Birds of a Feather

His fiefdom is a nondescript office tucked into a corner of the Provincial Capital Commission’s Pandora Avenue administration headquarters. Temporary shelves, no receptionist, no water cooler, no staff as yet.

It’s not much, but for Bernard Brown this is a dream job. The kind of job for which a successful 60 year-old advertising executive is willing to opt out of a semi-retired state and once again take up the nose-to-the-grindstone life he’d left behind.

Brown is the executive director of the Victoria Tall Ships Society, the lone paid employee of a board that is bringing the massive vessels to the city for the Tall Ship Challenge June 23-26 in what should be a mid-summer economic boon.

Brown, despite the off-white, PCC loaner office, is a kid in a candy store.

“It is a dream job for a year,” said Brown, over a lunch at the Douglas Hotel around the corner from his digs. “When the job (was announced) I put my hand up ... it kind of had my name all over it.”

A lifelong boater, the Duncan-born Brown was a sea cadet, served 17 years as a naval reserve officer and with wife Bev has owned boats for the last 30 years. His current boat is the Pacific Dream which he owns in partnership with former mayor Bob Cross.

“I love anything to do with the sea, it has always been near and dear to my heart,” he said. “You don’t need that in order to do this job, but it helps.”

It also helps to be tapped into the tourism psyche of the city, a well he’s been drinking from for over a decade.

Brown, educated at BCIT in marketing, moved back to the Island in 1989 after 12 years with Scott Paper’s sales and marketing division and three years with McKim Advertising.
McKim had just landed the Tourism Victoria account, and Brown who wanted to return to the Island, came over to manage the account through a partnership with Copeland Communications.

The account, and his subsequent work with Tourism Victoria over the next 12 years with the McKim, Copeland and Palmer Jarvis agencies, gave him a better understanding of the city and why an event like Tall Ships is such a good fit.

“When you’re involved with Tourism Victoria you become really sensitive to what makes Victoria work, because it is our largest industry,” he said. “So when this came up, I thought it would be good for Victoria because of the economic impact involved.”

That impact is estimated to be $25 million based on 250,000 people visiting the event over a four-day period in June. The society estimates 40 per cent of the event’s visitors will require overnight stays — the impact reflects 40 per cent of 250,000 people spending an average of 1.8 nights here and $135 per day.

“That’s ancillary tourism revenue, it’s not counting local spending, it’s a big number,” said Brown.

Tourism Victoria CEO Lorne Whyte wouldn’t speculate on the impact, noting it’s always difficult when an event is a first-time effort. However, he did say it will likely have significant impact on the number of overnight stays in the city.

Halifax recently hosted the same event with organizers estimating more than 400,000 people visited bringing in an additional $14 million in spending.

But Whyte says Brown is the kind of guy to pull off an event like this.

“They’ve got the right board and the right executive director,” he said. “Bernard’s helped bring together a stellar board, people who have a lot of confidence in his ability.”

Whyte says Brown is a keen listener and a stickler for detail, noting you’d probably be able to eat from his boat’s engine it’s so well cared for. “And he pays attention, he understood the (tourism) research from the destination and got that through to the creative people at the different agencies,” said Whyte of why their partnership was so successful.

Those sentiments are echoed by Brown’s friend Cedric Steele, president of GLS Global Assets, who had Brown’s help putting together newspaper supplements welcoming U.S. navy ships, and the Snowbirds campaign last year.

“You absolutely couldn’t have found a better person for the job,” he said, lightheartedly conceding his friends may have to come up with a new marine-related job for Brown when the Tall Ships sail out next July.

“He’s a reliable person who carries through very well when he sets his eye on a task.”
The task at this point is to get corporations to buy into the tall ship buzz, as they are tabbed to make up more than $400,000 of the society’s $1.3 million budget.

That job will be made easier as the city jumped on board the project early on, and Victoria’s existing infrastructure of volunteers and a stunning Inner Harbour helps make the sale.

“We are blessed with these kinds of legacies,” he said.

If he sounds like a glass-half-full kind of guy, he is.

And truth be told, Brown’s enthusiasm and optimism for the Tall Ships and his post would likely be carried to any job he walked into these days.

He survived a cancer scare nearly four years ago and sees life a little differently these days.

“For anybody that’s had a life threatening illness, it does change your perspective,” he said. “You tend to appreciate today a lot more than you did — carpe diem becomes the philosophy.”

So for Brown, the sea air is a little sweeter, his boat rides a little more smoothly through the islands and, yes, a nondescript little office on loan from the PCC is just fine thanks.
“I always look on the brighter side,” he said.