Peter Bentley

On the night of March 12, 1938, eight-year-old Peter Bentley… and other family members fled as Nazi Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss. …Mr. Bentley recalled in his autobiography, A Family’s Journey: Canfor and the Transformation of B.C.’s Forest Industry. Mr. Bentley, who died of a blood infection in Vancouver on Sept. 6 at age 91, went on to cross many more borders as he became a legendary Canadian business leader and philanthropist. For more than half a century he played leading roles in the family’s lumber company, which evolved from Pacific Veneer, a small factory operator in New Westminster, B.C., into Canadian Forest Products, a Vancouver-based global industry giant. Mr. Bentley ranked as one of B.C.’s most influential national-policy voices, according to Thomas d’Aquino. But Mr. Bentley’s policy interests transcended the province’s boundaries. Mr. Bentley, he added, made his greatest policy contributions in the areas of free trade, federal debt reduction and national unity. [to access the full story, a Globe and Mail subscription is required]