KITSAULT, BC, July 30, 2005
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 30, 2005
The millionaire who bought a town likes to save
a buck. He breakfasts at McDonald's, flies economy
class and asks for a doggie bag when he doesn't finish
his meal at cheap motel restaurants.
But when, several months ago, the Virginia-based
businessman saw a news story about a whole town up
for sale in remote western Canada, he called the same
day to offer a check for $5.7 million, site unseen.
Today, Krishnan Suthanthiran owns Kitsault, a ghost
town abandoned by miners' families more than 22 years
ago and preserved like a museum display of suburbia,
though one through which bears occasionally wander.
Suthanthiran, who was born in India and made his
fortune selling medical devices and real estate in
the Washington area, said he jumped at the chance
to buy Kitsault because, “one, it is beautiful
up there, and two, I couldn't believe it wasn't being
used. I said if nobody else could figure out what
to do with a town, I can.''
Kitsault will become an eco-tourist destination or
an artist's colony. He will hold conferences, gathering
scientists for forums and evening salmon-roasts on
the beach. Wedding receptions. A corporate retreat.
A movie set. Skiing, hiking, a spa, bans on smoking
and cars, maybe a high-speed hydrofoil to bring tourists
85 miles from Prince Rupert.
“I feel like a kid in a candy shop,'' he said.
Suthanthiran has avoided publicity in the past, content
with his work and a growing list of philanthropy projects
in India, Canada and the United States. Many involve
small scholarships, the kind of boost that enabled
him to leave home for college at 15 with only a collection
of donations from neighbours in his pocket.
At 56, after quietly building his businesses for
28 years, Suthanthiran has plunged into a flurry of
financial acquisitions. In the last year, he has moved
to buy half-a-dozen companies. Most are medical concerns
that complement his own, Best Medical International.
But the purchases also include a Vancouver video production
company and now, the splashiest buy, a ghost town.
“I guess Kitsault will bring me more into the
open,'' he says.
Kitsault, 500 miles northwest of Vancouver, was to
be a model mining town. Instead, it became a monument
to corporate misjudgment. In the late 1970s, Amax
of Canada Limited chose to reopen a local mine, dormant
since 1972, that produced molybdenum, a metal used
to harden steel.
The setting is stunning: Green-cloaked mountains
crested with streaks of snow plunge toward lakes and
river gorges. A tidal estuary by the town teems with
shrimp and salmon. Curious harbor seals poke up their
heads from the water beneath the swiftly moving shadows
of bald eagles.
Amax created a modern, planned community to house
1,200 miners and their families. The company built
seven apartment buildings and 92 suburban homes with
aluminium siding and green lawns. The town boasted
a recreation centre with a gleaming hardwood-floor
gym and a swimming pool, health clinic, community
centre, library and day-care facility.
“It was an ideal place for a family,'' said
Larry Payjack, who opened a sporting goods store in
the town's small mall. There was no crime; residents
formed a bear watch to collect the kids when a bear
wandered through.
But just as the families were getting settled, the
price of molybdenum plunged, from a $15-a-ton high
to $3. An oversupply of the ore from competing mines
and the recession of the 1980s killed off the “moly''
market.
The company stockpiled the ore in one-ton bags on
the beach for a while, recalled Art Hill, an electrician.
Then, in November 1982, it ordered the operation closed,
and within months, the town was abandoned. Kitsault
was left empty and eerie.
Amax and the successive owner, the giant mining company
Phelps Dodge, kept a caretaker there who mowed the
lawns and kept the heat on in the winter, keeping
the town surprisingly intact.
“It's nice and peaceful here in the winter,''
said Jim Essay, 65, who lived with his wife, Maggie,
as a Kitsault caretaker for the past two years. “Maggie
did a lot of cross-stitching. We played cards a lot.''
There were occasional attempts to sell the property
but no takers until the price dropped and Suthanthiran
noticed the ghost town for sale.
He had a history with Canada. He had come to Carleton
University in Ottawa in 1969 at age 20 on a postgraduate
scholarship after leaving India, where a friend's
father had taken up a collection to rescue the smart
young man from his family grocery store and send him
to college.
Suthanthiran got a master's degree in engineering
and then went to Washington to make medical devices
with an oncologist. He started his own company in
1977, specializing in sophisticated radiation treatment
catheters used to fight cancer, the disease that had
claimed his father in India. The company now employs
a staff of 130 in Virginia and 100 in Europe.
Its owner is not a flashy millionaire. No gold Rolex,
he wears a plastic sports watch and white socks. He
says he hasn't been shopping in three years. He does
not own a car. He spends more than half his time on
the road, so when he flies back to Virginia, he rents
a car to drive to the house he bought 22 years ago
in quiet Mason Neck.
The only extravagance he admits to is a two-bedroom
apartment in Las Vegas. He doesn't gamble, he says,
but likes the shows and marvels at the operation of
the giant hotels.
Suthanthiran has neither a wife nor children. He
works seven days a week, his ear joined to a telephone.
He hasn't borrowed money in 20 years, he said.
But something about Kitsault has brought out the
dreamer in him. “Just look at this place,'' Suthanthiran
gushed as he wandered around the empty buildings of
his town. The frozen-in-time look of the town is deceptive,
though. Ants are chewing away at the wood foundations;
mould has crept into the eaves. The electrical wiring
is brittle, and the sewage system, which runs straight
into the estuary, probably will not pass today's standards.
“I don't think he really knows what he's got
into,'' mused Edmond Wright, secretary-treasurer of
the Nisga'a Lisims native government, which represents
the aboriginal villages that are Kitsault's closest
neighbours.
“We're really out in the boondocks here.'' Over
a hospitable lunch of wild salmon, the Nisga'a officials
politely scolded Suthanthiran for rushing ahead without
consulting them.
“You've got too much money,'' Wright chided
him.
Suthanthiran is undeterred by sceptics. “If
I wasn't an optimist, I'd still be in my home town
in India running a grocery, with 10 kids,'' he said.
“Land development is not for the fainthearted.''
His plans do not include capitalizing on Kitsault's
ghost-town history, however. “We're going to
focus on the future,'' he said. “People are going
to say, `Wow.' And they will forget about the past.
The ghosts will be exorcised.''
