The story of Tye Burt, a former graduate of Port Perry High School, is one of Canada’s great business success stories. Recently he was nominated to the top fifty business success stories by Investor 500. His success has also been written up in Forbes, the prestigious business magazine.
Tye was a popular student at Port Perry High School and was involved in football, skiing, music and drama. He graduated from Port Perry High School in 1975 and entered the University of Guelph.
“I have always felt proud of graduating from Port Perry High School,” Tye states. “I gained such a solid education there as there were so many dedicated teachers on staff, John Scott taught French, John Barton, math, Diane Lackie, English and my father in science.”
Tye is now the Chief Executive Officer of Kinross Gold Corporation, a Canadian company, and the top performing gold equity company in the world in 2008. Presently its stock is the top performing stock on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges and has been for three years. Key to this success has been Tye Burt’s management of the company since becoming its CEO in 2002.
After graduating from the University of Guelph with a degree in history, he decided to work for a year before entering Osgoode Hall Law School.
He practiced law for a year before he began working for the Bank of Montreal’s Nesbitt Burns in 1986. Here he developed an interest and skill in business mergers and acquisitions. “This is where I began to feel that I had found my niche,” he says. In 1995 he became managing director of Global Mining at BMO Nesbitt Burns.
His success in that area of corporate financing attracted the attention of a number of banking companies and in 1997 he became the chairman of Deutsche Bank Canada. His next move was to Barrick Gold as vice chairman and executive director of corporate development.
In 2002 Kinross Gold was experiencing some difficulties, and lured him away from Barrick and asked him to take control of its company. “It didn’t take me long to realize that Kinross had mines with aging ore bodies, and many of its operations, including our Canadian mines, were stifled with high taxes and excessive labour costs,” he asserts.
Tye heads up an eight person management team in Toronto and has now streamlined the company by closing unprofitable mines, selling off the Canadian company and focusing on efficiency and performance from his staff. Kinross employs 5,500 people worldwide with 140 of those at the head office in Toronto.
Presently the company has gold mines in the United States, Brazil, Chile, and Russia and is exploring in Ecuador and Mexico.
In spite of the pressures of travelling around the globe, in order to ensure the company’s efficiency he takes time to join his family in Toronto where they live.
Tye met his wife Janet in Muskoka while golfing at her father’s Kirrie Glen Golf Course on the shores of Lake Muskoka. Janet now manages the beautiful 2,830 yard nine hole course.
The Burt’s have three children, 17 year old Andrew, Annie, 15 and Mary, 10, all who share their parents’ love of skiing and sailing.
Tye developed a love of those two sports through his parents Larry and Diane, who still reside in Port Perry. His father, who retired several years ago from teaching science at Port Perry High School, was instrumental in the development of Skyloft Ski Resort near Chalk Lake, south of Port Perry. Tye’s mother Diana is still a ski instructor at the Skyloft club.
Tye, Janet and the children all share a real passion for sailing and share the enjoyment with Tye’s parents. He remembers his father buying a sailboat in Nova Scotia and bringing it to Port Perry where the family enjoyed sailing on Lake Scugog during the 1970s.
“When visiting Expo 67 in Montreal, my dad and I spent many hours marvelling as we watched David Stevens build a 52 foot schooner at an exhibit in the Atlantic Provinces Pavilion. The vessel was named Atlantica,” Tye recalls.
“We couldn’t get over the quality of the workmanship and the graceful design of the schooner. We thought that if we ever won the lottery we would love to own a schooner like that.”
Years later while visiting their summer home in Lunenburg, Tye and Janet saw an advertisement for “boat for sale.” It was the same Atlantica they had marvelled at years earlier.
The schooner had seen better days and was in dire need of restoration, but this did not deter them. They bought the vessel and gave the Atlantica a full refit including new masts and rigging, new mahogany planks below the waterline, a new power plant and many updated safety features.
In 2003 the Atlantica was relaunched and immediately began its winning ways, first of all the Pelham Trophy for schooner restoration and then many awards in competition including the Premier’s Cup in 2004 and 2005 and the prestigious Cunard Trophy in 2004 and 2006.
The family now spends many pleasant hours every summer sailing the graceful schooner out of Lunenberg.
In spite of his commitment to his family and the success of Kinross Gold Corp., Tye still finds time to serve on the Board of Directors of the University of Guelph and the Duke of Edinburgh Awards.
Tye attributes his success to hard work and, as he paraphrases Winston Churchill, “never give up.”
By Paul Arculus
Focus on Scugog
Personalities
