David Gilmour, a Canadian-born entrepreneur who within the Nineties constructed a luxurious resort on Wakaya, a tiny island he owned in Fiji, then created Fiji Pure Artesian Water, turning a neighborhood useful resource into a number one bottled model, died on June 11 at his dwelling in Manhattan. He was 91.
The trigger was cardiac arrest, mentioned David Roth, a good friend and enterprise companion.
By the point he purchased Wakaya from two enterprise companions in 1987, Mr. Gilmour had constructed a number of companies over 30 years. He imported Scandinavian dwelling furnishings and constructed high-end stereos. He helped assemble a sequence of resorts within the South Pacific, which made him acquainted with the archipelago nation of Fiji, and he co-founded a gold-mining firm.
However there was one thing totally different about Wakaya. On the time, he was mourning the demise of his solely little one, Erin Gilmour, who had been murdered in her condo in Toronto in 1983.
He referred to as the island “the final bastion of sanity on the earth,” his spouse, Jillian (Sweeney) Gilmour, mentioned in a telephone interview. “He thought when every little thing went kerflooey, that is the place he would go. The island itself is so stunning. There’s an space referred to as Chieftain’s Leap, with hovering cliffs, the place peregrine falcons make their nests.”
In 1990, he opened the Wakaya Membership & Spa, a cluster of eight free-standing suites on a former coconut plantation. On the time, he mentioned, he opened it as “actually only a place the place my mates, these I can’t put up in my own residence, can come and share the peace.” He added, “I don’t see it as terribly business, frankly. It is going to in all probability solely break even.”
It nonetheless grew to become standard with celebrities, together with Tom Cruise, Invoice and Melinda Gates (who spent a part of their honeymoon there) and Keith Richards, who fell out of a palm tree there in 2006 and was flown to a hospital in New Zealand with a head harm.
Sooner or later within the Nineties, Mr. Gilmour noticed company on the property ingesting bottled Evian.
“He mentioned, ‘There’s one thing flawed with this image,’ and I mentioned, “What do you imply?’” Ms. Gilmour mentioned. “And he mentioned, ‘We’re on our personal island, they usually’re ingesting water from Lake Geneva. I do know that with Fiji’s rainfall, there should be a larger water supply.’”
Mr. Gilmour discovered of an underground aquifer beneath the volcanic highlands of the Fijian island of Viti Levu with water wealthy within the mineral silica. In 1996, his firm started packaging and delivery its distinctive sq. bottles around the globe.
Mr. Gilmour mentioned the water’s purity was the results of Fiji’s geographic remoteness. “There’s no acid rain, no industrial air pollution, no pesticides,” he instructed The Palm Seashore Put up in 1998. “It’s the purest virgin ecosystem.”
Fiji is now the second-largest imported water model in america, in keeping with the Beverage Advertising and marketing Company.
David Harrison Gilmour was born on Nov. 5, 1931, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and grew up in Toronto. His father, Adam Gilmour, was an funding banker, and his mom, Doris Godson Gilmour, was an opera singer.
Mr. Gilmour studied enterprise administration for a yr on the College of Toronto after which accepted his father’s supply of a $10-a-day stipend to journey via Europe, which he did for some time earlier than returning to Canada.
“I discovered what persons are actually like,” he instructed Palm Seashore Illustrated in 2015. “I discovered to the touch solely what I completely consider in 100%. And I discovered the right way to maintain myself.”
He turned down his father’s supply to hitch his financial institution and as an alternative moved to Montreal to promote pots and pans door to door for a yr.
His first enterprise was importing trendy, streamlined Scandinavian housewares and furnishings. He adopted that in 1958 with the start-up Clairtone Sound, a collaboration with Peter Munk, a Hungarian-born electrical engineer. The corporate made critically acclaimed, subtle hi-fi methods whose consumers included Frank Sinatra and Hugh Hefner. Nevertheless it foundered after branching into televisions and shifting operations, disastrously, to Nova Scotia.
Amid steep losses, Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Munk have been pressured out of the corporate in 1968 and later settled a lawsuit claiming that they bought shares earlier than the announcement of poor quarterly ends in 1967.
They recovered shortly, beginning Southern Pacific Properties in 1969, which accrued greater than 50 resorts in Australia, New Zealand in addition to in Fiji, New Caledonia, Tahiti and different islands. An formidable improvement that was to be constructed close to the pyramids in Giza, Egypt, was finally nixed by President Anwar Sadat in 1978.
Three years later, Tan Sri Khoo Teck Puat, a Singaporean banker, bought Southern Pacific for a reported $130 million, however Wakaya remained individually owned by Mr. Gilmour and his companions, till Mr. Gilmour purchased them out.
Within the early Nineteen Eighties, Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Munk have been among the many unique companions in Barrick Gold, one of many world’s largest gold producers. Mr. Munk was its longtime chairman and chief government, and Mr. Gilmour was a board member till 2001. Mr. Munk died in 2018.
Mr. Gilmour described his working relationship with Mr. Munk in 2008 with The Globe and Mail of Toronto. “I’m extra the entrepreneurial sort who likes challenges of beginning up, and Peter loves rising a colossus,” he mentioned. “As soon as it reaches a essential mass, I type of get bored sitting round a boardroom desk.”
Fiji water, marketed as a luxurious model, was a significant business success however, like different manufacturers, drew scorn from environmentalists, who criticized the trade for the power consumed and greenhouse gases created in making and delivery plastic bottles, and for the plastic waste they depart behind. Fiji, particularly, was singled out for delivery water to shoppers 1000’s of miles away.
Mr. Gilmour bought Fiji Water to Roll Worldwide in 2004, and Wakaya to Clare Bronfman, an inheritor to the Seagram’s liquor fortune, in 2016, after a Class 5 cyclone devastated the island. “We bought it for 10 cents on the greenback,” Ms. Gilmour mentioned. In 2020, Ms. Bronfman was sentenced to jail for her function in enabling the Nxivm intercourse cult.
Mr. Gilmour is survived by his spouse. His marriages to Anna Wilmot, Erin’s mom, and to Diane Williams resulted in divorce.
Mr. Gilmour, who bought his Palm Seashore property final yr for $44.9 million, had one final firm in his portfolio at his demise: Wakaya Perfection, a wellness firm that sells powders and capsules of ginger and turmeric grown in volcanic soil in Fiji and Nicaragua.
“David had this perception that natural, single-source, very pure, high-quality ginger and turmeric could be one thing that individuals needed,” Mr. Roth, who began the corporate with Mr. Gilmour, mentioned by telephone. “And Oprah selected it twice as one in all her favourite issues.”
