Old Boys Profiles

Thaine Carter ’05

THAINE CARTER ’05 FROM TURF TO TUSK

By Chris Traber

With the same fleet and confident skills he demonstrated on the gridiron as one of Canada’s most decorated amateur football players, Thaine Carter ’05 is now on an ascending trajectory in the heady real estate asset management arena.

Born in St. Albert, Alta., and raised in Nanaimo, B.C., Thaine’s athletic prowess was evident at an early age. At a youth football camp, he experienced an epiphany, says the 35-year-old, who married Bianca in February and awaits the birth of their son in July.

“I realized that if I were to take football to the next level, it wouldn’t be in Nanaimo,” he says. “I took that to heart.”

Mindful of sage advice from his mother, Judi, and her sacrifices, the teen looked eastward.

“My mom is a saint,” he says. “She supported me with three jobs and has been an incredible influence. She raised me to know that school comes first and football is second.”

The Carters submitted a Grade 11 application to St. Andrew’s College. While the deadline for scholarships and bursaries had passed, SAC Board of Governors member, the late King Ward, sponsored Thaine.

He arrived in Aurora with gratitude and blind faith, he recalls. “For a blue-collar kid from rough and tumble Nanaimo, it was a culture shock.”

The school’s warm reception quickly eased his trepidation.

Families of school chums, such as Brian Daly ’05 and Nick Sachewsky’04, embraced him immediately.

“Brotherhood runs deep at St. Andrew’s,” says Thaine, who served as Prefect. “It’s a great school, and you’ll always be an Andrean.”

As a 200-pound-plus linebacker, Thaine’s bruising tackling and “smash

mouth” approach impressed First Football coach, Courtenay Shrimpton, (who is now Deputy Head of School) and helped the team win the 2003 Golden Horseshoe championship. The following year, Thaine earned an Addison Award, presented to graduating members of First Football who make an outstanding contribution to the game over their careers at St. Andrew’s. He was also a member of First Lacrosse, First Basketball (captain), and Senior Track and Field.

Recruited by numerous institutions, Thaine opted to attend Queen’s University, graduating with a BA in Applied Honours Economics in 2010.

Thaine was an Ontario University Athletics All-Star and led the Queen’s Gaels and the OUA in defensive tackles while winning the Lou Bruce Award as the team’s defensive player of the year in 2007-08. In 2008, he cocaptained the Gaels to an undefeated 8-0 season. He was a first-team All-Canadian and became the only Queen’s player to win the President’s Trophy (U SPORTS) as the country’s Defensive Player of the Year in 2008.

In 2009, he was drafted by the Canadian Football League’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the sixth round. Regrettably, a shoulder injury requiring surgery cut his pro career short.

“I have no regrets,” Thaine says. “I never paid much attention to the awards. It really only validates that I did my best, but at the end of the day, you can’t take it to the bank. For me, football was always a means to the end.”

The “end” initially translated into an analyst position within the Altus Group, where he appraised commercial properties, and Brookfield Financial, where he provided analysis and transaction support on local and international real estate mandates. Ambition led to the position of vice-president with the Real Estate Investment Banking Group at TD Securities. Over his career, Thaine has underwritten and/or advised on $15+ billion in real estate acquisitions, dispositions, and M&A transactions.

In early 2021, Thaine and former TD Securities colleague, Aaron Yick, founded BlackTusk Group, a Torontobased private equity real estate asset management firm. The company,

named for the highest peak in B.C.’s Garibaldi Mountain range, invests in urban-focused commercial real estate across the Greater Toronto Area.

“We help our clients participate in the growth and progression of one of the fastest-growing and most livable cities in North America,” Thaine says.

The duo’s reputation, network, and savvy have netted them several acquisitions within their first year of operation, including deals in Port Credit and Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood. BlackTusk has also formed a partnership with Dream Impact Trust that will involve co-investments on a project-specific basis.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic’s disruptive impact on commercial real estate space, Thaine is confident BlackTusk will continue to bloom.

“We’re nimble, creative, and have valuable institutional experience,” he says. “I love the work and have real tangible skin in the game. It tests our wits and limits. Every day is game day.”X

Left to right: The 1st Football team page from the 2005 Review; Thaine with some 2021-2022 1st Football players during a campus visit; Thaine during his St. Andrew’s playing days

Brotherhood runs deep at St. Andrew’s. It’s a great school, and you’ll always be an Andrean.

