INDEPTH: KEN THOMSON
The bashful billionaire
CBC News Online | June 12, 2006
 Ken Thomson, shown in May, was the ninth-richest person in the world, according to Forbes magazine. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)
Roy Thomson lived to work, devoting almost all of his time to making money. By the time he died in 1976, he had turned a $6,000 investment in a North Bay, Ont. radio station in 1931 into a $750-million international empire built on newspapers, broadcasting outlets, North Sea oilfields and Britain's largest travel services group.
Then along came Ken who took that legacy and turned it into a corporation said to be worth more than $30 billion and whose 2005 revenues were estimated at $8.7 billion. Forbes magazine estimated that in 2006, the Thomson family fortune — which consisted of 70 per cent of the shares of Thomson Corporation — was worth $19.6 billion US, making Thomson the richest person in Canada and the ninth richest in the world.
Thomson accomplished the feat by getting out of the day-to-day operations of the corporation — and presiding over the sale of assets that his father accumulated. Though one in particular he kept: He referred to the Globe and Mail as the "jewel of the crown" of the family's media empire. It was the one paper he maintained an interest in even after selling off the rest of the company's newspaper holdings. It was also a paper he had acquired, after his father had tried and failed to snap it up on previous occasions.
Roy Thomson once told his son that in order to be a success, you had to be a slave to the business. Ken Thomson decided to put his faith in a hand-picked management team.
Unlike his father, Ken Thomson shunned publicity. He was often described as a shy, shrewd businessman with an aloof nature. Roy Thomson, on the other hand, was intensely proud that he had been awarded a peerage to the British House of Lords in 1964. Lord Thomson of Fleet gave up his Canadian citizenship so he could sit in the House of Lords. Ken Thomson, who inherited the title, held onto his Canadian citizenship and never used the title.
Ken Thomson was born in Toronto on Sept. 1, 1923. The family moved to North Bay in 1927, four years before Roy Thomson saved up enough money to put a down payment on a radio station. They returned to Toronto in 1935 as the family business expanded. Ken attended school at Upper Canada College and planned to go to the University of Toronto in 1942, but he signed on with the Royal Canadian Air Force for the duration of the Second World War.
After the war, he studied at Cambridge University where he earned a degree in economics and law. Armed with his degree, Ken Thomson entered the family business — at the bottom. He wrote obituaries for the Timmins Daily Press, and then worked his way up.
In 1954, Roy Thomson moved to Scotland. Ken remained in Toronto where he took over as president and chairman of Thomson Newspapers. Two years later, Thomson married Marilyn Lavis. They had two sons, David and Peter, and a daughter, Taylor.
Thomson instilled the same "start-at-the-bottom" philosophy in his own children. When the Thomson family owned the Bay department store chain, he hired his son, David, to manage one of the chain's smaller outlets.
Ken Thomson inherited his father's ability to stretch a dollar. He bought his suits off the rack, carried a battered briefcase and was once photographed sporting a hole in one of his shoes. He's also known to have cruised supermarket aisles looking for food bargains.
Thomson and his wife rarely entertained in their 23-room mansion in Toronto's exclusive Rosedale neighbourhood. He preferred a simple life, enjoying nothing more than walking his small dog.
The great love of his life was art. He focused on old-style Canadian works by members of the Group of Seven as well as Paul Kane and Cornelius Krieghoff. He bought his first Krieghoff in 1950. His 3,000-piece art collection was estimated to be worth about $300 million.
Thomson donated most of the collection to the Art Gallery of Ontario, which is building an addition to house the material. Along with the art, came cheques for $50 million to help launch the gallery's expansion project and $20 million for its endowment fund.
He also donated millions of dollars to help build a concert hall in downtown Toronto in the 1980s. It was named for his father, Roy Thomson.
Thomson stepped down as chairman of Thomson Corporation in 2002, handing over the reins to his son, David. Under Ken Thomson's watch, one of the biggest newspaper companies in the world had become one of the world's largest digital information and academic publishing companies.
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