Culver Launches New Book

Old Boy NEWS

CULVER launches new book at SELWYN HOUSE

On May 27, 2014, David Culver ’39 held court in the Rossy Agora at Selwyn House for the official launch of his new autobiography, Expect Miracles: Recollections of a Lucky Life. Those present were fortunate to be charmed and enthralled by the humourous anecdotes and fond reminiscences of one of the school’s most distinguished—yet humble—Old Boys.

As former CEO and Chairman of Alcan, the multinational aluminum manufacturing company that has for a century been one of Canada’s industrial giants, David has become well known for insisting that the company retain its Quebec base through unsettled political times.

David modestly describes himself as an undistinguished student when he started at Selwyn House some 80 years ago. “The school was small and I was lazy,” he says. Nevertheless, he went to the top of the business world and returned to serve the school as Chairman of the Board of Directors from 1967-1970, during the last years of the Robert Speirs period. David once asked the venerable headmaster whether he could pick out the students most likely to succeed later in life.

“Speirs had a way of looking skyward before he answered,” David said. “He looked up and he said to me: ‘Watch the boys in the middle of the class. The boys who are at the bottom are most often there for a reason, but the boys at the top find it too easy.’”

And what was Dr. Speirs’ reason for being a good headmaster in general? “Boys first, teachers second, parents third.”

After graduating from Selwyn House in Grade 9, David went to LCC and then to Trinity College School. He received a Bachelor of Science from McGill University in 1947, an MBA from Harvard University, and a Certificate from the Centre d’Études Industrielles in Geneva. He began working at Alcan in 1949, eventually rising to CEO in 1979.

While at the helm, David fought to keep Alcan in Quebec. “Montreal is not the place from which to run your business if it’s just in Canada. But it’s very much the place to run your business if it’s worldwide,” he told his Selwyn House audience.

In 1977, not long after the Parti Québécois had first been elected, Alcan was poised to make a $500M expansion in the Saguenay. David’s colleagues on the board insisted that, politically, it was not the right time to make such an investment, but David was adamant. “Very well, but you’ve got to get a letter from Premier Levesque written in his own blood pledging that nothing will endanger the project,” he was told. “That’s easy,” David replied, “but it would be worthless. The next fellow who comes along [as premier] will disregard it.” David had a better idea. “I’ll have the project announced by the local mayor [in the Saguenay]. He’ll make sure nothing happens.” After his retirement, David was encouraged by his daughter to write down the stories he told so entertainingly. After all, his mother had been an inveterate writer all her life, bequeathing some 48,000 handwritten pages of her musings to the National Archives when she died.

At the book launch, David was asked by his ghost writer, Alan Freeman, to explain the significance of his book’s title. “I’ve always believed in happenstance,” David replied. ”When things suddenly happen, pay attention and don’t be afraid to act.”

He said he was a firm believer in the power of serendipity. He quoted the late Dr. David Colman, the eminent former Director of the Neurological Institute, to define that word. “It’s when you go looking for a needle in a haystack and you come up with the farmer’s daughter.”

“So far in life,” David said, ”it hasn’t hurt me to follow happenstance.”

Asked by Geoff Moore ’83 if he had any advice for today’s young people, David fell back on three points TV’s Judge Judy once told a graduating class in Connecticut:

“Number 1: You only have one chance to make a first impression. Number 2: be organized; be organized. Number 3: choose a career for which you are suited; everything else is a hobby.”

“In my lifetime of hiring people,” David added, ” I always favoured people who were good at sports. They spend five days of the week preparing to be perfect for two minutes on a Saturday afternoon.”

“Never forget,” he said, “you don’t have to be perfect all the time; you just have to be perfect at the right time.”

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