– Thaine Carter ’05

MARK FELL ’87 THE (FUTURE) KING’S MAN

By Chris Traber

Few people have separate professional and volunteer lives that bridge and benefit the societal spectrum like those of Mark Fell ’87.

As head, family office and strategic clients at Royal Bank of Canada, the personable 54-year old is responsible for ensuring the bank’s largest enterprising families and strategic client relationships get the very best experience globally from across all of RBC’s businesses.

As chair, since 2017, of Prince’s Trust Canada, a national non-profit and a member of a global network of charities, Mark focuses on assisting at-risk youth and members of the military and veteran community for the transforming world of work. The Trust, founded by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales in 1976, also champions sustainable solutions for a green recovery and supports diverse young people aged 18 to 30. The initiatives help Indigenous youth, newcomers, those facing economic disadvantages, and young people affected by mental health challenges.

“HRH The Prince of Wales is a social entrepreneur who champions innovative solutions to address social gaps,” says Mark, who initially joined the Trust’s advisory board in 2011 prior to succeeding The Honourable Hilary Weston as chair. “The Trust endeavours to empower young people and veterans to build resilient future-ready Canadian communities.”

Serving both the privileged and disadvantaged is a time-consuming passion, says Mark. His voluntary work can also be fraught with danger and geopolitical intrigue.

Most recently, Mark was enlisted in August by the Trust’s chief executive in London, Dame Martina Milburn, to help a girls’ school in Afghanistan that was trying to arrange for a group of 250 vulnerable students to leave the country.

For a month, amid the chaos of the Taliban taking control of Afghanistan, the women discreetly travelled hundreds of kilometres across the country before reaching Pakistan overland, thanks to visas arranged by Prince’s Trust Canada. This operation, coordinated between Canada, Britain, the United States, and Afghanistan over the WhatsApp messaging service, involved transporting the girls in small groups and keeping them out of sight from the Taliban in multiple safe houses. After crossing the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the group and some family members were able to fly safely to Saskatoon, Sask., in autumn to begin a new life.

“Bringing this young Afghan community to Canada will help make Saskatoon, and even Canada, thrive,” stated Mark at the time.

Successful in the rarified realm of international finance and national charitable governance, Mark attributes St. Andrew’s College for his formative footing.

“St. Andrew’s has done a great job educating a number of boys in my family,” he says, noting that nephews, Fraser ’03, Bryn ’04, and Paul ’05 and his uncle,

Tony Fell ’59

and his sons, Graham ’86 and Geoff ’89, along with Tony’s father-in-law, Allen Graham ’33, all attended SAC. “I told my parents I wanted to go,” he says.

A member of St. Andrew’s Board of Trustees since 2016, Mark said he arrived at the school as a “shy, quiet, serious” boy.

“The school and its extra-curricular programs are the foundation for who I am today,” he says. “SAC instilled independence and confidence in me.”

Admittedly not a jock, Mark says he fully leveraged study options, including a six-month Grade 11 program in France, when he also took advantage of backpacking across Europe. In Grade 13, he was chosen to be Canada’s student representative on a study tour of the Republics of the Soviet Union.

“Those trips gave me a thirst for global experiences when I was young, and it stays with me today,” he says.

After his five-year boarding tenure at St. Andrew’s, where he served as the school’s photographer, Mark earned a BA Honours degree in political science at Queen’s University and in 1994 graduated with a law degree from Oxford University.

Following work at the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange, Mark managed his own consulting firm until he joined

Mark, with HRH The Prince of Wales at Clarence House, 2021. Used with permission of Clarence House, the office of HRH The Prince of Wales.

RBC serving as enterprise strategy director, head of strategy, brand and marketing for RBC Wealth Management, followed by eight years as head of global ultra-high-net-worth services for the bank, and his current post in 2021.

Mark, his wife Dawn, sons Adam and James, and daughter Morgan live in his hometown of Toronto. X

EVAN SCHULMAN ’54 DISTINGUISHED IN HIS FIELDS

By Chris Traber

Aviator, educator, patented inventor, conservationist, and universally considered a luminary in the fields of asset management and financial technology, Evan Schulman ’54 is modesty personified.

