The breakaway shot

To truly grasp the wonderful improbability of the Aquilini family taking possession of Vancouver’s crown jewel – its NHL Canucks – you have to go for a ride. And it’s best to go for it with the Aquilini who has become the public face of ownership: Francesco, eldest son of Luigi and the mastermind who orchestrated the deal that gave the family half, and then eventually 100 per cent control, of the team.

Aquilini pulls his silver Range Rover to a stop outside a huge corner lot at North Slocan and Oxford streets in east Vancouver. On it sit two homes. The one set in the back is made of white stone; it has a wraparound veranda and a silo-shaped, glass-enclosed solarium that sets it apart from any other house in the area. The other is closer to the front corner of the property where the two streets intersect. It, too, sticks out in a neighbourhood known mostly for brick-and-vinyl-sided Vancouver specials. It’s made entirely of dark yellow brick. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think it had been picked up during a tornado in northern Italy and somehow landed here, half a world away. The two homes are ringed by a brick wall and cast-iron railing.

“This is where I grew up,” says Aquilini, who now lives in a mansion on the west side, near UBC. Aquilini spent most of his childhood in the white-stoned home, which at one time served as the Japanese consulate; the yellow stone house was built by Luigi in the late ’70s. “We moved into it when I was 15,” he says. “We still own both houses today and rent them out.”

Aquilini pulls away from the curb and stops at the intersection. He turns left, to head east on Oxford Street and there, instantly, it rises before you: the Pacific Coliseum, for so many memorable years the home of the hockey team Aquilini now owns. As it turns out, Aquilini literally grew up in the shadow of the old stadium. “When I was young, I would park cars at my house on game nights,” he says as we glide by his old home. “I used to jam them in there. I could get 20, 25 cars in there sometimes. I would make $200, $300 on a good night. And then the city brought in this rule you could only park four cars on your

We continue heading east, past Calister Park. We hit Renfrew Street, cross it and turn into the parking lot in front of the low-slung office building of the Vancouver Giants, which once was the executive suite of the Canucks. Aquilini turns in his seat and points to the plaza area west of the Coliseum’s main doors. “That’s where people would scalp tickets,” he says. “I would hang around on game nights and sometimes a scalper who couldn’t get rid of some tickets would give me one. ‘Here kid, go enjoy the game.’ And that’s how I would watch the games. Couldn’t afford it otherwise.”

The Range Rover is now idling at the back of the Coliseum, where the Canucks players would emerge after games. It was here, one night years ago, that Canucks defenceman Lars Lindgren gave a tall, scrawny 10-year-old his stick and then signed it. “I’ll never forget it,” Aquilini recalls.
Fast-forward 37 years. Aquilini is in Las Vegas at the invitation of Mike Gillis, the new general manager he has hired to run his hockey team. It is a meeting of the team’s scouts, one of whom is Lindgren. Aquilini sees him and ­extends his hand. “Hi Lars,” he says. “Francesco Aquilini. Remember me?”

Until the November day in 2004 when then-Canucks owner John McCaw announced he had sold half of the team to local interests, few outside the city’s business community had ever heard of Francesco Aquilini, the tall, dark-haired Italian-Canadian who would become the family spokesman and chief decision-maker for all matters concerning the team.

For some, the Aquilini name produced vague memories of a controversy back in the 1980s. A few Vancouver rental properties owned by Luigi and his then-business partner, Giovanni Zen, had become the subject of protests after the landlords jacked up rates in the rundown buildings. In recent years, however, the family name has been linked more favourably to philanthropic endeavours – multimillion-dollar donations to transform three hectares of Hastings Park into Il Giardino Italiano and to preserve 104 hectares of wetlands near Pitt Meadows, a community in which the Aquilinis own vast swaths of land.

While the purchase of the Canucks certainly made Francesco Aquilini more of a name in the city, it would be a caustic legal battle for control of the team that would thrust him into an often harsh, unforgiving light. It was a fight that pitted Aquilini against two longtime acquaintances – Tom Gaglardi and Ryan Beedie.

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