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Izzy: The Maverick, The Mogul, And All That Jazz
A gloves-off biography of the larger-than-life founder of the CanWest Global empire. The business biography
of the year!
Izzy Asper was born of Ukrainian immigrants in a small prairie town in the depths of the Depression; at his death in 2003, he was the billionaire ruler of Canada’s largest media conglomerate, the CanWest Global empire. A man of huge appetites and passion, he characterized himself as a jazz-obsessed chain-smoker and unwavering champion of Israel. He was also a ruthless and litigious businessman who clashed with rivals every step of his ascent up the
business ladder. Seymour Epstein, who lost a court war over the ownership of Global Television Network and was still suing Asper at his death, says, “He was the kind of guy you could be mad as hell at and still love.”
Such are the contradictions that Gordon Sinclair Jr. portrays in his unflinching and unauthorized portrait of this complex man. Here we see the little Jewish boy who never backed down from small-town bullies, the heartthrob usher tearing tickets at his parents’ cinemas, the big man on campus and the work-obsessed lawyer, the failed political leader and accidental television station owner, and finally the creator of a media empire that he grew to span three continents.
Sinclair’s description of the media mogul is sprinkled with controversial, colourful, and off-the-wall stories about a larger-than-life character who loved to laugh almost as much as he loved to win.
After the first heart surgery, Izzy told a friend that he was ready to make what amounted to a deal with Death. He would take ten more years if he could live them the way he wanted, which meant the way he had always uncompromisingly; burning the cigarette at both ends; being a work-driven, chain-smoking, cheeseburger-craving, martini-consuming, baggy-eyed keeper of never-ending To Do lists. With his jazz — always that smoking jazz — playing in the background.
So it was that ten years passed of living life on his terms. Followed by another ten.
"I am the most remarkably lucky guy I know,” he said happily at age sixty-five, counting all his blessings, not just his millions. And he was.
By seventy, the man whose greatest passion in life was music, wore a discreet hearing aid. And his new, most important companion wasn’t a cigarette. It was a defibrillator.
— From Izzy
of the year!
Izzy Asper was born of Ukrainian immigrants in a small prairie town in the depths of the Depression; at his death in 2003, he was the billionaire ruler of Canada’s largest media conglomerate, the CanWest Global empire. A man of huge appetites and passion, he characterized himself as a jazz-obsessed chain-smoker and unwavering champion of Israel. He was also a ruthless and litigious businessman who clashed with rivals every step of his ascent up the
business ladder. Seymour Epstein, who lost a court war over the ownership of Global Television Network and was still suing Asper at his death, says, “He was the kind of guy you could be mad as hell at and still love.”
Such are the contradictions that Gordon Sinclair Jr. portrays in his unflinching and unauthorized portrait of this complex man. Here we see the little Jewish boy who never backed down from small-town bullies, the heartthrob usher tearing tickets at his parents’ cinemas, the big man on campus and the work-obsessed lawyer, the failed political leader and accidental television station owner, and finally the creator of a media empire that he grew to span three continents.
Sinclair’s description of the media mogul is sprinkled with controversial, colourful, and off-the-wall stories about a larger-than-life character who loved to laugh almost as much as he loved to win.
After the first heart surgery, Izzy told a friend that he was ready to make what amounted to a deal with Death. He would take ten more years if he could live them the way he wanted, which meant the way he had always uncompromisingly; burning the cigarette at both ends; being a work-driven, chain-smoking, cheeseburger-craving, martini-consuming, baggy-eyed keeper of never-ending To Do lists. With his jazz — always that smoking jazz — playing in the background.
So it was that ten years passed of living life on his terms. Followed by another ten.
"I am the most remarkably lucky guy I know,” he said happily at age sixty-five, counting all his blessings, not just his millions. And he was.
By seventy, the man whose greatest passion in life was music, wore a discreet hearing aid. And his new, most important companion wasn’t a cigarette. It was a defibrillator.
— From Izzy
332 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2007
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