by Chris Koentges / photographs by Bryce Krynski
The view from ARC Financial's empty boardroom, 43 floors up Canterra Tower, as the sun radiates through the steel and glass valley below, first thing on a Monday morning, when anything is possible, is arguably the best view from what is still the best skyscraper in the 10-square-block radius of downtown Calgary where oil and gas deals are done. It has the quality of Olympus. Presiding and worshipped. What makes ARC's view different from the other downtown boardrooms is its situation on the north edge of the deal-doing district; you can see way beyond downtown – even as you are right in it – north over the stone lions on Centre Street bridge, out atop the river valley, an unfettered panorama west to the Rocky Mountains.
ARC leverages this perspective from above quite well. Perspective from above is all they have. They give life to the emerging energy companies in the urban core beneath, at $20 to $75 million a breath. ARC originally stood for Advice Research Capital. Now they are just capital. Capital with perspective, of course. More than these junior oil companies need ARC's capital, their apotheosis is predicated on the perspective ARC has honed while taking 120 of their predecessors to market. The existence of this boardroom is testament to that success.
Now Brian Boulanger enters the boardroom, closing the door behind him. He's dressed in a crisp Zegna suit, and has the manner of a tactical hockey coach. He has big brown eyes – not fawnish. After some hesitation, he begins talking about oil and gas deals, about ARC's criteria that each deal return three-to-five fold in three-to-five years. He talks about the conversations that go on around this 37-foot boardroom table, how easy it is to reach consensus because everyone at the table is a capitalist. (He says "capitalist" with neither judgment nor pride.) He also talks about prostitution. He talks about homelessness. He talks about aboriginal youth. He talks about two different downtowns, about leveraging the return on investment on each.
At 32, Boulanger has four kids, and is the youngest senior vice-president in ARC's history. He arrived in 1997, when ARC was essentially a boutique investment bank. An Ivey School B. Comm., he could use Microsoft Excel as if it were an oracle. He worked insane hours. Made no significant mistakes. And he happened to be in the right place when ARC restructured as an employee-owned company. As much as Calgary is full of the right guys in the right places – in the exact right part of the world in the right era – the thing that makes Boulanger the right guy among right guys is that he also occupies the downtown beneath the boardroom. Let's call it the ravaged downtown. In April he will become chair of the Calgary United Way, where he has been volunteering, after work, for six years. Another youngest-ever feat.
In a hyper-accelerated city, with hyper-accelerated problems and expectations, Boulanger has profited immensely from his knack for straddling both downtowns. But then, so have both versions of downtown.
MARLBOROUGH PARK
Though the Canterra view is infinite, you can't quite see a neighbourhood called Marlborough Park. If you're new to town, if you're a big shot in oil and gas and have a last name that's kind of European, and you tell a real estate agent to show you houses around Marlborough Park, they'll immediately take you somewhere else – even if somewhere else is farther from downtown. Marlborough Park is "diverse." On a cold Thursday night, the community centre parking lot is packed with police vans and haphazardly parked SUVs from local television stations.
Half a dozen officers mull warily around the doors to a gymnasium. About 100 people sit on folding chairs inside. Boulanger waits near the entrance – another crisp suit, arms folded. On a PowerPoint slide with District 4 crime statistics for the period of January 1, 2007 to August 31, 2007, one stat,"692 vehicle thefts," leaps off the screen.
"Is this part of some larger trend?" asks one of the civilians on the Calgary Police Commission, seated baseline beneath the Plexiglas backboard. "Or is it joyriding?"
There's a pause. Some shuffling of paper. A different stat is mumbled. The evidence would seem to indicate joyriding.
The commission seems pleased by this answer.
Two aldermen now talk. Somewhere in the middle, Boulanger is introduced as chair of the United Way's Community Services committee. He will do "an information sharing presentation about street prostitution in Calgary." He moves to a table at the top of the basketball court's three-point arc and begins reading from typed notes to the assembly of cops, politicians and social workers – the underpaid minions left to deal with the collateral damage of the city's boom. He has five points, beginning with prevention and early intervention programs, ending with policy solutions to address poverty. (Keep that last point in mind for later.)
Boulanger has come by this knowledge through much diligence. When he first arrived at the United Way, none of the aboriginal leaders, social workers or community development geeks he shook hands with were especially impressed by his ability to make an Excel spreadsheet spit mysterious truths about a junior oil company's potential to return three-to-five fold, nor did anyone care who he golfed with. There's something kind of dwarfing about that. About the non-profit sector itself, in fact, which accounts for about 15% of the country's labour force, and doesn't actually think that much about oil and gas. By percentage of GDP, the sector is double the size of oil and gas. Though, of course, it's not independent from oil and gas. Especially in Alberta.
Boulanger's presentation is concise. Some of the cops nod in agreement. He doesn't get into how, down on 3rd Avenue, where the postmodern glass curtain walls of Canterra touch the sidewalk, prostitutes in high-cut cowboy boots are arriving for the night, while two blocks away, right along the Bow River, the biggest open-air drug market in the city stirs to life. Nobody needs that part repeated.
Outgoing police chief Jack Beaton asks about Boulanger's information sources. There seems to be more to the question than the words of the question. Boulanger has a reverence for the United Way staff and is careful about answering such questions. He'll forward the information to Beaton tomorrow. His informal sharing presentation is over.
THE TRIAL OF BRIAN BOULANGER
The next day, two cops show up at Canterra. They get in the elevator, push 43. Soon they're in ARC's lobby, then Boulanger's office, and then Boulanger is in handcuffs. He recognizes them from the Marlborough Park gymnasium. His mind races. It has something to do with Beaton's question. Down the elevator. A patrol car whisks him to Bow Valley Square, another office tower where oil and gas deals are done, but on this morning the atrium has been taken over by a female jury that rapidly fires questions. They ask him what he does, and when he tells him, they ask if he has a BlackBerry. He says that he does and a gavel is slammed. "Bail is set for $5,000."
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