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Purdy Crawford BY I. RATE I WAS COMPLETELY GOBSMACKED BY THE NEWS OF JOHN BRAGG’S NOV. 10 INDUCTION INTO THE V. IMPORTANT-SOUNDING CANADA’S TELECOMMUNICATIONS HALL OF FAME IN OT- TAWA. Naturally, my first impulse was to rush to the phone and congratulate John, but alas, because I am an Eastlink customer, my phone line was dead. Leastlink magnate John and son Lee Bragg like to go mano-a-mano with the big boys - Eastlink is now the country’s largest private TV cable company - but if its phone service to parts of downtown Halifax is any indication, the company may be better off keeping to the kid’s wading pool. Put it this way: if Alexander Graham Bell went with Eastlink, he’d wish he’d never invented the telephone. For at least five months now, Eastlink’s service to some biz customers along the Hollis- Granville-Duke-George corridor — including the Frankland Bunker — has been abysmal. At times the loss of dial tone has led us to consider advertising its disappearance on a milk carton. Have you seen Eastlink’s dial tone? It’s been missing all week! While calls are dropped infrequently, it has been known to happen; but more frustratingly, many calls are marred by constant noise interference. At times it’s like you’re speaking underwater. It happens so often, I’m nominating John Bragg for a berth in the Canadian Aquatic Hall Of Fame. Over-worked Eastlink reps have told us the recurring problems are likely due to deterioration in the company’s underground infrastruc- 4 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK DECEMBER 7, 2010 LET’S DO LUNCH... BY COLE D. CUTTS TWO MEN WHO HAVE ESCAPED SCRUTINY IN MAPLE LEAF FOOD’S DECI- SION TO CLOSE ITS LARSEN PLANT IN BERWICK AND THROW 280 PEOPLE OUT OF WORK, ARE BIZ TITANS JOHN BRAGG AND PURDY CRAWFORD. Last year, Oxford Frozen Foods and Eastlink czar Bragg and Crawford, the darling of Bay Street, split $160,000 between them in director’s fees for parking their fat-cat behinds around the Maple Leaf boardroom table. To earn their princely sums — an amount I’m sure any of the laid-off Larsen workers would be thrilled to receive — both men attended 10 of the 11 yearly board meetings. Bragg, who ranks among the top 100 richest men in Canada, held $2.2 million worth of company shares as of last February, while Five Islands native Crawford owned $2.7 million in shares. Having rebounded from its 2008 listeriosis outbreak, Maple Leaf’s stock price has risen in the past year from a low of $8.47 to a high of $13. Good news for major shareholders like Bragg and Crawford, bad news for the victims of Maple Leaf’s restructuring. Last year ceo Michael McCain’s total compensation rose nearly $3 million, to a whopping $7.3 million. CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW...? ture, and can guarantee no estimated repair time. If John and Lee Bragg can’t provide reliable phone service to businesses in the commercial heart of Atlantic Canada, they should fold up and go back to picking blueberries in Oxford! In the past five years, Eastlink’s Halifax market share has risen from 34% to 50%, but many see the jump more as a result of public dissatisfaction with the Upper Canada-based Bell Aliant, than with anything Eastlink is doing right. If its piss-poor service continues, Eastlink will be bleeding customers left and right, not that the Bragg family ogliarchy is likely to notice. Last year John’s empire — worth over $711 million, making him the 77th richest man in the country — sold its cable interests in Saskatchewan for over $26 million, and unloaded its Pierceys hardware stores to Rona, in a similar-sized deal. Industry chatter has Eastlink poised for an expansion into the lucrative wireless and cellphone market, and rumours abound that the company is ready to swap some of its Western Canadian holdings to the Shaw media empire. The big-time wheeling and dealing is all well and good, but Maple Leaf and TD Bank corporate director John — who owns his own multimillion dollar private jet (Frank 563) and whose companies benefited from more than $60 million in N.S. government loans — needs to remember capitalism’s cardinal rule: people pay his company to provide basic services, and if Eastlink can’t deliver, the customers take their money elsewhere. John Bragg in the Hall of Fame? You’ve got to be kiddin’ me! Hall of Shame, is more like it. dan@atlanticfrank.ca John Bragg Keith Condon DR. KEITH, IF YOU DON’T MIND A TIP OF THE OLE FRANKLAND MORTARBOARD TO TRI-STAR INDUSTRIES AMBULANCE MAN KEITH CONDON FOR HIS DALHOUSIE U. HONOURARY DEGREE. Over the past five years, taxpayers have coughed up over $20 million to Tri-Star, to lease 150 of its ambulances. My trusty Frankland abacus tells me we lease each hospital wagon for about $25,000 a year. No bloody wonder, we’re slapped with a $670 bill every time we ride in it! Keith’s daughter, Halifax biz consultant April MacLeod, formerly toiled at Dal’s School of Business.
