R. I. P. Jacques Menard
Jacques Menard, a former member of the Montreal Expos board of directors, died on February 4 at the age of 74.
February 17, 2020
By Danny Gallagher
Canadian Baseball Network
Jacques Menard was a heavyweight financier in Quebec, a multi-tasking individual who wasn't averse to contributing to social, civic and national causes by rolling up his sleeves and getting his hands dirty.
Menard once said that it was his mandate to spend 20 percent of his time as a volunteer outside of his principal job with equities dealer Burns Fry and later with the Bank of Montreal Group.
Menard was a philanthropist who helped coordinate relief efforts when the Great Ice Storm of 1998 gripped Quebec and there were many other organizations that captured his rapt attention, including the Montreal Expos.
Menard felt it was part of his civic duty to lend expertise to the Expos in the early 1990s at a time when Claude Brochu was assembling a consortium of investors to take over from outgoing principal shareholder Charles Bronfman.
Although Menard personally didn't put any of his own money into the consortium, he convinced his employer, Burns Fry, to pitch in about $5-million and he also helped Brochu to bring investors on board when wringing money out of Quebec and Canadian companies was exceedingly difficult in the midst of a mini recession.
In the end, Menard also became chairman of Brochu's partnership committee for many years and was a member of the team's board of directors.
When the Expos media guide was produced each year, Menard wanted his name duly listed this way: L. Jacques Menard. L., as in Louis.
Menard died Feb. 4 at the University of Montreal Health Centre after a long illness at the age of 74. Ironically, in his lengthy death notice that appeared in a number of newspapers, there is no mention of his involvement with the Expos.
Operating under the frailties and limitations of a partnership, Menard, Brochu and numerous other minority shareholders did a commendable job of operating a Major League Baseball franchise despite a small payroll and poor season-ticket sales.
There were good and bad times for Menard and the Brochu consortium and some of the negative stuff involved in-fighting between Brochu and the shareholders, who had no power in making decisions about the operation of the Expos.
That friction began following the disastrous strike of 1994-95 that saw Brochu decide on his own that the Expos would trade Marquis Grissom, Ken Hill and John Wetteland and let free-agent Larry Walker (Maple Ridge, B.C.) walk free. Because the minority shareholders had no say, Brochu got to choose what was right for the organization.
Brochu was the managing general partner and this meant the shareholders underneath him had to adhere to his demands in running the franchise. Menard was one of a few people who eventually took Brochu to task for some of his decisions. It resulted in a falling out between Menard and Brochu.
"The power may have gone to Menard's head,'' said Bob Armand, one of Brochu's closest friends, who made this comment to me for my new Expos book of memories from 1969-2004 called Always Remembered.
Other shareholder representatives such as Pierre Michaud of the grocery-store chain Provigo and Mark Routtenberg of Guess Jeans also warred with Brochu for years.
When Brochu decided to leave the consortium and was given a settlement of more than $15-million, it was Menard, who orchestrated a deal to bring in the next managing general partner, Jeffrey Loria.
"He (Menard) was the one who found Loria to invest. Not his best move,'' former La Presse reporter Pierre Ladouceur told me in an interview a few days ago.
Loria, like Brochu, feuded with the same group of minority shareholders and is blamed for running the Expos out of town.
All in all, you can't blame Menard too much because he volunteered in so many ways to improve the lot of many causes over the years, including the Expos. His charitable work will never be forgotten.