Outgoing Nexen boss leaves legacy, tributes mentor
Charlie Fischer gave credit where it was due when he retired at the end of 2008 after 36 years of career successes
In a foreword to Seaman’s biography, former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed writes: “For decades he built companies through sound but creative planning; so often, and so successfully, that over the years I’ve come to believe Doc is a kind of organizational and motivational genius. Luckily for Canada, though, he was always interested in much more than making money for himself.”
Although Seaman rarely receives credit for it, he laid the foundations of Calgary’s contemporary character as a combined business and recreation capital with an international profile, Lougheed writes. “I had no idea why he wanted to see me at the premier’s office in Edmonton one day in 1980. He brought the most brilliant idea for gathering up into one package the 1988 Olympic Winter Games, an NHL team [the Flames], a hockey arena for both [the Saddledome] and long-term funding for amateur sports.”
Seaman, a soft-spoken engineer, was steeped in experience. Fischer describes his mentor, who was famous for disliking public speaking, as “understated.” But Seaman was no wallflower. As a southern Saskatchewan teenager, he ran heavy equipment around the tiny town of Rouleau, southeast of Regina, in a family road construction outfit during the 1930s Great Depression. He flew 82 missions as a fighter-bomber pilot during the Second World War. Shortly before he turned 21, a German fighter plane’s machine guns shattered his youthful dream of playing professional hockey by piercing his left leg in air combat over the Mediterranean offshore of North Africa.
The Doc got his nickname by using a black leather bag, akin to an old-time country doctor’s house call kit, to carry baseball gear around Saskatchewan diamonds after the war. He played in a lively Prairie league that sometimes paid better than ordinary summer jobs for war veterans who returned home and went to university like Seaman.
After graduating as an engineer and trying less exciting work in Ontario, he moved out to Alberta and into oil soon after the 1947 Leduc gusher launched the modern Canadian industry. He and brothers B.J. and Don eventually parlayed a $7,500 down payment on a truck-mounted rig, imported from Texas to drill shot holes for dynamite explosions in seismic surveys, into the Bow Valley conglomerate in production and field services. The firm grew up into an international oil powerhouse that set financial records for its time by attracting a $1.2-billion investment by British Gas in 1989, then a $1.8-billion takeover by Talisman Energy in 1994.
Until he died, Seaman ran a busy land, industry and philanthropy network that ranged from the celebrated OH Ranch south of Calgary to water management technology and support for robotic brain surgery. He had prostate cancer, and that sharpened his interest in health care. He adhered to a medical school of thought that gives a blunt warning to the idle rich: “Boredom kills.” He went to his downtown Calgary office every working day. “Never quit; never retire,” said Seaman’s motto.
“He was right,” Fischer says as he leaves the Nexen job that kept him hopping for up to 80 hours a week. He is not turning his back on his long list of community, charity and mentor roles. “I don’t think you can go from running hard to doing nothing. I’m not quitting. I’m just doing some different things.”
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