Broker retiring after 60 years

One of the pillars of the Bay Street investment community over a 60-year span — and always strongly mining oriented — Samuel Gordon Sharpe is retiring at age 83.

Born in Winnipeg where he attended business college, he got his first taste of mining in 1924 when he moved east to the then- booming Gowganda silver camp in northern Ontario as office manager of one of those early mines.

While there, he took an extension course to better prepare himself for the hurly-burly Toronto scene that was to follow, moving to the big city in 1927 where he quickly met up with a group of mining brokers. And he has never looked back — no regrets.

His introduction to the fast- moving brokerage business was with the firm of Patterson & Co., a member of the old Standard Stock Exchange, predecessor of today’s tse. This was followed by a lengthy stint with Moss, Lawson and Co., a tse firm which he joined as a trader in 1942. Several years later he joined the firm of Gairdner & Co. in which he became a director. Then in ’59 he joined the firm that was to become his love — A. E. Osler & Co. as a director and vice-president. He was subsequently made chairman of that board, a post he relinquished 10 years later when he required serious open-heart surgery. It is no secret that many of his close associates thought this “spelled curtains for the boss”. But after a remarkable recovery he rejoined the Osler firm with which he has remained active until his recent retirement.

Always in tune with the mining scene, Mr Sharpe played a particularly active role in the financing of the big Elliot Lake uranium development, having worked closely with Dr Franc Joubin, the geologist who played the key role in that camp’s discovery and development.

Both community and sports- minded, he is likewise a patron of the arts, being a strong supporter of A. J. Casson of the celebrated Group of Seven. In fact he possesses one of the best collections of the paintings of that famed Canadian group.

One of the oldest members of Toronto’s prestigious National Club, his is still a familiar face at its renowned mining table.

And now, following in his footsteps, is son Stephen who heads Paramount Funding Corp., a merchant banking firm that has grown dramatically in recent years providing worldwide multi-million-dollar financing of junior resource companies including Mascot Gold Mines, B.C.’s newest and biggest gold producer.

Too, the younger Sharpe serves on the investment advisory committee of Resource Capital International Ltd., an offshoot of the Paramount firm and whose shares are listed on the tse. Already a highly successful company (net income of $7.1 million or $1.79 per share in the past six months), its activities are focused on junior mine financing in Canada.