Forever 21 Paul Godfrey, 2023
Paul Godfrey is like Peter Pan…he never gets old. When he came to visit me at my downtown real estate office, it briefly crossed my mind that he might be interested in buying something. But alas, he didn’t react to the glittering marketing materials at all. He focused his precious time on catching up on our longtime friendship. Paul has many longtime friends, and he takes care of each one of us. When I began my foray into writing, doing an emotional piece about my son, the first person I called was Godfrey, who was then running The Toronto Sun. I told him that I had written a piece that I thought was perfect for his newspaper. He told me later that he had thought to himself, “Oh god, not another friend who wants to write”. But he asked me to send him the piece anyway, and promised to forward it to the appropriate editor. He called to tell me a little while later that the editor actually liked my story and would be calling me. “You seem surprised”, I pointed out.
“You have no idea how many ‘friends’ call me wanting to write”, he laughed. The most pressure he’s received, he says, was when he was president of the Toronto Blue Jays. “I even got a call from a friend of mine who was a dentist. He told me that he didn’t like ‘fixing teeth’ anymore, and would love to work for the Jays. He kept calling and pressuring me to find him a job within the Jays organization. “I’ll take anything”, he told me.’” “So did you find him something?”, I wanted to know. “Of course”, Paul said, “I found him a job taking tickets at the door. That didn’t go over too big”, Paul laughs, adding, “the doctor was indignant and said, ‘Why are you giving me such a terrible job’’ I reminded him that he said he’d take anything”. But the friend was bitterly disappointed. “‘I thought I’d be working directly with the ball players’ he told me, I pointed out that even I didn’t get to deal directly with the ball players and I was the CEO”, Paul laughs.
I don’t even know how Paul and I became friends, I was introduced to him at an event many years ago and was instantly his pal. I introduced him to my son Luke, years later, and one day Luke told me, “I went to Paul Godfrey’s office today”.”What? Is he your friend now too?”, I asked. “Well, I wanted to get his thoughts on a few things”, Luke said. Apparently the extremely busy Godfrey came out to share some ideas with Luke, who was with him for about two hours. “I’ve done that before too”, Luke said.
There are only 24 hours in a day, I don’t know how Paul does it. At the end of our visit, Paul felt bad. He felt he had done too much of the talking, I pointed out that he had tried a number of times to get me to talk about myself. “Normally you get no chance to talk at all”, I told him, “this was the first day I got you to tell a bit of your story”. I found out that Godfrey was brought up in the Kensington market area of Toronto, and graduated from university in Chemical Engineering. “The teacher figured out that there was a problem”, he tells me. “She asked me, “what’s wrong? You’re graduating as a chemical engineer and you don’t look happy” Paul says that he replied, “I’m not happy, I don’t want to be an engineer”. He adds, “Imagine, after four years of intense study and a degree, I hated my chosen path. “The teacher encouraged me to find something that I loved to do”. And not long afterwards, inspired by his teacher and his own mother who was involved in local politics, and who put his name forward as a nominee for alderman when she herself refused a bid to run, Paul ran and won, thus finding something that he loved to do. He succeeded in his 20’s and hasn’t stopped succeeding since. From being an alderman, to being Toronto comptroller, to head of the Toronto Sun, running the Blue Jays, head of Post Media, and constantly being asked to run numerous other companies.
Paul at 87 is a people person and a happy family man. And it shows. He is trim, dressed to kill, and is incredibly youthful. This is a guy who is excited about his life, his career, his sons, and his wife Gina, who I ran into in the grocery store several years ago and who said to me, “I’m really smart, I married Paul Godfrey”. And Paul is still going strong. As enthused about life as he ever was, he could give Tony Robbins a run for his money.
As he’s leaving my office, Godfrey asks me to help direct his car out of the tight parking lot. “I should back up and veer to the right side and then you can guide me out, right?”, he asks, haltingly, the only time I have ever seen him hesitant. Ahh, so there is something that Paul can’t do.
“No, no, I’ve got this”, I tell him, “I’m going to guide you to go straight back out of the lot, no veering to the right, and then take a hard turn to the left”. As I direct Paul, he easily gets out of the lot.
“That was great Sharon”, he tells me enthusiastically, adding, “you’re so good at this, I’m going to hire you at the Post!”. All of a sudden I feel like the dentist. “So I shouldn’t get my hopes up?”, I yell after him, “what you’re offering me is a job parking cars, right?”
He lets out his huge belly laugh as he pulls away.
by Sharon Dunn