UNEXPECTED HONOUR
‘ A man beyond definition’
W. Brett Wilson has received his share of awards over the years, but one look at the list of recipients for the Bob Edwards Award told him the odds on him receiving this one were long.
“The Bob Edwards Award,” says Wilson, "was right at the top of the list of awards I didn’t expect to get.
“I looked,” he says, “at the historical recipients” — a roster of literary and pop culture heavyweights such as Lawrence Hill, Gwynn Dyer, former Herald columnist Catherine Ford, Mordecai Richler, Pulitzer Prize winner Carol Shields, John Raulston Saul, songwriter Ian Tyson, funny man Rick Mercer and funny woman Mary Walsh — “and said, this is an orange in a box of apples.”
However, says Brent Beuchler, vice- president of the Calgary Library Foundation, upon closer examination Wilson — the foundation’s 2015 Bob Edwards Award recipient — has more in common with Edwards than he might originally have suspected.
After all, Edwards provoked Calgarians through lively commentaries in the pages of The Eyeopener, his newspaper, 100 years ago.
In 2015, Wilson provokes Calgarians — and the world — through lively 140 character long commentaries on his Twitter feed.
Wilson, through his philanthropic efforts, has raised millions of dollars for various organizations across the country, most recently focusing on organizations devoted to addressing mental health.
And that hipster beard and loud, unsensible shirts, together with Wilson’s emergence as a television personality on such programs as CBC’s Dragons’ Den over the past six or seven years, has certainly reinvented the notion that corporate Calgary is nothing more than a bunch of suits and ties looking for a power lunch to crash.
“We’ve had our eyes on Brett for a while,” says Buechler, "as somebody who embodies that risk- taking element, thought leadership and who is really unafraid to present strong opinions which have obviously guided his life’s work as an entrepreneur, business leader and philanthropist.
“He’s a man who’s beyond definition,” adds Buechler. "He’s had great success as a business leader, an entrepreneur, a dealmaker, a TV personality — but, again, is leaving his mark in life as a philanthropist.”
Wilson receives his award Thursday night at an event held at the Palliser Hotel, with the proceeds going to the Calgary Library Foundation, which is in the midst of a capital campaign to help raise funds for the new Central Library, in the East Village downtown.
“This is an incredible moment in our city’s development,” says Buechler. "The city’s invested in what we call our intellectual infrastructure, with the building of the new central library.
“We’ve set out,” he says, “on a vision to create the best public library in the world, for Calgarians, and we think that is within reach.”
And — just as you might expect of a foundation dedicated to raising funds for libraries — the organization has even coined a new word to describe Wilson.
“We’ve defined him as an ultrapreneur,” says Buechler, "that’s a new forming definition of someone who goes beyond their original life’s work to really discover their life’s purpose.
“Brett,” he says, “really embodies that principle of being an ultrapreneur — someone wanting to leave his mark on our community beyond his business interests, by supporting the philanthropic needs, not only of Calgary, but our country.”
And whether he’s challenging the City of Calgary about the introduction of Uber to the city or shaming them about dithering on basement suites, or lobbying for more support for veterans, Wilson has never been shy about expressing his point of view.
“I’m having some fun,” he says, "pushing some buttons, whether it’s political or Remembrance Day.
“I like poking at stuff,” he says, “the goal in a lot of the conversations I start, is to create awareness and conversation — I take a strong view, and then willingly defend.” That’s a philosophy that sounds like something Edwards might have said at the turn of the 20th century.
Wilson is also a provocative do- gooder, well- known for challenging Calgary’s corporate community to step up their game at one of his famous philanthropic events, where he’s known to prod donors to give a little more than they’re comfortable giving.
Perhaps it might be fair to describe him — in the spirit of Bob Edwards — as a muckraking philanthropist? “I like those words,” says Wilson.
The Bob Edwards Gala on Thursday is at the Palliser Hotel