He then attended the École Polytechnique de Montréal, a school affiliated with the University of Montreal,[2] graduating with a BSc in electrical engineering in 1971.

After receiving his MBA from the University of Utah, he joined the Mining and Metals Division of Bechtel, based in San Francisco, California.

[4] In 1982, he co-founded, along with his business partner Seymour Schulich, Franco-Nevada Corporation, the first publicly traded gold royalty company.

In 1985, Franco-Nevada acquired for US$2 million a royalty on a small mining operation in the heart of the Carlin gold belt of Nevada.

The company was responsible for the discovery of the world-class El Morro deposit in Chile and the Cerro San Pedro mine in Mexico.

In 2010, Metallica merged with Peak Gold and Newgold and later on with Western Goldfields Resources to create a leading mid-size gold-producing company.

In 1995, Lassonde backed his late wife Claudette MacKay-Lassonde in the startup of Enghouse Systems Ltd, a provider of software to the telecommunication companies.

[10] Lassonde is an active and engaged philanthropist in both Canada and the United States in the fields of education, the arts and the community in which he lives.