Diary of a Hedge Fund Manager: From the Top, to the Bottom, and Back Again

CHAPTER 2

SHIPPING OUT

The city of Thunder Bay, actually an amalgamation of two cities, Fort William and Port Arthur, sits atop Lake Superior in northwestern Ontario, right smack in the middle of the continent. It’s an hour’s drive from the U.S.-Canadian border, not far from Duluth, Minnesota. Actually one of North America’s earliest known trading hubs (Paleo-Indian, pelts, we’ re talking 1,000 years ago), Thunder Bay has long been a gateway for freighters carrying lumber and wheat from Western Canada down through the Great Lakes and into the St. Lawrence Seaway. Towering steel grain elevators, black and gray, still mark the lake head to this day. The city maintains a viable forestry industry, and transportation sector manufacturer Bombardier has a plant here, too.

To Canadians, though, Thunder Bay is best known for producing something far more valuable than timber or subway cars. Thunder Bay makes hockey players.

Growing up, kids get fitted for ice skates around the time they learn to walk. I was skating at 3. My first House League games were played as a 5-year-old. I came of age following the exploits of a fellow Ontario kid named Wayne Gretzky at the dawn of his career, first in the World Hockey Association and, after it folded, with the National Hockey League’s Edmonton Oilers. All of us kids idolized The Great One, and of course, we all watched the Toronto Maple Leafs on CBC’s ...