it. He and Brenda had bought some stock together, and each morning he went out early for the newspaper. Ian saw him at a payphone one day and asked who he’d called. “My broker,” said Brian, who was always phoning his broker — from the bank, from McDonald’s, from the pub they went to on Friday afternoons. In fact he was calling his credit officer. “Just thought I’d check in, Steve. Anything new?” Richardson wondered how Molony could enjoy his holiday when he thought constantly about work. Molony wondered what he’d do if Richardson said, “The auditors are in.” Fly to Las Vegas, maybe, for one last shot. Perhaps if he made full restitution the bank wouldn’t prosecute.
Brenda read his anxiety as that of a workaholic. Funny the way he resembled his father — even on vacation Dr. Molony was up for six o’clock Mass. When Brian suggested cutting the trip short, Brenda said, “Don’t be crazy, we drove all the way down here to have a good time. Can’t you just relax?” He thought of inventing an emergency that demanded his immediate return. It was a commonplace in the bank, though, to beware the employee who didn’t like to be out of the branch. He had no choice but to sweat out the full two weeks.
On their last day in Florida they went to Pompano, sat through ten races, then drove twenty-four hours straight, hitting Windsor, Ontario, in time for the races there. “Let’s stop,” said Brian. “After the palm trees and blue skies, it’ll be fun to see them running in the snow.” The others were exhausted from the trip and eager to get home, but once Brian had made up his mind that was that. They watched every race, shivering and turning blue beneath their suntans.
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