You can't always get what you want, or so said the Rolling Stones.

And when it comes to choosing a career, many people just don't know what they want.

Kevan Cowan, a lawyer and guitarist who once dreamed of playing alongside Mick Jagger and the rest of the Stones, discovered his next chosen career by accident - and then camped out in an executive search company's office for more than an hour until he got it.

Now, 10 years later, he is the new president of the TSX Venture Exchange, officially taking over for the retiring Linda Hohol at the end of April.

Brennan O'Connor, Business Edge
Kevan Cowan's interest in stock market rules and policies helped the Toronto lawyer land his new job as president of the TSX Venture Exchange.

He has prepared for the job by holding various executive positions with the TSX Group Inc., which oversees the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), the TSX Venture, the Natural Gas Exchange (NGX) and related market, data and trading-technology services.

Cowan's next mission is to steer the whole vehicle that transports - or at least attempts to transport - entrepreneurial schemes and dreams to market. That means the kid who grew up and went to school in the Greater Toronto Area will have to live in a new city - Calgary - for the first time in his life.

"My kids are 10 and 12, so they're very established in Toronto - there'll obviously be some challenges," says Cowan. "But on the flipside, we're a very avid ski family, so we're looking forward to all those aspects of Calgary."

Kevan Cowan

Cowan is already quite familiar with Cowtown. He made many trips west while rewriting the rules for the former Canadian Dealing Network and helping the former Alberta, Vancouver, Winnipeg and junior Montreal stock exchanges merge into the TSX Venture.

When not biking, rollerblading, snowboarding or water-skiing, Cowan enjoys mixing his sports with travel.

"I love sports," he says. "I'm a very avid snowboarder and a very avid water-skier. I do a lot of cycling. My wife and I have done three of our own cycle trips through Europe, where we take our own bikes, plan our own routes and carry our own luggage on our bikes."

He also loves to write. He has written articles on travel, windsurfing and cars, while also penning a children's story as part of a Toronto newspaper's short-story contest.

As he prepares to move to a new job and a new home in a new city, Cowan does not expect to find much extra time for leisure pursuits, including playing his guitar.

But, undoubtedly, startup company operators hope he'll help their firms rock.

Since 2000, more than 300 companies, including 67 in 2006, have graduated to the larger TSX from the TSX Venture. And if all goes according to plan, Cowan will enable the junior exchange to enhance the expansion of many more young firms based in Canada, the U.S. and other countries.

1. What was it like growing up in Scarborough?

"It was great. The reputation of Scarborough in Toronto is very different than the reputation of Scarboro in Calgary. It's not as media-friendly. The media doesn't view it as nicely as they do Scarboro, which is close to downtown Calgary. I spent a lot of time down at the Beaches area in Toronto, which is right next to Scarborough, on the waterfront, and went windsurfing and cycling and that kind of stuff. So it was great."

2.What did your parents do?

"My parents were both public school educators. My mom was a kindergarten teacher for well over 30 years. My father started out as a primary school teacher and then became a primary school teacher, then a primary school principal and a high school principal and then, through the administration, ultimately became the director of education for Scarborough. I think he held just about every job in the system."

3. What was your boyhood dream?

"To take over for (guitarist) Ron Wood in the Rolling Stones. I'm a guitar player. I wasn't sure Ron Wood would last with the band - they'd been through so many guitarists - so I was lining up for the next audition."

4. How did you end up going to law school?

"I always enjoyed the policies and communications side of law. The challenge of communicating ideas clearly really appealed to me. Then when you added the whole business side of it - for example, finance and securities law - it was a really interesting combination to me. Right from high school, it was always the strongest option in my mind, to go to law school."

5. Did you think you might become an agent for a rock band or something like that?

"Well, I did do a little bit of entertainment law in the early days. But there's this thing called receivables. Sometimes, that wasn't the best way to practise. I'm only joking.

I did do a bit of entertainment law. But from a legal point of view, it was the business world that most appealed to me. Just the whole segment of transactions, and financing and growth of companies was really what I found most interesting."

6. Where did you go after law school?

"I started to article at the same law firm where I became both an associate and a partner at, which was Smith Lyons in Toronto, which is now part of the Gowlings (Gowling, Lafleur Henderson) law firm. I practised in corporate and securities area, and I did that for nine years."