Fit, trim, and equipped with a lightning wit and an infectious smile under a chalk-hued thatch, the 86-year-old, whose distinguished career has been documented in Super Traders (1992) and How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street’s Elite (2009), deftly deflects praise.

“I am pleased with my investment career and appreciative of the success,” Evan says from his home in Plymouth, Mass. “My proudest accomplishment, however, is raising three children as a single father.” He and their mother divorced when the children were young.

His children, Yvonne, a veterinarian pathologist, Audrey, a published author of eight novels, and Eric, a path-breaking patent attorney, have excelled in their fields.

Life for the jaunty octogenarian began in Toronto. His father, Frank, a lawyer, and mother, Margaret, encouraged Evan to strive and make a mark on the world, he says.

Evan and his wife, Glorianna Davenport, at their Living Observatory outside Boston.

As a boarder at St. Andrew’s, Evan was a Prefect – “the last one selected that year,” he recalls. In his six years at SAC, he captained the gymnastics team, was on the debating team, and served as a Librarian and Chapel Boy. He also played Second Soccer and cricket and was a Cadet Corps corporal. His brother, John ’57, also attended SAC.

“I was very privileged to be at the school, and I regarded the teachers highly,” he says, lauding instructors Stan Macfarlane, Dick Gibb, and Jack Wright, among others.

Evan keeps in touch with classmates, Barry Wansbrough and Doug Grant, attends occasional reunions, and contributes an annual gift to the school. His mother donated the Isabelle Cockshutt Prize for History in memory of her mother, and it is still awarded today.

After SAC, he enrolled at the University of Toronto’s School of Architecture, where he struggled with design. In his second year, an instructor suggested he should move on.

“I respect his honesty to this day,” Evan says.

Evan joined the Royal Canadian Air Force reserve training program.

“I could see myself as a dashing fighter pilot,” he quips. He trained on Harvard propellers and subsonic T-33 jets, earning his wings in 1957.

Evan returned to U of T to study political science and economics, and, with degree in hand, he enrolled at the University of Chicago for graduate work. Returning to Canada with a master’s degree, he taught economics for a year at Western University.

Evan’s climb in the financial sector began when he accepted a position as a trust officer with Royal Trust Co. in Montreal. There he trained to program computers at McGill University. He received several patents for his innovative algorithms designed to facilitate fast, secure trades and diversified portfolios.

Evan has been referred to as one of the “fathers of electronic trading,” and in 1975, as director of computer research at Keystone Custodian Funds in Boston, completed what is generally regarded as the first equity program trade: Michael Bloomberg captained the other side of that trade. During the 1980s, he led the effort to develop computerized investment and trading systems at Boston’s Batterymarch Financial Management.

Now retired, Evan co-founded Upstream Technologies and Lattice, advanced portfolio management and alternative trading systems, respectively. Evan is the founder of Tykhe, LLC. and

has authored several scholarly articles for professional journals during his career.

Another chapter in Evan’s exemplary life started in 1982 when he and his second wife, Glorianna Davenport, co-founder of the MIT Media Lab, purchased a century-old farm near Boston.

“It was a cranberry farm, low labour content and profitable,” he says of the property, which amounted to some 600 acres, 177 of which were cranberry bog. “It was a business, and we produced one per cent of Ocean Spray’s crop in 1989.”

But technology changed the business over the next 20 years. As such, in 2008, the couple decided to cease cranberry operations, restore the wetlands, and track the progress through their non-profit Living Observatory, a public interest learning collaborative of scientists, artists, and wetland restoration practitioners. Today, the restored bogs are part of the Tidmarsh Wildlife Sanctuary. The duo raised $3 million to design and complete the ecological restoration now open to the public. Their efforts earned them the Gulf of Maine Visionary Award.

With typical humility, Evan praises his wife’s ongoing leadership at the Observatory.

“I just enjoy wandering through the trails and working in the garden,” he says of the sanctuary and their 20-acre homestead on the property. X

Evan and Glorianna in the vintage 1949 MG he bought secondhand while he was at the University of Toronto. He still drives it often.

