Eugene Melnyk: Billionaire, tireless worker and a taste for Hawaiian shirts and fun

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Eugene Melnyk wanted to be a doctor. But his path led elsewhere after his emergency-room physician-father, Ferdinand, passed away when he was 17. Initially, it was a part-time sales job doing promotions for a pharmaceuticals company, as well as a part-time stint as a York University student that, as the story goes, lasted two classes before he decided that was enough of that.

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Young Melnyk had his own ideas. He didn’t need a business professor to teach him that you either worked your tail off or were fired. He was already a tireless worker, a budding entrepreneur, and what he took from the promotions gig was that doctors were incredibly strapped for time, making it impossible for them to stay up to date on all the latest research.

To make their lives easier and make himself a few bucks, Melnyk, then 20, founded a medical publishing company, Trimel Corp., which grew to include 40 titles before he sold it in 1989 for $6.5 million to Thomson Reuters Corp.

Melnyk’s lawyer, Sheldon Plener, remembers congratulating him on the deal, while imagining all the possibilities that lay ahead of his client, which, given the money involved, included possibly retiring on the spot at age 27.

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“Eugene gets this incredible offer — it is millions and millions of dollars — and he says to me, ‘I am going to sell,’ and I say, ‘Great, fantastic,’ and then he says, ‘And now I am going build a pharmaceutical company,’” Plener said on Thursday, recalling the early years of a business relationship that grew into a close friendship spanning almost 35 years.

“I was thinking, ‘Holy mackerel, this person has an incredible appetite for risk, and a creative mind — and he knew the path he wanted to take — and he was willing to put it all on the line and do it.”

Melnyk’s determination to swing for the metaphorical fences in building Biovail Corp. from the ground up propelled him into the ranks of Canadian billionaires. One who later bought the Ottawa Senators in 2003, rescuing the team from bankruptcy and possible relocation to the United States. He also ran afoul of securities regulators in connection with the pharma company he founded.

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“To a certain extent, things went sideways,” Plener said. “But he had no regrets. He was incredibly proud.”

Melnyk could look the part of a big shot in a finely tailored suit, and he was as hard-nosed as they come when in a boardroom, but he felt most at home in a Hawaiian shirt and pair of shorts, with a rum and soda in hand and a friend next to him, watching a Senators game at Bert’s, the sports bar he owned near his Barbados home.

“You walk in a room and you would never know he’s a billionaire, he’s just Eugene,” said John Miszuk, the Senators’ chief administrative officer and a friend and employee of Melnyk’s from Biovail’s early days.

What were those days like? Long. Miszuk remembers a crazy period in the early 2000s with staff pulling late nights. Melnyk shows up with a coffee cart one morning, making the rounds to each employee’s desk. He also sent a bottle of Dom Pérignon with a handwritten thank you note to their homes.

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“That was Eugene,” Miszuk said.

Miszuk, Plener and all those who knew Melnyk well are having trouble believing he is really gone. He died on Monday, at 62, due to an undisclosed illness. Dying just didn’t seem like something Melnyk had time for. Even after amassing a king’s fortune, he was still clocking 12-hour workdays until recently, sipping on fizzy, non-alcoholic beverages at his desk with an ocean view.

He had no regrets. He was incredibly proud

Sheldon Plener

He wanted to win a Stanley Cup, and swore he had the plan to do it. He was charging ahead into new business territory, including China, where Clean Beauty Collective, his boutique beauty and cosmetics company, is set to launch this year after establishing itself among the top five fragrances in Scandinavia.

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Melnyk was also turning his Florida racehorse farm into a housing development, and super keen on Neurolign Technologies Inc., a startup he snapped up a few years ago that has developed a brain injury detection tool using virtual-reality technology. In his mind, it was going to be his next home run, a game changer with the potential to enhance athlete safety, as well as have broader potential applications related to brain health.

“Eugene had a huge capacity for taking on a lot of projects. He didn’t sit still,” Plener, a partner at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP and an alternate NHL governor for the Senators, said. “He was a non-stop work worker, but when he took a break, he knew how to enjoy himself.”

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Miszuk remembers a Senators management meeting in Las Vegas. Serious stuff. Hours after the meetings wrapped, he was wandering through the casino bar when he saw a crowd. From somewhere in its midst, a piano tinkled. He guessed it must be someone famous, a virtuoso perhaps.

“It was Eugene,” he said, laughing at the memory.

It was also Melnyk who flew all his buddies down to Barbados for a party where Bryan Adams was the musical act; who hired crooner Wayne Newton to come to a casino northeast of Toronto, so he could throw his octogenarian mother, Vera, a private surprise birthday party; and who pulled Plener onstage with him at a gathering of illustrious St. Michael’s College School alumni in Toronto for a tribute, even though Plener wasn’t an actual alumnus.

“Somebody in the crowd shouted, ‘He’s the lawyer,’ Plener said. “No moment was too solemn for Eugene. He liked to have fun, and that’s what I liked about him.”

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