I met Frank Sanders on March 25, 1968, the day I joined the accounting firm McDonald, Currie (now part of PwC), and he turned out to be the most interesting person I’ve ever known.
Let’s start with the fact he had two different names and two passports. His Canadian passport identified him as Francis Xavier Sanders; but he also had an Austrian passport identifying him as Francis X. Spanberger. He was born in Austria and Spanberger was his real name. He explained that when he came to Canada shortly after the end of WWII, he thought life would be easier if he didn’t have a German-sounding name. What he didn’t explain was how he managed to keep two names and two passports for the rest of his life. He simply said, “You could do that back then.” But having two names and two passports wasn’t all that made Frank interesting.
Although a brilliant tax practitioner, he refused to accept a partnership when it was offered to him. He said he didn’t want the responsibility and liability inherent in being a partner. That was likely true, but that he was independently wealthy probably played a more prominent role. Another factor was Frank would work enough overtime in nine months that he was able to take three months off work, even though he was entitled to only three weeks vacation. He would spend his three months in Austria; typically a couple of weeks at Christmas and the rest during the summer, which he wouldn’t be able to do if he was a partner in the firm.
Frank lived two distinct lives: his three months in Austria and his nine months in Canada. According to colleagues who visited him in Austria, while there he lived the life of a wealthy aristocrat; but in Toronto, he lived the life of a person who barely subsisted from payday to payday, boarding with an elderly widow in the Yonge-Davisville area, not owning a car, taking a brown-bag lunch to work, and rarely doing anything at night other than work, read, or play cards.
Another interesting Frank Sanders characteristic was that he seemed impervious to cold weather. He never wore an overcoat or winter jacket. Even during a sub-zero blizzard Frank would show up at for work wearing nothing extra than a huge scarf wrapped around his neck and a toque on his head. On rainy days he simply got wet. Not being a skier I didn’t see this myself, but a couple of colleagues said they’d seen Frank skiing bare-chested on sunny days.
I often played poker with Frank and he was the best I ever played with. He was extremely well-read and held strong opinions on topics ranging from sports to science. The only time I didn’t enjoy being around Frank was during his fasting periods.
Twice a year, for a few days Frank ate barely a morsel of food and wouldn’t drink a drop of alcohol, surviving on fruit juice and doses of Epsom Salts in either water or black coffee. The problem was that after a couple of days he became cranky as a wounded bear. His theory was that engaging in the two fasts allowed him to eat and drink as much as he wanted to during the rest of the year. It obviously worked for him because well into his 70s he could pass for 50.
I never asked Frank how he made his money and he never mentioned it to me, but credible sources told me the following story. In the late 30s Frank was working for a US-owned carbon paper company in Osaka, Japan. Believing the inevitability of war between the USA and Japan, he approached some US-owned Japanese companies, including the one he worked for, and obtained powers-of-attorney guaranteeing him a percentage of any assets he was able to repatriate to the US. Frank then sold as many assets as he could to Japanese interests and used the proceeds to buy diamonds and pearls, which he somehow smuggled into New York City, sold them, and turned the cash over to the U.S. companies, less his substantial commission, which the companies willingly paid because they would otherwise have recovered nothing.
Although I never learned how he got out of Japan, Frank never denied having worked there before the attack on Pearl Harbour nor having spent the balance of the war years in New York. He also admitted that shortly after the war ended he returned to Austria and bought as much property in his home village as he could. By the early 50s he owned almost half the village, but the family that owned most of the rest wouldn’t sell. After a while he became bored being a landlord, came to Canada, and obtained his chartered accountant designation.
In the mid-60s Frank married the daughter of the family that owned most of the property in the village that he didn’t; so between them they potentially owned nearly the entire village. As mentioned, Frank spent three months in Austria and nine months in Canada, and his wife, Agate, would spend three months in Canada and nine months in Austria, an arrangement that worked well right up to the time of Frank’s death.
Francis X. Spanberger, a.k.a. Frank Sanders, was indeed a most interesting man.