Peter Pocklington
Outside sports, his best-known venture was his tenure as owner of a meatpacking plant in Edmonton, where he became embroiled in a bitter labour dispute in 1986.
Pocklington's life experiences were extensively documented in the 2009 biography, I'd Trade Him Again: On Gretzky, Politics and the Pursuit of the Perfect Deal, written by Terry McConnell and J'lyn Nye.
[1] The greatest influence on young Pocklington was the legendary motivational speaker Earl Nightingale and his best-selling recording, The Strangest Secret.
One of his earliest business ventures was to find old cars on the farms around his maternal grandparents' home in Carberry, Manitoba, buy them for $25, then ship them to Ontario by train, where he sold them for upwards of $500.
Because of the West's dry, cold climate, the cars, many of them 25 to 40 years old, were in better shape than comparable vehicles that had been driven on Ontario's salted roads.
Edmonton in the 1970s was experiencing explosive growth fuelled by an oil boom and several fortunes were made, not only by Pocklington but by the likes of Pat Bowlen, later owner of the National Football League's Denver Broncos.
Pocklington’s business empire eventually exceeded $2 billion in sales; massive real estate holdings throughout Alberta and Ontario; Fidelity Trust, one of Canada's largest trust companies; Palm Dairies, one of the largest retailers of dairy products in Western Canada; Canbra Foods, a canola manufacturer; Magic Pantry, which sold prepared foods that did not require refrigeration; Kretschmar Foods, which serviced restaurants; Green Acre Farms, a chicken-processing company with plants in Texas and Mississippi; and Gainers, an Edmonton-based beef- and pork-packing company.
He withdrew his candidacy before the second ballot and supported the eventual winner Brian Mulroney, who would adopt some of Pocklington's policies while in government.
It was through his charitable works that he became close friends with famed tenor Luciano Pavarotti, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and former U.S. presidents Gerald Ford[4] and George H. W.
[3] He remains active in business and philanthropic pursuits there, and was for a long time member of the board of directors at the Betty Ford Center.
On October 8, 2014, Pocklington was invited back to Edmonton when the Oilers organized a 30-year reunion of their first Stanley Cup championship team.
Prime interest rates in the early 1980s topped out at 18.5%, a development that sapped the oil boom of its strength, collapsed the real estate market, and sank Fidelity Trust in a sea of declining property values.
Pocklington's labour dispute with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union ended up crippling Gainers, which at the time was Canada's second-largest meat packer.
During the union's six-month strike, Pocklington used strikebreakers, primarily from Quebec, to keep the plant operating despite the picket lines, a decision that earned him the enmity of Canada's labour movement.
In return, says Pocklington in his biography, then-Premier of Alberta Don Getty agreed to give Gainers an interest-free loan of $50 million.
After this error, the NHL and Hockey Hall of Fame adopted policies to confirm the roster and the relation of the people on the engraving list to the championship team.
One member of the House of Commons of Canada demanded the government block the trade, another man burned Pocklington in effigy, and Gretzky's bride, actress Janet Jones, was branded hockey's "Yoko Ono".
A book by former Kings owner Bruce McNall quotes Pocklington as saying Gretzky had become impossible to deal with since he began dating Jones, who let it be known that she was not going to live in Edmonton after they got married.
Pocklington claims he has had only nice things to say about the couple, yet he has repeatedly defended the trade as being a sound business decision that he would not hesitate to make again.
[7] By the late 1980s, increasing player salaries led the Oilers to trade Gretzky and other stars, such as Paul Coffey, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, Glenn Anderson, Kevin Lowe and Grant Fuhr.
"[2] In May 2012, Pocklington announced his family was auctioning memorabilia from his time as owner of the Oilers, including his rings from their Stanley Cup championships.
However, those investments yielded more heartache than profit, and what he claims was fiduciary malfeasance by some partners in these ventures left Pocklington the target of numerous lawsuits.
While a lower court had retroactively revoked Peter Pocklington's probation on a perjury conviction and sentenced him to six months in prison, the Ninth U.S.
[11] The court had earlier heard evidence that Pocklington had, over 19 months, failed to disclose consulting fees paid to a company controlled by his wife.
A statement by Pocklington's company was included in Canadian media accounts, which stated “the allegations of wrongdoing ... have been laid to rest” with the commission’s decision.
[15] On October 8, 2014, Pocklington was the focus of a media opportunity organized by the Edmonton Oilers Hockey Club to promote the 30-year reunion of the 1984 Stanley Cup championship team.
