This book is an interesting read for a business owner. Here is someone that is in line to inherit one of
Belinda Stronach requires no investors and no MBA to one day inhabit the throne of the Magna Empire. She has not always been the ‘heir apparent’. In fact her father’s expectation of her success was to become a good mother and homemaker. What happened, you may ask, to enlighten Frank Stronach so that he would encourage and support Belinda in her rise to power both politically and corporately?
Belinda was a teenager of the eighties, ‘poofy’ hair, tight jeans, and bush parties, does that sound familiar at all? Her teenage life in the public school system was unremarkable. Besides the fact that her family was very wealthy, Belinda was a very average teenager. She walked the halls of the public secondary school with a group of close friends, many of whom are still close with her today. As an academic, her grades where only nominally above average, certainly not what you would expect from the CEO of Magna International. Yet, she possesses a persistence to do things she was not expected to do and go places that her father had only reserved for the male gender.
Belinda is a world class go-getter and also daddy’s litter girl. If she wanted something she would have it but not in the fashion of a spoiled child. Belinda is described in this book and by others as fearless, generous, compassionate, confident, connected, and an exemplary mother and yet she is also described as “rich, a divorcee, spoiled, a socialite, linked to
When she realized that the leadership of the newly formed Conservative Party, which she had worked hard to help consolidate, was going to go uncontested to Steven Harper, she decided to throw her hat in the ring. According to those who understood how the electorate worked, she could not win. But, she did not do this on a whim. This candidacy took months of preparation and consultation to decide if it was even worth the effort. Could she pull together a team in time to effectively persuade the membership of the party to elect her as their new leader?
Public speaking was something she had little experience at; some would say a prerequisite for the leader of a country. She could not and would not even attempt to speak French, a leadership downfall in a bilingual country. She knew little or nothing about the issues of the day and of those issues she did know about she had no opinion. It was a long shot, she nearly pulled it off but the race to the election date was full of disappointments and failures on her and her team’s part.
She did win a seat for the Conservative Party under Steven Harper, but was denied over and over any key role in the party. This book makes out Steven as a paranoid monarch, always watching over his shoulder for Belinda, whom he knows is out to take his throne. When she realizes she can no longer support the views of the party she did the unthinkable, at least in Peter MacKay’s mind, she crossed the floor, abandoning their party and their relationship.
Even after all this she had taken her second election in the Newmarket-Aurora riding by a huge margin over the first election changing the riding from a Conservative to a Liberal held riding. It was the only loss of a Conservative seat in
This book is full of anomalies between the “haves” and “have not’s”, the “can’t do” and the “doers” the “academics” and the “self-taught” and they are all playing on the same field. It makes me feel I can play there too because I have lots of what they have and some of what they don’t.
A good read.
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