Canada has bragging rights as the world's second-largest country, but when it comes to number of billionaires, they are few and far between.
In March, we pinned down the fortunes of just 23 Canadian billionaires--outnumbered by the U.S.'s 415 billionaires by a ratio of more than 19 to one. Germany (55), Russia (53), India (36), the U.K (29), Turkey (25) and Japan (24) all hold more billionaires than Canada.
That gap with the U.S. will probably be even more dramatic after our Forbes 400 list of richest Americans is published this month.
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The total wealth of all Canadian billionaires is $84.4 billion (CDN$ 100.1 billion), up $600 million from 2006, but still less than the combined net worth of the two richest Americans, Microsoft's (nasdaq: - - ) Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway's (nyse: - - ) Warren Buffett. The average net worth of a Canadian billionaire, though, is $3.7 billion (CDN$ 4.4 billion) vs. $3.3 billion (CDN$ 3.9 billion) for the Americans.
Canadians deserve kudos for finding ingenious ways to make money. The 23 tycoons made their money in 11 industries, from food to finance. A former accordion-playing fire-breather, Guy LaLiberte, created Cirque du Soleil in 1984; today, it is performing 13 shows in 11 cities, including five in Las Vegas. Murray Edwards mined his fortune in Canadian oil sands. Bernard Sherman, who founded generic-drug maker Apotex, battled his way into the billionaires' ranks by fighting against big pharma over exclusivity patents.
Technology was the source of the most fortunes, producing seven billionaires, including Research in Motion (nasdaq: - - ) co-founders and co-presidents Mike Lazardis and James Balsillie, who debuted on our billionaires list in March. Their company is best known for the ubiquitous BlackBerry, which survived a dangerous patent dispute over its popular e-mail service last year; more recently, it's been mentioned as a potential takeover target for Microsoft.
Lazardis and Balsillie are also making names for themselves in the company's hometown of Waterloo. Lazardis recently gave $50 million (CDN$ 59.3 million) to his alma mater, the University of Waterloo, where he initially founded the company, as well as another $100 million (CDN$ 118.5 million) to establish the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
Balsillie, who unsuccessfully tried to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team last year, also gave $50 million (CDN$ 59.3 million) to the same university to fund the Balsillie School of International Affairs, and helped establish the Waterloo Regional Children's Museum.
Canada's richest citizen is 49-year-old media mogul David Thomson, who took control of his family's fortune comprised mostly of their holdings in media conglomerate Thomson Corp. after his father's death in June 2006. He qualified as the richest of last year's 178 new billionaires, worth $22 billion (CDN$ 256.1 billion) and ranked No. 10 in the world.
And Thomson's year has only gotten better. First, Thomson Corp. bought Reuters in May for a reported $17.2 billion (CDN$20.4 billion); he will be chairman of the merged Thomson-Reuters. In June, the 50-year-old got engaged to Kelly Rowan, star of the now-canceled television show The O.C. The pair supposedly met in Toronto, where Thomson lives. He is one of half-a-dozen billionaires to call the city home, making it Canada's top spot for billionaires; Montreal follows with five.
Another high-profile Toronto tycoon is Alexander Shnaider, 39, who immigrated to Canada from Russia and runs a diverse conglomerate with interests in steel, real estate, retail and manufacturing in Russia, Ukraine and Siberia. But he is best known in Canada as Donald Trump's partner in a long-delayed Trump International Hotel & Tower.
Shnaider made news more recently when he reportedly told a Toronto newspaper that he was planning to keep the penthouse condominium in the tower, valued at up to $20 million (CDN$ 23.7 million), possibly making it Canada's most expensive condominium. He is one of three billionaire immigrants to Canada. The others include 81-year-old asset manager Stephen Jarislowsky, who moved from Berlin to Montreal, and Michael Lee-Chin, a Jamaican native now living in Burlington, Canada.
