Colin MacDonald

"Colin MacDonald"

"One issue hampering the company was, paradoxically, Risley’s best attribute: his ability to see—and desire to pursue—new opportunities. At Ocean Nutrition he was eager to chase new marine oil applications, and like Colin MacDonald in the early days of Clearwater, Jamieson felt Ocean Nutrition was becoming too scattered and needed to prioritize."

"Details were scarce, but FPI would finance the acquisition by taking on $ 210 million in existing Clearwater debt and issuing millions of non-voting shares to Risley and Colin MacDonald, meaning they were giving up 100 percent of Clearwater to get non-voting shares in FPI. Risley would be CEO of the giant company and would reportedly hold (through CFFI) 60 percent of the combined common shares but still only about 15 percent of the preferred voting shares. “I will therefore have no more control over the company when the transaction is closed than I have today,” Risley declared. (Except he would also be running it.)"

"According to Risley and Spavold, MacDonald’s relatively modest lifestyle was simply a personal choice. “Whenever Colin needed money, we gave it to him. He had a different objective in life than John did. That’s all,” Spavold said. “We funded Colin’s account the same way we funded John’s. We never controlled the amount going to him. Whatever he spent, we covered. That was the deal. If he had wanted to buy a boat, he could have bought a boat. We wouldn’t have stopped him.”"

"He’d also been impressed with the simplicity of getting a shot in the US (no cost, no appointment, walk in, walk out). For more than twenty years Risley had been visiting the former Lahey Clinic (now the Lahey Hospital & Medical Center) near Boston for annual checkups and procedures. “It’s run like a business,” he explained. “It costs me $ 10,000 for a day. But if I have an appointment at 9: 10 a.m., I have an appointment at 9: 10 a.m..... I’m treated like a customer.” (Similarly, Colin MacDonald at one point noted he was flying his son’s father-in-law to the Cleveland Clinic for heart treatment “because getting treated here is fucking insane.” MacDonald later mentioned having a procedure done in New York.) “I don’t think there’s any real difference in the quality of care you get between Canada and the United States,” Risley added. “It’s just that we’ve got a single provider system with no competition, no incentive to do better, and no measurement device as to whether people are being efficient. So you get a system which is completely overloaded.... You want to see a specialist? Good luck.”"