This is the first part of our Beyond the Family Business series.
Hosted by Luke-Hansen MacDonald, a second-generation family business leader, “Beyond the Family Business” has established itself as one of the most thoughtful and engaging podcasts about family enterprise in Canada. Starting today and then running roughly every two weeks, Canadian Family Offices is proud to be sharing “Beyond the Family Business” with our readers.
In every podcast, Hansen-MacDonald interviews leaders in the family enterprise space to explore lessons they have learned and their successes and challenges behind the headlines. Every episode is unique, but they all examine core family business themes—from entrepreneurship and succession to philanthropy and governance—featuring voices from both first-generation founders and next-gen leaders.
This week’s episode features Ian Wilson of Wilson Fuel Co. Ltd.—a company whose roots in Atlantic Canada go back eight generations. In his interview with Luke, Wilson provides insights into the intricacies of running a business alongside family while maintaining strong interpersonal bonds, and the corporate journey from supersizing a retail fuel business to bringing the beloved Popeye’s franchise to the East Coast in 2022.
Here’s the full interview:
Transcript
Luke Hansen-MacDonald: Hi, I am Luke Hansen-MacDonald. Welcome to Beyond the Family Business, a podcast in partnership with Canadian Family Offices, where we dive into the stories, challenges and opportunities that come with leading a family enterprise. This episode is brought to you by BMO Private Wealth. As a client myself, I’ve seen firsthand how they can help families like mine plan for what’s next.
Today we sit down with Ian Wilson. He is the eighth-generation of Wilsons. He discusses the incredible family legacy, which began in the early 1800s with the small construction business in rural Nova Scotia. He discusses how this business evolved over time into the fuel and heating industry, and grew into the multifaceted group of companies it is today. He shares his own journey as one of the original employees of their retail fuel business, which grew into a huge behemoth across Atlantic Canada, both through organic growth as well as through acquiring locations from groups like Petro-Canada as well.
He gets into intimate detail of the reasons why he and his family decided to sell their retail fuel business to Couche-Tard in a monster transaction in the last few years. We also discuss family governance, the dynamics between him and his siblings, as well as him and his cousins, and what they find works for them. And lastly, Ian shares what’s next for their family business, including the exclusive rights to Popeye’s Louisiana Chicken for Atlantic Canada.
You’re not gonna wanna miss this one. This is beyond the Family Business podcast. Let’s jump into it.
So, I always start off with the same three questions. Who are you, where are you from, and what do you do?
Wilson: Well, I’m Ian Wilson. I’m from Halifax. Born, raised, not too far from where we’re recording this. Lived here all my life with the exception of going away for university. What do I do? I’m married, have two children—young adults now. Business—I am the president of our family business Wilson’s, as well as doing some other business activities.
Hansen-MacDonald: Cool. Where’d you go to school?
Wilson: I grew up in the south end of Halifax. Went to Tower Road School, which is now, yeah, now the grammar school. And, Gores Brook, then Queen Elizabeth High School. Went to Queen’s University, and then I did a master’s degree at Imperial College London.
Hansen-MacDonald: They’re actually a customer in one of our businesses. We sold them some machinery for their lab. That’s a very cool university.
Maybe we could sort of rewind back to the beginning. What generation are you of your family business?
Wilson: We describe my generation as the eighth generation of the family business.
Hansen-MacDonald: Which Is staggering. For Canada, I’ve interviewed a lot of people in multigenerational. Third or fourth is pretty deep, so when you’re getting to eight, that’s almost unheard of. Can you explain that sort of founding story? Who was the founder of the family business and what did it look like at that time?
Wilson: Yeah. We did a genealogy, family history, and traced the origins back to a Wilson who came up actually from the United States, back in the early 1800s. He founded a business (in the Truro area) which morphed into, you know, Wilson’s Construction. So it was a construction company for quite a number of years. They had a lumberyards and masonry business. So, entrepreneurially, someone started selling slab wood for heat. Then from that they got into the coal business. One of the ancestors decided, I don’t know, maybe they’re having a hard time in construction at some point in time. That usually seems to happen at some point in time and got out of the construction business. And so it was just a heating business, a coal business. Then the coal business morphed into a heating oil furnace, oil business, and got into the propane business. And then that changed—well, didn’t change, but we also got in the retail gasoline business, and lots of other ancillary businesses, you know, that were more or less successful over the years. I think it’s just an illustration that with any business you’ve got to move with the times.
