Hirshhorn’s quest for wealth

At about five feet, three inches, Joseph Hirshhorn (1899-1981) did not tower over anyone. But as a mining financier and art collector, he was head-and-shoulders above most.

Born in Latvia in 1899, Hirshhorn came to the U.S. at age four, accompanied by his widowed mother and numerous siblings. The family settled in the Bronx borough of New York City. Hirshhorn attended school until he was 13 and then dropped out to become a paperboy, and later a jewelry clerk. At 15, he got his first job on Wall Street, earning $12 per week. A year later, he invested his life savings of $255 and became a stockbroker on the curb market, effectively launching his career as a financier.

By age 28, he was making $2 million per year as a broker during the boom period of the early 1920s, and had enough foresight to pull his money out of the markets before the great crash of October 1929.

It was at the onset of the Great Depression that Hirshhorn moved north to Toronto, where a sign outside his office read: My name is opportunity and I am paging Canada.

In 1936, he had holdings in Preston East Dome Mines, which had discovered gold.

In the early 1950s, Hirshhorn crossed paths with Franc Joubin (1911-1997), whose geological skill, determination and drive he was quick to recognize. (Perhaps this is because Hirshhorn, like Joubin, was known to do six things in the time it would take an average person to do one.) Geologically speaking, Hirshhorn didn’t know the difference between a uraniferous conglomerate and sidewalk cement, but nor did he care — he paid people for their expertise, and he soon hired Joubin to become general manager of the now-legendary Technical Mine Consultants, which would soon become my employer.

It was not long before Joubin, in his endless search for uranium, stumbled upon the Long Twp. property, near Algoma, Ont. Joubin convinced Hirshhorn to put up $30,000 to begin a drilling program . . . and the rest, as they say, is history.

Sometime after Elliot Lake had been developed, Joubin told me that Hirshhorn was treating the project like any other business promotion, not realizing that it could be one of the biggest mining camps in the history of Canada. Eventually, as Joubin tells it, he gave Hirshhorn an ultimatum.

Said Joubin: I told him, ‘Joe, you do it your way and you might make a million; do it my way and you could make $50 million. What’s more, if you do it my way, I want 10%, and if you don’t do it my way, I’m leaving now.'” (Hirshhorn would actually receive close to $50 million from Rio Tinto for his share of the project.)

Henceforth, despite their differences, the duo made an effective team: Hirshhorn could wheel and deal and raise money with the best, whereas Joubin, it seemed, could pull an economic orebody out of his hat.

Their first major project together was the Pronto uranium mine, the first-ever publicly traded uranium mine in Canada. A few days before Pronto was scheduled to open, the mill superintendent warned the mine manager that the mill was not yet ready to produce uranium. Working day and night in the lab, scientists made a couple of barrels of “yellow cake” (uranium oxide). Miners filled dozens of barrels with sand, and the cake was placed on top to create a 1-inch thick facade, thus creating the ilusion of a producing uranium mill.

At the opening ceremonies, with the mill machinery running, two burly miners were told not to let anyone “touch” the yellow cake as the barrels rolled off the line. To their credit, no one did, and the opening went off without a hitch.

It was near the Pronto mine that Hirshhorn first envisioned “Hirshhorn City,” a model townsite near Algoma that would be home to his second wife Lily, their four children, a library, a concert hall and one of the finest art galleries in Canada (to house Hirshhorn’s extensive collection).

Hirshhorn brought his family to Algoma to see the beautiful landscape and to live at Bootlegger’s Bay. He hired the director of architecture from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, N.Y., to design his “ideal” village. But the townsfolk from Algoma were very much against the idea, and in 1955, the townspeople caught wind of a rumour that Hirshhorn was having an affair with his former secretary. The Toronto Star headline read: Millionaire mining mogul sued for breach of promise of marriage. As the story goes, Hirshhorn hired several people to buy all the newspapers in town, but Lily nonetheless found out, and that led to the end of his second marriage. Hirshhorn would marry two more times, but the scandal meant the end of “Hirshhorn City.”

Art remained his true passion. At 18, Hirshhorn acquired his first two works of art — two etchings by Albrecht Drer — for $75 each. By the early 1960s, the diminutive financier had assembled one of the most exhaustive art collections in the world, including works by de Kooning, Rodin, Matisse and Picasso. In 1962, he lent most of his sculptures to the Guggenheim Museum in New York City for an exhibition. Four years later, an act of Congress established the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden as part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Hirshhorn donated almost 6,000 pieces to the Smithsonian. Today, the collection boasts 12,000 works of art, including 5,000 paintings, 3,000 sculptures and 4,000 works on paper. At any given time, there are about 600 pieces on display.

Joubin openly criticized Hirshhorn in Time magazine for donating his collection to a U.S. institution whereas most of the wealth that enabled him to form his collection was acquired in Canada. Hirshhorn retaliated by writing a letter to the magazine’s editor, belittling Joubin’s contribution to the Elliot Lake uranium camp. The two sides would never make up.

Hirshhorn died in 1981 with an estate estimated at $1 billion. He left behind a legacy of wealth, power and a taste for the finer things in life.

Next week: Steven Roman.

— The author, a retired mining engineer, resides in Barrie, Ont.