Hellas
Greek My
Barber’s Diary
MY LIFE AND TIMES AT CANADIAN AIRLINES 1968 -1997
Memories of a life well lived!
As told by a former Senior Vice President and Chair of the Council of Canadian Airlines Employees SID FATTEDAD F.C.G.A.
by CHRISTOPHER
BEST
AUTHOR OFTHE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE LEGENDARY MR.D
The
George Chronopoulos Story
MY GREEK BARBER’S DIARY
My
Greek Barber’s Diary THE GEORGE CHRONOPOULOS STORY
4 ~ Publisher
Copyright 2015 Christopher Best All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopywrite.ca, 1-800-893-5777 Warfleet Press 1038 east 63rd Avenue, Vancouver, B.C., V5X 2L1 www.warfleetpress.com All photos from the collection of Christopher Best unless otherwise noted. Cover Photo: 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1980s, 2014 Photos of George Chronopoulos Cover design by Christopher Best Text design by Christopher Best Edited by Dr Robert S. Thomson Printed and bound in China Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Best, Christopher 1949 My Greek Barber’s Diary The George Chronopoulos Story ISBN 978-0-9868793-4-0
1970s Vancouver, Ray Cantor, Voula, Terry Moore (the actress), Mrs. Cantor, George Chronopoulos
6 ~ Map
This book is dedicated to my lovely wife Voula and daughters Helen, Marianna, Jaime and grandchildren. I hope it will bring them happiness and understanding.
MAP OF THE DISTRICT OF MESSENIA (Southern Greece)
I was the 20,000th person through the door to buy a ticket for the big game. Herb Capozzi promoted my shop in both the Sun and Province newspapers for two weekends. 1965,
CONTENTS 1. The Chronopoulos’ Of Militsa...................................................13 2. Sargeant Chronopoulos...........................................................29 3. Married In Montreal..................................................................43 4. Good Guys, Bad Guys.............................................................53 5. My Beautiful Riviera Hair Salon...............................................73 6. The Royal Riviera.....................................................................91 7. Up, Up And Away....................................................................113 8. Two Trips of a Life Time.........................................................195 9. Three Weddings for Three Daughters....................................219 10. Puttin’ On The Breaks..........................................................231 11. India and Beyond.................................................................245 12. Bad Times, Good Times.......................................................269 13. Mentors, Clients and Golf Buddies.......................................285 14. A Wonderful Life...................................................................307 15. Appendix...............................................................................353 16. Index.....................................................................................363
10 ~ Stories & Anecdotes
This book is a collection of short stories and anecdotes in chronological order about the people, places and events in the life of George Chronopoulos. He has met and known a lot of people from all walks of life. “I would like to think that I have touched them all in one way or another.” While some might interpret some of the details in his stories as bragging, I feel it is the detail that makes his stories so interesting. Like a boy in a candy shop at age 80 he still loves meeting new people and greeting old friends and he always treats everyone just the same. His memory is so sharp it was a challenge not to include more of the details. His life has been filled with much happiness, sorrow and ups and downs. He has travelled extensively and bought and sold a lot of properties and businesses. But at the end of the day, he always likes to say, “I am still just a barber from a small village in Greece called Militsa.”
“Don’t limit investing to the financial world. Invest something of yourself, and you will be richly rewarded.” -- Charles Schwab