Hansen-MacDonald: You’ve got to be evolving. What year was that when you moved into the fuel business?
Wilson: Well, I mean, some of the stuff is very anecdotal. There was some letterhead that we had in the office that said the ‘complete fuel line since 1909.’ So, we just kind of chose that as like, okay, that’s probably an entry point. The actual business, Wilson Fuel, was incorporated in 1955. That’s on a seal. We were told from the lawyer who was doing the incorporations—you know, at the time it was Wilson Coal Company Limited. And they said, well, really, you’re selling a lot more furnace oil than coal. Do you want to change the name? And so that’s how they incorporated as Wilson Fuel. And so that’s still our major corporate entity.
Hansen-MacDonald: You were doing home heating and also retail. What did the retail business include?
Wilson: Retail gasoline… Wasn’t a huge business, the heating business. And we did equipment as well, as well as selling the fuel. My father was head of the industrial engineering department at the technical University of Nova Scotia, which was its own separate engineering school. He kept in touch with a lot of his students and hired some of them as senior management. One person that he hired well was the general manager of our heating business. Then he hired another gentleman, who came back to start a retail gasoline business. And he had come from working at Imperial Oil.
Between the two of them, they discussed how, you know, they might lever the supply side of the petroleum business and get into the retail gasoline business using the existing Wilson’s brand. They started that gasoline business. I think he was hired in 1989.
Hansen-MacDonald: Cool. So, the retail gasoline business was relatively new?
Wilson: Yes.
Hansen-MacDonald: My entire lifetime I’ve seen your business around. So, the original fuel business was the supply side and that allowed you to leap into retail?
Wilson: Yeah, the original business was delivering furnace oil. Predominantly in the Truro area. We branched into the Halifax market in 1988. But most people wouldn’t be familiar with the Wilson brand unless they were in the Truro area.
When I first started in the business, I would go to Christmas parties and people would ask, ‘Where do you work’? I’d say Wilson’s and most people had never heard of it.
Hansen-MacDonald: Incredible. I grew up in Chester. And we always stopped at [one of your locations] and you had a Wilson Fuel stop there. So, it was burned into my early memories that you were a retail brand. But you grew significantly since the 80s if you only moved out of the Truro market in the 80s—you must’ve seen significant growth.
Wilson: Yes. I started in 1991. I was the second hire in the retail gasoline business. We didn’t hire anyone else in that business for another two years. The office was in Truro; I was living in Halifax. It was a business we were building in Atlantic Canada …. A lot of it was a sales job as well, so driving the roads was a big part of it, because we were just going out and visiting independent gasoline dealers. Convincing them that they could do better with us versus a major brand.
Hansen-MacDonald: You joined in 1991—specifically the gasoline retail side—and is it fair to say it was essentially a small startup with your overall family business?
Wilson: It really was a startup with the initial hire, Dave Collins. He started the business piggybacking on the back office of the heating oil business, piggybacking off of the supply connections that we had to, to buy petroleum using the brand that we already had, even though it didn’t have a lot of recognition to lever that into the retail gasoline business. We started convincing independent dealers they’d do better with us, and we bought existing gas stations. It was a different time. The market was regulated. You couldn’t just open a gas station—you have to apply. It was very difficult to get. Very much a protected industry. We fought hard to deregulate to allow the industry to modernize.
Hansen-MacDonald: Successful?
Wilson: Yeah, get the business deregulated and pricing was deregulated and, you know, under regulation, I mean, not many people would remember. You had to have two service spaces—that was part of being a gas station. You weren’t allowed to open on the weekends or after, you know, in the evenings, you weren’t allowed to be open unless you had special licences, or you would do that in a rotation.
