Courtesy Francis Campbell, The Chronicle Herald 
  
Ex-CEO of Maple Leaf Sports shares ‘leadership lessons’ at St. F.X. 
 
Richard Peddie spent 14 years trying to sell the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Toronto Raptors.

Now, he is selling dreams.

The 67-year-old stopped at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish on Wednesday to talk with student leaders and to deliver a speech to students and the public.

“I had a dream when I was 20 that I wanted to run a basketball team ,and 29 years later I did,” said Peddie, who was president and chief executive officer of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment from 1998 until his retirement on the last day of 2011.

“I really believe that people have more success if they have a dream and they work hard at achieving that dream. I’m going to encourage them to dream a bit.”

Peddie met with 50 student leaders at at St. F.X. on Wednesday morning.

“It was pure leadership lessons, how to develop into a great leader, how much they have to invest, how much they have to do.”

The afternoon speech was to concentrate on the lessons learned that Peddie outlines in his new book, Dream Job.

Peddie’s extensive business resume would reveal many lessons learned. He was president and CEO of SkyDome in the early 1990s, pursued an NBA team for Toronto with Larry Tanenbaum and was president of the Labatt’s communications subsidiary that ran The Sports Network and the Discovery Channel.

Then he moved on to the Raptors and to Maple Leaf Sports, overseeing all the business relating to the Leafs, the Raptors, the Toronto FC soccer team, the Toronto Marlies American Hockey League team, the Air Canada Centre, the BMO Field, three television stations and Maple Leaf Square.

“It seems like a big challenge,” Peddie said of Maple Leaf Sports. “But there are men and women running companies that span the globe with hundreds of thousands of employees. I think their jobs are a lot more challenging. All my facilities were within about a mile of each other. There were 700 full-time employees, 2,000 part-time employees. Yeah, there were the Leafs and the Raptors, but that’s what I had general managers for.”

Peddie would have liked to see more success on the ice and on the court, but he said he takes pride in his accomplishments off the playing field.

“Developing the Raptors into being a very viable professional sports franchise,” he said. “I can tell you the Maple Leafs, off the ice, were the company that time forgot. I brought them back into the 21st century, brought major league soccer to Canada to the benefit of Vancouver and Montreal. We brought the Marlies to town, created three television channels, built Maple Leaf Square, built wonderful practice facilities for both the Marlies, the Leafs and the Toronto FC and the Raptors. It was a busy 15 years.”

“Again, I wished we won some stuff, but every year there is only one winner and 29 losers, and unfortunately I was in the loss column.”

Leo MacPherson, the St. F.X. athletic director and former director of Canadian Interuniversity Sport, talked Peddie into joining the CIS board and the two became friends. That is why Peddie included St. F.X. on his university lecture and book tour.

Meanwhile, the man who once ran the Leafs and the Raptors keeps himself busy.

“I call myself actively retired. I teach at the University of Windsor, I’m on three boards and I work with private-equity firms studying the potential purchase of companies. I’m as busy as I want to be.”