Pedestrians amble on the Coal Harbour seawall on a sunny late January afternoon as Graham Clarke Group owner Graham Clarke welcomes a guest inside one of his tenants’ meeting rooms at the Coal Harbour Marina in Vancouver.
Physically agile, mentally sharp and eager to chat, the 81-year-old looks about 20 years younger as he strings together stories from six decades in business.
Clarke owns six marinas, Harbour Cruises Ltd., Western Pacific Marine, a stake in Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre and various leases on land and water. He also manages various tourism and hospitality businesses owned by others.
He credits his good health to his lifestyle.
Intermittent fasting, genetic luck and operations that gave him artificial knees and an artificial hip have also helped him age well, he added.
“I go for a walk every day,” said Clarke.
“I lift Mickey Mouse weights, and then I pick a tune on my guitar. I’m not a good singer, but I sing. And then I shoot some pool.”
His routine is to randomly throw balls on the pool table at the home he shares in Vancouver’s West-of-Denman neighbourhood with wife Anne Bancroft-Jones.
He then tries to put spin on the cue ball when he shoots so he can wind up with a good leave, or an easier next shot.
“You’ve got to think through that,” he said. “If you do that when you go to work, I think it predisposes you to make cautious decisions.”
Succession planning is one thing Clarke has contemplated strategically.
Two employees are most likely to succeed him when the time comes. One, Odai Sirri, is general manager of Harbour Cruises and Western Pacific Marine. The other is Brook Castelsky, CEO at Clarke’s newly purchased Oak Bay Marine Group (OBMG).
Clake would not disclose how much he paid in December to buy OBMG, which came with four Vancouver Island marinas.
The transaction was complicated because he bought the company from an estate left by late founder Bob Wright, who died in 2013.
“There were quids pro quo in this whole thing, you know: We’ll do this, we’ll do that,” he said. “They wanted to sell this. I wanted that.”
This is why he does not own the Cape Santa Maria Beach Resort in the Bahamas. The estate does—he is simply paid to manage it.
A similar arrangement is at play with a profitable Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! franchise in Newport, Oregon.
BIV asked Clarke if he might want to expand and manage more than one Ripley’s franchise, given that the company is owned by Vancouver’s Jim Pattison Group and he has known owner Jim Pattison through the decades.
“That could be, but I wouldn’t want to tell you before I told Jimmy,” Clarke said with a laugh.
Being a partner in ventures comes naturally to Clarke.
Another project he is excited about involves Finland’s Sunborn International Holding Oy.
Clarke owns a lease on land under the water north of the Vancouver Convention Centre West building.
Sunborn wants to pay to use that site and build a floating 250-room hotel.
The proposed 431-foot long, 60-foot-wide structure would look like a large yacht and have six levels above water and one level below the surface.
Various permanent ramps would enable access. Sewage, electrical and water infrastructure would connect the floating structure to the convention centre.
Guests not staying at the hotel would be able to hang out on at least one level of the ship, which would include a restaurant, café, bar and arcade.
Vancouver city council has yet to fully give the project a green light, although the ruling ABC party’s councillors have sounded positive about it.
Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung, for example, has called the project a “step in the right direction” for creating more hotel rooms.
The lease Clarke owns north of the convention centre is only part of his leased waterfront holdings.
In addition to his Coal Harbour Marina, which is further west, Clarke owns a lease for where Harbour Cruises operates and where the Harbour Cruises marina is situated: North of Devonian Harbour Park, which is at the northern end of Denman Street.
His list of tenants includes Hullo Ferries, Cardero’s Restaurant and yacht seller Grand Yachts Inc.
The Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre, which he owns jointly with Ledcor Group of Cos., is the busy hub where seaplanes operate. He described that venture as profitable.
His Western Pacific Marine operates four ferry routes across the province.
In all, Clarke said his businesses generate tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue, although he would not pinpoint the exact number.
His OBMG purchase pushed his companies’ overall employee count to 417, from 277, he said.
The Harbour Cruises operation is what he calls the “heart” of his business, and it is one that he has owned since 1975. He bought it when it was a 67-year-old venture that was largely a ferry company.
Born in 1943 in England, Clarke moved to Victoria when he was three years old.
After high school in North Vancouver and a year at the University of British Columbia, he decided to take a year off university.
That year stretched to be a seven-year break.
He motorcycled around Australia and New Zealand and wound up travelling around the world twice, visiting all continents except Antarctica.
Clarke set up businesses along the way.
One, established in Bangkok, was bought by an international mutual fund company that kept Clarke on as staff, and sent him to Hong Kong, he said.
He made money in different ways. One gig was promoting what became a sold-out Hong Kong concert for the Bee Gees in 1972, long before the band hit superstardom with their Saturday Night Fever album in 1977.
Because he was in the arbitrage and mutual fund sector, he said, he knew beforehand that Japan was planning to intervene in currency markets and revalue its yen.
“I took all the Hong Kong dollars that I’d earned, and I converted them to yen,” Clarke said. “Overnight it went up 25 per cent.”
By 1975, he had returned to Vancouver and was offered a job as manager of what was then Harbour Ferries.
His finances were flush after his travels so instead of taking the management job, he offered to buy the company from then-owner Ardiem Industrial.
It was not a core holding for Ardiem so its executives gave him a good price, he said.
The business at the time included five boats. It now has three, but the boats are bigger, Clarke said. So are the company’s operations.
His dedication to his businesses is clear from some of his experiences.
Clarke told BIV that he was on B.C. Ferries’ Queen of the North when it sank near Hartley Bay in March 2006.
He was on board because he was considering operating ferry routes in northern B.C. and wanted to see the area.
His business acumen has been sought by various organizations over the decades.
At different times, he has been chair of the Vancouver Board of Trade (now Greater Vancouver Board of Trade), Tourism Vancouver (now Destination Vancouver) and the Vancouver International Airport Authority (now Vancouver Airport Authority.)
He has also chaired boards for a former BC Hydro subsidiary as well as the Vancouver International Maritime Centre, AdvantageBC and others.
He oversaw the transfer of Vancouver International Airport from Transport Canada to its current independently run operation.
He was also instrumental in lobbying the federal government to help fund Canada Place.
Ottawa bureaucrats were reluctant at the time because, they said, they would have to fund similar centres in cities across the country, he said.
“Why don’t you make it the Canada pavilion at Expo 86?” Clarke recalled suggesting. “‘OK,’ they said. ‘Done.’”
Those who have worked at promoting tourism in Vancouver praise Clarke’s community service through the decades.
“His willingness to go beyond being a private entrepreneur and to give back to the community in significant volunteer ways I always admired,” said Rick Antonson, who was CEO of what was Tourism Vancouver after Clarke had left that company’s board.
“He was always one to give good, solid, uncoloured advice. If you were looking at doing something, he would home in on the practicalities and have descriptive explanations.”
