When violence begets violence

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This is a CBC podcast. Hello. I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. Some people call them the Rockefellers of Vancouver. The Bentalls were the family that for decades ran Dominion Construction, responsible for a cluster of iconic office towers that anchor Vancouver's downtown. The family was a business dynasty, prominent philanthropists, but as in many families, there was turmoil under the surface. Ken Wyder experienced that turmoil firsthand. The great-grandson of the original patriarch, Charles Bentall, Ken Wyder had a childhood punctuated by his father's violent outbursts and unpredictable rage. And now, in a new memoir, he draws a straight line between those experiences and his own problems with anger, infidelity, and violence. That book, Kill Not the Butterfly, is a raw portrait of how patterns can repeat across generations. And just a warning, we will be talking in this conversation about intimate partner violence. Ken Wyder is in our Vancouver studio. Ken, good morning.

Good morning.

I kinda gave the, the, the brief sketch there, um-

Mm-hmm

... in the introduction. But if you were to look out across the skyline of Vancouver-

Mm

... where would you see the imprint of your family?

Well, I think from here I can probably see the Sun Tower peak. Yes, I can. So the Sun Tower's over, over 100 years old now.

Mm.

That was, uh, one of the first projects my great-grandfather was involved in. I can't see it, but of course the Bentall Centre would be the core, core of the financial district. Four towers. Actually five now, and I think there's a sixth on the way.

In many ways it, it's like the family helped build the city, right?

Yeah. That's often been described that way in local media.

What was it like growing up in the, in that city knowing that?

Well, I guess I [laughs] ent- I felt entitled or, you know, there's that sense that we own this, yeah. It was, it w- and it was just sort of innate, like, you know, Grandpa up on the top floor with commanding view of the city and the, and the aura around my grandpa- not my great-grandfather now, but my grandfather, Clark, Charles' son. So yeah, he was a real dynamic person and really took the company to the next level.

You say e- entitled, like it, like you owned the town.

Yeah, it just felt that way 'cause the family had also built the church we went to and built the school I went to. And so yeah, that sense of this is all sort of family, you know. Um, I think entitled's maybe being a bit hard, but not [laughs] depends who you talk to and who