Ryan Beedie, Young Gun
In 10 years as president of the Beedie Group, Ryan Beedie has transformed the family-owned real estate firm into a billion- dollar behemoth. After an impressive behind-the-scenes effort to get Kevin Falcon elected Liberal leader, many think Beedie is now destined for even bigger things.
Ryan Beedie’s mid-November lunch with Kevin Falcon at Vancouver’s Fairmont Waterfront hotel had been scheduled weeks in advance. For years, the two former SFU classmates had been getting together to catch up on their respective worlds of business and politics.
But this lunch had taken on a different hue, thanks to the surprise resignation of Premier Gordon Campbell the morning of November 3, 2010. Falcon’s name was on every pundit’s list of likely successors. He was viewed very much as a Campbell protege, the potential candidate most likely to honour the Liberal premier’s pro-business agenda.
It didn’t take long before Beedie and Falcon’s lunch-hour conversation turned to the leadership. Falcon was seriously considering a run but was unsure what Carole Taylor was doing. If he was convinced she wasn’t interested, then he was in. And if he was in, he wanted to know if he could count on Beedie’s support.
The stylish young president of The Beedie Group Developments Ltd. had been impressed with Falcon from the moment he’d first met him in an economics class at SFU’s downtown campus in September 1986. At the time, Falcon was a few years older than most of the other students. He seemed more confident and mature. When Falcon spoke in class, Beedie was struck by how articulate and intelligent he was. The two would soon become friends and Beedie would discover that they shared an admiration for the great conservative standard-bearers of the day: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
Beedie convinced Falcon to run for the presidency of the Young Socreds, the youth Social Credit Party organization at SFU. He was a natural politician – just like another young SFU undergrad attending university with them, Christy Clark, although she was not someone who shared Beedie and Falcon’s passion for neo-conservatism.
“She was a big federal Liberal,” Beedie recalls today. “But she was a dynamo. I remember she was running for a spot on council and she came into our political science class before it began. It was in a lecture hall and there might have been 100 students in it. She came in, gave her stump speech, and left. And she absolutely nailed it. And I remember thinking, ‘Wow. That was impressive. That is not an easy thing to do.’ She had a real presence, even back then. She was a lot of fun too. I think she even gave me a ride home from the pub in her VW Bug one night after I’d had a few too many.”
Few could have imagined at the time that 25 years later, politics would bring the three SFU undergrads together again.
Over their lunch at the Fairmont, Falcon asked Beedie if he’d help him raise money if he ran. Beedie didn’t hesitate. He’d made the promise years earlier; that’s how much he believed in Falcon’s leadership. When lunch concluded, the two friends sealed their agreement with a handshake.
On Tuesday, Nov. 30, Falcon would announce his candidacy. The next month, Beedie was holding fundraising dinners at his West Vancouver home. In the weeks that followed, his behind-the-scenes position in the campaign would become more visible. A political junkie from a young age, he had no qualms about assuming the kind of public role often shunned by other high-profile business leaders.
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