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November 8, 2011

Tea with Mr. Harold Gordon

Yimin Jiang

On November 8th 2011, Our Sauvé house was privileged to welcome an “old friend”, the Chairman of Sauvé Scholars Foundation, Mr. Harold (Sonny) Gordon as a guest for tea.

Mr. Gordon was a managing partner of Stikeman Elliott during his 28-year career as a practicing attorney. He also serves as board member on a number of transnational corporations. Over an hour and a half, he sat with all the Scholars and shared his impressive story.

Our guest recalled the days when he worked for late Honourable Maurice Sauvé, the husband of late Honourable Jeanne Sauvé and a Minster of Federal Government of Canada. He believes that working with Mr. Sauvé gave him opportunities to extend his personal outlook and moreover, provided him with greater access to the resources that later helped him build a successful career.

Mr. Gordon enjoys an outstanding education record. He has a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Civil Law degree from McGill University, a Bachelor of Arts degree from Concordia University and also studied at the Graduate Division of the Wharton School of Business and Finance at the University of Pennsylvania. Addressing the worries raised by some Scholars about their current blindness on their future careers, Sonny frankly said that he also spent college life almost aimless. However, by constantly exposure to new fields, he believes, people develop an increasingly clear picture about future.

Mr. Gordon is a highly successful and accomplished lawyer. His personal reputation contributes greatly to the success of the entire firm. He told the Scholars that a successful lawyer should be honest, diligent and reliable. Only by constantly delivering perfect results through extremely hard work can a lawyer win and maintain the trust of clients and thus establish their reputation. Sonny also shared his experience of serving on different boards as well as lessons he learned from his decades in business. Sonny highlighted the importance of compromise in the business world by favouring long-term and consistent business relations and by committing to achieving every possible win-win solution, rather than merely focusing on profit maximization.

The conversation took place in an active and easy atmosphere. All the Scholars were impressed by Mr. Gordon’s personal experience and his “philosophy” of business. We are so proud to have such a distinguished and easy-going “nice old friend”.