Jack Lawrence (1934 – 2009)
Business Titan,
Fitness Ambassador
On a warm August afternoon at Ontario’s Lake Muskoka, cottagers heard the familiar sound of a floatplane taking off. Then silence. The plane had crashed killing both occupants, pilot Jack Lawrence and passenger Carol Richardson.
Jack Lawrence was most recently the chairman and CEO of Lawrence & Company Inc., a leading investment company he founded in 1996. He was a Bay Street legend known for his hard driving and relentless deal making persona and widely respected for his contributions to Canada’s economic policies. He is perhaps best known for his role in the sale of securities firm Burns Fry to the Bank of Montreal and his subsequent role in developing BMO Nesbitt Burns to become the number one ranked investment firm in Canada. He is also known for his support of the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario (his alma mater), contributing $3.7 million to fund the building of the Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management.
He is less well-known but greatly admired for his personal example and dedication to healthy living and his contributions to the fitness business. He exercised regularly at the Cambridge Club in Toronto, became a business partner and good friend of owner Clive Caldwell and invested in the Cambridge Group of Clubs.
“Jack Lawrence was a fitness ‘psycho,’” says Caldwell. “He totally dedicated his whole life to living healthy which included working out five to seven days every week. He played tennis, squash, golf and other activities with the same passion that energized his business life. Jack was very conscious of nutrition and fully intended to live to be at least 120. His doctor recently advised Jack that he had the heart of a 40-year-old.”
Lawrence clearly inspired others. He would frequently walk into business meetings on his hands! He was one of the first to establish fitness club membership subsidies for his employees. In recent years especially, much of his active lifestyle was spent with his family.
Jack was an investor in Toronto’s Squash Academy and Adelaide Club, the Bentall Fitness Centre in Vancouver and several other franchises. He was a founding investor of the Cambridge Club and funded the entire package for the purchase of the MMA club in Montreal. Jack would typically take less equity than he was entitled to, and in hard times he would reduce his ROI to keep the business alive, which has resulted in the success of the Cambridge Group today.
Jack Lawrence did not reach his goal of living to 120. Were it not for a tragic accident, his great enthusiasm for life would likely have carried him close to, if not beyond, his goal and have led many more individuals to live healthier and longer lives.
From the Lawrence and Company website:
For those wishing to honour Jack’s legacy, in lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management at the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, 1151 Richmond St. North, London, ON, N6A 3K7.
To donate online, ivey.uwo.ca/development. (Please indicate that the donation is to benefit the Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management in the “special instructions” box.)
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