subscribe to our RSS feedVanMag: Joel Solomon – The Unlikely Revolutionary
May 29th, 2009
Vancouver Magazine: The Unlikely Revolutionary
Joel Solomon has put his millions, and those of a powerful circle including Rubbermaid heiress Carol Newell,into a new business-first socialism
Frances Bula
Vancouver Magazine
May 25, 2009
Across from Victory Square, a crowd is celebrating the reopening of the historic Flack Block, a monument to Vancouver’s gold-profiteering past that has been transformed into a home for people who believe in changing the world one socially responsible business at a time. Mayor Gregor Robertson, reading a proclamation honouring the restored building, and several of his councillors are here on the fourth floor. So are a woman with a company that manufactures cloth menstrual pads, a man whose firm delivers organic food to people’s homes, and staff from the collection of like-minded save-the-world enterprises that have decided to bunk at the Flack Block, like Rainforest Solutions Project, IdeaLever, and ForestEthics.
Amid the bustle at what’s now called the Tides Renewal Centre, the man at the centre of the room seems unremarkable. Tall and lanky, with a thin, lined face and rectangular metal glasses, Joel Solomon, 54, is the hypersensitive host preoccupied with making sure that everyone feels good. You wouldn’t guess that this guy in shapeless black jeans, black runners, and a nondescript suit jacket is the force behind this room, this gathering, this restoration. Or that he binds this group, giving them the sense of being part of a grand revolution that will remake Vancouver.
Solomon, whom friends describe as “beyond self-effacing,” downplays his part. “My favourite way to help is just to get people to think things through,” he says in his Tennessee accent in his office on a much quieter Saturday afternoon. “I think I have a role as a connector.” But “connector” is a puny word for the influence he has on this city, a place he’s committed to pouring money and energy into.
How to explain what he does? Solomon is the son of a wealthy Jewish family from the southern U.S. turned young American searcher and Cortes Island organic gardener who’s combining his two lives—capitalist heir and idealistic reformer—into one, as the business guru for B.C.’s new green left. He’s doing it through his partnership with Rubbermaid heiress Carol Newell, another American child of capitalism who escaped to utopian B.C. in her 20s. His inheritance was a modest $3 million, not enough to do what Newell’s $60-million-plus can. Paired up (in a business way only) since 1993, the two have created an Escher-like organization that includes a foundation (Tides Canada), a charity (Endswell), and two investment agencies: Renewal, which uses only Newell’s money; and Renewal2, which aims to attract new money to carry on what her money has started. Through those agencies, they have provided grants to 121 groups in the province, ranging from the environmental (Valhalla Wilderness Society) to the social-activist (Pivot Legal Society) to the holistic (Centre for Integrated Healing). On the investment side, they’ve put money into 70 enterprises in B.C.—most famously the Happy Planet juice company of Gregor Robertson, but also the organic grocery chain Capers, several publishing and communications companies, Salt Spring Coffee, Lunapads, PeaceKeeper Causemetics, and the Jorg&Olif bike company. And that’s not to mention the $60,000 that Renewal sank into helping elect Vision Vancouver and Robertson in last fall’s election—its first serious foray into local politics and one of the larger donations on record for any Vancouver civic party.
Click here to read the full article on the Vancouver Magazine website.