Nova Scotian lawyer Sir Graham Day became Margaret Thatcher’s favorite fixer

More than two decades ago, when Lydia Bugden was an emerging young lawyer in a law firm in Halifax, an older colleague offered a suggestion: it was time for her to meet Sir Graham Day.

Mrs Bugden was initially surprised about this proposal. Within her law firm, Stewart McKelvey, Sir Graham was this towering figure with a huge reputation – legendary business director, trusted adviser to the business dynasties of Atlantic Canada, and the most famous, Margaret Thatcher’s favorite Fixer, who in the 1980s, the privacy in the 1980s -Industry in the shipbuilding and a car industry has drawn up.

Sir Graham Day was a very big problem, while Lydia Bugden wasn’t. Yet she made the pilgrimage to the town of HANTSPORT from the Bucolic Annapolis Valley, where Sir Graham and his wife, Lady Ann, had settled after the tumultuous Thatcher, while litting a hand as a gray eminence in Stewart McKelvey.

She heard that Sir Graham already knew a lot about her and had plans for her. He would become her career sponsor, a deeply committed relationship that went beyond the occasional advice from the typical mentor, she says, thinking about the life of Sir Graham, who died on July 31 at the age of 92.

Mrs Bugden became part of a talented framework, often young women, who experienced the day effect over the years – the useful phone calls, the contacts, the opportunities. He was someone without a personal self -interest, she remembers, except that he just wanted to launch a career.

“And he followed you for the rest of the time – you were not dumped so that he could continue to the next person,” says Mrs. Bugden who celebrated her 10 -year anniversary this month as CEO of Stewart McKelvey, one of the Powerhouse Legal Stores in Atlantic Canada.

For Mrs. Bugden’s thinking, this was his way of paying it in advance. As a young lawyer, he had benefited from the attention of a senior partner in one of the predecessor companies of Stewart McKelvey. He wanted to know that when he and his contemporaries left the stage, there would be new generations of trusted advisers to serve the companies and people of the Atlantic region.

Graham Day had left Nova Scotia as a young man, made his mark in Central Canada and crossed the Atlantic Ocean to become a power in British public life, like a Canadian in London, in the paths of Lords Thomson and Beaverbrook and the road cleared for people like Mark Carney. But his plan was always to get home and to serve his beloved Nova Scotia.

In setting up young people, Sir Graham was aware of his own non -commanding beginning. He was born on Judson Graham Day on 3 May 1933 in Halifax. The son of a furniture furniture from an English immigrants and a mother from an old Haligonian family, he was a very popular only child. But when he improved at school, young Graham became an angry young man. In high school, the lanky rebellious teenager joined a gang of malcontents, wibe and classroom exiles that played cards in the boys’ toilet.

Although he scraped to the University Law School Dalhousie Law, he still drove into an intervention of one of his professors. Mr. Day failed the Property Law by Graham Murray and when he complained, the professor started to kick my ass “, he would remember. A light continued: Mr. Day realized that he wasted his talents. He graduated from the Dal -Act near the top of his class.

Even in the bad times he found comfort in his baritone voice, allowing him to spoil his talent and love for opera. He was good enough to be approached by the Gilbert & Sullivan Touring Company in London. He was for a short time, a member of the choir, and then musical director, of the legendary CBC television show Singalong JubileeWhere he crossed paths with rising stars such as Anne Murray and Catherine McKinnon.

Mr. Day practiced rights in Windsor in the Annapolis Valley when his ability to make fast and far-reaching decisions became clear. One day he was part of a group of young people on a toot, crammed into his Volkswagen Beetle. He saw one of his passengers, Ann Creighton, a clear, sympathetic 19-year-old from Dartmouth. Beaten, the 24-year-old Mr. Day asked her to have lunch. He suggested within a few days. She would be a perfect companion for his adventures on the world stage.

Then came the paying moment. While Mr. Day the law in the small city in Windsor practiced, had the value in the legal establishment of Halifax’s other plans for him. Senior Halifax lawyer Gordon Cowan informed him that there was an opening in the legal department of gigantic Canadian Pacific, then the largest industrial care in Canada. Soon Graham and Ann were on their way to Montreal.

He would come forward as an international problem solver for CP, who solve problems around the world. Upon assignment in Great Britain, he delved into an incident that the toughness showed that would mark his career. A shipyard in Birkenhead, across the river Mersey from Liverpool, built three CP container ships, with one very close to completion. But a strike had closed the garden and left the boat in the dark.

The young Canadian noted that in the evening the pickets of the Union all went home. So in the night, at Vloed, he arranged that the almost completed ship was relaxed from his berth and dragged to Cork, Ireland, for completion. The strike was broken and Mr. Day went to Canada as a bit of a folk hero – at least on the management side of the bitter labor force of Great Britain.

