The Other Team

If their lives were a movie, Joy MacPhail and James Shavick’s Hollywood ending would have come with their Hollywood wedding in 2005. The one-time B.C. finance minister and the TV and movie producer responsible for hits such as The New Addams Family and The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles exchanged vows on the back lawn of a friend’s 1920s-era Spanish-style estate in Bel Air, with a mariachi band playing and a Canadian flag borrowed from the consulate flying proudly in the California sun.

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At the wedding, MacPhail’s NDP colleagues, such as MLA Jenny Kwan, former premier Mike Harcourt and MP Libby Davies, mixed with Shavick’s showbiz pals, such as producer Kirk Shaw (Blood Ties, Battle in Seattle), director Ron Oliver (Degrassi: The Next Generation, The Chris Isaak Show) and composer and producer Shuki Levy (The Power Rangers). “It was so funny,” recalls MacPhail, who had recently retired from 14 years in provincial politics, about these colliding sets of friends. “Because Hollywood thinks they know everything political, and B.C. politicians are fascinated with Hollywood.”

That could have been it – end of story, with MacPhail and Shavick continuing to work in their divergent fields and keeping professional and private lives at a safe distance. Instead, the couple’s marriage has turned out not only to be the culmination of their love story but also the first act of a business triumph. In June 2006, only a year after getting married, the two decided to purchase a 58 per cent stake in OutTV, a digital cable network for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, for a seven-figure sum.

At first glance, it’s more than slightly puzzling that these “opposite-sex life partners” would choose to take the wheel of a channel floundering with only 185,000 subscribers, minimal advertising support and unco-operative cable partners. But working in tandem and using their unique skill sets and connections, this duo – Shavick as CEO, MacPhail as chair – has more than tripled

“I have a lot of respect for James and Joy’s commitment to the community,” says Andrew Chang, COO of Pink Triangle Press, publisher of the Toronto-based Xtra chain of LGBT newspapers, which, at 25 per cent, owns the largest minority share in OutTV. “They’re very cognizant that it’s a bit of a trust to operate a community’s media. They take that very seriously.”

Even taking into account the presence of a snoopy reporter, the affection between Joy MacPhail and James Shavick is palpable. Sitting across from each other in the living room of their Kits Beach duplex (which they bought together in 2004), they steal glances at each other like teenagers who’ve been going steady for three whole weeks since the grad formal. At the same time, they reflexively fact-check each other’s anecdotes and fuss over each other as though they’ve been married for decades.

Shavick, a tall man with a broad, perma-tanned face and a greying head of floppy hair, in a black shirt and blazer, has the kind of indulgent confidence that suits a man accustomed to pulling the levers offstage. At one point, in the middle of a long-ish anecdote, he pauses and says to his wife, “Tell me if I’m going on too long.”

“You are going a little long,” says MacPhail, a strawberry blond who’s wearing a blue blazer over a cream-coloured turtleneck. “The reality is, you don’t have all day.”

Shavick was born in 1950 in Montreal, the privileged grandson of Alvin Walker and the son of Len Shavick, who were both, at different times, the president and CEO of Holt Renfrew. Rather than going into the family business, Shavick became hooked on moviemaking after he sold a 30-minute documentary to the CBC that he made as a final project for a film-history class at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia). Still in his 20s, he made a splash when he purchased the film rights to Hugh MacClennan’s iconic Canadian novel Two Solitudes in 1975 with money saved from his bar mitzvah.