Butler Mountain's Hemingson dies at 69
2008-02-28 14:43 ET - Street Wire
by Stockwatch Business Reporter - www.stockwatch.com
Errol Hemingson, the prototypical Vancouver stock promoter
with the booming voice and the nickname Foghorn, died of
congestive heart failure on Feb. 16, 2008, at 69. He was a
week shy of his 70th birthday.
The larger-than-life Mr. Hemingson joined the Howe Street
mining scene in the 1980s. His best-remembered company
was Butler Mountain Minerals Corp., which won the
Vancouver Stock Exchange's annual volume contest more
than 25 years ago. There were many others, including
Toodoggone Gold Inc., which also never made a mine, but
did provide a motherlode of interest at the B.C. Securities
Commission and a 20-year hiatus from public companies for
Mr. Hemingson.
Growing up
Errol Cecil Hemingson was born on Feb. 23, 1938, in Portage
La Prairie, Man. He was the second child of Norman and Ivy
Hemingson, arriving between his brother Vincent and his sister
Delores.
He grew up on a farm, which meant a lot of hard work. His friend
Bob Swenarchuck remembers him talking about the wheat harvest:
building stooks and working the threshing machine.
The farm boy quit school after Grade 9 and joined the Hudson's
Bay Company in Churchill, Man., heading north as a fur trader.
At 20, Mr. Hemingson followed his uncle Alfred into the navy,
serving from 1958-1959, allegedly becoming the Pacific Fleet's
heavyweight boxing champion. He was stationed in Esquimalt, B.C.,
working as a radioman on a submarine.
His first marriage
As the sailor's brief naval stint was ending, he attended a
Christmas dance, where he found himself enchanted with
a fetching young lady named Sally Furneaux. She was
getting her teaching certificate at the newly opened University
of Victoria. Life with her looked much better than life on a
submarine, and Mr. Hemingson got an honourable discharge
from the navy. The couple was married almost immediately,
and moved back to Manitoba where their first child, Vincent,
was born in 1960. Bradley arrived in 1961 and a third son,
Kent, in 1965. The Hemingsons adopted their daughter
Charlene in 1966. "After three boys, my mother wanted a
daughter," says Mr. Hemingson's son Vincent.
In Manitoba, Mr. Hemingson worked for Allis-Chalmers Rumley
Ltd., selling tractors and heavy machinery. In sales he found his
calling, rising to vice-president of Western Canada. Prompted
perhaps by his wife's experience at the University of Victoria,
Mr. Hemingson started classes at night school. He completed
his high school equivalency and then took undergraduate courses
in agriculture and mining.
A move west
In the early 1970s, the family moved to Vancouver Island and
Mr. Hemingson started Hemingson's Water Services, a pumping
company. Sally also started teaching at French Creek Elementary
School. Mr. Hemingson took up sailing with Gerry Thompson,
a friend he met through his pumping business. Sailing, along with
mining, became his passion. His boat, a CT-37 called the Stone Raven,
is a fixture in many of the best stories about him.
The good salesman got his start in mining promotion through Leif
Ostensoe, a geologist with many connections to penny stocks
and the Vancouver Stock Exchange. Mr. Hemingson's son
Vincent remembers seeing Mr. Ostensoe at their farm on
Vancouver Island in the mid-1970s. At the time, Mr. Ostensoe
was looking for copper in the Highland Valley with his company
named Lawrence Mining Corp. "Like all good promoters, Leif
got some of my dad's money, and he had so much into it that
he started helping Leif raise money," Bradley Hemingson says.
To the mainland
Mr. Hemingson set sail for Vancouver in 1979. Two things
prompted the move: his promoting required it, and his
marriage to Sally was ending (they divorced in 1980).
"Like most larger-than-life characters who are used to getting
their own way ... [my dad] didn't always have the world's best
conflict-resolution skills," Vincent explains. "If he didn't ge
t what he wanted the first time, he might just turn up the volume."
Bradley, now a broker at Leede Financial Markets Inc.,
remembers his father's penchant for speaking loudly as well.
"My dad would phone me up, 'You know, I got this idea' and
I'd say 'I'm not interested.' He'd yell and scream and jump up
and down. Some times you'd hold the phone about two feet from
your ear. Then he'd get over it."
After arriving in Vancouver, Mr. Hemingson started promoting
Butler Mountain. It had a polymetallic property in the Yukon and
some good drilling results, but it never became a mine.
Mr. Hemingson promoted Butler enthusiastically. With good drill
results, and as one of the VSE's volume leaders in the early 1980s,
the promoter fancied a listing on the prestigious Toronto Stock
Exchange. The Butler never quite made it to that pinnacle of
Canadian stock prestige, but one business associate from those
days, who wishes to remain nameless, remembers entertaining a
delegation from Toronto on the Stone Raven. After a long night
of partying, the gentle rocking action of a Coal Harbour dock
proved too much for the anonymous associate's novice sea legs.
Walking down the gangplank, "One foot went one way and the other
foot went the other," he says of the dunking. Mr. Hemingson
never could lure him onto the water after that mishap.
