Author says Joyce ‘proud of what he’d accomplished’
While Jack Coulter knew Ron Joyce as a boy, author Douglas Hunter knew him as a prominent businessman and a powerful force.
The nature of the man behind the reputation he came to know better after the interviews, when he was waiting for Open Ice to go to print.
Someone at the book’s publisher, Penguin, thought that more copies could be sold if it was by the cash at Tim Hortons restaurants across Canada. So, without asking the author, they sent a copy of the as-yet-unpublished manuscript to corporate office at Tim Hortons.
“I was mortified,” Hunter said. Among the people quoted in Open Ice was Lori Horton, Tim’s widow, who was at the time suing Joyce over the settlement reached two decades earlier.
Also in the book were details about how during the business’ early days to keep things going, Joyce had mortgaged properties he didn’t even own. There were also details about Horton’s drinking. It was a book by a professional journalist, not a hagiography.
Hunter got a call from Joyce out of the blue on a Thursday.
“He said, ‘ Yeah, I’ve got it, going to give it a read-over. Don’t worry, I’m not going to want to change anything,’” Hunter said.
“Then he phoned again, in a bit of a sweat, suddenly it was, ‘Boy, I didn’t know that tape was running.’”
Then Hunter, a freelance journalist with no resources for a protracted legal fight, got nervous.
“He could have crushed me,” said Hunter.
“I said, ‘Ron, do this for me – take the weekend and read the whole thing.’ Monday the phone rings. He said, ‘I read it, I’m not happy with everything but I understand why it’s there.’”
And over what likely would have been the objections of his corporate lawyers, Joyce told Hunter to run the book.
To Hunter, that said a lot about the man he was dealing with.
Later, he’d get phone calls out of the blue from Joyce, just to chat.
“He was proud of what he’d accomplished,” Hunter said.
“He wasn’t boastful or anything, he just liked that it had happened.”