Philanthropists and daughter die in plane crash
Joe Robertson helped to create a dentalsupply firm and sold it for millions of dollars before he turned 40, then, with his wife, Anita, became a major philanthropist in southern Ontario.
The couple, both 58, and their 24-yearold daughter, Laura Robertson, died in a plane crash on Monday as they flew to P.E.I. for a vacation.
“He was unbelievable,” said Carman Adair, Joe Robertson’s business partner. “He was a machine. You couldn’t find a better business partner. He was brilliant and caring and thoughtful and fair. The best Bay Street lawyers, he would correct their work.”
Each time he viewed a photo of the crumpled fuselage, Adair said he could not believe his meticulous and caring business partner was piloting the aircraft that crashed into a field in northern Maine.
The twin-engine plane plunged to the ground near the Greenville municipal airport in the U.S. state’s interior during an attempted landing on Monday morning.
“I keep looking at the plane wreckage and thinking that cannot be Joe,” Adair said on the phone from Langley.
“He told me when he took lessons on that plane from a master trainer. He did 168 takeoffs and landings in a two-week period.”
Adair was struggling to understand what might have gone wrong for the brilliant Harvard MBA graduate.
The business partners took Arcona Health Inc. from inception into a firm with $65 million in annual sales and more than 900 staff before it was sold in 1998.
They had recently finalized an agreement to resume their partnership on a fresh venture, hoping to repeat their success with a new firm, Amax Health Inc.
The cause of the crash remained unknown, though the U.S. National Transportation Safety Agency has launched a probe of the crash of the twinengine Piper PA-60 Aerostar.
The flight started from Pembroke, near the family’s Golden Lake, Ont., cottage, and was bound for Charlottetown, with plans to carry on after a few days to Newfoundland and Labrador.
Terry Williams, a spokesman for the NTSB, said Robertson called in a loss of engine power to the Boston air traffic control on Monday morning.
Witnesses saw the aircraft pass by the municipal airport, bank and plunge to the ground as an emergency landing was attempted.
As news spread through the family’s hometown, local community leaders expressed their sadness at the news.
Brian McMullan, a former mayor of St. Catharines, said in the years that followed Robertson’s retirement from the dental supply business, the couple became key philanthropists in the Niagara area.
He said in an interview that the Niagara-on-the-Lake residents were “genuine, decent people,” whose early donation to the St. Catharines performing arts centre was a bold move that helped revitalize the city’s centre.
They were also strong supporters of Brock University, the United Way and Niagara Health, he said.
One of their donations funds a bursary to support hospital staff taking classes at the St. Catharines campus.
The university said Robertson spent a decade on the school’s board, including two years as chair, from 2012-14. He had also chaired the Council of Chairs of Ontario Universities, it said.
Anita Robertson was also an active volunteer for Brock and charities in the area. Laura Robertson had recently been hired to work at the recreation and athletics department at Brock University. They are survived by two adult sons.