Wes Hall outside his Toronto home on June 3, 2020.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
I thought I knew Wes Hall.
Over three decades of work on high-stakes deals, the founder of Kingsdale Advisors often shared insights as his shareholder consulting company advised chief executive officers and helped set the course for Corporate Canada.
I’ve watched Mr. Hall hold forth on CBC’s Dragons’ Den. I edited a chapter he contributed to a book, on the launch of the BlackNorth Initiative. One sunny Saturday a few years ago, the two of us solved the world’s problems as we covered a few kilometres together with our families – Mr. Hall has five children – on a charity walk for Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. I knew the broad strokes of his rags-to-riches backstory – the kid who grew up in a tin shack in Jamaica makes it big on Bay Street.
Then I read Mr. Hall’s autobiography, No Bootstraps When You’re Barefoot, which was published last week. And I realized I knew next to nothing about one of the country’s leading Black executives.
Mr. Hall’s book, as honest and raw a tale as you’ll encounter, is a story of triumph in the face of incredible adversity. Searing poverty. Overt and systemic racism. Career setbacks. Family tragedy – a brother beaten to death and dropped in a dumpster. Most poignantly, Mr. Hall’s narrative is about surviving, and thriving, after a childhood marked by physical and even more damaging verbal abuse from his mother.
“I wanted to tell a story of hope,” Mr. Hall said in an interview. “An impossible, true story with a really great ending.”
Mission accomplished.
To start where the book ends, Mr. Hall’s tale finishes with an insider’s take on his two most public projects. There is a chapter devoted to Kingsdale’s successful 2012 campaign for hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman that replaced the board at Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. Then comes the 2020 launch of BlackNorth, a project aimed at increasing Black representation across all ranks of Canadian companies, including the boardroom.
The common thread in these two experiences, according to Mr. Hall, is the unique outsider perspective that comes with typically being the only Black person in a room full of business leaders.
In the book, he writes: “If I had perceived my Blackness as a disadvantage or weakness, then it would have been exactly that. If I’d tried to ignore who I was and be more like them, I would never have accomplished what I have. To me, being Black is my superpower. I brought something no one else in those rooms did: a different perspective earned through different lived experience. There’s no telling what someone who sees things through a new lens can add to your business.”
Looking back at the CP Rail campaign, in which Kingsdale’s client replaced the retired CEO of Royal Bank of Canada on the railway’s board, Mr. Hall writes: “The real win for me was accomplishing something everyone thought was impossible, and what it meant in a bigger-picture sense to prove them wrong. … We’d sent the message that no board is untouchable. Privilege alone is not enough; you have to do the work. I’ll die happy if that win inspired even one person who never thought they’d get a chance to step up to the plate to swing for the fences.”
When a Black executive writes a 300-page book highlighting a lifetime of prejudice, it makes for occasionally uncomfortable reading. For any Canadian who sees anti-Black racism as an American problem, Mr. Hall says: “Black folks – in North America, at least – are never allowed to exist separate from our racial identity; every interaction we have is impacted by the colour of our skin. So, I can tell you for a fact: Black people know when it’s about race. I suspect that many white people do, too, whether they’re willing to admit it or not.
“Canadian racism is often called ‘polite racism’ (as if such a thing can exist). It is a racism that is largely implied rather than explicitly written out on a sign over a drinking fountain or with a burning cross. It relies on the fact that people raised in the Canadian system will get the message – and they do.”
Mr. Hall’s book opens in a shack on the edge of a Jamaican plantation where family members worked. His mother boiled a pot of porridge, left it on the table, and walked out on her 18-month-old son and two siblings. The oldest was 4. Neighbours contacted his grandmother, Julia Vassell, who arrived later that day to pick up three crying, hungry children. She raised Mr. Hall, imparting the work ethic and moral code that now anchor her grandson. In the book, which is dedicated to Ms. Vassell, Mr. Hall sums up his childhood with these lines:
“I saw how hard she worked for us. I saw the dignity with which she lived, and the honest effort she applied to everything she could control in her life. How could I ever be embarrassed by the life she worked so hard to give me?
“As I’ve grown older, I’ve always tried to carry myself the way she did. What embarrasses me aren’t the things I can’t control, only the things I can. Poverty, sickness, hunger, having a crappy job or only being able to afford a small apartment or shabby house – these things aren’t failures. Failure is having the power to affect positive change for yourself or others and not acting on it.”
When Mr. Hall was 11, his mother re-entered his life. She had started a new family with a new partner, but reclaimed her son in what he later realized was an attempt to win back the affection of Mr. Hall’s father, who had immigrated to Canada. Before detailing the next two years of his life, Mr. Hall warns readers the passages may be triggering.
“My appearance, particularly the colour of my skin – I was darker than her – was a constant target. … As brutal as the physical abuse was, it was the verbal abuse that hurt me the most – and she knew it. I internalized the verbal abuse – particularly the idea that my Blackness made me undesirable and somehow lesser – in a way I never did with the physical abuse. I remember telling [my sister], ‘I wish she would just hit me, punch me in the face, instead of saying what she just said.’ It’s really hard to overcome the knowledge that your own mother hates you. How do you rationalize that or explain it away?”
At 13, Mr. Hall ran away from his mother’s home to live with a series of friends. At 16, his father agreed to bring him from Jamaica to Toronto, where he joined a family raised in the Jehovah’s Witness faith. At 22, working in the mail room at law firm Stikeman Elliott, Mr. Hall joined the church. The role of faith, in both business and personal life, is a subtle but significant element of the book. Mr. Hall writes: “I joke with people nowadays: You think it’s tough being Black on Bay Street? Try being a Black Jehovah’s Witness knocking on doors in a rich neighbourhood.”
As he concludes his book, Mr. Hall sums up the many challenges he faced, and the common response. Children make fun of you for being poor? Get up. Mother beats you? Get up. Half your staff quits? Get up. Mr. Hall said: “That’s what‘s special about me. For a Black person in the corporate world, my willingness to fight was far more valuable than being the smartest person in the room, and more necessary for survival.”
In the 1990s, basketball player Charles Barkley caused a stir by starring in a Nike television commercial that opened with the line, “I am not a role model.” The NBA star went on to explain that parents should take centre stage in raising their children. Mr. Hall said similar sentiment underpinned his book.
“I’m not trying to suggest to anyone they do the same as me, that they follow my path,” Mr. Hall said in an interview. “I’m trying to say to anyone who goes through trauma that they can come through difficult times, emerge stronger and find success.”