Richard (Dick) Ritchie
MAY 20, 2024
The year we graduated, 1964, I couldn’t even imagine what the year 2000 would be like, it seemed so distant, yet here I am happily hitting the keys in 2024, 60 years later. How to summarize 60 years of post-MRHS life?
I wasn’t the happiest teenager, I played hookie for two weeks from high school at one point. I spent my winter afternoons at the curling club across the street and played tennis at the Town's courts off Rockland during the summer months. Most of my good friends were from MRCHS across the boulevard. It was a time of 50cc Honda motorbikes and an easy life sitting on the clubhouse steps surveying the courts, sipping Cokes, and noting who was driving a new Buick Skylark convertible. At MRHS Mr. Cameron tried to get me to write with my right hand and Miss Welham made life difficult, then went through my locker. My father met with Mr. Drysdale, our dour principal, twice. And Mr. Anakin - or perhaps it was Mr. Messenger - arrived one day with a portable record player and told the class that we would listen to an album he thought we should hear. It was ‘Blue Skies’ by the African-American jazz pianist Don Shirley. It blew me away and I bought the record. (‘Green Book’, the movie, came out in 2018, and was based on Don Shirley's life.)
My dad recommended Commerce studies at Sir George Williams. My low matriculation average ruled out going to McGill and a business degree seemed a sensible choice for a 17-year old with little apparent interest in anything. Through friends I got a summer job with the Royal Bank which became full time after graduation in 1968. It was a secure job, my mom and dad were happy and the future seemed rosy. But, on my 23rd birthday, I awoke wIth a start. I saw myself as a complete fraud, someone who had better start thinking about his real life. I didn’t want a middling career at the bank and I couldn't continue a relationship I had started at Sir George. All I could think of was going back to school. A colleague who had recently quit and moved back out west invited me to the Calgary Stampede. I had read some post-grad course material from UBC and he suggested I fly to Vancouver for a day to check things out. I did. A month later, on Labour Day 1973, I landed in Vancouver and began a new life.
Grad classes didn’t work out but selling jeans at Fairweather Big Steel did. When money got tight I joined the Canada Revenue Agency as a field auditor and kept working for Big Steel on evenings and Saturdays. I knew I enjoyed the retail life and answered an ad for management trainees at Henry Birks & Sons. Tom Birks hired me in 1975. I believe he arranged all of my transfers over the next ten years as I moved from managing stores in Vancouver and Toronto to becoming a national buyer based back in Montreal. It was a heady time and I was a workaholic. One Fall day in 1984 a head hunter called and offered me a job in Toronto. Burke & Wallace, a siliverware manufacturer, had just fired their Vice President of Sales. He added that I might have to find new employment in a year’s time if the company’s fortunes weren’t turned around. Birks had shown me where I could thrive but their compensation paled in comparison to what I was being offered. And I decided I would be a sales agent if Burke & Wallace shut down. It did, exactly a year later. I left the factory and drove to the airport. Three days later, in Birmingham, England for the Spring Fair, I signed on with six companies. Until my retirement in 2015, I was one of a handful of Canadian sales reps working for mostly European tableware and giftware manufacturers.
Yves Boutin danced into my life in 1974, fifty years ago. We met at a gay disco in downtown Vancouver. He followed me to Toronto in 1978 but said ’no’ to moving to Montreal two years later. He returned to Vancouver to manage a residential lighting store. In 1999 he called me to say he was again in Toronto, would I be interested in going to a movie? We have been together ever since and moved back to Vancouver in 2015. We live in a beautiful condo near Queen Elizabeth Park. I am originally from Halifax but the West Coast has always been where I want to be. Even with family still based in Montreal and Toronto.
Richard (Dick) Ritchie (L) and Yves Boutin (R)
Lately we’ve been going through ’stuff’ and decluttering. I’m now clear of my active business years so boxes of receipts, invoices and tax returns have gone for shredding. But not without a last look. There’s now a single binder holding notes, bills, and tickets of very special places - a congratulatory letter from Drummond Birks about the sales increase at the Yorkdale store in December 1978, the bills from a lunch at Claridges and a stay at The Ritz in Paris, my ’Suites’ boarding pass on a Singapore Airlines A380 flight, and the invoice for my 1994 Apple PowerBook - $7800! I had never compiled the names of all the companies I represented over 29 years but I have a list now, by country: Japan, Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Spain, Italy, Austria, France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom plus the names of the 48 companies. I made it a point to visit almost every one. More than half have now closed; my career coincided with the rise in discount retailing, big box stores, and so much production moving to China. In tabletop, as we call it, you can now buy cheap or expensive. There is little in the middle.
At Birks I had replaced a buyer who hated flying. I love jumping on planes. For an international sales representative the trade show circuit thirty years ago was daunting. Atlanta led off the year followed by Paris, Toronto, New York, Milan and Frankfurt by mid-February, then Chicago in March, New York again in April then nothing until Atlanta in late July started the Fall/Winter cycle. New product introductions and the decisions of clients to either attend a show or give it a pass often made my travel planning easy and/or sometimes very frustrating. And then there was Canada, the countless drives to Montreal, Quebec City and Ottawa, the flights to Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver. The national client in Canmore and the specialist in silver in Victoria. I’m certain no one, let alone a family, would have put up with me as I ‘managed’ all that went on. Fortunately I had some great staff to look after things at home as I worked away.
None of this would have happened without four key mentors: Tom Birks, Alan Stark of William Ashley China in Toronto, Owen Smyth of Town Talk Polish in England and Georg Riedel of Riedel Crystal in Austria. They each gave me the freedom and confidence to promote ideas, offer new products, and see new innovations in design implemented. When a product you’ve had a major hand in goes on sale far from home, at Harrods in London, Lane Crawford in Hong Kong, or Bloomingdales in New York, it brings a great sense of accomplishment.
When I lived in Montreal, Guadeloupe was my go-to vacation spot in the Caribbean. Now our favourite southern destination is Zihuatanejo, on the west coast of Mexico. But I suppose we love being in France the most, driving to the next B&B, stopping in small towns for a bite or short tour or walking the beaches. Paris is wonderful but France is so much more than that incredible city. In 2023 we did over 4000km driving from Lyon to Marseille and west to Biarritz, then down to Spain to see the Guggenheim Bilbao and back north to Bordeaux and home. Two months of rest, fun, good eating, and culture.
My dad had Parkinson’s Disease as did my brother. Bob and I had an odd way of positioning our hands when being photographed so I wasn’t surprised when I was diagnosed in 2005. It’s hard to believe it's almost twenty years; how many Levadopa pills have I swallowed? Three years ago I had Deep Brain Stimulation surgery to control tremor. It worked out very well for me. Unfortunately less than 10% of those afflicted with PD in this province have even been offered the surgery. Now I’ve switched from walking sticks to a walker so my balance stays under control. My voice is softer too but I’ve avoided many of the other issues that can occur. I have a wonderful team of health professionals to provide assistance as things evolve. It is what it is.
If you have read this far you have read a lot. Today it is cool and raining here in Vancouver, but that’s the 'wet coast’. A good day to finish this project; spurred on by the great things I have read from other contributors. Sixty years! We are so fortunate to have this website and the dedicated people who have shaped it - many thanks to John and his team.
Richard (Dick) Ritchie