By Dave Thomas
Published in March 2015
The Mayors’ Dinner has recognized the substantial contributions of many prominent residents of Kitchener-Waterloo over the years, and Murray Haase is no exception to that tradition. Over the course of his life he has reached out to serve on countless community projects and good causes, touching many lives in the process, and building a much stronger community.
He’ll be recognized at the 28th Annual Mayors’ Dinner on April 11. It will add to the list of many honours he’s received previously – such as being named KW Citizen of the Year in 1985, Waterloo Wellington Outstanding Volunteer Fund Raiser in 2003 and a Community Champion by CTV Kitchener in 2004, the Waterloo Award in 2007 and Murray received the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Award in 2012.
Murray is humble about the attention and praise. He just sees the work he does as something he should do. “There’s no way the system can work if we all just take,” he says. “We have to put back. I’m able, I’m healthy. I have to help those who are less fortunate.”
He attributes part of that ethic to the modest beginning of his family, affected by the economic turmoil of the Great Depression. Murray was born in Kitchener in 1935 and grew up on David Street. With four brothers and two sisters, he was the fifth of seven kids in the family. His dad was a labourer (he worked at Rockway Golf Course when it was being established) and his mom a housewife.
His family didn’t have much money, but Murray has lots of happy memories from childhood. “Everything was close by. You could walk to school, sports, theatre, the movies. It was all right there.” He spent a lot of time at Victoria Park, sneaking into Kitchener Panthers baseball games in the summer, and playing hockey on the iced-over lake in winter time. “People would come from all over to skate on the lake,” he recalls.
There were also important life lessons, like the value of hard work at school and in employment. Murray’s first job, at age 12, was at the Boathouse, renting out canoes – and occasionally retrieving them when customers didn’t return them on time. After going to high school at KCI, he found his next job at a Supertest service station on Queen Street. Over the next few years in the early 1950s, he also worked in the parts department at Super Motor & Lighting and in logistics at Canadian Comstock.
While he had the necessary organizational aptitude and inclination in his day jobs, Murray also developed an early interest in business and community service by getting involved with the Jaycees, the Junior Chamber of Commerce, taking on many roles in the service club, with annual events such as the fall fair, Santa Claus parade and Citizen of the Year award.
In 1956, he started working at Four Wheel Drive Company, where he held positions in bookkeeping, production control and purchasing over the next 10 years. The company built industrial equipment such as tractors, trucks, mobile cranes and motor toboggans (a rear-engine type of snowmobile). Murray feels he really honed his business acumen during his years at the company.
His participation in Jaycees would have other benefits for Murray too. In the fall of 1963, one of the other members, Dave Buehlow, introduced Murray to his sister Merle. They soon became an item, and got married in 1964.
In 1966, Murray and Merle got their first opportunity to go into business on their own. They had an opportunity to buy a convenience store in Galt. With help from Merle’s dad for the down payment and securing financing from a bank where a fellow Jaycee worked, the two were happy to be their own bosses – even if it meant working seven days a week; initially, they were the only two staff. They operated the store for 3½ years. Their plans to expand it couldn’t materialize because of the zoning.
After selling the store, Murray managed a pharmacy, expanding its business and making it more profitable. He was also part of a group that bought Puslinch Lake Golf Course in 1969. “It was the finest golf course in Puslinch Township,” he says. “It was the only one!”
In the 1970s, Murray and Merle’s family expanded. Susan was born in 1973. Brian was born in 1975. Though he was busy with work and community activities, Murray always made sure that family came first.
His reputation for business know-how was growing. In 1971, he was hired by Kwikie Minit Markets, a struggling convenience store chain, to turn the stores around. Through his management, he was able to reduce the company’s debt, make a profit and begin expanding. There were 10 stores when Murray came on board. In 1978, when he assumed ownership of the company, there were 20.