So to find out what gas station would be open, you’d have to look in the newspaper to see, well, which one’s open, except if you had a 24-hour licence. You had to have parking for 200 cars if you wanted a 24-hour gas station. There was a lot of very strange parts to that regulation. And so once it deregulated, you know, all of a sudden you started seeing convenience stores and gas stations and self-serve. Yeah. Self-serve wasn’t allowed either under regulation, so it allowed modernization margins in the business [to come] down significantly, so people had price savings as well. Right. So, there were a lot of benefits to, um, deregulation. Then the government did eventually reregulate, at least the pricing side of the business, so, okay, although not regulating every aspect of the business as it formerly did.
Hansen-MacDonald: What roles did you play over time until eventually taking on the president role?
Wilson: Like I said, I was the second hire. So when we started, we sort of looked at each other and said, ‘What do we do? Will you do that or me?’ Pretty much a bit of everything. Marketing or sales or computer programming. Cash, uniforms, talking to the insurance agents. It was baptism by fire. As we grew to give myself my own sandbox, the person who was running the business carved out the convenience store side of things and said, ‘Why don’t you take that as a P&L and try and run that side of the business?’ I had direct control over that. But again it was informal. If something needed to be done, we just did it. We weren’t huge on titles. And my father died, and he was the president of the business, although he wasn’t coming into the office regularly until he retired from TUNS [Technical University of Nova Scotia] around 1997 (as a guess). He died in 1999. And at that time, I became the president of Wilson’s—it was the desire of the family to have a family member as president.
Hansen-MacDonald: That must’ve been a big shock to take on the role and the trauma.
Wilson: The role was less of a trauma than dealing with the death of a father. Everyone was very supportive in the family and the people I worked alongside. Easy transition in that sense. My father was not ever present as a president, so things didn’t change a whole lot day-to-day.
Hansen-MacDonald: By that time, had the retail business grown to be a big part of the family business? When did that part reach critical mass?
Wilson: The retail part of business took off shortly after it started. Fairly consistently continued to grow at a very good pace. Fairly quickly, it overtook over delivered fuel, heating business. In terms of size, scale and importance financially. The heating business did continue to grow, but it’s a different business. It’s more challenging to grow because of the characteristics of the business and the other players.
Hansen-MacDonald: if you look back at your career over all of that growth, is there a particular challenge that stood out to you as a leader that was a defining moment in your career?
Wilson: First started in the business, a challenge was that there were so many different things to do, and I was used to being a linear thinker, so how you do something—step 1, 2, 3. But then I was in a roll with hundreds of things to do. A lot of the time, if you sat around waiting for Step 1 to be completed, you’ll be left behind. If there’s a wall—are you going to wait for it to crumble? Or run around it? Right through it? And in that path do something else? A different mentality to tackle things was an early challenge. In the leadership role—I’m introverted), so communicating regularly with people, indicating a vision and values, and standing up in front of groups, talking to people a lot, I found that challenging. And I still find it challenging. Getting up in front of a crowd and communicating the message—still a challenge.
Hansen-MacDonald: Is there anything you’ve found over that has helped with that?
Wilson: What I have discovered is that it is good to be prepared. I used to write things down and read a statement. That’s nowhere as effective as not referring to notes at all. Talking directly from the heart is much more authentic, and natural. More challenging, but practice helps a lot.
Hansen-MacDonald: Great advice. Back to the growth of the business. Over your tenure leading it, continued to grow significantly, was that organic or [through acquisition] or both?
Wilson: Mix of both. We certainly had regular organic growth happening. A big leap for us (2003), we partnered with Imperial Oil to take on the Esso brand in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. We acquired the sites that they had, with the exception of Halifax sites. They had fewer directly owned sites than one may think. We took over those and took over the supply of their dealer network. When that happened, in 2005, we did the same with PEI & Newfoundland. So, that was a big growth acquisition. After that, we continued to buy and build sites.
Hansen-MacDonald: Imperial Oil & Esso a part of Exxon?
Wilson: Exxon owns 70% of Imperial Oil. It’s very integrated. Over that period of time, we did take over the Halifax sites. And in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Hansen-MacDonald: How many sites in total?
Wilson: Last acquisition (around 2015) was 19 sites. At the time that was their biggest and brightest sites in Atlantic Canada. That was a big bite for us at the time.
