Page 48 - SHARP September 2022

LEVELLING THE FIELD
WES HALL OVERCAME POVERTY TO REACH THE HIGHEST ECHELONS OF BAY STREET. A NEW MEMOIR CHARTS HIS ONGOING FIGHT TO MAKE ROOM AT THE TABLE FOR PEOPLE OF COLOUR
By Jeremy Freed
W ES HALL KEEPS A PICTURE IN HIS OFFICE OF THE HOME
where he grew up in Jamaica. A two-bedroom shack with a tin roof and a dirt-floored kitchen, it couldn’t have less in common with the house he now shares with his wife and children in one of Toronto’s most exclusive neighbourhoods. How he got from a shack in rural Jamaica to Rosedale, broke a generations-long cycle of poverty, overcame racism and abuse, and rose to become one of Canada’s most influential businesspeople is the subject of his new memoir, No Bootstraps When You’re Barefoot.
Rags-to-riches stories like Hall’s are often used as proof that anyone can become wealthy and successful if only they work hard enough, and that capitalism rewards everyone equally. As its title
No Bootstraps When You’re Barefoot by Wes Hall is available October 2022 at indigo.ca ($34).
CULTURE
suggests, however, Hall’s book is intended to prove the opposite. While hard work certainly played a role in his success, Hall says, a host of forces, particularly racism, still conspire to keep poor people from improving their lives. “There are a lot of people who are smarter than me who did not go through what I went through in life, but they encounter one act of racism and it ends their advancement,” Hall says. “And just because you’re able to overcome those obstacles doesn’t mean that it’s fair to have those obstacles in your way to begin with. The obstacles don’t belong there.”
Now, as the founder of Kingsdale Advisors (a high-profile Bay Street business consultancy), a Dragon on CBC’s Dragon’s Den, and a prominent Canadian business leader, Hall has made it his mission to help as many others as he can to rise above their circumstances. Hall’s latest effort as an active philanthropist in Canada and the Caribbean is the foundation of the non-profit BlackNorth Initiative, an ambitious project to end systemic anti-Black racism through a wide range of business initiatives. “A lot of companies didn’t have women on their boards a few years ago, and now, all of a sudden, every single bank and institution in this country has multiple women in C-suite positions,” he says. “But the same organizations have zero Black people today. I hope that if we can fill the gender gap, then
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