CKGB o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-05-20 published
He helped build a media giant
Newly graduated accountant brought order to Thomson Corp. in
early days
By Allison
LAWLOR
Tuesday,
May 20, 2003 - Page R7
The astute accountant who provided the financial wizardry to
pull the fledgling Thomson Corp. through its shaky early days
and see it become one of the world's greatest media enterprises,
has died. Sydney
CHAPMAN was 93.
With Roy THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON and Jack Kent
COOKE,
Mr.
CHAPMAN helped transform
a Depression-era Northern Ontario radio station and The Timmins
Press into Canada's largest newspaper group.
By the 1970s, with the aid of Mr.
CHAPMAN's guiding hand, Thomson
Corp. owned 180 newspapers, including The Times of London, 160
magazines, 27 television and radio stations and interests in
North Sea oil.
"He certainly did great things for my father in the early days
when my father desperately needed a right-hand man of his calibre
and his integrity," said Roy
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON's son, Kenneth
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON.
"Of all the things he did, the thing I will be most grateful
to Sid for is the fact that he was there when my dad needed him
and he never, ever let him down."
Mr. CHAPMAN was a newly graduated accountant working at Silverwood
Dairies in London, Ontario, when he answered a help-wanted ad
Roy THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON had placed for a financial man. Soon after being
hired, Mr.
CHAPMAN moved to the northern Ontario town of Timmins
to sort out the finances of the growing media company.
"I didn't have any equity in Silverwood's; I was just an employee
and my superiors were not old," he is quoted as saying in Susan
GOLDENBERG's book The Thomson Empire. "I wanted to join something
that was going somewhere and have equity in it."
At the time, Mr.
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON,
Mr.
COOKE and a secretary shared one
room in a Toronto building. Roy
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON began buying radio stations
and newspapers in Northern Ontario in the 1930s and bought his
first newspaper in Canada, The Timmins Press, in 1934.
"Roy was so busy on the telephone, he could hardly talk to me.
I had been making $40 a week at Silverwood's and Roy agreed to
pay me $45," Mr.
CHAPMAN said of the initial meeting.
Mr. CHAPMAN also insisted on buying $10,000 worth of stock in
the company. Mr.
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON, not keen on the idea of anyone but
himself owning stock in his company, said he would discuss this
proposal with Mr.
CHAPMAN at the end of his first month.
"At that time, he asked if I had the cash and said, 'That settles
it,' when I said I didn't. But I was determined to have that
stock," Mr.
CHAPMAN said.
The young accountant went to the Bank of Nova Scotia manager
in Timmins, where he was working at the time, and asked for a
$10,000 loan. For collateral, he offered his group insurance.
It took more than two decades for Mr.
CHAPMAN's investment to
become worthwhile. "I didn't get any dividends for 22 years but
when the company went public, there was a 30 to one split,"
Mr. CHAPMAN said.
Sydney (Sid)
CHAPMAN was born on January 22, 1910, in Bromley,
England, on the border of London. One of five children born to
Robert CHAPMAN, a house painter who had been wounded in the First
World War, and his wife Sarah, the family scraped by with little
money. When Mr.
CHAPMAN was still a young boy, the family packed
up and emigrated to Canada, making their way to Toronto.
Not long after arriving in the new country, Robert
CHAPMAN decided
he didn't like the place and wanted to return home to England.
His wife decided not to join him. Left to raise the children
alone, Mrs.
CHAPMAN took a job cooking and cleaning for a wealthy
family. Sid got a job as an office boy at what is now Deloitte
& Touche. While working there, he completed his high-school equivalency
through Queen's University and went on to earn his chartered
accountant certificate.
After spending five years at Silverwood Dairies, Mr.
CHAPMAN
began his long relationship with the
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON family. Arriving
in Timmins, Mr.
CHAPMAN found the business affairs of the newspaper
and radio station in less than immaculate order.