7. How did you go to the Canadian Dealing Network?

"Well, actually, I did start with the Toronto Stock Exchange. My New Year's resolution on Jan. 1, 1997 was to think about doing something different than the practice of law. I wasn't in a rush to leave. I had set myself a two-year horizon to try something different and, I think it was in April of 1997, I was reading an ad in the lawyer's magazine Ontario Reports. The Toronto Stock Exchange was looking for someone to write the rules and policies for (its junior exchange), which at the time was called CDN - the Canadian Dealing Network. I caught myself composing my cover letter as I was reading the ad. I thought, well, that's a great sign that this is something that really interests me. So I quickly whipped together a covering letter and a resumé, and the next morning I went straight to the headhunter's office that had advertised for the job. I said, 'I'm really over-qualified for what you're looking for for this job - but I really want to do this.' I'm fascinated by stock markets, I love the real-time flow of information and the speed at which things move, and I thought that coming to the CDN was a wonderful opportunity to look at all aspects of a stock market. The CDN was a very small market run by the Toronto Stock Exchange for unlisted trading, and in joining that very small market, I was able to get involved with all aspects of a stock exchange's business."

8. Can you refresh my memory on how the CDN was merged and so forth?

"The CDN was part of the exchange realignment that was announced in March of 1999. Canada's five junior markets were going to merge into one, which later became known as the Canadian Venture Exchange (and subsequently the TSX Venture Exchange.) A lot of the component of the five merger pieces was CDN. The Alberta Stock Exchange, Vancouver Stock Exchange, Winnipeg Stock Exchange, CDN and then the junior companies from Montreal (Stock Exchange) were the five pieces that went into forming (the new exchange.) Formation commenced with the merger of the Alberta and Vancouver stock exchanges in the fall of 1999, and then over the following year or so we merged with CDN, the junior companies from Montreal and Winnipeg."

9. How were you affected by the merger?

"I personally saw it as a great opportunity. At CDN, we had been working on a strategy to hydrate the market and improve the market to compete with these other junior markets across Canada. But when the opportunity came up to form one market that would have a national footprint, a much larger liquidity pool than any market could have on its own, that was far more exciting - certainly for me personally - and a great thing to be involved with. Some of the excitement of that involvement had to do with simply putting the markets together. I was also very excited about the prospect of trying to take five separate cultures - of junior markets being run out of five different provinces - and merge all of those things together. That did have a lot of challenges in terms of building relationships among people and staff, and the opportunity to take the best of the best. After it was all merged together, I became the Canadian vice-president for the merged Canadian Venture Exchange."

10. What was it like being involved with one small exchange and then getting involved with the larger organization?

"The most eye-opening thing for me was that, because the other junior exchanges were all established and because I had been brought in to improve the rules and policies of the CDN, I sort of assumed in the early days that the other exchanges had solved all of the problems that we were dealing with. What I quickly learned was, all of the markets were dealing with the same issues. Our level of knowledge on all of them was relatively similar. We'd made different decisions in certain cases, but we all had the same issues."

11. What are your goals in your new capacity as head of TSX Venture?

"I can't really answer that question without just commenting quickly on the last several years. We've worked really hard to build a national platform and improve the market and build the integrity. So the first priority is to continue to do that. To continue to be a customer-focused organization that provides services to our customers in an efficient way. To provide what is, in many ways, unique capital-raising opportunities for people in the world, but then, in terms of looking forward, grow the opportunity and raise (the exchange's) profile beyond its traditional markets for support. Our challenge, or our opportunity, over the last few years has been to grow our base of support in the West and raise the participation rates in the exchange in Ontario and Quebec. That's our first-growth opportunity, and then our second-growth opportunity is to raise the profile of the exchange beyond our own borders and, principally, to raise its profile in the United States, because it is an extremely useful and unique capital markets platform."

12. A lot of people are saying that the western economy is driving the entire Canadian economy these days. How much of a driver do you expect Western Canadian companies to be in the TSX Venture in the next few years?

The West will continue to be extremely important to the Venture exchange. It's our biggest constituency, and it will always be extremely important. The West has long utilized public markets for early-stage companies. There is a culture there that is long, well developed and very familiar with this platform. What we want to do is supplement that by growing its utilization in Central Canada and then, ultimately, south of the border and beyond."

13. What do you see as the challenge in Eastern Canada, given that a lot of TSX Venture companies and, I guess, companies on the whole, are linked to manufacturing, but manufacturing is on the decline in the East?

"The key thing for us is, Ontario and Quebec still have large economies, and they do not utilize the public markets to the same extent as the West does.