Hansen-MacDonald: What is the supply side that you took over?
Wilson: We talk about supply just as petroleum supply. The initial business was supplying furnace and heating oil, and we’d have supply relationships to purchase petroleum. With supply, we’d do wholesale supply and then the retail side of the business would be the site we directly own. And then we talk about wholesale supply to independent third-party dealers where we’d provide the brand, brand support and POS terminals.
Hansen-MacDonald: Got it. You have since sold that business. Can you talk about that sales process, what led to it and when it happened?
Wilson: Culminated in 2022, but in 2020 we looked at the business and we’d hit a certain size, scale and market share in Atlantic Canada, [which] made it increasingly difficult for us to grow our existing marketplace organically. Our next growth options would take us outside the region. We participated in some sales processes; we were unsuccessful in that. We found that we were competing against large publicly traded entities for other acquisition opportunities. Not impossible, but we’d have to change our own capital structure, go public or take on private equity partners, which we weren’t super-keen about. Also meant that we would have to pay more than what we were comfortable with. It’s tough, competing against large-scale companies and people. And it’d mean more travel on my part, which I wasn’t super-excited about. A lot of the opportunities we offered to our staff to grow, well, wouldn’t be there. We also identified that the retail gasoline business had peaked in North America. Climate change policies, there’s a lot of pressure to reduce fossil fuel consumption. We thought this market is going into secular decline at some point, so now might be a good time to sell. Capital markets were frothy. We thought it’d be the right time. Sometimes it’s better to sell at a time of perceived high as opposed to riding a business into oblivion—we’ve done that before, too. Everyone was comfortable with it as a concept. We were very intentional about the process and doing it right—we found a good home for the business and staff.
Hansen-MacDonald: Who bought it?
Wilson: Couche-Tard. The largest gasoline convenience chain in the world. Started in Quebec, a Canadian company, very strong people there. They already had a significant presence in this market with their Circle K banner and the part of the business they divested went to another Quebec company that is similar to Wilson’s.
Hansen-MacDonald: That’s a major change for your family. That’s a core asset. Now you’ve moved onto some new things. What are you focusing on now in terms of new businesses?
Wilson: The interesting thing about the transaction is that we did not sell our brand. We still have the original heating business. We had branched into the security business, residential and commercial monitoring installation service and door access control. Wilson Security business is run by my brother Dave. We had also in our retail business—got into quick service food, Burger King, Tim Hortons, that we operated directly as franchisees.
Hansen-MacDonald: Were those attached to your gas stations?
Wilson: Yes. We spun those out when we sold the business—quick serve restaurant entity. We also had achieved the rights to Popeye’s Louisana brand for Atlantic Canada. We took that on with the capital we had gotten out of the business. Now we are working on growing that brand.
Hansen-MacDonald: It’s one of the hottest brands—it was a huge deal when it came to Atlantic Canada. Did getting into Popeye’s (having access to Tim Hortons and Burger King already) play a role in getting that?
Wilson: Yes, we showed the owners of that brand that we could operate restaurants in their brands, between us demonstrating that we could operate and capital we had and desire—it was a bidding process. We still had to prove that we were the right partner in this market.
Hansen-MacDonald: Not completely unrelated to what you were doing before. Do you have any advice for families re: getting yourselves to pivot and bringing energy to a new direction?
Wilson: The history of our business, over eight generations—you have to move with the times. Over that time, the business has to survive, never mind the continuity of the family. I think it’s a lesson for any business: you have to innovate and try new things. And if it’s working well, do more of it, and if it isn’t, then keep trying. But do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. We always want to be growing and have growth opportunities for everyone working for us.
Hansen-MacDonald: Moving to the overall family business level, how do you and your brother balance governance, or do you have any suggestions re: what governance works when there are multiple family members at that ownership level?
