One of Canada's sharpest investors. Seymour Schulich has made many successful bets. Now he is reaffirming his ties with this part of the world.

by David Holt

Seymour Schulich tries to deflect questions to his cousin-in-law, Halifax native Jon Goldberg, but they keep coming back to him. Journalists don’t get to talk to billionaires all that often. Goldberg, the executive director of the Atlantic Jewish Council, is tall and imposing but reserved. Schulich, on the other hand, has that natural ability to command any room he enters. His shrewd eyes take in the scene at a glance. It’s no surprise that he’s a card player; he has charisma and can turn a phrase. “My family motto is ‘often wrong but never in doubt,’ ” he says. (Most would kill to have his track record, as an investor, anyway.)

Schulich is such a believer in the Canadian university system, which helped him get his start, that he has given more than $200 million to schools across the country. On this day in June, the Ontario native, who is one of Canada’s sharpest investors, was at Halifax’s Dalhousie University to help dedicate the Goldberg Computer Science Building. He and his wife, Tanna, Goldberg’s cousin, are setting up scholarships at the school.

Schulich explained that as a student en route to his MBA he used a scholarship to finance a trip to Europe, as well as to buy stocks. This was bet No. 1. Early in his career he worked at Shell Oil, then at a large pension-fund management company, Bentel, Goodman & Company Ltd., where he is now honorary vice-chairman. This was bet No. 2.

In 1983 he co-founded a gold-mining company, Franco-Nevada. In his recent book, Getting Smarter, Schulich writes that it “started as a bit of a lark.” He liked to fly to Nevada to ski and play poker, and as he flew over the state he noticed old mining operations. Borrowing a concept from the oil patch, the new company pioneered the concept of royalty payments in the mining industry and produced ownership stakes in some of the world’s most profitable mines. Today, post merger, Schulich is director of Newmont Mining, the world’s largest gold mining company, and chairman of its merchant banking division. Initial investors in Franco-Nevada have seen a 40% annualized return. This was bet No. 3.

By 2004 Schulich was convinced that the price of oil was set for a long-term increase. He made a major investment in Canadian Oil Sands Trust, which was highly leveraged to oil prices. By the end of 2007, the investment had made more than a four-times return. This was bet No. 4.

At the briefing I mentioned Richard Rainwater, the U.S. investor who had also made several piles based on strategic—and usually contrarian—investments, including a similar bet on a rise in the price of oil. “I know Rainwater,” said Schulich. “He bought a $7-million house on a ranch in Tucson for a big blonde. Sheleft him a year later, and he was stuck with the house.”

The Dalhousie event was a celebration of the Goldberg family. The original Goldbergs, Joseph and Sarah, left the Russian pogroms for America, where they married in 1902. Joseph ran a store in a Pittsburgh suburb and later moved to Halifax. He died in 1942, leaving a relatively young widow to raise seven children. A daughter left for Baltimore but the rest stayed in Halifax, making successful careers in business and the professions.

“In Nova Scotia, Jewish institutions were negligible,” said Jon Goldberg. “There was a family focus on education and religion, and through the port there was a connection with the new state of Israel. Self-betterment and community are tenets of Judaism. With the help of the university, my family was transformed from immigrants to businesspeople and professionals.”

Jon’s brother Victor Goldberg—lawyer, bridge player, and volunteer—took the podium at the reception. “Our grandparents left the xenophobic countries of their birth for the U.S., then Canada,” he said. “They were never able to get an education themselves, but they lived the art and practice of Judaism and love of family.”

It was a day Sarah and Joseph would have been proud of. The school of computer science had a new name with meaning. Turning to leave, I spotted local businessman Harry Steele in the crowd. He and Schulich have that same sharp-eyed look; it turns out they have been friends for a long time. Steele is mentioned anonymously in Getting Smarter, but he is easy to identify. “I’ve never met a man respected and beloved by more people,” Schulich writes of Steele. “I’m still trying to analyze how he does it.”

Schulich is a tough business guy with a keen sense of the generations. His book, dedicated to his father, Julius, is an attempt to pass down to younger adults some of his hard-earned wisdom. Certainly his educational endowments are making a big difference in Canada and Israel. (That would be bet No. 5—and the beneficiaries are many.) The traits he ascribes to Harry Steele—they apply to him too.

David Holt is a writer and consultant on strategy and communications. He can be reached at dholt@eastlink.ca.