Rod Mcqueen – författare

In this engaging book, award-winning business writer Rod McQueen examines how the pugnacious personality and hard-driving leadership style of Dominic D''Alessandro led Manulife Financial to its position as one of the largest and most profitable life insurance companies in North America, and the fourth largest in the world. From D''Alessandro''s role in the successful demutualization and conversion of the company to public company status in 1999, which set the stage for Manulife to become a world leader, to D''Alessandro''s successful completion of Canada''s largest cross-border merger, Manulife captures the story of 15 years of outstanding business leadership.

"At a certain point in our lives we are left only with our close relationships and our clear recollections." So begins Thumper: The Memoirs of the Honourable Donald S. Macdonald. An early supporter of Pierre Trudeau for the Liberal Party leadership, Donald Macdonald has had a career in public life spanning four decades that included posts as House leader, minister of national defence, minister of energy, and minister of finance. He chaired the landmark Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, which led to free trade between Canada and the United States, and as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom he conferred with Margaret Thatcher and dined with Queen Elizabeth II. Drawing on extensive archival resources and contemporaneous personal diaries, Macdonald insightfully details his friendship with Trudeau, fascinating encounters with world leaders, and personal revelations about the October Crisis. In this behind-the-scenes account of the business of governing, he also describes high-stakes disputes with Alberta over soaring energy prices, the real story behind the resignation of John Turner as finance minister, and the decisive action taken against inflation using wage and price controls. Interlaced with anecdotes that reveal Macdonald''s self-effacing good-nature, Thumper is a riveting memoir written with humility and candour, recalling an exceptional period in Canadian politics.

"At a certain point in our lives we are left only with our close relationships and our clear recollections." So begins Thumper: The Memoirs of the Honourable Donald S. Macdonald. An early supporter of Pierre Trudeau for the Liberal Party leadership, Donald Macdonald has had a career in public life spanning four decades that included posts as House leader, minister of national defence, minister of energy, and minister of finance. He chaired the landmark Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, which led to free trade between Canada and the United States, and as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom he conferred with Margaret Thatcher and dined with Queen Elizabeth II. Drawing on extensive archival resources and contemporaneous personal diaries, Macdonald insightfully details his friendship with Trudeau, fascinating encounters with world leaders, and personal revelations about the October Crisis. In this behind-the-scenes account of the business of governing, he also describes high-stakes disputes with Alberta over soaring energy prices, the real story behind the resignation of John Turner as finance minister, and the decisive action taken against inflation using wage and price controls. Interlaced with anecdotes that reveal Macdonald''s self-effacing good-nature, Thumper is a riveting memoir written with humility and candour, recalling an exceptional period in Canadian politics.

The story of what one daring entrepreneur with dreams and determination can achieve. Frank Hasenfratz grew up in Hungary learning to dodge bullets and avoid land mines during the Second World War. When the 1956 revolution erupted, he and his army unit joined the insurgents. After the revolution was crushed, he fled to Guelph, Ontario, where he gambled everything on a one-man operation making oil pumps for Ford. The company he founded, Linamar, today has 15,000 employees in eight countries and is the second-largest maker of auto parts in Canada. To create this global empire, Hasenfratz stayed ahead of competitors through hard work, visionary leadership, a cost-conscious regimen, and a skilled workforce.In 1990, Hasenfratz designated his daughter, Linda, to succeed him as chief executive officer but first put her through a prolonged apprenticeship that took her from the plant floor to head office. Driven to Succeed is the story of what one daring entrepreneur with dreams and determination can achieve.