It was not long before he received a phone call from Great Britain-an invitation to become the director of the same shipyard, Cammell Laird, where he had taken the caper of the belly. It was now a fading relic of an era from the past in which the British ships ruled the waves. But at 38, seven years after doing wills and real estate transactions in the Annapolis Valley, he received a company with 10,000 employees.

It was the first of his rescue tasks, with Mr. Day was instructed to tighten old artifacts of the industrial glory of Great Britain. He had to be difficult in lowering costs, often jobs, while it remained morally high. The joke went around: “Is it true that Graham Day was kicked out of the mafia for excessive cruelty?” But he insisted that he never eliminated a job that could be salvaged. The feeling of the Union was that he was a cool -hearted numbers man, but some workers’ leaders appreciated the competence after years of medium management. His motto was always: “I won’t lie. I won’t bluff.”

Peter Mills, a recruit of Dalhousie Law that Mr. Day followed from CP to his British jobs, says his boss was charismatic, charming, witty but also “an intimidating bastard when he had to be.” He paid a personal price, says Mr. MILLS – He hated to do the brutal restructuring, although he was good at it. Frustrated by clogged hierarchies, he found rough diamonds buried in organizations, they strengthen and they were intensely loyal.

He was a natural candidate for a larger job when the Labor government of James Callaghan prepared in the mid-1970s to nationalize the entire British shipbuilding industry. Mr. Day would be served as CEO of the new British shipbuilders, but the nationalization was in the midst of political chaos. Later the industry would be nationalized, but Graham Day was back in Canada, busy with jobs of Academe and Scheepsbouw.

At the end of 1982 the call came again from London. The Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher was wiped into power of the intention to bring about a revolution in the British economy and the privatization of large parts of the state industry. The Thatcherites had a candidate in mind to manage the repulsion of British shipbuilders – the same Graham day. He agreed and went from potential nationalisator to privatization.

The British industrial and political establishment was initially suspicious of this upstart colonial, but he won a lot against the skeptics. Above all, he won Mrs. Thatcher. He loved the Iron Lady and the feeling was mutual. They saw each other as truthful who do not shrink for harsh realities. But it was his ability to deliver results that were really loved by the prime minister, “who always appreciated people who brought solutions instead of problems,” says Dame Colette Bowe, then an official who worked on the privatization file.

As soon as the shipping builders were well advanced, Mrs. Thatcher chose him to run the privatization of automaker British Leyland, another faded icon, but with the respected brands Land Rover, Range Rover and the Mini. He would throw away the truck unit, the Buffing brands and the core activity, Rover Group, in the hands of an acceptable freer.

He adopted the partial sale of the British Power industry, and served a Stint as chairman of venerable Cadbury Schweppes. But after 10 hectic years it was time to return to Nova Scotia and to Hantsport, where he and Lady Ann had built a charming house in Cape COD style. She had managed the many movements, the many houses, the busy life of three children. He had promised her that they would come home.

He slid in the role of director of Canadian companies. The most prominent was Bank of Nova Scotia, where he was a leader during a transforming period. He was the adviser of some of the prominent business families of Atlantic Canada: Bragg, Sobey, Oland, Jodrey and others.

One of the business leaders he advised saw John Bragg as a rare type that, while commanding the Big Business image, would also be a deep interest in the progress of individual people in the organization.

At his knighthood, Sir Graham was fierce proud to be a final example of that rare race – the knight Canadian citizen – before that tradition ended. Mr. Bragg notes that he was one of the last of those Canadians who felt a primary attachment to ‘Mother England’.

Sir Graham built up a career by being political Savvy, but there was a moment when political control avoided him. He joined the board of Ontario Hydro, just when the conservative government of the province was planning to split the enormous usefulness into generation and transmission weapon and to sell them to private interests.

He became chairman of Hydro One, the transmission entity, where he defended the smart young manager Eleanor Clitheu as CEO. But Mrs. Clitheu’s compensation became a scandal. Under a new Tory Prime Minister, privatization was suspended for the time being and cabinet ministers were publicly ashamed of the Hydro One Board. Sir Graham and his board have resigned.

Back in Nova Scotia, he continued to advise business families, support the careers of emerging leaders and are a presence in HANTSPORT’s community life. There would travel to Toronto and Dunedin, FLA. To follow his Toronto Blue Jays through their ups and downs. He was loyal to the end.

At his death, Sir Graham leaves Lady Ann; Their children, Deborah, Michael and Donna; And three grandsons.

You can find more death messages from the world and post here.

To submit a reminder about someone we recently profiled on the Obitarian page, send us an e-mail obit@globeandmail.com.