National Post (National Edition)
JR SHAW LEAVES LEGACY AS A TELECOM PIONEER.
An ‘inspirational entrepreneur,’ says BCE CEO
JR Shaw, a family man with a powerful handshake and a warm nature, leaves a legacy as a Canadian telecommunications industry pioneer who built his Alberta cable startup into one of the nation’s largest communications providers.
The Shaw Communications Inc. founder and executive chairman died peacefully Monday at age 85.
“JR was the founder and leader of our company, but he was also an exceptional husband, a loving father, grandfather and great grandfather. His legacy of love and compassion for people will live on for generations,” Shaw chief executive Brad Shaw, JR’s youngest son, said in a statement.
JR was born in 1934 in Brigden, Ont., where he would watch U.S. TV stations on cross-border signals. When he moved to Edmonton in 1961, the only channel he could get was the CBC. He felt he had no choice but to start his own cable company in 1966, according to an interview with the Alberta Business Hall of Fame.
“People would say, ‘You’re building 27 channels, why would you do that? I can only watch one at a time.’ But we wanted to have state of the art and choice,” JR said.
Over the next five decades, Shaw grew into one of Canada’s largest cable and satellite providers and radio and TV broadcasters. It started offering internet in 1996, spun off the media business into Corus Entertainment Inc. in 1999, launched residential telephone service in 2005 and entered the wireless market in 2016 with the purchase of Wind Mobile, now called Freedom.
JR stepped down as CEO in 1998 and was succeeded by his older son Jim Shaw, who died after a brief illness in 2018. Brad became the Calgary-based company’s third CEO in 2010, but his father always remained active in the business.
“I spoke to JR every day about the business. He was engaged and interested in everything the company was doing — from the latest technology being rolled out to how we were meeting the needs of families across Western Canada,” said Brad, who will assume his father’s executive chairman role on an interim basis.
“Our tribute to him will be to continue to grow the business he loved.”
Growth was one of JR’s main motivators, said Peter Bissonnette, a former Shaw president and board member who worked with JR for 31 years.
“It was all about what is the next challenge,” said Bissonnette, who described him as a mentor and father figure.
JR led by example, a humble man who was known for building strong relationships with industry players, regulators and employees, Bissonnette said.
“Irrespective of what the situation was, if he gave you his word you could take that to the bank,” he said. “He could build relationships on a handshake, and he had a powerful handshake, I might say. You could tell he worked with cattle.”
JR took pride in the company he built, delivering by hand to every employee a book on the company’s history called Above and Beyond, Bissonnette said. But his biggest motivator was family. He and his wife Carol had four children, Jim, Heather, Julie and Brad. Bissonnette said JR took immense pride in the success of his children and grandchildren, who celebrated his 85th birthday at a family retreat in Newport, RI last year.
Tributes also poured in from telecom executives across the country, including Shaw’s competitors who praised JR as a “true pioneer.”
BCE Inc. CEO Mirko Bibic called him an “inspirational entrepreneur,” Telus Corp. CEO Darren Entwistle said he was “an extraordinary leader and a formidable competitor,” and Rogers Communications Inc. CEO Joe Natale described him as “one of Canada’s greatest entrepreneurs” admired for his achievements and thoughtful nature.
JR’s competitors also admired him for his people skills, whether he was speaking with employees, negotiating takeovers or dealing with the regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
“JR as a businessman had great instincts. But it was his skill with people that made a difference,” said Rogers vice chairman Phil Lind, who has known JR since the ’60s and described his friend as a family man who was adored by employees.
When Shaw was buying up cable companies in Eastern Canada, Lind remembers JR’s transactions as very smooth compared to Rogers’ deals, which were more contentious. JR also had a way of satisfying the CRTC, Lind said.
“At the commission, we had to fight every inch of the way … it just amazed me, every time he’d get through without even a hearing.”
Shaw board member Adrian Burns remembers dealing with JR when she was a CRTC commissioner in the 1980s.
“Shaw was always the gold standard for the regulators,” Burns said, adding what JR said was always viable, truthful and workable.
Burns, one of the first women on Shaw’s board, described JR as an “equal opportunity man” who accepted people for their abilities.
“My memories of him are of his kindness and caring, and on the business side, the same thing but his razor sharp ability to get to the point and make a decision — almost inevitably the right one,” she said.
During the coronavirus crisis, JR’s legacy becomes more pronounced as Canadians flood the networks that Shaw and his peers started setting up decades ago.
“Without these sustainable broadband networks, I don’t think the country would be doing as well as it’s doing.”
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