A new movie on Amazon Prime starring Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones tells the story of a rags-to-riches lawyer helping a funeral home owner save his business from a corporate juggernaut. The movie's villain, played by Bill Camp, is based on the founder and CEO of a real-life funeral services empire headquartered in Burnaby.
An ex- Burnaby MLA who founded a vast Burnaby -headquartered funeral services empire, has been cast as the villain of a new movie on Amazon Prime starring Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones this month.
Loewen, who took over his family's funeral home in Steinbach, Man. in the 1960s, moved to Burnaby in 1969 after buying two funeral homes in New Westminster.In 1975, he put his business ventures on hold and ran for provincial office, unseating NDP veteran Gordon Dowding during an election that saw Bill Bennett's Social Credit Party push Dave Barrett's New Democrats out of office.
After his foray into provincial politics, Loewen concentrated on real estate development with Loewen Development Corp., building half-a-dozen highrise apartments in Burnaby, among other projects, before the 1981 recession brought an end to that chapter. By September 1995, the company had corporate offices in Philadelphia and Cincinnati and had acquired 764 funeral homes and 172 cemeteries, 8,000 employees and more than $1 billion in assets, according to a Province story at the time.
From 1991 through 1995, Loewen Group more than tripled its revenue to just shy of $600 million, according to a Time Magazine article. The company continued its aggressive strategy of buying up funeral businesses; it recorded profits, and its stock rebounded somewhat, but never to its September 1995 peak of $56.50 per share.By that time, Ray Loewen had stepped down as the company's CEO and chairman, and his director position on the board had been eliminated.
The company emerged under new ownership as Alderwoods Group in January 2002 but was finally bought out by Loewen's archrival, SCI, four years later. Lowen espoused what he called the Eagle Principle: "To soar to the heights of possibilities, one needs two equally healthy, strong wings – one being that of people and service concerns, the other that of responsible planning and fiscal management."
Burnaby Funeral Services Movie Amazon Prime Jamie Foxx Tommy Lee Jones Corporate Juggernaut Lawsuit Damages Ray Loewen Loewen Group
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