Me with my dad at my Seymour Street salon in the sixties
4 Bad Guys, Good Guys!
My first job in town was at the Hotel Vancouver Barber Shop which was located in the basement of the hotel. It wasn’t a good job for a new barber. There were nine chairs and it operated as a free-for all, which meant you couldn’t develop a clientele. Not a good place for a new barber. My only client was Sam Pappas of Pappas Furs. I left the Hotel Vancouver and went to a small salon at Forty-first and Oak Street where I stayed for six weeks. The owner, who was Italian, bragged about his salon. “I have the best guy in Vancouver.” Word got around. One night a guy came by, took a seat and watched me cut a customer’s hair. “I want to talk to you,” he said. I thought he was another insurance salesman. “No, I don’t want to talk to you.” I didn’t know
54 ~ Bob Golden
that he owned a barber shop (with six chairs) downtown on Georgia Street called the Waverly. It took me a long time to learn how to pronounce the name. He offered me big money. His name was Gus Lloyd. He was really Austrian but he had changed his name. I started to work for him. We were living in Greektown (Kitsilano). All the newly arrived Greeks lived in Kitsilano. My wife’s brother, John, owned two houses in the 2300 block West 7th Avenue. Houses in those days could be bought for $10,000 to $15,000. He let us stay in one. A lot of Greeks emigrated to Vancouver between 1954 and 1960 and Greektown is where they settled. There was even a Greek Orthodox Church located at 7th and Vine. I was the first barber in Vancouver to offer razor cuts and hair styling for men. Jack Wasserman wrote about me in the Vancouver Sun newspaper. One of my customers was Ken Stauffer who owned the Cave Supper Club. It was through Ken that Jack found out about me and that led to a nice write-up in the Vancouver Sun. For the first two weeks, I didn’t do much, no styles, just cutting. When I finally started doing styles, they put me in a back chair, the last chair in the salon, behind a curtain. In those days they considered it embarassing to see a man getting a blow dry and a style. For a while I worked behind a curtain doing razor cuts, Perry Como style or Hollywood style. Then, after two weeks, Gus threw the keys down in front of me and said, “Here, you look
BAD GUYS, GOOD GUYS ~ 55
after the place.” So here I am, no English, no friends, just a hot-blooded Greek but my brain was working. Before I knew it I was established in Vancouver. Bad guys, good guys, big business people, all came to me through word of mouth. There was no one else in Vancouver doing what I was doing. I was in the right place at the right time. I made alot of friends in the Jewish community. Here’s how it happened. A young fellow named Bob Golden was waiting for a haircut. It was a Friday afternoon. Nice looking boy, good hair, he thought he would see what I could do. Finally, I took him. I did his hair and when he went home his mom said, “Who gave you the haircut?” “A Greek guy who doesn’t speak any English. He gave me a style.” I had asked him, “Would you like a razor cut or style?” He didn’t know what I was talking about and said, “What’s that?” Then he said, “How much?” I wanted him to see what I could do so I said in my broken English, “You buy haircut, me buy style.” “Okay!” The next day his father came down and booked an appointment for every other Saturday. This was before the Beatles and the hippies. His father was Sid Golden. For fifty years I cut his hair. In those days I thought only poor boys worked, not the sons of the wealthy. Two weeks later, Bob dropped in and said to me, “Do you have a car?” “No.” “Do you want a ride home?” “Sure.” He was only sixteen years old and he was already driving. I didn’t know what to say. “Fine, after work I will wait for you and drive you home.” We walked to the parking lot at Richards and Georgia. He told me he worked at
56 ~ Sid Golden
the Army & Navy. There was an old car parked next to a bright shiny new Cadillac. I thought we were going to get into the old car but he went and got into the Cadillac. They were a very wealthy family. They owned Belmont Properties (an apartment management/real estate company). We were still staying on West 7th Avenue in Kitsilano. My wife was standing at the window when we pulled up. “Who’s the guy in the Cadillac?” she said to her sister. To her surprise, it turned out to be me. Bob and I became friends. My wife and his mom, Dora, visited each other’s houses. They often cooked together. Dora made wonderful Jewish kreplach (dumplings) and kneidlach (matzo balls) – a mixture of matzo meal, eggs, water, melted fat, pepper and salt. Voula taught Dora how to make Knish using filo pastry. The Golden’s were well known in Vancouver. Sid was one of a group of Jewish businessmen who opened the Richmond Golf & Country Club in 1959. It was a private club. Before that they owned Gleneagles in West Vancouver. There was some discrimination in West Vancouver so they sold Gleneagles to the District of West Vancouver and built their own course in Richmond. Originally, it was Jewish only but then they opened it up to everyone. Mr. Golden offered me a membership as a present. All I had to do was pay the monthly fee. However, I didn’t play golf at that time and we sure didn’t have any golf courses in my village in Greece. My first partner in Vancouver was Gus Lloyd. I worked from April
