Throughout his life and his career, Tony Waters has usually been in the right place at the right time.
This month, as his 75th birthday approaches, he takes a look back at where he's been.
Tony was born "on the last road in London and the first street in Surrey - in other words, Streatham," as he describes it, in 1940, the first full year of the Second World War. He remembers the Anderson shelter in the backyard and being evacuated with his brother, John, to a farm north of Birmingham. Everyone was listening to Gert and Daisy on the radio program Workers' Playtime, their comedy bolstering British morale during the war and its aftermath.
The war's end was celebrated with bonfires in the streets of Streatham and life for Tony became a round of school, sports, and amassing enough badges to be named a Queen's Scout and attend the World Scout Jamboree.
He was 14 when the family acquired a television. A favourite program was Dixon of Dock Green, the titular policeman played by Jack Warner, real name Horace Waters, brother of Doris and Elsie Waters, a.k.a. Gert and Daisy. The show business Waters were related to Tony's father - a real copper, he was a detective sergeant with Scotland Yard.
Tony did not go on the stage nor into the CID. By day, he clerked in the government's customs and excise branch, listening to Shirley Bassey at lunchtime jazz concerts. By night, it was ballroom dancing to Victor Silvester's Ballroom Orchestra.
Suddenly, it was 1960 and London was about to start swinging. At 20 years old, Tony was a Teddy Boy, in a string tie and Tony Curtis hair, jiving in crepe soled shoes at the Lyceum Dance Hall, Bill Haley belting out "Rock Around the Clock."
Trading a clerk's life for the world of sales, Tony found his way once "the edges were knocked off me." His first success was with Olivetti, selling office machines that were partly typewriters, partly precursors to computers. The grocery business, where Tony went next, wasn't evolving as quickly. Some salesmen, whose territories included the smaller English villages, were still filling orders using a horse and cart. Tony was provided with a car when he moved to Crosse Blackwell and "off I went into the wilds of Surrey." His sales skills were soon so honed that he was assigned to train CB's new recruits.
By the 1970s, Tony was meeting new challenges. He imported and distributed Danish-made kitchenware so successfully that he was awarded that country's business version of the Oscar. He had also found his bride while on holiday in the south of France. Alison Butler, a British Columbia girl, was on holiday too.
By 1982, Tony had exported his housewares import business, together with Alison and their two children, to North Vancouver. Alison was determined to feed the family food produced bio-dynamically and organically, not widely available back then. Tony and Alison saw potential in this new sector of the grocery market. By 1991, the transition from housewares importer to food broker specializing in natural and organic products was complete.
The goal was to make organic products affordable and therefore accessible. Tony applied the "stack 'em high and see 'em fly" sales techniques he had mastered back in the early years. The family pitched in, tirelessly promoting organic products at in-store demonstrations.
One longtime partnership began with the sale of a truckload of salad dressing and pasta sauce. How many jars in a truckload? "A helluva lot," says Alison. "That's why he's known in the business as 'Truckload Tony.'" Their family business, headquartered in North Vancouver, helped bring organic products into the mainstream, helping transform how we regard food and its production.
For Tony, new challenges await. With his daughter at the helm of the agency, Tony's business acumen and vision will continue to support the purpose of the company he created: supplying organic products to the people, by the truckload.
On Jan. 24, when family, friends and colleagues gather in celebration, Tony Waters will, as usual, be in the right place at the right time. It's a sweet spot with a very bright future.
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. 778-279-2275 [email protected]
