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Peter Armstrong: Iron Horse

Rob Howatson

| July 3, 2006

Image by: Dina Goldstein

Peter Armstrong is the CEO of the Armstrong Hospitality Group, which owns the Iron Horse of B.C. recreation, Rocky Mountaineer Vacations, the largest privately owned passenger rail service in North America.

B.C.’s tourist-train baron lowers his hefty six-foot-four frame onto a small, oak-finished stackable chair and shimmies himself closer to the table. The seat’s chrome legs grind across the freshly sealed concrete floor and a screech echoes through the new $4.2-million, 17,000-square-foot train station.

Peter Armstrong grins and his big, doughy, white-haired frame exudes a boyishness that transcends his 53 years. Armstrong is the CEO of the Armstrong Hospitality Group, which owns Rocky Mountaineer Vacations, the largest privately owned passenger rail service in North America. But in this instant he looks like an oversized high-school kid who has wedged himself into an exam-hall desk.

I reach for the tape recorder and he cuts me off. “I don’t want this just to be about me,” he says. “We are a big operation and everyone contributes.” I gently remind him that although there is no “I” in team, there is one in profile. We’re both chuckling as the tape starts rolling.

Armstrong grew up on the right side of the tracks. His dad was Nesbitt Thompson’s [now Nesbitt Burns] regional VP for Western Canada and Asia. In 1964, the family moved from Toronto to Oak Street and 19th Avenue in Vancouver. Armstrong attended the upscale private St. George’s School, where he captained the swim and rowing squads. “When I graduated, all my buddies were going off to UBC to become lawyers, accountants or doctors, and I looked at them and thought, ‘I can’t compete with that crowd.’” Instead, he enrolled in BCIT’s hotel management program and spent a couple summers as a doorman at the Hotel Vancouver. The job taught him the fundamentals of the service industry – and a hard lesson about workplace politics.

“I went over the head of my assistant manager one night when I was still new at the hotel. He wanted me to tow some cars from the driveway. We were using that curb space as unofficial parking for VIPs – the likes of Peter Bentley, Jack Wasserman and Allan Fotheringham. I took the issue upstairs and the big bosses agreed with me that towing was a bad idea. But later, my shift manager got his revenge by telling me I had to deliver newspapers to all 560 rooms in less than 30 minutes. The first night I did the route, I was covered in sweat and ink and it took me three and a half hours. By the end of the ¬summer, through brute determination, I had hacked that down to half an hour. On the last day of the season, he said, ‘Good effort – the previous best time by an employee is two and a half hours.’”

Armstrong laughs at his carefully honed story of tenacity. The account seems almost too polished. Could a towering bellhop of his stature really sprint down hallways withoutdisturbing guests? Then again, people who know the CEO say that when he sets his mind to a problem, he’s like a dog with a bone – a necessary trait for doing battle with his arch-rival VIA Rail.

The defining moment of his move from bellhop to bus baron came in 1973, when he and a fellow bellhop noticed that travellers in Vancouver were being turned away by overbooked bus tours. Spying an opportunity, they scraped together their tips and hit up family, raising enough cash to buy two 23-seaters and form Spotlight Tours. Three years later, the company bought the failing airport bus company, Trailways of BC. Then, in 1979, Gray Line’s regional fleet, which was owned by BC Hydro, came up for bid as the province’s first Crown corporation to be privatized. Armstrong, who had worked on deputy premier Grace McCarthy’s campaign, had perfected the art of quiet lobbying. When Trailways won the bid, he became Gray Line’s new president.

It wasn’t all smooth tarmac ahead. Armstrong ran the buses for a decade and made a killing at Expo ’86, but one of his partners squeezed him out of the big office and Armstrong ended up stewing in the executive VP seat for three frustrating years before leaving the depot in 1989. Perhaps the best thing to happen to him in those final diesel-scented days was the fam trip he took aboard VIA’s first all-daylight run through the Rockies.