RIP Peter Munk

Never met the guy, but that didn’t hold me back from offering sporadic commentary on his various adventures.

And he had plenty of adventures. Check out this story by Peter C. Newman at Macleans from 2014.

I never met Peter Newman either, but I do have a story. Back in one of my past lives I called up the guy who owned the two biggest apartment towers in Guelph at the time.

I said, hey, it’s Dieter Neumann, can I have a couple minutes of your time?

He thought I’d said Peter Newman, and he was delighted to give me at least a couple hours. Little did he realize that Peter C. was by then the biographer of choice for Canada’s business elite, nor did he realize that owning a few hundred rental units in Guelph was a long way from the “elite.”

But back to Mr. Munk.

As an “aristocratic Jew” from Hungary (Newman’s words), Munk obviously had some advantages in the game of life, and he was able to take full advantage of those advantages. The mining game will always be awash with rampant naysaying from environmentalists and social justice types of all stripes, who as often as not are funded by your competitors.

I’ve followed Munk’s adventures, at some remove, for a long time, and while his rep was far from spotless, he was a long way from “worst offender” status too.

Happy trails, Mr. Munk!