The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media.
Ian Telfer was a screw-up. The Canadian mining industry luminary didn’t exactly excel during his undergraduate days in university. He was too busy having fun.
So at 25, after doing some travelling and bouncing around at entry-level jobs for a few years, he was exceedingly grateful to have been accepted (at the absolute last moment with two days until classes) to the University of Ottawa’s MBA program.
“I was not cum laude,” he smirks with a creviced grin. So appreciative was Mr. Telfer, in fact, that he has since created a scholarship awarded annually to the program entrant with the lowest university marks.
Despite a playful and self-deprecating sense of humour, the unusual academic endowment isn’t just a lark. It tells you all you need to know about the 65-year-old’s sense of self and his perceived place among Canada’s corporate elite.