Mr. Hemingson often partied: with friends, without friends;
on his boat, off his boat. "My father had a love affair with the grape
that was never unrequited. No meal was complete without a bottle
of wine," Vincent says. Mr. Hemingson's drinking was not good
for his health; he had his first heart attack when he was 46 and
was a frequent patron of the Canadian health system in the
following years.
His second marriage
In 1988, after a string of young, attractive girlfriends,
the promoter married Alexa Gilbert. He met her at
his friend Bob Swenarchuck's wedding in 1986. "I said,
'Errol, you've got to come and meet this gorgeous lady...
' and they sat down together and they didn't move for
three hours," Mr. Swenarchuck remembers.
Toodoggone Gold
Around the same time he married Ms. Gilbert, Mr. Hemingson
was busy with his latest venture, Toodoggone Gold.
The company had incorporated in 1987, with three directors:
Mr. Hemingson, Howard Andersen and Gordon Steblin.
Mr. Hemingson's son Vincent joined the board in May, 1988.
It listed on the VSE on Sept. 19, 1988.
Mr. Anderson and Mr. Steblin resigned in December, 1988,
the result of a squabble with Mr. Hemingson that had started
as the company was working on its $300,000 initial public
offering in August. Ms. Gilbert and James Regan joined the
board in their place.
By then, Mr. Hemingson's custodianship had left the company
with $32,000 in its bank account and he and his new wife were
on a sailing trip in Mexico.
The BCSC was not amused and held a hearing into
Mr. Hemingson's casual management practices in 1990.
The result was a 20-year ban from trading and acting as an
officer or director of a public issuer. At the time, it was the
longest ban the commission had ever handed out.
Sailing in Mexico
Mr. Hemingson and Ms. Gilbert did not attend their BCSC
hearing; they were busy sailing the Stone Raven on the
Sea of Cortez.
It was an exciting trip, missed hearings aside. Ms. Gilbert
remembers an eventful few days at the start of the trip.
They were cruising along when a freak summer storm
forced them to put in at Embarcadero, a small Oregon port
near Newport. It is a tricky passage. Compounding matters,
the pilot Mr. Hemingson hired did not have the right charts,
and the Stone Raven got stuck on a sandbar.
She started taking on water, and the Coast Guard showed
up to rescue the passengers. Ms. Gilbert and four tourists
the Hemingsons had acquired for the trip were taken off the
boat; Mr. Hemingson and the pilot stayed on to save what
they could of the ship's electronics and papers.
When the tide rose, Mr. Hemingson managed to sail into port.
He was drying the ship's papers on the dock when the Coast
Guard approached him.
"Stone Raven?" asked the white-clad officer, his sidearm clearly
resting on his hip.
"Yes," Mr. Hemingson answered.
"You're under arrest."
It turned out the Coast Guard was looking for the Stoned Raven,
a boat it suspected of smuggling drugs. To clear up the
confusion, Mr. Hemingson went to show the officer the
Stone Raven's registration, which was drying on the dock.
Whoosh! along came a gust of wind and away went the
precious papers.
The Coast Guard confined Mr. Hemingson and his fellow
sailors to the Stone Raven for two days before Vincent
faxed the ship's papers from Vancouver and proved his
father was not a drug runner.
Mr. Hemingson's second marriage lasted two years.
Life after Toodoggone
"There's lots of guys out there who'll put together a shell,
... and their goal is to get as much five-cent stock as they
can, tell a story and sell ... at the highest price they possibly
can and fill their pockets. The only time my dad ever made
money is when the drill hole succeeded," says Bradley.
"If he didn't have something real to promote, he was doomed.
More than once I know he blew himself up buying his own
paper ... he just wanted to find a mine."
Working under the BCSC's cloud was hard, but not impossible.
Mr. Hemingson just had to go farther afield and settle for a
regular job. After Toodoggone, the irrepressible promoter began
splitting his time between Canada and the United States, where
he promoted stocks under the radar. He did some work for his
close friend, the late Arthur Fisher, on his deal in Vietnam, which
became Olympus Pacific Minerals Inc. The last company where
he helped out was Inspiration Mining Corp., a potential nickel
miner in Ontario.
Randy Miller, the president of Inspiration, says Mr. Hemingson
drove his 45-foot motorhome to the property in Timmins. He lined
up drillers and set up the core shack. He got the results that
started the company moving and helped with the first financing.
"There's not a lot to do in Timmins, so we'd sit around and shoot
the shit and discuss the deal. I will miss him, that's for sure,"
Mr. Miller says.
"He was closer in style to Murray Pezim, I think, than today's
promoters," says Reg Ogden, a Canaccord broker of many years
who knew Mr. Hemingson well. "He had an extremely high energy
level." Mr. Ogden chuckles when he tells a story about
Mr. Hemingson and the equally hefty Mr. Fisher falling from the
moped they had to share on the poor roads of Vietnam.
Mr. Hemingson is survived by his four children, his brother
and sister, his three grandchildren, and his two ex-wives.
His family will hold a wake on March 9 at the False Creek
Yacht Club, starting at 3:30 p.m. Stories are welcome.