BAD GUYS, GOOD GUYS ~ 57
1962 until September 1964 for Gus at his Waverly Salon. During that time, I filled it up with barbers, six in all. Gus didn’t want to lose me. “What are your plans?” he asked me. “I want to open a small restaurant where Greeks can come in for coffee and food, like they do in Europe,” “Well, we’ll do it together.” “No, no, no.” “No, we’ll do it together.” He convinced me and we went and bought a building at Richards and Georgia and turned it into a Greek nightclub. We called it the Bouzouki Coffee House. I brought Greek musicians in from Montreal. There were only two nightclubs in Vancouver at the time, the Cave and Isy’s so there was plenty of room for one more. The law was different then. You could get a liquor license after you had been open for forty-five days but you had to close at 11:30 p.m. Only the Cave and Isy’s could stay open until 2 a.m. The first three months we lost about $10,000 due to delays in getting licences. That was a lot of money. You could buy a house for $10,000. To re-coup our money, we turned the nightclub into a steak house and called it The Wild Boar. It became very successful. We hired two more musicians, a blind German (who played the piano) and a Hungarian who played the violin. I got them from the Johann Strauss Restaurant. We got our money back in three months but we had to work for nothing in the beginning. The first Greek I met in Vancouver was Angelo Pappas. He lived behind us in Kitsilano. Gus and I each needed $3,500 for a down payment. Angelo introduced me to his bank manager. The building cost us $55,000. We did huge renovations. The floor was
58 ~ Mike Mavritsakis
reinforced so an elephant could have danced on it. In the end, it cost us $110,000. Eventually, I sold my share to Gus in the spring of 1964. He was living a different life style than me and at times it was uncomfortable so we went our separate ways. Gus turned The Wild Boar into Vancouver’s first gay club and it became quite successful. I was working at the Waverly in the daytime and at the Bouzouki Coffee House in the evenings when my first daughter Helen was born. When she was nine months old she only knew me through my photos. At that age she still had beautiful wavy hair. I took my clippers one day and gave her a buzz cut. My wife almost killed me. It grew back really nice and thick but my wife was furious. Everyone in Canada preferred Vancouver because of the weather. My wife’s brother Bill moved out from Montreal. He was nine months older than me. He got a job at Western Canadian Fur Company. When he arrived in Vancouver, he had enough money to buy a house on the West Side which he still owns today. The house next door to him sold a couple of years ago for $1.65 million. Go figure. We rented from Bill for a couple of years to help him with financing. You couldn’t find anyone to rent a house back then. Our rent was $65 a month in those days. It is not like it is today. I always tried to do the right thing. Mike Mavritsakis came into the Waverly. I had met Mike on the boat coming over from Greece. He had gone to Kingston. He was from Methoni, a village about a fifteen
BAD GUYS, GOOD GUYS ~ 59
minute walk from my wife’s village. He was also a barber. He had been working in Omonia Square (in the heart of Athens) when I had been working in the Port of Piraeus, but we had never met. We discovered his family and my wife’s family knew each other. I hired him for the Waverly. He was a very good barber. After he had been working at the salon for a while he told me why he had come to Vancouver. “I had a girl friend in Kingston and we were getting too serious.” I talked to my wife and the next day I said to him, “Listen, do you love the girl?” “Yes.” “Then I want you to come to my house and phone your girl friend (her name was also Voula) and talk to her. Then my wife is going to talk to her and then I am going to talk to her. She probably won’t believe just you. If she trusts us she will come here.” And that is what happened. She came here, they got married and they had two kids. I wanted him to do the right thing and be happy. My brother-in-law George moved out from Montreal. He was going to work for me at the Bouzouki Coffee House as a cook but when I decided to sell he got a job at UBC. Our wives had been in the same class at school in Greece. Later, he worked on the tourist trains to Calgary and then as a cook in the lumber camps at Ocean Falls. He eventually bought a house here in Vancouver near Trafalgar and First Avenue. He brought his wife, baby and mother-in-law out from Montreal. He was quite happy looking after two women. We had lots of fun at the Waverly. The Beatles came to Vancouver
