REMEMBERING LEONARD LEE
Lee Valley founder
Leonard Lee came from humble beginnings in Saskatchewan, where he studied in a one-room school but flourished, becoming a savvy entrepreneur who grew a world-renown business in Ottawa on the principles of honesty, integrity and a strong work ethic.
Lee, the founder of Lee Valley Tools and one of Ottawa’s most prominent businessmen, died Thursday at the age of 77 after a rapid progression of vascular dementia.
His son, Robin Lee, said his dad ran the company in a way suited to Ottawa — a big city that feels like a small town.
“He has always been very empowering to staff, hiring people with good judgment and strong values and teaching them the rest,” Lee said.
Lee is best known for founding the Ottawa-based mail order company that offered a wide variety of quality tools. He founded the company at the age of 39 after working in the Canadian Foreign Service and as a civil servant. Lee said his father left the public service when it became too bureaucratic. He wanted to be the person making decisions.
Lee Valley Tools began with the sale of cast iron stove parts sold by mail from a rented basement in a strip mall. The first catalogue came out in 1978.
“Mail order and cast iron is not the same as mail order and jewelry,” Lee said with a chuckle. “It’s heavy and it’s fragile, too.”
Over time, Lee Valley Tools morphed into the high-end tool company that it is today and expanded to include retail locations across the country and a manufacturing division called Veritas Tools. The company also branched out from selling woodworking products to include gardening, hardware, kitchen and other home product lines.
In 1998, Lee founded Canica Design, a company that developed cutting-edge medical tools for cleft palates. Although Canica was Lee’s biggest business disappointment, it was the “gold standard” to help children with cleft palates and was something he was very proud of, his son said. “There was no market for it though, which drove him crazy because he thought what’s more important than a child’s face,” Lee said.
After taking a leap into the medial field — something Lee had never done before — he cut his losses and sold the company.
Lee was committed to his family and made sure his wife, Lorraine, and sons Robin and James were together for dinner every night. They also spent time together at the cottage and travelled as a family.
Lee was born in 1938 in Wadena, Sask., and grew up in a log cabin without electricity or running water. He studied civil engineering at the Royal Military College, attended the Royal Roads Military College in Victoria, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Queen’s University.
Lee received honorary degrees from Carleton University, Royal Military College, the University of Ottawa, and was awarded the Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilee Medals and the Order of Canada.
When Lee received his honorary degree from the University of Ottawa, he told graduating students they should choose jobs based on their interests and passions. He said that loving his job is better than driving a fancy car. Lee also urged students to take risks.
“If you never took a risk, you never would have got your first kiss,” he said. “It’s important that you be willing to take risks in your profession and your career, and have the courage to work on the cutting edge of engineering and be creative — that’s really where the fun is, not in the day-to-day stuff.” mhurley@postmedia.com Twitter.com/meghan_hurley With files from Jacquie Miller
Editorial page editors regularly get calls from people taking issue with the paper’s editorial stance, so I wasn’t taken aback when Leonard Lee telephoned in late 1991. In a polite but firm fashion, he informed me that we didn’t understand the financial exigencies for a medium-sized business such as Lee Valley Tools.
I countered by inviting him to join us for a month as a guest member of the editorial board, taking part in the morning meeting to determine the thrust of the next day’s editorials. I never expected he would accept, since he did have a business to manage, even if it was only a few minutes away from the Citizen’s Baxter Road offices.
But Leonard Lee surprised me and throughout February 1992 he turned up daily.
You learn a lot about someone when you have intense discussions for an hour about everything from taxes, to municipal services, to federal politics and international affairs.
I learned that Leonard Lee was passionate about Saskatchewan, about language, about carpentry, about imaginative inventions, about the Canadian federation and about integrity in business dealings.
Above all else, I learned that he was an honourable man.
Over the next 24 years, these first impressions were reinforced and deepened as we became friends.
When Leonard was appointed a member of the Order of Canada in October 2002, his citation read: “In addition to being a successful entrepreneur, he is active within the community and has generously given of his time to the University of Ottawa, Algonquin College, the Public Policy Forum and the Greater Ottawa Board of Trade.”
Rideau Hall didn’t know the half of it.
Dozens of undertakings have received a quiet helping hand from Leonard Lee and the company he started by putting together a catalogue at a kitchen table with his wife, Lorraine.
My own such experience came when I was trying to launch the Word on the Street literacy event in Ottawa in 1998. I approached Leonard for a contribution. No, he said, I won’t give you money but I will help you to raise some. Find a book that our company can reprint and sell and we’ll donate all the proceeds beyond the production costs.
We found two out-of-copyright books that were perfectly attuned to the Lee Valley clientele: A Hundred Things a Boy Can Make and A Hundred Things a Girl Can Make. Their sales contributed more than $15,000 to the event.
Leonard’s integrity was as boundless as the sky in his native Saskatchewan. One incident particularly epitomized this for me.
The company had designed an ingenious kit version of a cloche, a plastic-walled box to protect plants from frost. After many sales, they discovered that in prolonged high temperatures the metal frame might expand faster than the plastic inserts which might pop out. No one had complained but Leonard sent a refund to all buyers. And invited them to keep the cloches.
Leonard was endlessly imaginative about discovering items that satisfied his love of practicality and would also appeal to the company’s customers. Look closely at those popular white plastic scrub brushes which Lee Valley correctly claims have dozen of uses and you’ll see a rectangular indentation on the back. Originally, that held a miniature bar of antibacterial soap and the brush was used to scrub a patient’s skin at the spot where surgeons were going to operate. When Leonard had a back operation, he was scrubbed with one of those brushes. Soon after, he bought the manufacturer’s entire stock.
Two years ago, I drove to Almonte for one of our regular, if infrequent, lunches. Our talk ranged from his collection of heirloom slide rules to an awl for making standard-sized holes in drywall. As I was leaving, he dragged me into Mill Street Books and thrust The Happiness Diet into my hands, saying “You must read this. It changed my life.”
A man of endless enthusiasm and boundless integrity has left us.