Beauty and the Beasts
By Tamara Gignac

LuAn Mitchell-Halter knows adversity

She's been beauty queen and a meat packer. Widow and a single mother. Philanthropist and author.

But if one title best describes LuAn Mitchell, it's survivor.

From humble beginnings in small-town Saskatchewan to the boardroom of one of Canada's largest food processors, Mitchell-Halter has defied her critics to become one of Canada's top female entrepreneurs.

The former chairwoman of Saskatoon-based Mitchell's Gourmet Foods resurrected the company from the brink of bankruptcy, transforming it into a $300-million supplier of wieners, bacon and sausage with 8,000 customers. She also orchestrated an alliance with industry giant Schneider's Corp., a deal that financed the construction of a $44-million deli-slicing factory.

Mitchell-Halter and her husband, Fred Mitchell, had previously been embroiled in a messy family dispute involving his mother and siblings over the direction of the family-run business; a decade-long legal feud that at one point forced the couple and their three children to live in a van and sell most of their possessions.

The row ended in 1996 when the company was split, with LuAn and Fred taking control of the company's pork-processing assets. In desperate need of reorganization, Mitchell's Gourmet Foods expanded its product line and introduced robotic equipment that both cut costs and eliminated worker injuries.

Just a the Mitchell's were tasting success, Fred died from complications relating to cystic fibrosis, a disease he battled after surviving a lung and heart transplant.

Though stricken with grief, Mitchell-Halter took control of the business, firing non-supporters and convincing the board to back her expansion plans. Her strategy would see Mitchell's Gourmet Foods successfully compete against rival Maple Leaf, and stay afloat despite rising hog prices.

Mitchell-Halter would later sell her interest in the firm to Schneider's and take five years off to write a book about her life: Paper Doll: Lessons Learned from a Life Lived in the Headlines.

Even after retiring from the boardroom of Mitchell's Gourmet Foods, her private life remained under public scrutiny, most notably after disgruntled relatives of her late spouse placed a newspaper ad in a bid to discredit her on her wedding day to second husband, Reese Halter.

Today, the former Miss Saskatoon chooses to ignore the headlines, focusing her energies instead on motivational speaking and spending time with her children in a multimillion-dollar Banff dream home.

She is a board member of several organizations, including the United Way, the YWCA and the Women's Leadership Board of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Mitchell-Halter sat down with the Herald at the President's Cup Challenge, an annual gathering organized by the Calgary Chamber of Commerce in support of several local charities. The first woman ever to speak at the event, she received a standing ovation from a packed Red and White Club after her powerful 45 minute address.

Q: You have endured an unenviable degree of mudslinging and bitter legal battles. What was that like?

A: It was really tough. In fact, it was hell. I had a husband recovering from a heart and double-lung transplant, taking some pretty potent medication, and I was a stay-at-home mom with three little kids. We ended up for a time living in a Chevy van – not a mobile home but a van – cooking our food on a Hibachi. Our life came to a screeching halt. We sold all of our luggage and anything else that could bring in some money. We were broke. But we still had to put up a façade.

Q: Why did the Mitchell family feel such resentment toward you?

A: I'd be on a plane or sitting in a neighbourhood café and I would see people reading about me in the newspaper. I just wanted to crawl under a rock.

People said to me, "Oh, don't worry about it LuAn. They blamed Yoko Ono, too." The thing is that business was everything to Fred. He wasn't there to see it when the kids cut their first tooth, or took their first steps. He made tremendous sacrifices for that company

Q: Is there still a great deal of bitterness among the family? What about the newspaper ad your former sister-in-law placed on your wedding day?

A: I was walking into my reception with Reese and the kids and there were swarms of reporters all over the Banff Springs Hotel. They said, "LuAn, do you have anything to say about the ad your sister bought?" I said, "Yeah, I have something to say to that. I'm here today as a result of love. And I want to practice love and forgiveness. And I hope that's infectious. Now if you don't mind, get the hell out of my way."

But for me to create dissention on my own home front, create illness within my own body, I'd rather not. I believe I have only a few spins left around the sun, and I'd rather use the time I've got to do some good work. The whole situation is rather sickening and I'm not going to be a part of it.

Q: What was it like to take control of Mitchell's Gourmet Foods after Fred suddenly died? Did you have trouble getting people to take you seriously at first?

A: Yes – and they don't work at the company anymore as a result. The majority were pretty good about it because they saw that I meant business. But they were people who didn't want to se me score a home run. No question. Some of them may have meant well when they said, "Why do you want to do this? You're a single parent, you've got three kids. Why in the heck would you want to turn around a meat packing plant? Why not cash out, go do something else. But don't be ridiculous." Thank God I didn't listen to those people. But I'll be honest: when I had to negotiate my first rendering contract I thought I would curl up and die.

Q: Why did you cash out?

A: Because I knew in my heart I could do it. I listened to how I was feeling in my gut and I realized that I felt passion about owning that plant. It was part of Fred's legacy. And when my kids said they were onside, that's all I needed to hear. It made me shuffle a lot of my own life around. Life brings you lows, and you have to be able to say, "I can deal with this." And maybe sometimes you can't, but you know what? That's OK.

Q: Mitchell's Gourmet Foods was widely expected to file an IPO. Why did you abandon the plan?

A: The timing wasn't right. You have to realize we were making food products. That meant we needed a supply of hogs. But in the late 1990s, hog prices went sideways, and a lot of producers were cutting back on production. At the same time, a major competitor – Maple Leaf – opened up a plant right next door to us and needed supplies. But we didn't have enough for ourselves. It was kind of like having Tonya Harding out there determined to bust our kneecaps out.

That's when I opened discussions with Schneider's about a possible strategic alliance. It was really a strength builder, putting power in numbers. We could immediately save costs on our trucking and we started using their hedging program, which was a great thing. Suddenly our combined buying power was shaving millions of dollars in costs. Now I could have still launched an IPO, and yes I could have rallied the money for our expansion and still maintained a majority ownership. But with our alliance, the company remained private. It meant I didn't have to make our numbers public.

Q: Did you have any second thoughts about the Schneider's deal?

A: When we entered into a strategic alliance, I did so with a long-term strategy in mind. It was not a seat-of-the-pants decision. We knew we had synergy, but we also remained autonomous of each other. We had separate sales forces, but we grew as a unit. It was an experiment – either it worked and we moved to the next stage, or it wasn't going to work, and we figure out how we both exit. In the end, it not only worked, it was phenomenal.

Q: Do you ever miss running the company?

A: I miss the people terribly. I know it sounds a bit like a cliché, but they were my brothers and sisters. They would invite my kids into their homes, take them fishing. We'd have these big Christmas parties, but they don't invite me anymore. That kind of bums me out. Maybe somebody's got their nose of out of joint or they just forgot, but I'd love to go.

Q: Do you think women are making progress breaking through the glass ceiling?

A: That's a perception of limitation and I don't agree with it. So it's very difficult for me to take a perspective or make a statement about that.

Q: Are there any female executives you admire?

A: Belinda Stronach, because in some ways I feel an alliance with her. It's easy for people to finger-point and label her the "lucky sperm-bank girl." I know how tough that can be. She's attractive, she's young and she's faced controversy, like me. Belinda is a single parent and probably as scared of the dating scene as I was. I see her following her dreams and aspirations, running for the Conservative Party because it's something she believes in. I think that's wonderful and good for Canada.

There's others I admire – Linda Cook of Shell Canada, for one – but my life isn't limited to executives with dollar figures attached to their names. I respect people who are not afraid, the Helen Kellers of today, who supposedly have impairments but go out and win wheelchair races in the Olympics.