60 ~ Jimmy Hill
on August 22. Everyone was excited. I got a telephone call at the Waverly, “Can you do a Beatles style?” “Sure, when was your last haircut?” “Two or three weeks ago.” “Two months from today, you come down to see me and we will do the style.” “That long?” “Of course, your hair will be long by then and we can do something with it.” I was so fearless that I decided to leave the Waverly in September and open my own salon. Lots of people dropped by the Waverly. Lots of stock-market tough guys like Jimmy Hill. He was one of the “Howe Street Boys” -- Harry Moll, Ted Turton, Murray Pezim, Lou Black, Basil Pantages etc. And Dave Davies (Big Dave). Jimmy Hill was a big guy very strong and a natural blond. They use to celebrate energetically at Moll’s Harry C’s eatery and Sugar Daddy’s, Charlie Brown’s and Sneaky Pete’s night spots back in the day. Hill barehandedly quelled three aggrieved motorcyclists. But his legendary feat came in September 1968, when he survived a reported three .38-calibre pistol shots to the body at the Georgia Hotel -- Hill says five -- from a Daniel Ceklay, who was later convicted of attempted murder. “He still has one [bullet] in him that gives him a slight limp,” says Hill’s long-divorced but still tender wife Beverly Hauff (In the words of Malcolm Parry). While he was in St. Paul’s Hospital, Jimmy called me and asked me to
BAD GUYS, GOOD GUYS ~ 61
come over and cut his hair. He owned a house on south west Marine Drive. “Kid,” he says (he always called me kid), “Do you want to buy my house on Marine Drive, only $80,000?” Jack Diamond had an office on Georgia Street across from the Bouzouki Coffee House. He was a regular at the Waverly. Along with Bill Randall they ran the B.C. Jockey Club which was responsible for horseracing at Exhibition Park. He was also the man who practically invented fundraising in Vancouver. The race track became an ideal arena to raise charity funds. When he spearheaded the Special Events Committee for the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, of the $250,000 raised, $130,000 came from horse racing. Known as the BIG “Sparkplug” for his fundraising efforts that ensured the Games would finish with a budget surplus, Diamond also helped speed completion of Empire Stadium in time for the Games. My partner in my new barber shop was Tony Farina, an Italian boy. Tony was really good at bringing in new clients whenever things slowed down. He asked his mother, “Can you loan us the money.” “Yes,” she said, “as long as George pays me back.” So we opened our new salon at 650 Seymour Street under the Bay parkade. I was surprised that I could find such a good location downtown. It was not too far from the Waverly. I didn’t want to open close to the Waverly but this spot came available. I gave Gus three weeks notice but he let me go immediately. He was more embarrassed than unhappy because someone had spread
62 ~ Jim Pattison
the word that he was gay. He thought that I had done it. Everyone dropped by our new salon. It went very well right from the start. All my co-workers from the Waverly wanted to come with us but I said no out of respect for Gus. We hired two barbers, one from England named Jimmy and one from Ireland named Kevin and we had most of the establishment coming to us. Thanks to Sid Golden, guys from the Jewish community became my clients: Max Fugman, Syd Belzberg, Roy Cantor, Joe Cohen, Irving Kates (I was invited to his house just a couple of weeks ago (September 29, 2013), to celebrate his 85th birthday); guys from the Richmond Golf & Country Club. Practically every CEO in town came by: Jimmy Pattison and Mr. Rogers of B.C. Sugar. We called it the Riviera Barber Shop. My partner liked the Buick Riviera and that is where we got the name. I had a painter paint a mural on the back wall of the salon. It cost us about $1,000. We were making $100 a week to start and later more. That was a lot of money in those days. The Lion’s won the Grey Cup. It was a big deal. The office of the B.C. Lions was located a little further down Seymour where the entrance is to the Bay parking lot. We had all the players dropping in for a hair a haircut: Joe Capp, Lonnie Dennis, Dick Fouts, Willy Fleming and Tom Brown. Tom Larscheid, their color announcer (one who fills in with background material during breaks in the play), and Jim Cox both came down as well. Tom still comes into the salon. Later on Tom was
BAD GUYS, GOOD GUYS ~ 63
