Jack O'Neill: builder, businessman, entrepreneur

Eureka Resources chairman and president, John J. (Jack) O'Neill, is no stranger to success. A gifted entrepreneur, Mr. O'Neill has been the driving force behind several flourishing businesses during his more than four decades of enterprise in British Columbia, in Canada and, indeed, throughout the continent. But it took much persistence to arrive at where he is today.

Family lore has it that, after Mr. O'Neill moved his wife, Patricia, and their six (eventually seven) sons from Winnipeg to Vancouver in 1959, then paid the rent on their one-bathroom house and, finally, outfitted two small offices (one in a windowless basement and the other in the corner of a warehouse), he was left with a grand total of $200 in the bank. It was that tight.

A child of the Depression whose father died when Jack was just seven, Mr. O'Neill was soon balancing school and work to help bring in money for his family. From working in one of Winnipeg's legendary slaughterhouses to learning how to handle a team of horses on a Prairie farm, young Jackie did what had to be done in a time when there was no such thing as welfare.

He and Pat married young, and Jack's ambition, already apparent as a junior clerk with Canadian National Railways in Winnipeg, was fuelled by the rapid arrival of his baby-boom-era sons. He soon took his growing family to Brandon, Manitoba, where he quickly rose to become general manager of the landmark Prince Edward Hotel. From there, it was back to Winnipeg to help run a company specializing in industrial catering - a demanding business that involved feeding workers in remote camps. Mr. O'Neill excelled.

He fell in love with the beauty and warmth of the Canada's west coast during a business trip to Vancouver. Recognizing the boundless opportunities presented by B.C.'s burgeoning economy, he established two small companies, bid on a pair of contracts, and won them. Soon, O'Neill Railway Catering Ltd. was feeding CPR work crews across the West, and National Caterers Ltd. was doing similar work for the Pacific Great Eastern Railway in B.C.

Mr. O'Neill launched many other ventures over the years---a boat-chartering firm, several development deals, a logging venture, a signage company and, of course, Eureka Resources Inc. in the late 1970s. But it was the reliable catering companies, and National especially, that remained the foundation of Mr. O'Neill's increasing success. From a dam-construction camp outside Nordegg, Alberta, to a pulp-mill expansion in Powell River, B.C., National fed and housed many of the workers who built the West.

The historic oil-and-gas boom of the late 1970s gave National its greatest opportunity to showcase its unrivalled expertise in the field of remote-site camp management and catering. Success followed success, and soon Mr. O'Neill was in a position to invest in his first love, hotels. The company he then founded is now part of B.C. business history: Coast Hotels, which became Canada's fastest-growing hotel chain in the 1980s. Throughout the decade and the next two, he kept a close watch on Eureka's Frasergold claim and arranged for a number of new drilling campaigns to better gauge the size of the deposit. "Nothing we've discovered has ever discouraged me from continuing to work the claim," he now says.

Mr. O'Neill sold Coast Hotels to overseas investors as the decade came to an end, and returned his main focus to National Caterers. The company continued to prosper throughout the 1990s by way of its involvement in such mega-projects as the Hibernia offshore oil platform in Newfoundland and the James Bay hydroelectric development in Quebec.

Mr. O'Neill sold National in the mid-1990s and, still not slowing down, turned his attention to property development, investments and, once again, Eureka Resources. "I've always hoped, always expected, the price of gold to reach the level it is at today," Mr. O'Neill said in late 2007. "And when it did, I believed the Frasergold property would become viable. I still do."

Mr. O'Neill looks back across the decades to the time he launched Eureka and, in response to a question about why someone with expertise in industrial catering and hotels would venture into the mining business, smiles at the memory. "You know," he recalls, "I was playing the stock market and not always doing so well. I figured I had a better chance to make something out of it if I was in charge myself."

It figures that his persistence, business acumen and entrepreneurial flair have all come together to give Eureka Resources Inc. the opportunity to be yet another successful chapter in the story of Jack O'Neill's stellar record of achievement.