The first indication he was about to become a knight arrived in a brown envelope along with the rest of the mail.
Said the letter from the secretary to the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher: “The Prime Minister is minded to recommend to the Queen to confer a knighthood upon you. If this were to occur, would you please indicate whetheryou would accept.”
The first thought of Sir Graham Day, as he became, was not for himself, but what this would mean to his father.
“My father was a classic late Victorian. If the Queen had said to my father, ‘Jump in front of the train,’ he wouldn’t have paused.”
The knighthood was bestowed because of Sir Graham’s crucial roles in the 1980s as chairman and chief executive of British Shipbuilders, then Rover Group, when both companies were restructured and privatized.
“The civil servants have a phrase, safe hands. So for me it was recognition that my hands were indeed safe, I didn’t drop the ball. Mrs. T. believed I delivered. That was very important to me,” he said. “I’m an unabashed admirer of Mrs. T. and I’ve had all four sides of her sharp tongue, particularly in my early dealings with her. One of her standard intros was, ‘Do you mean to tell me …’ and I realized that what she was guarding against, not just from me, was people telling her what they thought she wanted to hear.”
Once any topic was fully aired, the prime minister would say: “Then we are agreed, are we not?”
Donald S. Macdonald loomed large over the Canadian political landscape, writes Rod McQueen.
Sir Graham came to understand “that was your last kick at the cat.”
Born in Halifax, Sir Graham began his career as a trial lawyer with Canadian Pacific in Montreal. His first exposure to the U.K. came when he oversaw completion of three vessels CP ordered from a shipyard in Birkenhead, across the Mersey from Liverpool. After the ships were delivered, he was hired to run the shipyard that was by then bankrupt.
“Not a lot of people want this job,” he was told. “If you make a hash of it, it’s always easier to shoot the colonial than it is to shoot the natives.”
He turned the shipyard around within a year and returned to law in Canada in 1976. In 1983 he was again summoned to Britain to help with Thatcher’s privatization plans.
“Canada has always been very slow on privatization. As a nation with a lot of state involvement, Canada has always been well behind the curve.”
He blamed foot-dragging in the public service, asking, “Do turkeys vote for an early Christmas?”
“What interests me is trying to change something. Communications is very important and that changes the culture. You want people to be willing participants, not compelled performers.”
Sir Graham received his knighthood in 1989, before the capability for a Canadian to be honoured was ended. Sir Graham then served as chairman of British Aerospace, Cadbury Schweppes and PowerGen.
He retired at 60 in 1993 and returned to Canada to live in Hantsport, N.S., with a home overlooking the Avon River flowing into the Minas Basin then to the Bay of Fundy.
But he failed at retirement because he was just a 55-minute drive to the Halifax Airport for flights to ɫɫ where he served on the boards of the Bank of Nova Scotia, Extendicare Inc., and others. He was also chairman of Hydro One Inc.
“I was determined to wear out rather than rust out,” he told me in 2001. “Retirement for me was a cessation of working where I had executive responsibilities. In the U.K. if I’d dropped dead, it would have been very inconvenient. Now I don’t think there’s anything I’m doing that would have anything like the magnitude of corporate inconvenience. That’s the distinction.”
Sir Graham, who died at 92 this past July, was among a small cadre of Canadian businessmen who moved to the U.K. to become an executive or proprietor. Others include Sir James Dunn, Max Aitken, Roy Thomson and Conrad Black.
Employees feared change, but Karen Maidment was a missionary, Rod McQueen writes.
“A lot of Aussies, New Zealanders, South Africans and Irish go to work in the U.K. but very few Canadians,” he said. “A lot of Canadians have managed in a context that is constrained by the borders of Canada — or maybe into the U.S. In the U.K., it’s hard not to be international.”
Sir Graham’s knighthood generated a mixed response in Canada all the way from displeasure to one proud mother who pointed out his house to her young son, saying, “A knight lives in that house.”
“Oh,” said the boy, “where does he keep his horse?”
“That, to me, says it all,” said Sir Graham. “It’s important to keep yourself in perspective. Don’t put on any pretences.”
Just make sure the suit of armour doesn’t get rusty.
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