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Subject: Hartland Molson, Hockey Owner


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he was 95
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Date Posted: October 04, 2002 4:32:19 EDT

Hartland DeM. Molson, a former owner of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team and an heir of one of Canada's oldest and most prominent business families, died on Saturday in Montreal. He was 95 and lived in Montreal.

The Molson name has been synonymous with beer for more than two centuries. Molson Inc., the Montreal-based company founded 216 years ago by Mr. Molson's great-great-grandfather, still has 45 percent of the Canadian beer market and its flagship brand, Molson Canadian, is a household name here.

Though Mr. Molson was widely identified with Montreal's English-speaking establishment, he was fluent in French and in 1976 told the Canadian Senate, of which he was a member for 38 years, that he was "in complete sympathy" with making French the primary language of Quebec. Mr. Molson also nominated the first Jewish member of Montreal's Mount Royal Club, then a bastion of the English Canadian establishment.

Mr. Molson played minor league hockey in the 1920's. In 1957, he and his brother, Thomas, bought the Canadiens, shortly after the team won the first of five consecutive Stanley Cups, a record that still stands.

"Everybody remembers him sitting right behind the bench," recalled Jean Béliveau, who as a player led the Canadiens to 10 of their 24 Stanley Cups and worked for the Molson group for 39 years. "When he was in Montreal, he never missed a game. He always inquired about the health of the players. If I had an injury or was sick, he was the first to call."

The Molson brothers sold their stake in the Canadiens to three of their cousins in 1964. The club was later bought by the Molson Group, which now has a 19.9 percent stake.

Mr. Molson joined the family business in 1938 as assistant secretary-treasurer. He was chairman from 1966 to 1974, and retired as a director in 1988. Over the years, the company has tried to diversify beyond beer on several occasions, but with mixed results. A foray into global cleaning services in the early 1990's turned out to be a costly failure. Earlier this year, Molson joined with Heineken of the Netherlands to form Brazil's second-biggest brewer.

A Molson spokeswoman, Sylvie Morin, said Mr. Molson made a point of grooming family members within the business, but they had to show their mettle. One nephew, Eric H. Molson, is the current chairman.

Eric Molson, his brother, Ian, and a more distant relative, Stephen T. Molson, are the controlling shareholders.

Throughout his time in the Canadian Senate, the appointed upper house of Parliament, Mr. Molson sat as an independent. "Because beer is sold through provincial governments of all parties," he was quoted by The Montreal Gazette as saying, "I couldn't be political. I couldn't get mixed in the political fight and remain in business."

As a young man, Mr. Molson obtained a pilot's license and in the 1930's owned a business for a while that flew supplies to remote mines in northern Canada. During World War II, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force as a fighter pilot. He flew in the Battle of Britain and was shot down in 1941.

Mr. Molson later described the experience in an article in The Montreal Star: "There was a gentleman behind just hoping I'd do something stupid, and he knocked my machine out of control with his little cannon in about two seconds. A moment later, I was off on the greatest flight of my life, strictly on my own, bailing out from 23,000 feet."

Mr. Molson was married three times. His first marriage, to Helen Hogg, ended in divorce in 1938. His second wife, Magdalena Posner, died in 1982. In 1990, he married Margaret de Lancey Meighen. She died in December 2000.

He is survived by a daughter from his first marriage, Zoë Anne Harding, who lives in Jersey in the Channel Islands, and three grandsons.

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