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Environment
The late Glen Davis was no ordinary philanthropist
The murdered environmentalist inherited his wealth through connections that run from Conrad Black to Prince Philip
by Kevin Potvin
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Glen W Davis, the reclusive environmental philanthropist found mysteriously shot to death in a Toronto parking garage May 18, was no ordinary businessman.
His wealth was inherited from his father, Nelson M Davis, who died of a heart attack in 1979 at the age of 72, when he was one of the richest men in Canada, and every bit the recluse his son turned out to be.
Nelson Davis was chair and president of NM Davis Corporation, his own secretive energy and mining investment company. More interestingly, Nelson Davis was also chair of Argus Corporation.
The Conrad connection
Argus was also originally a Canadian mining company founded in 1945 before it fell into the hands of one Conrad Black, who purchased a controlling interest in the company from the widow of the late Bud MacDonald, president of Argus till he died, in 1978. Black parlayed his gain into a purchase of Hollinger Mines, founded in 1909 and at one time the largest gold mining company in the Western Hemisphere. Black placed Hollinger under the control of his Nelson Davis-run Argus Corp, and placed Argus under his wholly owned parent company, Ravelston (named, bizarrely enough, after a minor character in a 1936 George Orwell novel who publishes a radical left-wing newspaper called The Antichrist in the basement of a derelict building).
Glen Davis’ father is not only described as Conrad Black’s early mentor, but he also sat at the nexus between the 34-year-old Black’s growing web of private companies and the public companies he was rapidly becoming invested in. Nelson Davis was not only Black’s senior by 42 years, he was by far the wealthier of the two men.
With Nelson Davis in charge of Hollinger through his chairman-ship of Argus, Black enticed to the board of Hollinger such right-wing luminaries as Henry Kissinger and Richard Perle. Perle also was hired by Black as president of Hollinger Digital, a subsidiary of Hollinger Inc. Black has been closely associated with many other men besides these who were also intimately involved in the criminal presidency of Richard Nixon, about whom Black has recently released a sympathetic biography. He also rose to a seat on the steering committee of the notorious Bilderberg Group.
Dad’s business
Glen Davis picked up where his father left off in 1979, after he died of a poolside heart attack in Arizona. He maintained much the same business interests as his father, as well as the connections. In the early 1980s, he struck up a relationship with Monte Hummel, then the president of World Wildlife Fund Canada, and now honoured as president-emeritus. Glen Davis went on to donate millions of dollars to plenty of causes in the years since, but none so much as what he donated to Hummel’s WWF.
The head office of the worldwide Prince Philip-launched WWF organization is strategically located in the secret banking enclave of Switzerland. WWF reported revenues in 2005 of US$121 million. Sitting on the current board of the Canadian branch of WWF are R B Matthews, president of Manitou Investments, which is deeply invested in mining concerns; Patricia Koval, a partner in powerful global law firm Torys LLP (alongside former Ontario Conservative Premier William Davis, no known relation to Glen); Bryce Hunter, chair of Huntro Investments, also involved in mining; and other top executives from AGF Management, Catalyst Paper Corp, J P Morgan, Morgan Stanley Canada, and Deloitte & Touche, as well as top executives from other leading banking and resource extraction companies. In a 2000 speech to members of the Davis Family Trust, Hummel offered that his first love, in the field of conservation, is the Canadian Barrens—the vast area between Hudson’s Bay and the MacKenzie River rich in minerals, including gold—containing perhaps the largest reserves of gold in the world according to analysts, though much of it remains inaccessible for now.
After meeting Hummel, Glen Davis, recent inheritor of what has been described as one of the largest personal fortunes in Canada (built up by his father through close association with Conrad Black, Henry Kissinger, and Richard Perle, through companies originally involved in resource extraction), also acquired a love for conservation and in particular for the Barrens area of Canada—the rich, largely untapped sea of resources first introduced to him by Hummel. He thereafter became a significant donor to Hummel’s WWF Canada fund, on whose board of directors sit the top executives of some of Canada’s—and the world’s—biggest resource extraction and banking companies, and began taking trips alone into the Barrens and becoming something of a world expert, with Hummel, on the region.
A secretive man
Davis was shot in the basement garage of the building housing WWF Canada, immediately after a meeting in WWF offices. The man who called Davis’ father his mentor, Conrad Black, is currently on trial in Chicago on embezzlement charges arising from the intricate financial relationship between Hollinger, Argus, and Ravelston that Black set up with Glen Davis’ father as his guide and mentor 30 years ago.
Police say they have no leads in the murder of Glen Davis, and no motive. He has been honoured by leading environmental organiza-tions for his largesse, but was said to be a very secretive man.
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