In new memoir, Charles Bronfman talks Canada’s heritage – and his own

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In the 25 years since they were born, the Heritage Minutes – those amuse-bouches of Canadian history – have given us almost 80 glimpses into our past, from Terry Fox's run to Viola Desmond's act of cinematic resistance. But there's another tale – a minor one, to be sure, but one still worth retelling – that the Heritage Minutes are likely too modest to tell: their own origin story.

If it were ever made, this Heritage Minute Heritage Minute might open on a scene in late 1930s Montreal, where a small and sickly boy sits sullenly in a classroom at Selwyn House, a private school favoured by the English-speaking elite of the city, including the boy's whisky magnate father, Samuel Bronfman.

Young Charles was an indifferent student, but in time he leveraged his family privilege into business and social success, becoming the founding owner of the Montreal Expos baseball team and a small player in his father's sprawling business empire known as Seagram's. And so we would see Charles, in 1981, as he was inducted into the Order of Canada, looking around Rideau Hall and realizing that most Canadians had no clue about the impressive achievements of his fellow inductees.

"We didn't know our stories or myths," Bronfman might say in voice over, just as he writes in his new memoir, Distilled: A Memoir of Family, Seagram, Baseball and Philanthropy. "We didn't know our heroes or heroines. These are things that make a successful society, make its people proud and fortify the fabric of a nation."

There would be rapid cuts of Bronfman working the phones and calling in favours: raising money and, through his CRB Foundation, putting the wheels in motion to produce entertaining bite-sized history lessons for the masses.

As the video comes to an end, we might see students like young Charles, newly rapt faces upturned toward a movie screen, taking in the opening frames of a Heritage Minute about Canada's Underground Railroad.

That's a mere sketch, of course. Bronfman's full life story could fill hours of screen time, even if he is normally regarded as a supporting character in others' grand dramas: Zelig with a bloodline. And he believes his life holds lessons for others.

"I think [Distilled] is a story that tries to tell people that … it doesn't matter if you have the silver spoon in your mouth or not," says Bronfman, 85, enjoying a croque madame at Café Boulud in the Four Seasons Hotel during a fall visit to Toronto. "You can be – as I was – not a very worthy individual in your own eyes, and then eventually become one."

This is as close as Bronfman will get to introspection during the lunchtime chat: It's as if, having engaged in piercing self-analysis for the book (co-written with the broadcaster Howard Green), he is now emotionally spent. Though there is also this: Asked about the decades of psychotherapy he underwent, beginning at the age of 18, he lifts his head slightly from his meal and mutters, "I think I wouldn't be here talking to you if that had not happened."

He was filled with anger, he writes, which he came by honestly: Dad was a fearsome, volatile man who apparently never told his children that he loved them.

The youngest of four kids, Charles spent decades in the shadow of his older brother Edgar, who was tapped by Samuel to take over after his death. (Their sister Phyllis, the architecture advocate who made Mies van der Rohe's modernist Seagram Building happen, is also, according to Distilled, a flinty force of nature.)

Bronfman grew up so sheltered in Westmount that, as he writes, "I was in my twenties before I knew French was spoken in the city." Though life from afar might look glamorous, Distilled flicks at the class's peculiar psychopathology. "I remember my brother Edgar saying to me … 'Whatever we do, we can't win. If we fail, we're idiots. If we succeed, it's 'cause Dad built it.' Wealth has its privileges. It also has its burdens."

But if Edgar acquitted his duties well at Seagram, his choice of successor was a disaster. His son, Edgar Jr., became CEO of Seagram's in the mid-nineties, steering the company into the entertainment business with a purchase of Universal Studios' parent company, MCA Inc. Later, spooked by the merger of AOL and Time Warner, and mistakenly believing bigger was better, he shepherded an ignominious merger with the French conglomerate Vivendi.

Bronfman offers his own offstage perspective of such dramas, saying in the book that Edgar Jr. "didn't have the education or experience" for the job of CEO, but also acknowledging that he personally failed to prevent his nephew's missteps.

Bronfman worked for Seagram's for five decades, including a stint heading up a drab Canadian division that sold mid-market spirits. In the late 1960s, he also bought into a dream of Jean Drapeau's, the colourful Montreal mayor who thought a baseball team would help put the city on the map. The project finally gave Charles something of his own, free of his parents' influence. And he believed baseball could help unify the politically fractured province, which was then on the verge of a separatist referendum. He became a hero to many Montrealers for bringing Les Expos to the city.

And, in time, he also expanded his horizons. As a young man, Charles's mother had pushed him to join the junior committee of the Montreal Symphony, and urged him to visit art galleries. "I wouldn't go because, of course, I was a jock," he says. "I realized later in life how that kind of culture is very important to a society."

The Israeli Philharmonic Symphony now performs in the Charles Bronfman Auditorium; Charles was a lead donor on the Israel Museum's recent multimillion-dollar renewal.

Philanthropy has been his most successful endeavour. The CRB Foundation has given away more than $300-million, including to initiatives such as Birthright Israel, a program to introduce young Jews to their cultural heritage through organized trips to Israel.

"If you take a look at Birthright Israel, and you take a look at the Heritage Minutes, the formula is about the same: Don't hit people on the head. Let them enjoy it," he says. "If people are having a good time and enjoying, they'll learn. When people feel that learning is an imposition, they're not going to learn."

Lunch is winding down, and Bronfman has to head off to another appointment. Soon enough, he and his fourth wife, Rita, will head to Palm Beach, where they spend their winters.

"Hopefully, I'll get back to playing some tennis this winter," he says. "I enjoy myself. I'm beginning to smell the flowers. You know, I came from a work ethic. I remember, when I was doing Seagram Canada, if I took a Wednesday afternoon to go and play golf, I felt guilty as heck: 'What's Dad gonna say?'"