It was a cranberry farm, low labour content and profitable. It was a business, and we produced one per cent of Ocean Spray’s crop in 1989.

– Evan Schulman ’54

GEOFFREY CAMPBELL ’03 CIRCUIT MAKER

By Chris Traber

In name and diverse locales, St. Andrew’s has always been a meaningful magnet for Geoffrey Campbell ’03.

In February, the 36-year-old married Alexis DeRosa at St. Andrew’s Anglican Church in George Town, The Bahamas. Coincidently, Alexis attended St. Andrew’s International School in Nassau, The Bahamas.

The connection continued when Taylor ’06 and Quen ’15 enrolled at their brother’s alma mater.

He says the impetus for selecting St. Andrew’s was his family’s focus on education, tradition, and fondness for the bagpipes. “We’re a Scottish family, and my father always wanted me to learn how to play. The pipes still come out for special occasions and parties,” Geoffrey says.

Like many Canadians, he grew up playing hockey in the local minor hockey association. He also played JV Hockey for SAC along with U16 Football and rugby. “If there is one piece of advice I could offer current Andreans, it would be to take advantage of the diverse opportunities that SAC provides,” Geoffrey says. “I regret not using the time to discover new passions.”

After graduating from St. Andrew’s, Geoffrey attended Dalhousie University to study political science but admits he soon realized it was not his calling. He left Halifax to enrol in the construction engineering program at Fanshawe College. As the son of an architect, he was drawn to the tangible reward of constructing buildings. He later pursued executive education through Harvard University in real estate investment and finance.

With the goal to build “unique and marquee” projects, Geoffrey founded Oakleigh Developments, a custom cottage construction firm, a year before graduating from Fanshawe in 2009. As Oakleigh grew, Geoffrey began investing in Ontario real estate with an eye to large-scale development in the future.

To broaden his industry horizons, he moved to The Bahamas, where he met Alexis, to work with Sterling Financial Group. He spent more than three years working throughout the Caribbean on hotel, resort, and condominium developments.

Returning to Canada in 2017, Geoffrey shifted focus to developing the Oakleigh properties. In 2018, Oakleigh broke ground on the Matchedash Lofts, a 76-unit mixed-use condo development in Orillia, Ont.

While working in pastoral Simcoe Country, the entrepreneur, whose lifelong passion is automobiles,

Geoffrey with his 1965 Ford Mustang at what will be the entrance to Oro Station. Below: Geoffrey and Alexis at their wedding in The Bahamas; the track takes shape - turn 4 on the 4.1km circuit.

discovered a unique property for sale across the road from Lake Simcoe Regional Airport. Geoffrey decided to throttle up and enter the fast lane, literally and figuratively.

“I had been watching the rise of motorsports clubs around North America while simultaneously seeing a shift in the automotive sector toward alternative fuels and new technology,” he says. This led to the creation of Oro Station, a 320-acre automotive innovation campus complete with an FIA Grade 3 racing circuit.

The $275-million facility, an alliance with Georgian College, will create expanded opportunities for academic programming, research and innovation, and apprenticeship and skilledlabour training focused on emerging automotive technology, says Geoffrey, who serves as Oro Station’s managing partner.

With more than a half-million square feet of industrial space, the multi-use facility will include restaurants, vintage car restoration garages, an automotive museum, a conference centre, a business park, and a 4.1-kilometre 16turn motorsport track for private and commercial use.

The facility also has a members club that will provide ample opportunity for enthusiasts to use their highperformance cars as they were designed in a safe environment. Members have begun purchasing industrial condominium units to store their cars trackside and close to the mechanics and service providers within the main Oro Station campus.

Through his endeavours with Oakleigh and the founding of Oro Station, which is now under construction, Geoffrey has found frequent and consistent links to the St. Andrew’s Old Boys community. Oro Station’s lead attorney is Jake Bullen’89, while Marcus Gillam ’93 of Gillam Group is the construction manager. Scott Lennox ’03 has also worked as

Oakleigh’s corporate counsel for several years.

“One thing that I have come to appreciate in my career is the power of the Old Boys network. My time at St. Andrew’s can feel like a distant memory, but there is a familiarity and bond when you reconnect with Old Boys in the business world that takes you right back.” X