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What did you know about Clairtone growing up, Nina?
NM: It’s part of our family mythology, so to speak. It was my father’s first company. Although it was certainly not his biggest or most successful company, it was in many ways the one that really set the stage for what came later.
What did you think about your daughter writing about you, Peter?
PM: I didn’t think much about it. I’ve got so many other things to think about. I happen to love her writing. And of course when I read this essay in Switzerland two weeks ago, I must tell you that I was so overwhelmed that I had to stop reading.
What was overwhelming about it?
PM: How absolutely correctly she got me. To recapture the motivations and to highlight the flaws, as well as some positive things, it was spectacular, and it really got to me.
What was the most important lesson from the Clairtone experience?
PM: Clairtone was learn as you go. It started from zero. I never went to business school, I never took economics. I was an engineer. Nor did David [Gilmour] have much experience. What I did learn from it, really, was the art of doing business. I learned what is noise in business, and what matters, what moves the company ahead and creates value. I learned the enormous importance of being yourself, practising all your activities with integrity, because it always pays in the long term. It taught me two main themes that I maintain today, that you can combine an aggression in operations with conservatism in finance. I learned that government and business don’t exactly work together very well, [and] the reliance not just on optimism — which is a vital component of an entrepreneur’s life — but you’ve got to combine that with an expectation that your optimism may well not be fulfilled.
NM: Clairtone was the ultimate business school for my father. You could argue it was either a very expensive business school, or a low-priced one.
Did you have any mentors?
PM: No, I really didn’t have anybody. I evolved [into mentors] some of my suppliers who liked me, some of my bankers who liked me. Remember, I was in my late 20s or early 30s, so in those days, when you moved in stock-market circles and talked about multimillion-dollar loans, I was a bit of an exception. I had an accent, I wasn’t born here, I had no contacts. I was quite a novelty, a weirdo. But David was as much a part of this as I was. Everything I’ve done, David gave me. David was Establishment. David opened the doors.
There’s a quote in the book from Alexander Ross, former editor of Canadian Business, referring to you as a hero. Is that how you felt?
PM: I must say that we did. We broke every mould. On the one hand, we were on the stock market, and the stock performed really well. In those days, you’ve got to remember, there were not exactly hot stocks. Bell Telephone wasn’t known for rapid movements. Nor was Noranda, nor was Falconbridge. We were. Our product was in all the sexy magazines, and we openly associated with people like Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson. So we had glamour, and we had financial rectitude.
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