Wilson: Largely, the business wasn’t that big of a business. It was passed from parents to a single child. Very direct. Grandfather passed the business down to his two sons. The two daughters were not involved. We treated owning the business separate from operating the business— you don’t have to operate the business to own it. In family, it’s been passed own equally. In terms of governance as a concept, the biggest concept for us was communication. We summered together, wintered together and took a lot of family vacations together. Communication came fairly easily—there are always difficult conversations that come up. In the early 1990s, [cousins] started to discuss how things would work. It went fine. We have worked with family business consultants to discuss policies we may have, policies to have certain eventualities that may happen, so when they do happen—family compensation, expenses, charitable gifts, younger members entering the business—so, when it happens, it’s easier if you have a bit of a playbook.
A big part of these agreements, most of the time you write them and then they go up on the shelf somewhere. But they’re good to have as guidance. Best thing is to keep the communication going all the time. We have monthly/bimonthly meetings to discuss the businesses.
Hansen-MacDonald: Good advice. The transparency, constant communication, the separation of owners/operators—sounds like you guys are pretty far down the road on your governance approach. And you’re proactive. Great to hear.
Wilson: I don’t know if it’s sophisticated, but it’s something we work on all the time. Family compensation—we have to meet every year, and it’s awkward. But [we] try to follow a logical process.
Hansen-MacDonald: You talked about family time together. Do you still do family trips with your extended family? Any activities that are not just focused on business review?
Wilson: My brothers, and the wives and kids and my mother, we do a lot of family travel together. It’s strictly about fun. Still in that context, we have central family facilities where we get together in the summer and winter. Cousins—we see them regularly. My cousins are the owners of Ski Wentworth. See them all once a year. Introducing the next generation to each other, so they have relationships they can build on.
Hansen-MacDonald: I have a similar situation. My brothers and my parents, we spend a lot of time together. My cousin does something similar with my uncle. And we are now trying to do cross-charitable things together. But it’s a different dynamic when you move from siblings to cousins. I’m always interested to hear what people are doing. I want to keep the family connection.
Wilson: In my generation, we have great relationships with all of our cousins. We formed a foundation and that was an opportunity for us all to participate in something where we are giving back to the community and meet on a regular basis.
Hansen-MacDonald: Your family has been very generous in our region. You personally supported me when I was raising money for charities. You’ve been very generous. What is the importance of a family business like yours supporting community?
Wilson: The roots of our business are in Truro, and I felt that’s there where businesses would support one another. It’s reciprocal. I grew up in Halifax, so going there, they all grew up together, part of the Rotary Club/business community. Lot of close connections. People have their own projects, things that are benefiting the community, lots of reciprocal asks going on. Ultimately, it became a part of the fabric [of the] community and business to give back. There’s a big role business can play when they have that mentality. If you give in the community you’re working in, that will come back to you. The community will be more vibrant and you’ll be a beneficiary. It’s always been important to us to give back.
Hansen-MacDonald: I often think about it as, you know, donating to charity, but even just making sure you support other local businesses. Even though your business has now grown to be, you know, much larger, having the support of other local vendors and stuff is important. That’s a really good point.
Wilson: When I was younger, my father and uncle would talk to me about relationships, and I was like, ‘This person is selling it at $10 and this person is selling it at $12.’ And they’d say, ‘You’re buying the $12 one because of the relationship.’ Over time I certainly value relationships more, as I have gotten older.
Hansen-MacDonald: Last question, you have kids. I assume some of your siblings have kids and cousins have kids. Is the next generation old enough yet that they’re starting to enter the family business? Or are they doing their own thing, or what’s that look like?
Wilson: There are children in the next generation that are at an age where they could enter the family business. We certainly have some of that generation working in the summer. Nobody currently [is] expressing interest in working in the family business full-time. I would say that’s probably not similar to how it was in my generation as well. It may come, but we’re not putting any demands on our kids. Ultimately, we just want to see them be successful in what they want to do.
Hansen-MacDonald: Thank you, Ian. Alright, this is Beyond the Family Business podcast. Thanks so much for watching. Please like and subscribe. We have new episodes coming out every two weeks, so you do not want to miss those. Alright, see you soon.
This transcript is based on the audio recording of the video. While efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, minor errors are possible.
Disclaimer: This podcast is sponsored by BMO Private Wealth. The information provided in this podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or professional advice. The views expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any organization or company. Always consult with a qualified financial advisor or professional before making any investment decisions.
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