Self-made Walter Henn knew not how to stop
Walter Henn was a self-made man — thus did he make more people eat more exotic meat at more farm markets than any man in Eastern Ontario.
Henn died Friday at age 76, when his heart finally gave out, his ambition still alive. Even from a bed at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, he was sketching out plans to improve and expand Bearbrook Game Meats, near the village of Navan.
As the owner of Bearbrook Farm (its first name in a different location), he bred and raised wild boar, emu, ostrich, buffalo, sheep, goats, deer, chickens and geese. He kept pheasants around for their good looks, and llamas, ponies and donkeys, just because.
At its peak, the farm had 600 animals. His exotic meats were sold from Carp to Metcalfe; Henn himself was one of the founders of the Ottawa Farmers’ Market.
And the meat was merely an appetizer. During a 45-year business career in the east end, Henn built a refrigeration-equipment business that shipped all over the world, dabbled in real estate development, built an overnight tourist resort, and threw in a petting zoo.
“He never retired,” said his daughter Heidi, 51, the elder of two children. “He never went anywhere where he wasn’t investigating other businesses.”
She described a vacation to Hawaii: “He came home and told us he bought a marble company. My mother said, ‘You did what?’ ”
Henn came to Canada from Germany in 1960, arriving in Toronto on July 1 with a couple of suitcases and $50 in his pocket. He spoke little or no English, forcing him to take low-skill work. In an oral history, he described taking a room in a boarding house for $16 a week and working at night picking worms on a golf course.
Trained as a welder, he found work where he could, including a cheeky stint as a baker when his supervisor discovered he barely knew flour from Shinola, but his gumption got him the job anyway.
He returned to Germany in 1961 to marry Inge — who still works in the business — and they came back to Canada that year, soon to live on a dairy farm bought by Inge’s parents near the village of Leonard.
It wasn’t long before the couple bought their own farm and began raising hogs. Ever the innovator, Henn wondered why he had to sell the hogs to a middle man, who would resell the animals at a profit before they arrived in stores.
So, he started his own slaughterhouse and retail shop. This was not far from the farm of Brian Coburn, later the mayor of Cumberland and member of the Ontario legislature. Coburn, 70, said he met Henn more than 50 years ago.
“He was quite a character. There was no stop to the man,” Coburn said Tuesday.
“One thing would lead to another. It was like a tumbling effect. He’d get into something and his mind was always working.”
When he decided to sell his own meat, for instance, he began looking for used refrigeration equipment. This led him to buy the entire cooler stock from a grocery store under renovation in Ottawa. He resold some before it even left the store — and a business was born.
Henn, well-known for a trademark hat, began buying used cooling equipment, only to refurbish and resell it. It grew into a business worth in excess of $5 million annually, with shipments to about 20 countries, including Russia.
It also put Henn on the international-trade radar, leading to receptions with prime minister Pierre Trudeau in 1973 and even a meeting with the Queen. He later went on a trade mission to Moscow with prime minister Brian Mulroney in 1989.
Coburn said many have forgotten the tourist magnet the Henn family created at Bearbrook. Seeing the exotic animals drew crowds, and he began taking busloads of European tourists making their way from Ottawa to Montreal.
A small bed and breakfast turned into a 72-room hotel with a swimming pool. At its busiest, Bearbrook saw 200 buses a season and employed close to 80 people. He is credited, too, with frequent philanthropy, including bailing out neighbours during the ice storm of 1998.
“He was a very dedicated Canadian,” said Heidi. “Whenever he spoke to relatives in Germany, he would tell them Canada was the greatest place to live.”
A service honouring Henn is to be held Wednesday at 3 p.m. at the Maple Leaf Almrausch Club where — no surprise here — he was twice president of the German-themed venue.