Throughout our lives we are surrounded by opportunities. It is only by being active and acquiring knowledge that we are able to see these opportunities and to take advantage of them. In my case it was my willingness to learn languages that created my opportunities.
Although I had already learned two languages in addition to English, it was my move to Japan, and the subsequent acquisition of the Japanese language, that made a major difference to my life. Speaking Japanese, I was able to create good personal contacts in the Japanese business community. For this reason I was later hired by two of the major Canadian lumber exporting companies, on two separate occasions to run their Asian marketing operations. This eventually resulted in me starting my own company, whereby I was able to achieve a certain degree of financial independence.
I do not know what path I would have followed if I had gone to Beijing after all. No doubt I would have become more fluent in Chinese. I might still be in the diplomatic service or in the academic field or perhaps other opportunities would have come along. But pursuing languages was like a net for me, allowing me to catch opportunities that would otherwise have passed me by.
One example occurred in 1981. As President of MacMillan Bloedel Asia Ltd., based in Tokyo, I was back in Vancouver on a business trip. M. Bernard Guillemette, an important customer from France, was also visiting Vancouver at the same time. I was the only marketing person available at MacMillan Bloedel who spoke French. Even though I was responsible for the Far East, I ended up accompanying M. Guillemette for a whole day visiting our sawmills. From that day, we formed a lasting friendship.
Many years later, Guillemette et Cie. became my own company's best customer in Europe and has remained so. What is more, in October 1992 I took part in Bernard Guillemette's sixty-fifth birthday party in Paris, a gala dinner on a boat floating down the Seine. At that dinner I met another guest, Mr. Christer Johansson, President of Vida Timber of Sweden. We struck up a friendship which also continues to this day. Within four months of meeting Mr. Johansson, fluctuations in international currencies made European lumber competitive in Japan. Working with Vida, our company was among the first exporters of lumber from Sweden to Japan. Vida has subsequently grown to become one of the largest lumber producers in Sweden and is our main supplier to Japan from Europe. These relationships were partly the result of luck, but could not have been achieved without my knowledge of French and Swedish, not to mention Japanese.
When I started my own company, my main idea was to focus on producing the special lumber sizes used in the Japanese manufactured house industry. Not a particularly brilliant idea, perhaps, but one that made sense at that time.
Because I had close relations with various people in the Japanese wood industry I had a good understanding of the trends in the market. I also was confident that some of my friends and contacts would trust me in my new venture. It was my relationship with these people, the result of my fluency in Japanese, that created this opportunity for me.
Even though our company was a newcomer with no history of meeting commitments, I obtained the support of the world's largest home manufacturer, Sekisui House Limited, to supply their housing components. My company grew to be their largest wood supplier in the early 1990s. Similarly, my friend Mr. Hiroshi Higuma, the President of a medium sized regional wholesaler called the Bungohama Company, agreed immediately over a sushi lunch to switch his purchasing of traditional Japanese lumber components to my company, based on a mutual trust that had developed between us over the previous ten years. These relationships depended on my fluency in Japanese and could not have been achieved in English. These international relationships have continued over the years and are amongst the greatest rewards of international business.
Even with my Canadian suppliers, language was a positive factor in building trust. My two most important Canadian partners are both linguists in their own way.
Mr. Norm Boucher, President of Manning Diversified Forest Products Ltd., is a dynamic and self-reliant leader of the lumber industry in Alberta. He is originally from Quebec and speaks French. Even though we conduct most of our business in English, our ability to communicate in French created an additional degree of mutual understanding and trust. Norm grew up in the harsh environment of Northern Alberta to which he is still attached today. He likes to tell the story of how tough his childhood was. As a young boy on winter mornings, he would have to go out to a frozen lake in minus thirty degree celsius weather and make a hole in the ice to fetch water for the family. On his way back he had to check the rabbit traps for the dinner stew. Once, during a visit to Japan in the 1990s, we were at a sumptuous dinner of Japanese food. Norm was struggling to eat with the unfamiliar chopsticks. With his characteristic sense of humour he told our Japanese hosts that when he was growing up his family was poor and had to survive on rabbit meat but at least they could afford a fork!
Mr. Ben Sawatzky has been my partner in developing the Japanese market. He is President of Spruceland Millworks Ltd. and an outstanding business leader. He is quick to decide what to do, and then follows his decision through to completion. He started with one employee and now employs one hundred fifty people in three plants. In addition, he owns several ranches and has built a private school. Ben speaks German and Spanish as well as English. We have traveled together in Germany and Spain, and our interest in languages has given us something in common beyond our business dealings.
Ben always wanted to learn Japanese so he could join in the conversation with our Japanese customers. He studied Japanese off and on but not consistently. Once in Sendai at a meal hosted by Japanese customers, he took advantage of the fact that I had gone to the bathroom to try out his language. Ben always speaks in a strong voice. He wanted to say that the meal was "oishikatta" meaning "was delicious" but he confused the past tense with the negative and told our host in his usual forceful way that the meal was "oishiku arimasen" meaning "not good." In language, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing!
Norm Boucher, Ben Sawatzky and Sekisui House are today partners with me and some others in a successful joint sawmill venture in Northern Alberta.
