Growing up with dyslexia, raised by a single mom on welfare with tuberculosis, and flunking out of Grade 9, Earl Boon describes his upbringing as akin to a Dickens novel.
“Did you ever see the movie Oliver?” he asks.
Like many things Boon relates, the comparison to Oliver Twist is said with a smile. And Boon wants no credit for what he’s accomplished in the face of adversity.
Boon’s father abandoned the family before he was born in Montreal in 1938, and his mother kept the three boys together until 1944, when she came down with tuberculosis and had to go to a sanatorium for care.
The boys were sent to different family members, but as the financial strains of the time took hold, his older brothers eventually became wards of the state. They were sent to a boys’ home, where Boon joined them a couple of years later, once he was old enough.
It was at a Rotary-sponsored camp at a lake in the Laurentians at the age of eight where Boon had his first exposure to the club. The camp was the high point in a childhood filled with work and not much else.
It was at that Quebec lake where Boon first fell in love with the outdoors. Decades later, he still recalls the generosity of spirit of the Rotarians – most of them highly successful men from the upper class Westmount district of Montreal – as they came to visit every summer, and always made a donation to improve the facilities.
He formed his lasting opinion, which he holds to this day.
“I gained a high respect for the type of people that belonged to Rotary,” he said.
In spite of (or perhaps in addition to) his appreciation for other people's generosity, Boon said one of his most important life lessons is that individuals need to rely on their own initiative to succeed in life.
Time management is key
Boon’s humility is evident when he apologizes for his memory not being what it used to be, even as he recalls names of people he went to camp with as an 11-year-old in 1949.
He does three things repeatedly throughout a recent, wide-ranging interview with The Eagle at his Gleneagles home.
He stresses he wants this story to be about how important Rotary is, not about his own personal accomplishments. He continually asks if he’s boring the listener, and he checks his watch more often than the white rabbit did in Alice in Wonderland.
Like that rabbit, it seems Boon has an important date always on the horizon. Whether it’s a golf game, Rotary function, or a coffee meeting with friends, the 84-year-old has things to do, people to see, and no time to waste – especially on singing his own praises.
If ‘Git er done’ wasn’t already trademarked by Larry the Cable Guy, it certainly could have been adapted by Boon. Business was in his blood from an early age, and he learned to make the most of his surroundings.
Case in point: As a six-year-old, he convinced the milkman he needed a helper, earning 25 cents at the end of each day.
He laughs as he tells about his first business, started with his best friend Rudy. As an 11-year-old wandering the streets of Montreal in the late 1940s doing odd jobs, he took notice – along with everyone else in the heat and humidity – of the abundance of horse droppings piling up in the streets.
Rudy’s dad suggested the equine deposits could be turned into bank deposits.
“He said, ‘Why don’t you go and pick up all the buns and knock on people’s doors?’” Boon recalled.
The young entrepreneurs took matters into their own hands (and shovels), going door-to-door selling garbage cans full of fertilizer and dumping it on customers’ driveways.
“Rudy and I took a garbage can and a wheelbarrow and went around picking up horse s**t and knocking on doors.” he laughed.
It was his first exposure to sales, and would be a precursor to a long and illustrious career in retail.
The Hudson’s Bay Company sends Earl in
Boon’s importance and reputation at The Hudson’s Bay Company is evidenced by the numerous letters and keepsakes in scrapbooks (including one covered in sealskin) dating back to when he was 15 and lied about his age to join the company.
He started in Newfoundland and Labrador, went on to Wawa, Ontario, and eventually transferred to the head office in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Boon's steady climb up the Bay’s corporate ladder was accomplished despite a slow start that he attributes to his dyslexia, which he didn’t know the name of at the time.
“At that time we were called ‘slow learners’ – Albert Einstein had it,” he said with a laugh. “He was called a ‘slow learner’ . . . initially. So I’m in good company.”
One of Boon’s earliest postings with the Bay was in Newfoundland, where he took advantage of the East Coast isolation to teach himself to read.
At 18, he decided it was time to get properly educated. He talked a high school principal into letting him write the Grade 11 equivalency exam, and passed it.
The first hurdle thus cleared, Boon then gathered the books he’d need to cover Grade 12, absorbed them all – on his own – and passed that equivalency exam in less than a year to obtain his high-school diploma.
At the same time, Boon was already gaining a reputation at the Bay’s head office as someone who “knew how to make money.” He was selected at age 21 as one of two employees to be entered into a company program developing future executives.
From there, his determination and natural affinity for retail management led to a series of assignments. ‘Let’s send Earl’ became somewhat of a mantra for upper management when faced with challenges at any of their numerous retail locations around the country.
He became known for getting things done, and on time.
Rotary – the common thread
The Cochrane Rotarian, raconteur, and successful businessman is the longest serving member of the local branch of the club, having transferred his 1961 Ontario membership here.
Fellow Cochrane Rotarian and man-about-town Scott Grattidge is known for being a bit of a raconteur himself, though he laughs that description off, saying he can’t even spell raconteur.
“Earl is a unique guy. He has a great respect for everything and is a great storyteller,” Grattidge said of his long-time Rotary colleague.
Grattidge met Boon about 20 years ago and goes for lunch with him periodically to discuss “the stock market and life in general.” He said he sees similarities between Boon’s story and that of a famous explorer.
“I’ve done some research into the explorer David Thompson, growing up in an orphanage and going onto do great things, and Earl is kind of the same,” Grattidge said.
Boon speaks with pride whenever he circles back to the importance of Rotary, not just in his life, but on a bigger historical stage as well.
He said in his day, the “movers and shakers” in each town or city commonly made up the membership rolls.
To illustrate his point, he cites the role of Rotary in the early 1940s, when world leaders contemplated the problem of discovering a way to settle international conflicts without resorting to bloodshed or bombing.
At the organizational conference of the United Nations held in San Francisco in 1945, the United States delegation invited Rotary International to appoint consultants. Eleven prominent Rotarians served in this capacity with resulting influence on the humane aspects of the UN Charter.
“When [world leaders] were having difficulty, they came to Rotary and said, ‘Can you guys help us?’” Boon said. “It was instrumental in bringing people together – not many people know that.”