the commentator for the Canucks games for thirty years. I bought my first car in Vancouver in 1965 from Jim Pattison. It was a 1964 Pontiac Grand Parisienne. My wife and I walked into Jim Pattison Pontiac Buick at 18th & Main. Pattison was standing in an office at the back and when he saw us he came out and said to a salesman, “I will look after this young couple.” I was 30 years old. “That’s the car you are going to buy,” he says, like he could read my mind. He had all the confidence in the world. The car was white with a blue interior. I gave Mr. Pattison my business card and he started coming to see me regularly to have his hair cut. That is how I met Jim Pattison. He came down for Ted Turton six or seven years and then he stopped. He started coming in again a few
years ago and he still comes in today. Doug Hill has been a client of mine since the Waverly. He owned a public relations company. “George, you have to go see Herb Capozzi (B.C. Lions GM) and have him send the players here,” he said to me. “They already come here.” “No, you have to go tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. and see Herb in his office.” So I go. I walk in, the girls all smile. “How are you today?” I said. I didn’t have a chance to ask for Herb. Before I knew it a photographer popped out from behind a life-size cutout of a football player and took my picture. In those days they had big flash bulbs that blinded you when they went off. I started to get scared because I couldn’t see. “Why, what I did?” Somebody touched me on my shoulder from behind. “Don’t worry George, I’m Herb.” They knew
64 ~ Lou Black
how many season tickets they had sold, ninteen thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine. I was the twenty thousandth person to walk through the door. I had no idea! They gave me two season tickets. They put my name with a picture of me (see page 8), in The Sun and The Province for two weekends in a row. The B.C. Lions and the horse races were the only professional sports in Vancouver at the time. The Canucks were still a minor league team (Herb would assume control of the Canucks in 1971 after they turned pro to keep them in Vancouver). In that same year I went from four chairs to ten chairs. It was huge publicity. I really believe you have to be lucky as well as smart. I didn’t realize that I had been set-up until almost fifty years later. There was a huge stock promoter named Lou Black (Louie) who lived in Montreal. He had his hair cut by a stylist who knew me. “Do you know anyone in Vancouver who can do styles?” he asked the stylist. “I will send you to a guy who just moved to Vancouver. He is a way better barber than me.” Louie tried to find me here. He telephoned the barber’s association. This guy was a promoter. He could promote anything. He liked my work. He sent me so many people from Howe Street, I couldn’t believe it! His former partner, Lou Wolfin, still comes in today at 82 years young. At that time Lou promoted a stock called Pyramid. He gave me an option on ten thousand shares. I was to pay him for the stock when I sold it. That is how much he thought of me. It was a lot of money. I
BAD GUYS, GOOD GUYS ~ 65
had no knowledge of the stock market. The stock went from $.65 in three weeks to $3 so I sold. I made $20,000. I ran down to see Lou. “Here is your cheque.” “Where did you get the money?” “I sold the stock.” “Why did you do that? You should have called me first.” It wound up going up to $23 but I was happy to a certain extent because we make our own luck. I went and bought my first house in Mackenzie Heights. The fellow who sold it to me was Gary Averbach of Belmont Properties (Today he is their CEO). He is one of the Golden family. Sid Golden is the nephew and partner of Lou Averbach, Gary’s father. They all still come down for a haircut. I paid $19,000 for a double corner lot. It was at 21st and Blenheim, northeast corner. I gave them $9,000 as a down payment on the house and I had a $65 a month mortgage. I bought a brand new Oldsmobile Delta 88. I was probably one of the first Greeks in Vancouver to have a color television. It was round in those days. We did a lot of renovations to the house. My second daughter, Anna Maria (we call her Marianna) was born in that house in 1966. We lived there from 1965 to 1969. I sold it for $36,000 because my wife wasn’t feeling well and wanted to move and sell quickly. What was I to do? Jimmy Hill came over one day. He says, “Are you going away?” “No, why?” “I have some money. Can you keep it for me for awhile?” “Sure.” It was a lot of money. I did something really stupid because I didn’t know what to do with that much money. He didn’t
66 ~ Mickey Fillipone
