Rogers, Edward S.

CONVOCATION, OCTOBER, 2001
EDWARD ROGERS
to be Doctor of Letters

"Ted" Rogers, as he is known in the business world, is one of Canada's most successful entrepreneurs. He is President and Chief Executive Officer of Rogers Communications Inc., the country's leading provider of cable television, with interests that extend to a wide range of broadcasting, publishing, and other forms of communication. He is equally one of the nation's foremost philanthropists, a generous and active promoter of his community. He is, today, at the top of the heap; but if anyone thinks that his getting there was easy, they don't know Ted Rogers' story. It was anything but easy, and he met more than his share of nay-sayers in the pursuit of his dreams.

He was born in Toronto, the son of an innovative father who manufactured radios. The Rogers Majestic was one of the hot-selling models of the early 1930s, and it became as important an ingredient in Canadian pop culture as the Saturday night hockey game. The radio's technical edge came from the senior Rogers' invention of a vacuum tube that would permit the use of regular household alternating current rather than expensive and often unreliable batteries. It seems obvious that the father's daring, ambition, and drive were passed on to the son, remarkably so since his father died when Ted was five, and the fledgling company passed into the hands of others.

Ted grew up wanting to get back his father's business or something much like it. Even as a schoolboy, he pursued his business dream by filling his baby sister's pram with returnable beer bottles to collect the deposits. The sister, we might note was Ann Graham, who eventually came to UNB and took her BA degree here in 1967. Life for Ted, on the other hand, focused on Toronto. He went to Upper Canada College and then to Trinity College, University of Toronto, and Osgoode Hall Law School, seeming to pursue a conventional education to become a lawyer. He was admitted to the Ontario bar, but at every step of the way, it was business that attracted him. When he was still an articling law student, he bought a radio station, the country's first FM station, and within a year he branched into AM broadcasting. These were daring moves for a young man investing with other people's money and not at all sure where the broadcasting industry was going. But this was the beginning of an odyssey that was to bring both success and failure as well as the skeptical criticism of bankers and financiers who were astounded at his unconventional style and his seemingly unconcerned exposure to risk.

Peter Newman, the author, has called Ted Rogers "The Riverboat Gambler." When at one point his indebtedness reached into the billions of dollars, Newman wrote that "Rogers runs his business in a constant state of barely suppressed hysteria." What Newman alluded to was Rogers' entry into, and rapid expansion in, cable television. Without waiting for any of his acquisitions to turn a profit, he leveraged a small cable company into a bigger, and then the biggest in Canada. In the 1980s, he expanded into the United States until the price was right for him to sell off the American interests and reconcentrate in Canada. He diversified his communications empire by investing in Cantel, and became one of the pioneers in the cellular phone industry in this country.

Today Rogers Communications Inc., through its subsidiaries, owns 30 radio stations, a television station, numerous magazines including Maclean's, Canada's largest wireless communications system offering cellular phone and paging services, the country's largest cable network, over 200 video stores, and the Toronto Blue Jays Baseball Club. As recently as five years ago, the skeptics were certain that he was headed for disaster. But he has proven them wrong, and in the process has established his reputation as one of Canada's shrewdest businessmen.

But Ted Rogers is much more than this. He is witty, he is generous, and he is profoundly interested in his community. He and his wife Loretta have set new standards of philanthropy in the fields of health and education, they love and promote Toronto, and they share a broad interest in Canada and especially in Canada's youth. Ted Rogers' avid support of Toronto's bid for the summer Olympics combines these many interests in sport, youth, community, and nation. He is proudly an officer of The Order of Canada, a richly deserved honour.

In an earlier era, Ted Rogers might have pursued his dreams in politics. He admires the nation-builders, and was, as a young man, an ardent supporter of John Diefenbaker. He supported the party that had once tied the country together with railway tracks. As it turns out, he fulfilled his destiny outside of politics, physically tying a sprawling country together with television cables and wireless communications systems. His achievements in business, philanthropy, sport, and community development have become Ted Rogers' legacy. He is a modern nation-builder. Today we are honoured to add his name to the list of distinguished graduates of this institution.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 3