Peter Pocklington
Peter Hugh Pocklington is a Canadian entrepreneur.
Peter Pocklington was known among North American hockey fans as "Peter Puck", an entrepreneur from oil-rich Alberta who was also the owner of the National Hockey League 's Edmonton Oilers from 1976 to 1998, running the team during its dynasty years from 1983 to 1990. He earned the enmity of many Canadians when he traded hockey's greatest player, Wayne Gretzky, to the Los Angeles Kings.
A vocal advocate of free-market capitalism, Pocklington had various business interests throughout his career. Outside sports, his best-known venture was his tenure as owner of a meatpacking plant in Edmonton, where he became embroiled in a bitter labour dispute in 1986.
Pocklington's life experiences were extensively documented in the 2009 biography, I'd Trade Him Again: On Gretzky, Politics and the Pursuit of the Perfect Deal, written by Terry McConnell and J'lyn Nye. The book's title was inspired by Pocklington's ongoing conviction the Gretzky trade was the right deal at the right time and had a positive impact on all parties concerned: the Oilers, the Kings, Gretzky, and the game itself.
Early life and career
Pocklington was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, to Basil Cohen Pocklington, an insurance executive who had immigrated from England as a young man, and his wife, Eileen, and grew up in London, Ontario.The greatest influence on young Pocklington was the legendary motivational speaker Earl Nightingale and his best-selling recording, The Strangest Secret. "It literally stated, 'You become what you think about,' " Pocklington told his biographers. He says he still has the record today.
One of his earliest business ventures was to find old cars on the farms around his maternal grandparents' home in Carberry, Manitoba, buy them for $25, then ship them to Ontario by train, where he sold them for upwards of $500. Because of the West's dry climate, the cars, many of them 25 to 40 years old, were in better shape than comparable vehicles that had been driven on Ontario's salted roads.
By the time Pocklington was 25, he owned his first car dealership, Westown Ford in Tilbury, Ontario. At the time, he was the youngest Ford dealer in Canada. Within a few years, he had sold the Tilbury dealership and bought another nearby Chatham. By 1971, when Pocklington was only 29, he left Ontario and moved west, where he bought Shirley Ford in Edmonton, Alberta. Within a few years, Pocklington was running the most successful Ford dealership in Canada. He also had the cash flow to buy Edmonton's fledgling team in the World Hockey Association, the Edmonton Oilers.
Sports owner
Pocklington would come to operate several businesses over the next several years, but he has always said owning sports teams gave him the most satisfaction.The man who came to be known as "Peter Puck" bought part ownership of the Edmonton Oilers in 1976. According to his biography, he offered a diamond ring his wife was wearing to dinner as his downpayment. Within a year, Pocklington bought out his partner, Nelson Skalbania, who would later own the WHA's Indianapolis Racers.
In December 1978, the Indianapolis Racers, furthered the collapse of the World Hockey Association and ceased operations due to financial difficulties. Gordy Robson, acting as Nelson Skalbania’s representative, delivered the public statement announcing the team's closure following day-long negotiations with the club's limited partners. "The talks were unsuccessful and leaves the general partner no choice but to fold the team."
It was also from Skalbania that Pocklington acquired perhaps the greatest hockey player ever. In the fall of 1978, Skalbania offered Pocklington the rights to a 17-year-old phenom Wayne Gretzky. The Oilers' owner did not hesitate to do the deal. A few months later, Pocklington parlayed the Gretzky signing into a merger between the WHA and the National Hockey League ; with this, the Oilers became members of the NHL. Five years later, the Oilers would win their first of five Stanley Cup championships they would capture under Pocklington's ownership.
Over the next 18 years, Pocklington also owned the Edmonton Trappers of baseball's Pacific Coast League, the Edmonton Drillers of the North American Soccer League and the National Professional Soccer League, the Edmonton Brick Men of the Canadian Soccer League, and the Kamloops Junior Oilers of the Western Hockey League.
