Treliving gives back to his hometown

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This article was published 12/07/2022 (1361 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VIRDEN — Business mogul Jim Treliving received a warm reception at Virden’s Auditorium Theatre Monday evening, with the venue being full of friends, family and well-wishers who were there to celebrate his 2019 entry into Canada’s Walk of Fame.

Outside of unveiling a Hometown Star that now belongs to the Westman community, Treliving also took some time to address the crowd directly and talk about how coming of age in Virden really set him on the right path.

“I’d like to thank the people that I grew up around in this town,” the Boston Pizza owner said on Monday, describing the friendly atmosphere that pervaded the community throughout the 1940s and ’50s.

“You walked down the street, everybody said ‘Hello.’ You weren’t scared of anything.”

Treliving has particularly fond memories of the Auditorium Theatre, where he would watch movies and even take part in some public speaking as a child.

“I remember standing over there as a 12-year-old and doing spoken poetry for my school,” he said. “That was the first time I was ever in front of an audience.”

The building left such a big impression on Treliving that he decided to donate $10,000 to it through the Walk of Fame’s Hometown Stars program, which gives inductees the chance to financially bolster a local charity or organization of their choosing.

During Monday’s ceremony, Treliving mentioned that he decided to match the Walk of Fame’s donation using his own money, meaning the theatre, which is more than a century old, will receive an overall boost of $20,000.

This revelation about an extra $10,000 came as a complete surprise to Auditorium Theatre vice-chair Brad Hayward, who said the cash will be used to expand the backstage area and change the building’s seating layout.

“We are so touched,” Hayward told Treliving directly. “The kindness will go a long way for us.”

Earlier on in the night, Hayward also told the crowd that Virden Collegiate Institute recently decided to honour Treliving by inducting him into its own Wall of Fame, since the entrepreneur attended this school between 1956 and 1959.

After accepting the award, Treliving sheepishly admitted on stage that he never officially graduated from the high school, since he decided to leave town and join the RCMP at the age of 18 instead.

However, Treliving said this new environment provided the rigid structure and discipline he needed to later succeed in business, which came to pass in 1966 when he started eating at the Boston Pizza and Spaghetti House in Edmonton.

After acquiring the rights and opening his first Boston Pizza two years later, Treliving used the next half-century to build the humble restaurant into a major franchise that now includes more than 350 locations across the country, including Virden.

“I say to this day that I never had a job with Boston Pizza … it was just a fun day to go to work,” he said on Monday. “And I’m not retired. I’m not going away. I love what I do.”

While Treliving achieved a considerable level of fame through various other projects, including a 15-season run on CBC’s “Dragons’ Den,” he always considered his charity work through organizations like the Boston Pizza Foundation and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health to be one of his biggest accomplishments.

He reminded the local crowd on Monday that his impulse to help others originates from growing up in Virden, where his father, who worked as a barber, would regularly give senior citizens free haircuts.

Because of this, Treliving said the values he learned growing up as a boy in Westman continue to inform his actions as an 81-year-old business leader, making this hometown induction ceremony and $20,000 donation a real full-circle moment.

“When people ask ‘Where are you from?’ I say ‘I live in Vancouver but Virden, Manitoba, is my home,’” Treliving said to close out his induction speech. “Thank you very much.”

Monday’s ceremony in Virden also featured an appearance from retired Olympic speed skater Cindy Klassen, who had celebrated her own 2019 Walk of Fame hometown induction in Winnipeg earlier that day.

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