"So our biggest challenge - and also our biggest opportunity - is to continue to raise awareness about the exchange, about what it can offer, and then demonstrate what it can offer to companies in the technology, the life-science and the industrial area."

14. What types of stocks do you think will become popular in the next few years?

"In terms of growing the exchange generally, industrial technology. There's still lots of opportunity for people to use the exchange for industrial-technology growth companies."

15. How will the changes in income trust rules affect your exchange?

"In terms of direct impact on the Venture Exchange, there's really not many trusts trading on the Venture Exchange. We certainly have some, particularly in the real estate area, but the impact will be much larger on the Toronto Stock Exchange."

16. Since investors can't invest in trusts, and there's been talk that some of the returns on investment products aren't high enough, do you think that might propel investors to look at smaller companies instead?

"That would be good. One of the things we've been trying to do with programs like our TSX Venture 50 program is raise the profile of companies that are on the Venture Exchange. People realize that there are opportunities here. The Venture Exchange is early-stage companies with a higher-risk profile, so that's suitable for a certain type of investor, for a certain component of their portfolio. What's important for us to do is realize that there are opportunities for the right investor."

17. Just out of curiosity, how did you get into writing those travel articles?

"We did our first cycling trip, I came home and wrote an article, and I actually just sent it to the travel editor at the Globe and Mail, and they published it. The second one I think I actually did on a pitch basis."

18. Have you always had an interest in writing?

"Very much. I love to write."

19. You'll continue to do that?

"I think my challenges on my time are going to be pretty damn tight over the next while. We've made a lot of great gains with the Venture Exchange and our opportunity is to keep that growing and growing."

20. If you decide, or someone else decides, that you can't be involved with the Venture Exchange, or in the securities business anymore, what would you do instead?

"I guess that would depend whether I was working or not. I love to travel, so I'd certainly - at one point way down the road - be interested in travelling a lot more. But, right now, I'm really excited about the next several years of pushing this market forward."

Kevan Cowan

* Title: President, TSX Venture Exchange, senior VP of TSX Group Inc.

* Born and raised/age: Toronto/45.

* Education: Cowan obtained a bachelor of arts in history from the University of Toronto in 1983 and graduated from Osgoode Hall law school in 1986.

* Family: Wife Susan, son Cole, 12, daughter Courtney, 10.

* Career: After serving as a lawyer with Toronto-based Smith Lyons, Cowan joined the TSX Group in 2000 and assisted with the merger of the Canadian Dealing Network and Canada's junior exchanges into the TSX Venture. He became the TSX Group's general counsel and rose through the ranks to the position of executive vice-president responsible for Ontario operations, business and development for the TSX Venture. He replaces Linda Hohol, who is retiring as the president of the TSX Venture after five years at the helm.

* Passions: Playing guitar, cycling, rollerblading, skiing and other outdoor pursuits.

TSX Venture

* Brass: Kevan Cowan, incoming president of TSX Venture; Linda Hohol, retiring president of TSX Venture; Richard Nesbitt, CEO, TSX Group Inc.; John Cieslak, executive vice-president and chief information and administrative officer of TSX Group.

* Profile: The Calgary-based TSX Venture Exchange is part of Toronto-based TSX Group Inc. The Venture Exchange lists small-cap companies that are often in their early-growth stages. It was created from the merger of the Alberta, Vancouver, Winnipeg and junior Montreal exchanges, and the acquisition of the Canadian Dealing Network. The TSX Group operates the main Toronto Stock Exchange, the TSX Venture, the Natural Gas Exchange (NGX) and related data, market and technology services firms.

* Stats: According to figures provided by the exchange, the value of TSX Venture shares more than doubled in 2006 to $33.3 billion from $15.7 billion a year earlier. The volume of shares traded rose 74.9 per cent to 37.7 billion from 21.5 billion. The number of transactions jumped 74.9 per cent to 37.7 million, up from 21.5 million. In perhaps the most significant result, at least as far as companies were concerned, the market capitalization of listed equity issuers ballooned 62.6 per cent to $55.3 billion from $34 billion.

* Recent Stock Price (TSX:X): $46.80 (52-week range, $40.51 - $54.50.)

* Website: www.tsx.com

* HQ: (TSX Venture) 3rd Floor, 130 King St. W., Toronto, M5X 1J2

* Phone/Fax: (TSX Venture) (416) 365-2200/(416) 365-2224

(Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca)