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BE LIKE GEORGE
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THE SECRET BEHIND HOLLYWOOD’S
LEGENDARY LEADING MAN
WHAT IT FEELS LIKE
TO WORK IN A WAR ZONE
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 9
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SEPTEMBER 2010
ELEMENTS
OF A MAN’S
WORK
A PROSPECTOR. A BUSH PILOT. A WAR PHOTOGRAPHER.
THREE MEN WHOSE WORK REGULARLY PUTS THEM IN
HARM’S WAY TALK ABOUT WHY THEY DO WHAT THEY DO,
AND WHY THEY WOULDN’T DO ANYTHING ELSE.

BY DYLAN YOUNG

Work—that’s work in the sense of voca-
tion—is an odd sort of concept.
Even in our age of enlightened
maculinity, work constitutes a sizeable
amount of our self-worth. How uniquely
proficient we are, how valuable the work
is, the access, or station, or revenue it
brings us, all of these things are tallying
points in some dearly guarded scoring
system of personal success. And, all too
often, our very manhood is measured on
that count. After all, it’s damned hard to
feel like a man if you don’t believe you’re
doing a man’s work.
But what is that really—a man’s work?
What makes one project a job, or a
grind, or a drudge and another a calling?
The great Samuel Butler said that every
man’s work, whether it be literature or
finance or advertising or architecture, or
anything else, is always a portrait of him-
self. If we take that to be true, then the
most important thing about a man’s work
is that he like what he sees in that mirror.
The three men in this piece don’t
know each other. They work in differ-
ent fields, they come from different
backgrounds, and they want different
things. Still, they all share something in
common. They followed paths that were
distinctly their own and, in doing so,
they’ve let their work take them to the
extremes of experience.

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SHARPFORMEN.COM 93
 SCOTT
WA LT ER S
I
f a handshake says a lot about
a man, what it says about
Scott Walters is that he’s solid.
Maybe that doesn’t sound like a
hell of a lot. But to the people
Walters works with—the ones
who leave their dreams in his
hands, the ones who trust him with their
millions, and the ones who’d follow him into
a mine drilled into the side of an Ecuadorian
mountain—it’s more than enough.
Over the last 17 years, Walters has built
himself a reputation as a sharp and steady
hand in Canadian mining investments. His
company, Max Capital Markets—a ven-
ture capital firm specializing in precious
metals—has brokered some of the most
talked-about deals on Bay Street and not just
because he makes folks money. People sim-
ply like working with him.
One of the reasons people have so much
faith in Walters is how he goes about his
work. He’s paid his dues in the industry,
and it would be easy enough for him keep
his ass glued to a perfectly engineered Her-
man Miller chair and run deals from his of-
fices on the 29th floor of Commerce Court
North, in Toronto’s financial district. But
that’s not what he’s about. He’s a hands-on
venture capitalist. Whiffling the corners of a
quarterly report doesn’t do anything for him.
If he’s going to recommend an investment,
he wants to lay his hands on it first—and dig
his heels into soil.
That kind of attitude has put Walters
in some hairy situations. There have been
94 SHARPFORMEN.COM | SEPTEMBER 2010
shakedowns and a mudslide; he’s even had
to fend off packs of feral dogs.
“I’m a firm believer in boots on the ground,”
Walters says. “I want to see how a project is
run, make sure the conditions are good for
the workers, make sure the works are being
managed well. Before I put my heart into
something, I need to trust that it’s a good set-
up and there’s no way you can do that without
going out and seeing it for yourself.”
And, if sometimes—all too frequently—
that exposes him to some sort of danger,
then that’s just par for the course. In fact,
at this very moment, he’s recovering from
a head trauma and a spinal injury. He’s not
wearing it now but a neck brace has been a
regular accessory to his wardrobe for more
than a month. It was a close call.
“The funny thing is, I’ve been in some
of the most dangerous situations you could
find yourself in—floods, earthquakes, down
mine shafts—I’ve been in a plane we had to
land on a highway in the middle of a thun-
derstorm in Panama, driving trucks in Peru
on one-lane roads with 3,000-foot drop-offs.
And how do I injure myself? Go-karting
with my kids.”
“The irony of that isn’t lost on me,” he
adds. “You can’t spend your life avoiding
danger. That’s no way to live. You get hurt.
You heal. You keep going.”
If you’ve picked up on the hint of grit—
a kind of cowboy stride—in Walters’ at-
titude, you’ve hit on the right parallel. He
comes by it honestly and he proved him-
self early on.
When he was 17, he got a job with
Noranda doing geological surveys up north.
You should not confuse this with the dainty
pursuit of rock collecting, however. Walters
was a big guy even then, and he had to be.
He’d start his day at 6 a.m., hop in a heli-
copter and get lifted to a desolate location,
where they’d leave him by himself all day.
“They wouldn’t even land,” he says. “They
just hover and toss you into the bush. I’d have a
chainsaw, a rock saw and a shotgun. I’d spend
the day clearing a line through the brush, cut
into the rock layer for samples and, if a bear
appeared, I’d do my best to scare it off.”
“The shotgun had a birdshot shell that
you’d shoot into the ground to shoo them
away. If they kept coming… the next couple
of shells were slugs. Thankfully, I never got
past the first shell.”
So, tromping through the jungles of
Guyana, Colombia, or Panama, prospecting
for the next big metal deposit, that’s just a
natural evolution for the man. And his will-
ingness to put himself in the thick of it has
been the key to his success.
So, when he’s all healed up, does he fancy
putting himself in harm’s way again?
“Definitely,” Walters admits. “I don’t know
any other way to do what I do. I’d be missing
out on too many fabulous experiences not
to continue working this way. The key is to
find a balance between doing that and being
there for your family.”
“I only learned how to do that in the last
few years but it’s the most important lesson
I’ve ever learned.”
SHARPFORMEN.COM 95
 EMMANUEL
ANASSIS
T
here’s a growl, a gust-
ing whine of engines
that wipes out the voice
on the other end of the
line. Emmanuel Anassis
is a lot of things. Right
now he’s a racing en-
thusiast. Actually, that isn’t quite accurate.
Emmanuel Anassis isn’t just an enthusiast—
he’s a successful quasi-pro racer. He and his
team have won three championships and
set a number of speed records. What’s truly
impressive though is that’s not even what he
does for a living.
“I admit I’m a bit of an adrenalin junky,”
he says. “But a very significant part of why I
started racing was to promote my aviation
work, that’s what it’s all for.”
Born in Athens, Anassis emigrated to
Canada when he was just five. He might not
have known it then but that first skip across
the pond would guide his steps for the next 40
odd years. The undertaking started gradually,
a trip here and there, a sightseeing jaunt in a
Cessna 150 over Kitchener-Waterloo.
“It had entered my psyche in a way I
never forgot,” he says.
Before long, he was siphoning every cent
he earned into flying lessons, propelling
himself up the ranks as fast as he could—he
was going to be a pilot even if he had to kill
himself in the process.
He got his first flying job in 1984, as
a first officer for a commercial airline in
Greece. “It was glamorous and comfort-
able—and it paid decently—but it got
boring really fast,” Anassis says. “It was
so routine. You’d stop by Dispatch, push
96 SHARPFORMEN.COM | SEPTEMBER 2010
a few buttons, a half-hour later you’d be
sipping coffee with the stewardess, watch-
ing the clouds.” There’s a thoughtful pause,
then he adds, “I know I’ll catch a lot of
flack for saying this, but it’s a lot like being
a glorified bus driver.”
Anassis needed a challenge and that’s ex-
actly what he found when he signed on to
pilot for a small charter company in north-
ern Quebec. “I was flying small turbine
aircraft to distant and harsh locations,” he
says. “You fly to places like the Magdalen
Islands in winter—doing approaches into
isolated areas with no visibility—that’s
when you know how good a pilot you are.”
It was as far away from the airline experi-
ence as he could get—he’d become the avia-
tion world’s version of an outdoorsman—
and it suited him.
In the '90s, he hit a pocket of turbulence.
The charter company went out of business.
Along the way, he’d gotten married and his
first daughter had just been born. Work
was hard to find.
Destiny called when a friend tapped him
to start flying relief missions into the Sudan
and Somalia. His bush pilot experience was
in perfect sync with the work. The bullets
were something new. “The first time some-
one puts a gun to your face, everything
changes,” Anassis says. “It’s a completely
physical reaction. Your body freezes, your
hairs stand on end.”
“The hardest thing to explain is how
commonplace it gets. You’re trying to fly
into these completely shut-off areas, bring
people food and medicine. And there are
all these factions vying for power, arming
drugged 10-year-olds with AK-47s. And
you get used to that.”
Anassis got used to many things no one
should have to get used to. He’s paid for his
success and his spiritual rewards in blood.
He’s been shot on six different occasions,
been held hostage in a pit, and witnessed
suffering on a scale so huge that it seems
beyond belief.
“I remember flying into this camp
where there were tens of thousands of
refugees. There was all this smoke hov-
ering over the field. It was so thick you
couldn’t see the ground. As we came in
for the approach, we realized they were
vultures—a cloud of vultures. They liter-
ally blocked out the sky.”
After flying on contract for a while,
Anassis started his own remote-area opera-
tions company, DAC Aviation. His planes
now fly into the hottest landing zones in
Africa, Afghanistan, or any place other
people won’t go. And he’s a constant star in
the relief sector, with close ties to the UN,
UNICEF and other organizations.
“There is a definite sense of mission be-
hind my work. It’s hard not to think about
all the people you can’t help. So you try to
do as much as you can, even if it puts you
in danger.”
During the height of the African con-
flicts of the 90s, Anassis estimates that his
planes helped to feed and treat millions
of refugees. And he continues to support
those communities, by building businesses
there, training local people and investing
in them. So that someday they won’t need
the help.