Entrepreneur
Edmonton in the 1970s was experiencing explosive growth fuelled by an oil boom and several fortunes were made, not only by Pocklington but by the likes of Pat Bowlen, later owner of the National Football League's Denver Broncos. Pocklington’s business empire eventually exceeded $2 billion in sales; massive real estate holdings throughout Alberta and Ontario; Fidelity Trust, one of Canada's largest trust companies; Palm Dairies, one of the largest retailers of dairy products in Western Canada; Canbra Foods, a canola manufacturer; Magic Pantry, which sold prepared foods that did not require refrigeration; Kretschmar Foods, which serviced restaurants; Green Acre Farms, a chicken-processing company with plants in Texas and Mississippi; and Gainers, an Edmonton-based beef- and pork-packing company.Hostage-taking
Pocklington was also taken hostage by a gunman who broke into his home. "I thought I was bullet-proof—until I was shot," Pocklington told his biographers. The kidnapper was caught and Pocklington made a full recovery. The plan of the kidnapper, Mirko Petrović, was to kidnap Eva Pocklington, but she escaped. The other two people in the house were released, leaving Pocklington, who was with the gunman for 11 hours while he negotiated a $2 million ransom. However, before the ransom could be paid, RCMP law enforcement snuck into the house and shot both Petrović and Pocklington, wounding both men. They each made a full recovery and Petrović served five years in an Alberta prison before he was released and returned to Yugoslavia.Politics
In 1983, Pocklington entered the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada leadership convention. He campaigned on a platform of free trade with the United States, privatizing government-owned Crown corporations like Air Canada, Petro-Canada and Canadian National Railway, retiring the national debt and implementing a flat tax. In the end, Pocklington fell far below his expectations of delegates; one advisor jokingly guessed "99", Gretzky's sweater number, and Pocklington came close to receiving 102 delegates. He withdrew his candidacy before the second ballot and supported the eventual winner Brian Mulroney, who would adopt some of Pocklington's policies while in government.Philanthropy
Pocklington was an active philanthropist for many years in Edmonton. Among his gifts were $1.5 million he helped raise for the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation; $1 million for the Jamie Platz YMCA; $300,000 for the Glen Sather Sports Medicine Clinic at the University of Alberta; $250,000 to establish a free-enterprise chair at the University of Alberta's School of Business; and upwards of $2 million for Junior Achievement. It was through his charitable works that he became close friends with famed tenor Luciano Pavarotti, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and former U.S. presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. From 1995 to 2010, Pocklington served as a member of the board of directors for the Betty Ford Center.Leaving Canada for the United States
In 1998, after selling the Oilers, Pocklington moved to the U.S. with his wife Eva, and settled in Palm Desert, California. He remains active in business and philanthropic pursuits there, and was for a long time member of the board of directors at the Betty Ford Center. While Pocklington remains a controversial figure in Canada because of the Wayne Gretzky trade, he has his fans, too. On October 8, 2014, Pocklington was invited back to Edmonton when the Edmonton Oilers organized a 30-year reunion of their first Stanley Cup championship team. When he was introduced, he received a standing ovation from the 17,000 fans in attendance.Controversies
Gainers strike
While Pocklington's business empire realized its successes, it suffered its failures, too. Prime interest rates in the early 1980s topped out at 18.5%, a development that sapped the oil boom of its strength, collapsed the real estate market, and sank Fidelity Trust in a sea of declining property values.Pocklington's labour dispute with the United Food and Commercial Workers union ended up crippling Gainers, which at the time was Canada's second-largest meat packer. During the union's six-month strike, Pocklington used strikebreakers, primarily from Quebec, to keep the plant operating despite the picket lines, a decision that earned him the enmity of Canada's labour movement. Eventually, he agreed to settle the strike and rehire the striking workers at the request of the Alberta government. In return, says Pocklington in his biography, then-Premier of Alberta Don Getty agreed to give Gainers an interest-free loan of $50 million. Gainers would give the province 10% of its operating profit every year for the next four years, and repay a conventional mortgage after that. Pocklington also insisted the province disband its pork marketing board, which fixed prices on pork at a rate higher than what the meat packers could sell it in the marketplace. Instead, the government gave Gainers $55 million at 10.5% interest, refusing to disband the marketing board. "They said, 'Take it or leave it,'" Pocklington told his biographers. Crippled with a debt-servicing cost it did not anticipate and handicapped by inflated production costs created by the marketing board, Gainers immediately began to drown in debt. Loan repayments were missed and within three years, the Alberta government took over Gainers. The province lost $89 million on the venture in the four years it operated Gainers—more than double the rate of loss in Pocklington's last few years at the helm—and eventually sold the company for 1/20 of the price Pocklington paid for it 11 years earlier.