come back that night so I thought, “I’ll put the money in the drawer. I didn’t want to take it with me. I locked the door and left. At midnight I woke up in a sweat, “What have I done?” I remembered what my father once told me, ‘The key is for the good people. Bad people will open it anyway.’ I got up and went downtown and entered through the back door. The money was still there so I stayed the rest of the night. The next day when Jimmy showed up I said, “You son of a gun.” I didn’t know what to say. If anything had happened to the money, how could I have explained that I had nothing to do with it? I was lucky! In those days I could have bought five houses with no mortgage with the money. Today, the houses would cost 10 million. Mickey Filippone was a client of mine. He and his brothers ran the Penthouse Cabaret, a fixture at 1019 Seymour Street since 1945. In its heyday, it was the city’s premier after-hours hangout, the place where stars like Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper and Louis Armstrong would come ’til the wee small hours. One day after I gave him a haircut he wanted a shave. “I don’t want to have any bleeding,” he said. He was a diabetic and it would have been hard to stop the bleeding. Afterwards, he got up, paid me $10 and went over to the mirror. “No blood,” he said. “That’s good!” He came back and gave me a $20 tip. Jimmy Hill came in another time while I was coloring Lou Black’s hair. “Can you do the same for me?” he asked after I finished. “I don’t think it is a good idea because you are blond and you want me to make
BAD GUYS, GOOD GUYS ~ 67
your hair black.” “I want to look like an Italian partisan.” So I did his hair. I coloured it and gave him a haircut but it was definitely not that great. He was a nice guy to me. He never gave me any trouble. All the muscle boys downtown were nice to me. I don’t know why, they just were! I guess they felt they could be themselves with me. They didn’t feel like they had to be tough guys. I never interfered with anyone. I just did my job and that was it. Two or three days later Jimmy comes back. “George, can you change it back to my natural color?” “I don’t think so. I explained to you that it would be difficult but I will try.” So I put bleach on his hair. By the time I was finished (putting bleach on his hair) he was beginning to choke. He was allergic to the bleach. I should have checked before I gave it to him. In those days we washed client’s hair with their face down in the sink. He started to choke again Capozzihim and pulled him and then turned red and then almost blue.Herb I grabbed
up. “George, if I had had to hold it another minute, I would have been in trouble.” I didn’t want him passing away in my chair. Once again I was lucky. I brought my little sister Antonia over from Greece. The uncle of a man here in the Greek community came over to our house. “Does your sister want to get married?” “Sure.” They met and liked each other. His name was Peter Tentes. They eventually had three daughters: Irene, Vicky and Nectaria. All of their daughters married and they now have seven grandkids. Antonia had a daycare centre when her children were
68 ~ Peter Tentes
young. Her husband, Peter, worked in a butcher shop and later owned two restaurants. They are both retired now and return to Greece for two months each year. Their three daughters are all well educated and live with their families around Greater Vancouver. My wife’s sister, Atta, moved from Montreal to Vancouver. She had come to Canada as a housekeeper and gotten married in Montreal. Like all of us, she was a hard worker. Her husband was from Methoni. They had two boys. When they first arrived in Vancouver they stayed with us in Mackenzie Heights until they bought their own home. I often had trouble with the pilot light on my furnace. I had a repairman come out and show me how to light it. One time, just after Marianna was born, I tried to re-light the furness and it exploded, knocking me against a wall. I burned my arm so bad that I couldn’t work. I had just bought my Parisienne from Jimmy Pattison and I said to my wife, “If we didn’t have the baby, we could drive down to California.” At first she said, “No.” Then a friend asked me to go with him. My wife says, “My sister is here now. I guess she can look after the baby.” Marianna was only fifty days old. Once we got across the U.S. border my wife saw some baby cows in a field with their mothers and cried, “Let’s go back.” We knew some people in Pasadena. I was driving fast on the highway near Sacramento and I got caught by a police helicopter. An officer pulled me over. “Why were you driving so fast?” he asked. “To get to my hotel so I can call my kids back home.” “You may never make
BAD GUYS, GOOD GUYS ~ 69