There were certainly risks in taking over the chain, including incurring substantial debt. But his track record with the company had demonstrated a successful model. “The key was finding the right people to run the stores,” Murray says. “We had a quasi-franchise arrangement. The managers were independent contractors. They had a real stake in the success of their stores.” (Other chains tended to have corporate-owned stores.) Higher margins, discounts and rebates were also important factors in the chain’s success.
A few underperforming locations had to close, but more opened. By the end of the 1980s, there were 32 stores in the chain, which was earning good profits. That’s when Murray decided to sell. There were a number of reasons, but the major one was that Sunday shopping was on its way to Ontario, which would mean supermarkets would be open seven days a week. That would make the market much tougher for convenience stores. He sold the company to a Maritime-based chain, Green Gables, which unfortunately went out of business a couple years later.
Murray’s success has transcended the business sector. For many people in Kitchener-Waterloo, it’s his long-standing, energetic and tireless commitment to community service for which he is best known. Yet to the larger population, his name may not necessarily strike a chord of recognition. That’s because Murray does not do all that good work in order to seek the spotlight. In fact, he is happy to be in the background, to help organize, fundraise and bring people together to support good causes.
There have been many.
In 1984, he was on the board of Big Sisters. The organization was having financial troubles and was facing a huge rent increase. Murray devised the plan to hold a Dream Home Lottery. He and several friends co-signed a letter of credit to arrange the financing, and met with a local builder and tradespeople to construct the house.
“A lot of people said it wouldn’t work,” Murray says. “About a month before the show, only half the tickets had been sold. I called Paul Motz (publisher of The Record) and asked for their help. They ran a story and a full-page ad. We sold all the tickets. We raised enough money to buy a new headquarters for the organization and put money in the bank.”
The lottery was so successful that Anselma House asked Murray to head up a similar lottery for their fundraising. He asked the Kitchener-Conestoga Rotary Club, which he had joined in 1980, to take it on. They did, and the lottery has been held every year since, raising millions of dollars for dozens of charities in Kitchener-Waterloo. (The 2014 draw benefited the Grand River Hospital Foundation and St. Mary’s General Hospital Foundation.) Murray has been a top ticket seller for every one of those draws.
Selling large numbers of tickets to fundraising events seems to come naturally to Murray. For Rotary’s Lobsterfest, a buffet held each June to support educational efforts, Murray has often sold more tickets than anyone else. He has a lot of connections in the business community, and he prefers to sell a whole table at a time. Murray is also a major player each year in Rotary’s Turkey Drive, helping them exceed their goal in 2014 by over $300,000.
A lifelong sports enthusiast, Murray has helped behind the scenes on many sporting events in KW, including the Scott Tournament of Hearts, the Brier and LPGA Golf Tournament. On the arts scene, he helped Drayton Entertainment establish the St. Jacobs Country Playhouse. In education, he helped establish St. John’s-Kilmarnock School. In health care, he’s been active in fundraising campaigns for Grand River Hospital and St. Mary’s General Hospital.
For over 30 years, he was a director and officer of the Lutherwood Child and Family Foundation, the fundraising arm of Lutherwood. Though Murray is reluctant to take too much of the credit for the foundation’s success, his colleagues beg to differ. There have been more than 10,000 donors over three decades – individuals, churches, corporations, service clubs – and many of those connections came about through Murray’s efforts.
Murray also played a key role in the establishment of Luther Village on the Park, an integrated retirement community in uptown Waterloo. He helped to arrange the financing for this major undertaking, including extensive environmental cleanup of the lands and build 150+ atrium suites and 70+ garden villas, where residents can purchase a life lease.
He has also been a long-time supporter of The Working Centre, lending expertise, leading fundraising efforts and donating a substantial item (usually a week’s stay at a timeshare) for the Mayors’ Dinner live auction. It’s fitting that he is the Guest of Honour at this year’s dinner. But he’s not one to pat himself on the back. As he says, “I just want to help.”