IRVING’S PRIVATE FORTUNE BY WILL N. TESTAMENT USUALLY, A $4 MILLION WILL MAKES PEOPLE STAND UP AND TAKE NOTICE. But if the number is used to describe Schwartz Furniture and Seaside Communications magnate Irving Schwartz’s will, $4 million — which, let’s face it, is a staggering amount — provokes only raised eyebrows. “Is that all he had?” asked one longtime publicly elected official. “I would have thought he had more than that.” He sounded almost cresftfallen. One Sydney entrepreneur said he would have guessed Irving’s fortune would have been larger, considering that “he had the same vinyl window blinds on his house since the late 1960s.” Irving was one of those rare breeds, a man who went to work every day, and worked his tail off, and did not indulge in a lavish lifestyle. Ostentatious and flamboyant were two adjectives that you never associated with Irving Schwartz. But it is worth noting that his estate’s final inventory is not yet filed; at this stage, Irving’s $4-million estate consists only of personal property, and does not include his varied business interests. When the final inventory is completed by his quartet of executors — wife Diana Schwartz, daughter Margo Schwartz, retired Sobeys exec James Gogan, and David Miller, who owns the Mickey Dee’s franchise in the Little Vatican — the estate value may swell. We’ll have to wait and see. Beside his cash cows, the cable and furniture companies, the “I guarentee it” pitchman also had investments and directorships with John Risley’s fish guts empire Ocean Nutrition and Chad Munro’s X-ray peddling Halifax Biomedical (Frank 598). Like most successful entrepreneurs, Irving Irving Schwartz Joseph Claener experienced his share of spectacular biz failings, such as the Atlantic Castings boondoggle, which cost the taxpayer a pretty penny. But overall, I’d say the legendary biz figure and philanthropist, who gave away a small fortune in his lifetime, made out pretty good with his $4 million. Not bad for a kid who started working at his mother Rose Schwartz’s general store when he was only knee high to a grasshopper. As you can expect, Irving’s will, signed three months before his Sept. 18 death at 81, enriched those who meant the most to him — his family. Irving left all of his household possessions and real estate — including a 50-acre parcel in Guysborough County — to his wife of 52 years, Diana. Diana owns the couple’s longtime Churchill Drive abode, assessed at a modest $153,200. Irving set aside a cool $200,000 apiece to each of his four kids, London, England rezzie Margo, whose husband Adrian Noskwith is now Seaside president; David Schwartz of Halifax; and Joanne Schwartz and Stephanie Schwartz, who both live in Toronto, a fact we will not hold against them. CAPE BRETON CALLING... SCREAMING EAGLES LOSE A BOOSTER THE SCHWARTZ FAMILY IS SELLING ITS STAKE IN THE CAPE BRETON SCREAMING EAGLES AS A PART OF ITS OVERALL STRATEGY TO FOCUS ON THE CLAN’S CORE BUSINESSES. Seaside Communications president Adrian Noskwith — Irving’s son-in-law — says the family’s single share in the QMJHL team is worth about $20,000. Last time out I told you that another plank in Seaside’s streamlining strategy, the sale of close to $1 million worth of Halifax Biomedical stock back to the Maboubased start-up, left company CEO Chad Munro scrambling to come up with the cash. He and Diana’s four grandchildren were allotted $10,000 each. Welton Street dentist, Irving’s cousin Dr. Joseph Claener, was bequeathed $50,000. His 11-page will contains a reference to a discretionary trust created earlier in the year, suggesting that whip smart Irving, who battled colon battle for the past two years, finalized all of his estate planning sometime ago. dan@atlanticfrank.ca SILVER DONALD GIVING UP LOVENEST IT’S A HEART THING, SAYS SILVER DONALD CAMERON. A heart scare four years ago, to be precise, and the fact that the <strong>love</strong> of his life makes her living as a freelancer, mostly in Halifax, has prompted the acclaimed Nova Scotia writer to put one of his D’Escousse houses on the market. His ad on Facebook Marketplace exclaims: “PRICE REDUCED! Professional and health issues made us move to Halifax, so we have to sell one of the two houses we own in D’Escousse.” CONTINUED ON PAGE 7 DECEMBER 7, 2010 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK 5
Page 1 and 2: Fusion self-love! Dead ponzi scheme
Page 3: ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK HALIFAX, NOVA
Page 7 and 8: � � � Sydney barrister Joseph
Page 9 and 10: THE FRAGRANCE OF HEARTACHE: THE BAR
Page 11 and 12: I’m entitled to... some taxi chit
Page 13 and 14: Pictou County deputy sheriff Morgan
Page 15 and 16: MORE MISSING MONEY NEWS BY T. DOFF
Page 17 and 18: WEDDING BELLE, FROM PREVIOUS PAGE C
Page 19 and 20: CRAVING A TINY SLICE OF CUBA BUT CA
Page 21 and 22: THE DOPE ON THE QUEENS COUNCILLOR B
Page 23 and 24: SO, WHAT’S A BRIGHT YOUNG THING D
Page 25 and 26: Royal LePage “realtorextrordinair
Page 27 and 28: FAX ANYTIME: (902) 423-0281 LETTERS
Page 29 and 30: BUT OKAY THEN... I MAY NOT HAVE ANY
Page 31 and 32: FAX ANYTIME: (902) 423-0281 LETTERS

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