SHARPFORMEN.COM 97
 LOUIE
PALU
L
ouie Palu is hunkered
down at an encampment
in the Kandahar region
of Afghanistan, tapping
out answers to an email
interview he agreed to
do for a magazine back
in Canada. He’s taking his time—trying to
answer the questions thoughtfully—but
there’s still an element of urgency.
Any moment now, he could be scram-
bling towards a helicopter with 40 kg of
photographic equipment strapped about
him and the stiff collar of a flak jacket keep-
ing his head on straight. He’s been ghosting
a US Army MEDEVAC unit that services
the region, going where they go, wherever
and whenever the hell they’re needed.
But for now, he’s writing about where it all
began, 11,000 km away, in Toronto, Ontario.
His family was from the northeast of
Italy—“land of polenta,” he calls it. His fa-
ther was a stone mason and his mother a
garment district seamstress. From an early
age, he was taught the value of hard work.
There was also an emphasis on taking time
to experience the world around him.
FROM: LOUIE PALU
LOCATION: KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN
DATE: JULY 22, 2010
When I was young, my father took me up
north a lot, mostly on fishing trips (includ-
ing ice fishing on Lake Simcoe). I spent many
weekends up on the Bruce Peninsula around
Owen Sound and Wiarton, walking through
the bush to experience the wilderness….
Palu’s first job was as a BiWay stock boy,
earning $3.10 an hour, three days a week.
But before long, he was doing part-time site
work with his dad.
…I moved on to working construction with
my father, beginning around the age of 14.
That taught me the value of how to earn
98 SHARPFORMEN.COM | SEPTEMBER 2010
money the honest and hard way. I had a lot
of attitude and thought I was real smart. I
wasn’t. Mixing cement every day, carry-
ing stone and brick, smartened me up. It
gave me a sense of reality. My father was a
great (and patient) life mentor and teach-
er. Thank goodness he is still around to
continue kicking my dumb ass….
He used the money he earned to buy cam-
era equipment. Right from the start, he’d
been an avid painter and illustrator. In his
early teens, photography became his domi-
nant mode of expression. The interest in
photojournalism came a little later.
…A girlfriend gave me a book on British pho-
tojournalist Don McCullin. He worked for The
Sunday Times in the UK and had covered nu-
merous conflicts, including the Vietnam War.
Although the first images of war that caught
my attention were Frederick Varley’s and Paul
Nash’s paintings of World War 1, seeing Mc-
Cullin’s work changed my life. I knew one day I
wanted do the kind of work he did.
My deep interest in history soon had me
dreaming of witnessing and documenting
historical events with my camera….
His first real breakthrough was working on
a series shooting in the mines of northern
Ontario and Quebec. Cage Call took nearly
15 years to photograph and edit, and was
made into a monograph. It was a passion
project that gave him the confidence to take
his work-a-day photos in more daring and
challenging directions.
The work he does now, photographing
soldiers in Afghanistan, has earned him a
number of awards and accolades. But that’s
not why he does it. This is just the most re-
cent evolution of Palu’s craft and his need
to tell the untold stories.
…I focus on stories and subjects that are forgot-
ten, ignored and need attention. Social and po-
litical issues that make me feel like something
65305,
is wrong or requires wider discussion. I always
operate with the same thought—respect for
my subjects and sensitivity for what I am see-
ing and photographing. It is not about me. It’s
about the people and story I am covering.
Afghanistan is one of the most significant
international conflicts since World War II.
The war is more than a counter-insurgency,
it is the longest running conflict the US and
Canada have ever been involved in.
For a long time, this was a forgotten war,
I first came here in 2006. It’s strange to see
all these journalists coming here for the first
time. It’s 2010 and they are just realizing
now that there has been a war in Kandahar
for years. Empires have been marching in
here for centuries, only to face brutal condi-
tions with tragic consequences. Alexander the
Great founded the region, now it’s known as
the “Graveyard of Empires"....
Palu will be leaving Afghanistan soon, but
will continue using his lens to tell the sto-
ries that need to be told. Exposing himself
to such hardship and violence, one might
be tempted to think he’s a bit of a danger
seeker. But, as with Walters and Anassis,
the truth isn’t as simple as that.
Joseph Conrad once said that, although
he didn’t like work, he liked what was
in it—the chance to find one’s self, one’s
reality—which no other man can know.
That’s what these men have done. They’ve
made their own realities and come to terms
with them. That’s the lesson for the rest of
us. And maybe, finally, that’s what it means
to do a man’s work. Maybe.
…I can’t imagine wanting to do anything else
but I’m not attracted to risk or adrenalin, or
anything like that. A job needs to get done and
I do it. It’s simple and undramatic, I am re-
warded by what I do. I feel like I am using my
talents and skills to contribute something to the
world—if only a very small part.
There’s no romance in it, but I love doing it.
– LOUIE PALU
for a gallery of louie palu's photographs
visit sharpformen.com
SHARPFORMEN.COM 99