Reuben CohenDaniel St. Louis
Reuben Cohen was a New Brunswick lawyer, financier, philanthropist and university chancellor. His life reads like an epic rags-to-riches tale – complete with the impoverished protagonist acquiring power, wealth and the love of his life, only to tragically lose it all before fighting his way back through strength of character.
Mr. Cohen, who died in Moncton on Oct. 24 at the age of 93, was a successful lawyer before establishing a financial empire that spread beyond New Brunswick. In 1974, he co-founded, with Leonard Ellen, the Central and Nova Scotia Trust Company, which later became Central Guaranty Trust Corporation. For a brief time, the multi-billion dollar corporation was among the top five trust companies in Canada, before its collapse in the early 1990s.
"Reuben Cohen was an original. A one-of-a-kind character that could have been drawn directly from the pages of a rags-to-riches novel by Horatio Alger," said Frank McKenna, a friend and former premier of New Brunswick.
Born in 1921 in Moncton, Mr. Cohen was the son of immigrant parents. His mother, Molly, came from a village that became part of Poland after the First World War, he wrote in his memoir. He described her as a determined woman with "boundless ambition and tireless energy," which he inherited. She lost her hearing early in life and learned to speak limited English by lip reading. His Russian-born father, David, travelled throughout the Maritimes selling draft horses before opening a small grocery store on Moncton's Main Street. The Yiddish-speaking family lived above the store in an apartment that had only cold water. With few Jewish families in the city at the time, Mr. Cohen developed strong connections with other immigrants and non-English speakers, such as Acadians. Later in life, he used his wealth to support the preservation of Acadian art and culture.
When Mr. Cohen was 14, his father died of cerebral thrombosis. An early entrepreneur, young Reuben started selling newspapers before renting a horse and wagon to peddle bananas for 10 cents a bundle. After finishing at the top of his high school class, he went to Dalhousie University on a scholarship to study law.
He graduated from university in 1944 and returned home to Moncton to open his own law practice in a two-room office on Main Street. He soon built up an active practice in almost every type of law and before long branched into business, buying shares in local companies, such as the Central Trust Company of Canada, which was headquartered in Moncton.
"He was deceptive," Mr. McKenna said. "He used all kinds of ruses to be self-deprecating and modest."
A thin, small man, he spoke in a monotone, often with his eyes half closed, Mr. McKenna said. But when words came out of his mouth, you instantly knew he had a brilliant mind.
"He was extraordinarily bright and interested in everything under the sun," Mr. McKenna said, adding that his friend loved to recite poetry, often in Greek or Latin and could speak nine languages.
In the summer of 1950, a friend in Moncton introduced him to Louise Glustein. "She was 21 and the most vivacious young woman I had ever seen, with a smile that was magical and completely entrancing," Mr. Cohen wrote in his 1998 autobiography, A Time to Tell: The Public Life of a Private Man. On Feb. 10, 1951, they married and spent the next 37 years together. Unable to have children, they adopted two girls, Debra and Natalie.
"Louise became a sensation in Moncton and was sought after by all elements in the city for aid, advice, community work and socializing," Mr. Cohen wrote.
Largely crediting her for educating him about art and for supporting his philanthropic work, Mr. Cohen raised more than $250-million for various causes over the years, Mr. McKenna said.
In 1985, a $100,000 donation turned into the Louise and Reuben Cohen Endowment Fund at the University of Moncton, which allowed the gallery to acquire a large collection of Acadian art. The school renamed the facility Galerie d'art Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen.
The YMCA of Greater Moncton was another institution to which he gave generously. Zane Korytko, CEO of the YMCA of Greater Moncton, recalls stories of Mr. Cohen spending hours in the Y's small library as a young boy. It was a place that didn't discriminate, so he felt comfortable there, Mr. Korytko said.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Mr. Cohen set up a foundation to put the Y on good financial footing and in the late 1990s he spearheaded a capital campaign to raise more than $10-million for the opening of a new centre in 2004. The centre's opening came at a time when the city was suffering economically, Mr. Korytko said. "The Y project became kind of like a lighthouse project for the community."
Mr. Korytko fondly remembers calls he received from Mr. Cohen. "It's the old man calling," he'd say. (Mr. Cohen started referring to himself that way in the 1960s). "I'm driving by and the parking lot is full. That makes me feel good."
With his "puckish sense of humour," Mr. Cohen loved to tease, especially women. He was an "outrageous flirt," Mr. McKenna said. But his wife remained the sole recipient of his love and devotion until her death in 1988. "It was a Hollywood type of love story," Mr. McKenna said.
In the summer of 1984, Ms. Cohen started complaining of abdominal pain. The following year she was diagnosed with a malignant ovarian tumour and went to Toronto for medical treatment. He kept vigil by her hospital bed during her long sickness and painful death, which took him away from his business at Central Guaranty.
Following her death, Mr. Cohen fell into a deep depression. His wife had not only been his soulmate, but he had relied on her to do everything from choosing his suits to caring for their daughters and charming his friends. "For weeks I was a zombie, not venturing out of my bedroom and scarcely out of bed," he wrote.
While he grieved, his company was burdened with a debt of millions of dollars worth of investments. The debt, combined with a global economic downturn, resulted in the company's demise. In 1992, a court-ordered restructuring put the company's "… assets into the hands of lenders, who then entered into the disposition of some of the assets. The loss of the trust company, which ended up in the hands of the Toronto Dominion Bank, meant the disappearance of an important player in the Maritime economy and was a bitter blow," Mr. Cohen wrote.
"He often said he would give every cent that he had earned for one more day in her [Louise's] embrace," Mr. McKenna said.
In his book, Mr. Cohen offered little other explanation of how the financial services company he helped build came to its ultimate demise. He wrote that he still could not understand how it happened so quickly that, "… the better part of a billion dollars in capital and reserves were wiped out practically overnight."
"When the corporate collapse became known, it was as if a Churchillian 'iron curtain' descended on my life almost overnight," Mr. Cohen wrote. "It is almost as if I had died and gone to my reward."
Mr. Cohen gradually pulled himself out of his depression and created a new life for himself. He was asked to serve as Dalhousie University's third chancellor and held that post from 1990 to 1994. He was instrumental in securing seed funding for the first Canadian chair in black studies and helped build the foundations for a more modern fundraising campaign.
He also found love again and at age 90 married Astrid Lundrigan, a woman he had known for years. He liked to tease that they weren't going to have children because they couldn't decide on a faith in which to raise them.
For his work, Mr. Cohen was named to the Order of Canada and received honorary degrees from several universities including the University of Moncton and Dalhousie University.
He leaves his wife, Astrid; daughters, Debra Moffatt and Natalie Smith, and five grandchildren.
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