He enjoyed playing the ponies at the track, matching wits with a rising trout on an Alberta river, and being gallant to the ladies.
And if you ever bumped into an elderly Bob Kolstad riding the No. 13 bus to downtown Calgary in his worn 1950s business suit and tatty tie, you might think he lived among the back alleys rather than being a denizen of Mount Royal.
“Bob was a guy who carried frugality to the nth degree,” remembers friend Art Hibbard. “He spent very little money personally, and he lived very plainly.”
Those thrifty habits persisted until his death on Nov. 2, 2001 at age 83 – he came into work as usual the morning of the day he died. But the legacy of Bob Kolstad can now only be described as munificent after it was revealed this week that the prudent, lifelong bachelor has bestowed a record-breaking $15-million-plus donation to Calgary charities.
“This is the most significant gift we’ve ever received in terms of its size. It’s going to generate enough income to assist thousands of Calgarians for generations to come,” says Phil Levson, director of fund development at the Calgary Foundation.
The Kolstad Fund, which could actually approach $18 million when the paperwork is complete, will support in perpetuity organizations including the Salvation Army, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Alberta Heart and Stroke Foundation, the Arthritis Society and the Alberta Shock Trauma Air Rescue Service (STARS). Another portion will be dedicated to a fund that allows the foundation to respond to changing community needs.
“He was really a staunch Calgarian, and wanted his money to stay here,” notes Kerry Longpré of the foundation.
Bob Kolstad wasn’t a household name in Alberta’s oilpatch. He shunned formal occasions and took pains to avoid fancy business clubs that might have cost him money.
“I often think his No. 1 goal every day was to find somebody to buy him lunch, because he hated to do that himself,” Hibbard jokes.
But if you ever needed seed money to stake an oil rig or front a mining deal, you likely ended up rubbing elbows in the lineup at Bob’s door.
“In the last 20 or 30 years, he was just investing,” says Hibbard, vice-president of Phelps Drilling in Calgary, where Kolstad kept an office. “He did a lot of investing in startup companies. Guys would come to him and say: ‘We’re going to drill a well, looks like we’ve got a gangbuster and we need a little money,’ and he would invest.”
Born in Airdrie – his parents owned the Airdrie Hotel – Kolstad spent his early career at the Alberta Wheat Pool, but soon eased into the energy business and began signing oil leases for landowners in Alberta and Saskatchewan. He started his own company, Land Bank Minerals, and shrewdly began to invest in smaller companies involved in startup oil and gas and mining deals.
His fortune accumulated, but there wasn’t an ounce of flash in his lifestyle.
“He had a Lincoln, which he kept in his garage, and he used to back it out once or twice a month and idle it around . . . he didn’t particularly like driving and drove very rarely,” says Hibbard.
His spartan three-bedroom bungalow in Mount Royal, and his ’77 Lincoln (boasting 30,000 miles), were hallmarks of his modest life. “I guess you could call it retro,” says Longpré, delicately, of Kolstad’s household furnishings, which were accented by a few oilpatch-type pictures tacked up on the bare walls.
But Kolstad wasn’t a recluse. “Bob was not a solitary man – he knew a heck of a lot of people,” says Hibbard.
“He’d walk down the street or ride the No. 13 and knew just about everybody in Calgary. He was somewhat gallant with the ladies, and would hold chairs for them, the kind of stuff you’d see out of the ’30s that most men don’t do anymore.
“Before he got old and decrepit, he liked to dance. We used to invite him to our company Christmas parties, and he always enjoyed a turn or two on the floor.”
While he was the first person in the door at Phelps Drilling every morning, his connection with the company was somewhat tenuous. Back in the ’80s, Phelps acquired a drilling contracting firm in which Kolstad had invested. “We offered him some extra space until he found somewhere else to work,” he says. “And that was more than 20 years ago. We were kind of like family to him.”
Strongly encouraged by his colleagues to draft a will, Kolstad worked closely with the Calgary Foundation for several months before his death to ensure his money would be well managed.
“He knew the foundation had excellent investment returns, and that was something that always put a sparkle in his eye,” says Levson.
“He really believed that you had to work hard to make a living, and if you weren’t, you weren’t earning your keep on this planet. He grew up in hard times, and he made it on his own and did extremely well. But he had a soft spot for Calgary and wanted to make sure Calgarians would benefit for generations to come.”
The Calgary Foundation is a non-government funding agency formed in 1955 to support local community organizations by pooling and investing legacy gifts and endowments. It is entrusted with endowments valued at about $168 million, and by year-end last March, it provided grants totaling $9.1 million to 433 registered charitable organizations during the fiscal year.
The previous largest single donation to the Calgary Foundation was an $11-million gift in 2001 from oilman J.C. Anderson in the form of shares in Anderson Exploration Ltd. At the time, Anderson said he had been impressed by a then-record $8.2-million gift a year earlier from his friend, Calgary financier and philanthropist David Bissett.
For a true entrepreneur such as Bob Kolstad, the combination of a safe and thoughtful haven for his life savings and a last tweak at Revenue Canada must have seemed irresistible.
“One of Bob’s dreams was not to pay income tax when he died . . . and he knew the size of this gift would virtually eliminate that,” says Levson.
“And he valued that the money would stay in the community and city he was very proud of.”