it to your hotel. Why don’t you use that telephone over there?” [He pointed to a phone booth across the street.] “My English is not good enough. At the hotel they put the call through for me.” He gave me a ticket for $36. The next day we drove to L.A. I found my friend’s home and when they saw my nice new car they said, “Let’s drive to Vegas!” My wife didn’t want to go. “I’m too tired,” she said. It took us about six hours to drive to Vegas. We arrived there about midnight but we couldn’t find a hotel. It was a weekend. We finally stayed at the Hacienda Hotel in a new wing that was under construction. The next evening we drove back. Max Fugman and I first met at the salon in the 1960s when he was going through a divorce. I never met his first wife. After the divorce we started to see more of each other. I was one of the first people he met in Vancouver. His family had emigrated from Israel in 1954 to Edmonton. His brother Mordecai was killed fighting in one of the first Israeli/Egyptian wars. Max would come down to the salon and invite me over to his warehouse to pick out clothes for my wife. He was in the fashion industry and was very successful. We soon met his fiancée Margaret and we all became friends. She was the buyer for Eaton’s Department Store and very beautiful. It was a good match. Max was very bright. Here is how Max met Joe Segal. Max took some nylon stockings in to show Mr. Segal for his Field’s Department Stores. Max worked as a salesman for Alan Frome. Later he opened his own agency and then he
70 ~ Max Fugman
started Jana & Co. his successful clothing import business. He was selling the nylons for $2 a dozen. They cost him $1 a dozen. Max had left the manager of Field’s 2,000 pairs. “Max what happened?” Mr. Segal says, “You don’t have anyone else to sell nylons to. You gave them all to me?” “Joe, whatever you haven’t sold at the end of the month, I will take back.” It was a good deal. It was also a huge profit for Mr. Segal over one hundred percent. Before Mr. Segal knew it, in about a week they were all sold. He called Max. “What’s wrong? I told you that I would take any back if you didn’t sell them.” “No, no, no, you need to send me more. I didn’t take enough.” And that is how the two met. That is one of Mr. Segal’s stories that I want to remember. Who was the Chairman of the Board? Max used to come down to the salon every Saturday morning at 7 a.m. to have his haircut. He was always first in line. Trevor Peele (Chairman of the Bank of B.C.) would come down as well. At noon they would all go over to the Charcoal Room in the Four Seasons Hotel for lunch. At first it was just Max and Joe Segal but eventually others came down, Syd Belzberg (Max’s cousin) President of Budget Rent-A-Car of B.C. Ltd., Maury Wosk (aka MJ) who was in real estate, Jack Diamond, the owner of Pacific Meat Co. and creator of a “Day at the Races,” Charlie Diamond (his son), Leon Kahn (a successful real estate developer) and me. There were more, about twelve but I cannot remember their names. I just came along to hand out business cards and to make contacts. People kept in touch over
BAD GUYS, GOOD GUYS ~ 71
lunch in those days and to catch up on the latest gossip around town. This was before computers and social networking. I think they were supposed to be at the synagogue but this is what they did every Saturday at noon for years. I don’t think there even was a Chairman of the Board. Max was a nice guy, kind and fair. One time I took Max and our wives out for dinner. We were going to go to the dining room at the Hotel Vancouver in my Cadillac. When we reached the White Spot on Broadway, I turned in and parked in the car service area and turned on my lights. “What are we doing here?” asked Max. “It is my treat,” I said, “so I am choosing where we go.” “No, problem, no problem.” That is what he always said, “No problem, no problem George.” Everything with Max was no problem. When the carhop came to the car I said, “Thanks but we have changed our mind.” I turned off the lights and we left for the Hotel Vancouver. We were always playing jokes on each other. Max was very nice and easy to be around and always very fair. If someone was unfair to him he would say, “That’s okay, that’s okay.” That was the kind of person he was but if he got upset, he could really get upset. Later, his younger brother Jack came down for a haircut on Saturday mornings as well.
“No electric trimmer for me!� said the young fellow.
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“For a while I worked behind a curtain doing razor cuts, Perry Como style or Hollywood style. Then, after two weeks, Gus threw the keys down in front of me and said, “Here, you look after the place.” So here I am, no English, no friends, just a hot-blooded Greek but my brain was working. Before I knew it I was established in Vancouver. Bad guys, good guys, big business people, all came to me through word of mouth. There was no one else in Vancouver doing what I was doing. I was in the right place at the right time.”
WARFLEET PRESS * www.warfleetpress.com ISBN 978-0-9868793-4-0 $34.95
Printed in China