Leif Holt looked the world in the eye. A natural optimist, he favoured defence—until just the right moment

by David Holt

A recent study found that few senior executives have any talent for strategy. They get to the top by mastering their fields, but strategy, which is essentially making bets about the future, is another matter. The ability to think strategically has to be in your DNA. One indicator is the ability to go against the grain.

My father, Leif Holt, had the gift, as did his father, Egil Abrahamsen, who as a young man ran a large woodland operation in northern Russia until the revolution of 1917 sent the family fleeing back home to Norway. Like Egil, Leif loved to compete in games, sports, and business. He wanted to know the rules and was a shrewd assessor of the strategies and psychology used by his opponents. As a boy he mastered chess and bridge, and with his younger brothers, Teddy and Jan, rowed the fjords in summer and skied in winter.

The family spent my father’s teenage years in London. He led his class at times, but his enthusiasm was more for rugby, cricket, and boxing. Growing up in three countries, he learned four languages and was adept at adjusting to new circumstances. The older English schoolboys could be bullies, he said, but left you alone if you were good at sports.

Once I quoted to him aeronautical engineer Burt Rutan, to the effect that it is important that society inspires children so that later they will be inspired in their careers. “When I was young, I was just trying to survive,” my father said. “I never had time to be inspired.”

The family took long vacations at their home in Norway. In 1940 the Germans invaded, and the Abrahamsens became prisoners in their own land. Teddy was sent to a concentration camp, Jan disappeared into the resistance, and my father skied across the border to join the Norwegian army in Sweden. One night he decided to make a fire, reasoning the odds were slim that it would be seen by a German patrol. He stayed warm and made it into Sweden the next day. Months earlier he had declined an invitation to join some friends on a dash for England by boat; the young men were apprehended and killed.

After the war Leif attended forestry college in Norway, then he and Jan came to Canada to work in Labrador as timber cruisers. When the firm that employed them went under, my father went to see the honorary Norwegian consul in St. John’s about getting paid. He never did get his pay, but he married the consul’s daughter, Anne Emerson.

Leif then went to work for the Pulp and Paper Research Centre at McGill University, later accepting a position in the woodlands department at the Mersey Pulp and Paper Mill outside Liverpool, N.S. He had been attracted by the independence of Mersey, but soon afterward the company was purchased by Bowater Inc. In 1962 my father received a fellowship to the Harvard Business School, where he won a lot of poker games.

In games, business, and life, Leif always took a defensive position, but he was also willing to take calculated risks at the right moment. He was never keen on the sale of company assets. When Bowater Mersey sold a share to the Washington Post, Leif thought the selling price was too low. When Bowater merged with Abitibi-Consolidated in 2007, he was immediately skeptical. “It is never a merger of equals,” he said.

When I was young I helped my father plant seedlings from all over the world to see if they would grow. A conservationist, he told me that a well-managed forest could renew itself forever. Leif became a woodlands manager at an early age, hired good people, and spent much of his time on special projects. He bought some of the first software used in forestry mapping and was delighted to meet its architect, a female mathematician. His pivotal experience was a forestry mission to China in 1974. He returned after extensive travels in the country to say, “Never mind your kids learning French. China is the land of the future.”

Leif was not worried about global warming, but when I told him about a seminar I was attending on climate change, he said, “If it is really that serious, turn off the lights at night. That is what we did during the war.” He could cut to the heart of the matter.

In recent months my father got a surge of energy. He wanted to attend the Olympics in Beijing. At his last bridge game, he won every rubber. We had a family lunch on a Sunday, and on the following Tuesday he had emergency surgery and died soon after, at age 89. My wife, Donna, and I were at his side. That morning I asked on the phone if he wanted anything brought to the hospital. He said, “No, I don’t need anything.” That was Leif: he helped support four generations but never needed much himself. He always inspired me.

David Holt is a writer and consultant on strategy and communications. Email David