After spending time at the Costa Rican retreat of online gambling kingpin Calvin Ayre, this is how Timothy Taylor summed up the subject of our cover story: "One complicated guy." In his provocative portrait of Ayre ("Casino risqué," page 32), Taylor sets about peeling back layer after layer, beginning with the mythology of Ayre's climb to online gambling stardom. While Ayre's clear-eyed official bio charts an unremarkable path from his family's Saskatchewan farm to university to starting Bodog.com, Taylor writes that the truth is more opaque, and involves ties to drug runners and sanctions for insider trading.
When it comes to Ayre's business plan, it is tempting to dismiss it as no more sophisticated than an appeal to our basest instincts--money wrapped in the lustre of sex. That would be a mistake, says Taylor. Ayre has created a smart, integrated brand strategy. At its core is Ayre himself: In photographs on his various websites, he fairly reeks of money, as he relentlessly surrounds himself with barely clad hangers-on. The obvious brand prototype for Ayre is the original king of leer, Hugh Hefner. But while Hefner these days seems like a quaint--if libidinous--uncle, Ayre projects an image fully in keeping with our age, one of indulgence tied to a video-game-like caricature of real life. Or, as Taylor puts it: "Hefner looks like a Quaker compared to Ayre."
Ayre first made headlines last year when his name popped up on Forbes's list of billionaires. Wealth, and how much of it he has (it's a moving target these days), is central to his tale. This made him a natural to precede our package of stories focusing on the same subject. Yes, it's true, money is at the root of all business, but our roster of features looks at the subject through a variety of very different lenses. Consider: In the light of KKR's proposed buyout of BCE, Sinclair Stewart has written a thoughtful essay on the rise of private equity ("Liquid enough for you?" page 58). RO[S] associate editor Dawn Calleja tracked down Canada's most notorious counterfeiter--the recently released Wes Weber--who had flooded the country with millions in knock-off $100 bills ("Faking it," page 70). Carolyn Abraham, The Globe and Mail's science reporter, looks at the newest (and last) frontier for economists--the brain ("Your brain on Gucci," page 50). To tackle the issue of money transfers--a lucrative business in Canada---we asked reporter Tavia Grant to take a more personal angle by profiling new Canadians who were sending money back home ("Cash advances," page 68). Their stories and the images that accompany them are a welcome counterpoint to Ayre's excesses. --