A product of the Don Valley Racers program in Toronto,[1] he won the 1968 Southern Ontario Junior Championship in the giant slalom category.
[5] Lee also discovered a love for boxing at a young age, and claims to have shared the ring with several talented fighters, most notably future world champion Trevor Berbick in his native Jamaica.
[6] Lee transitioned to event organizing with 1976's Great Canadian Race, a cross country challenge opened to everyone and every type of vehicles, with some of the proceeds given to charity.
[10] With fellow producer/director David Mitchell, who would remain his partner for much of Rose & Ruby's history, Lee quickly managed to turn his small-time sports events into a television commodity.
His programming proved financially attractive to commercial network CTV thanks to its anonymous participants and aggressive integration of corporate sponsors, whose product was sometimes the centerpoint of the competition.
[17] He moved into mainstream fiction in 1983 with the support of Citytv boss Moses Znaimer, who pitched in some money for his first television film, Copper Mountain, best known for boasting an early Jim Carrey leading role.
[22] Among Lee's productions with Amritraj was a series of vehicles for Canadian martial artist/actor Jeff Wincott which, while severely criticized for their lack of polish, earned some notice for tackling real world issues that foreshadowed the director's more recent efforts.
[26][27] In 1997, Lee founded another company called Stone Canyon to promote a batch of higher budgeted films for such stars as Dolph Lundgren and Steven Seagal.
[28] At Annex, Lee maintained his association with Amritraj and his partner Andrew Stevens, providing production services for the pair's Phoenician Entertainment label.
However, that relationship was damaged when Lee lobbied to direct 2000's Agent Red, and delivered a cut that was deemed unreleasable, requiring substantial reshoots.