From flying high to roasted pigeon
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
by DAVE PINK
“We were taken,” Mary MacKay said Tuesday in Kitchener Superior Court, one of four farmers to testify Tuesday at the trial of Arlan Galbraith.
Galbraith was the sole owner of the now bankrupt Pigeon King International. He is charged with defrauding investors in his pigeon supply business of millions of dollars, along with four other charges under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act.
He sold breeding pairs of pigeons to his investors, with a promise to buy back the offspring at a set price.
Galbraith has chosen not to hire a lawyer, and is representing himself in court.
“When I invested in you I thought you were an honest man,” Saskatchewan farmer Clarence Murray told Arlan Galbraith in Kitchener Superior Court Tuesday.
“Today, I’m here because you’re not an honest man,” Murray added, explaining his reasons for travelling to Ontario to testify against Galbraith.
MacKay, who runs cash-crop farm with her husband Lawrence near Embro, in the Woodstock area, said they lost “close to a quarter-million dollars” on their Pigeon King investment. MacKay, who is also a full-time nurse, said she has had to take on an additional part-time nursing job, and that her farming husband has had to take on jobs at two local dairy farms to help pay down their debt. As well, they had to sell 50 acres.
Murray, who grows cereal grains and flax on his 640-acre farm near Ogema, Sask., south of Regina, told the court he lost $51,000 in his Pigeon King investment.
John Guetter, who runs a 72-acre cash crop farm near Beachville, in the Woodstock area, said his total losses amount to $150,000.
Lynn Strenzke, of Maryhill, not far from Kitchener, said that she and her husband Wilfred lost about $192,000. They have a dairy and cash crop operation.
Each of these investors said they were assured months before the June 2008 Pigeon King bankruptcy that the business was sound and secure, and that there was a market for the pigeons they were hatching on their farms.
“A booming business should not go bankrupt,” said Strenzke. She said that during a meeting with Galbraith at his Waterloo office late in 2007 the couple was assured there was never a better time to get into the pigeon business. Strenzke said they were told Galbraith was planning to build four plants to process pigeon meat – two in Canada and two in the United States – but that he first had to build up breeding stock to ensure there would be a steady supply of pigeons.
“He was very confident that it was growing and doing well . . . that there was a future for it,” she said.
The Strenzkes received their breeding pairs on April 7, 2008, but they never did receive any money from Galbraith for the offspring.
When they heard of the bankruptcy the couple went to Galbraith’s office, she said. “He told my husband, ‘I don’t know you,’” she said. “My husband said, ‘How can you not recognize me. I just gave you a huge cheque.’”
Under cross examination, Galbraith suggested to Strenzke that an investment in Pigeon King was similar to an investment in dairy quota, with the same risks. “A farmer is used to paying high overhead to get into a business,” said Galbraith.
Strenzke disagreed. There’s a market for milk, she said, but there was no market for pigeons.
Strenzke said she couldn’t understand how a business that was taking in so much money from investor breeders could go bankrupt. “I was totally blown away that that money was gone,” she said. “I couldn’t understand how any business with that kind of money could go bankrupt.
“If I had seen these figures before we invested we never would have invested.”
MacKay told the court she and her husband signed three contracts with Pigeon King – the first in December 2006, the second in June 2007, and an “upgrade” contract on Dec. 27, 2007. She said they were promptly paid – and well paid – for the pigeons they produced under that first contract, leading them to sign the second. After signing that second contract they were given the option of an upgrade – in the MacKays’ case a guarantee for a much higher price for their pigeons over a longer term, for an additional $111,000.
They never received anything back on those final two contracts.
“You must have been pleased with the pigeon business after your first contract,” Galbraith said during cross examination. “You must have been really pleased to put out an additional $111,000.
“You must have been doing really well up until the bankruptcy.
“Is it safe to say that if Pigeon King hadn’t been forced to close down things would have continued as they are?” asked Galbraith.
Guetter testified that he never received any payback on the pigeons he produced after receiving his birds on Dec. 1, 2007. “The day we were ready to ship is the day my calls weren’t answered,” he said.
Unlike many of the breeders who were left with barns full of pigeons, Guetter said he decided to cook up some of the birds he was stuck with. “I’m getting to like it,” he said. “It depends on how it’s prepared.” BF