Mr. CHAPMAN complained to Roy
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON about the cramped office
space and
CKGB's accounts and files being stacked in the bathroom
and having to keep all his own books in a suitcase.
"Yes, well, that's why we got you up here -- to straighten things
out," Roy THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON replied.
Mr. CHAPMAN did just that. He was so reliable that Roy
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON
put him in charge of his northern business at the end of 1940,
less than a year after he was hired. In the early days, the job
was a balancing act. "I used to say about Roy's motto of 'Never
a backward step, ' that he had better not step backwards or he
would fall in a hole," Mr.
CHAPMAN said in The Thomson Empire.
Mr. CHAPMAN got involved in the northern community through the
Kinsmen service club, eventually becoming its president. It was
in Timmins where he met his future wife Ruby, who was born and
raised in Northern Ontario. The couple married in 1948 and had
two sons. The couple later moved to Toronto with the growing
Thomson company.
Mr. CHAPMAN told his young bride that he intended to work long
hours. Even his honeymoon was a business trip to look into the
purchase of a newspaper in Jamaica, said his son, Neil.
"He loved to work," said Neil
CHAPMAN. "
There was always a love
of what he was doing. There was no way he was going back to being
poor."
His most gratifying business moment was travelling back to England
in the 1960s to be part of the acquisition of The Times of London,
said Neil CHAPMAN. He was so proud to be with Roy
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON and
to be staying at the grand Savoy Hotel after his poor beginnings
in life, Neil
CHAPMAN said.
Mr. CHAPMAN's financial skill extended beyond the balance sheets.
He played a large role in the addition of trucking and insurance
to the Thomson empire. The origin of Dominion-Consolidated Truck
Lines is said to have been linked to Mr.
CHAPMAN's habit of eating
breakfast at Kresge's, a five-and-ten-cent chain, in Timmins
in the 1940s.
"I used to sit at the counter beside a trucker named Barney
QUINN
who wanted my advice on buying the trucking business of Ford
cars from a Windsor widow.
"Although the trucks were rusty, with bald tires, and business
was slow because of the war, I expected a revival in business
and decided to go in on the venture," Mr.
CHAPMAN said in The
Thomson Empire.
Roy THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON tried to dissuade him, saying he didn't know that
business or have the money. After some persuasion, Mr.
CHAPMAN
convinced him to invest. They went on to buy smaller firms and
consolidated them under Dominion-Consolidated.
Mr. CHAPMAN was also a force behind the acquiring of Scottish
and York Insurance, growing out of his belief in consolidation
and lowering expenses.
"He was a good and tough negotiator," said Toronto lawyer John
TORY, who began working for Roy
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON in the 1950s. "He negotiated
a lot of deals for the Thomson group.... He liked to win."
Kenneth THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON said that what he learned most from his early
days working with Mr.
CHAPMAN was his positive attitude toward
life and people. "He was an extremely positive person. He loved
people."
Described as a cheerful and decent man, Mr.
CHAPMAN retired from
the position of senior financial vice-president at Thomson Newspapers
in 1975, but remained as senior vice-president of the Woodbridge
Co. and as a director of Thomson Newspapers until 1982.
After retiring from Thomson, Mr.
CHAPMAN had no intention of
slowing down. He commuted daily into his 80s to a private Bay
Street investment office he ran with his two sons. While he was
extremely hard-working, serious and focused, he did allow himself
to have some fun. He enjoyed golfing and ballroom dancing.
"He loved to dance with his wife
Ruby,"
Mr.
TORY said. "They
danced well together."
Mr. CHAPMAN, who died on May 9, leaves Ruby, his wife of 55 years,
and sons Neil and Glen.
"Dad was a good judge of character and he certainly judged Sid
well indeed," Kenneth
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON said. "He was so dedicated and
so extraordinarily loyal."
C... Names CK... Names CKG... Names Welcome Home
CKGB - All Categories in OGSPI