“With a great sense of urgency.” That’s how colleagues describe the way Paul Tellier approached his role as President and CEO of Canadian National Railway.

Tellier’s concern was justified. A crown corporation, the CN was badly under-performing and had become a burden on taxpayers. The railroad’s poor reputation had earned it an array of unflattering descriptors: “bloated”, “a dinosaur”, “a pig with lipstick”, “an investment disaster waiting to happen”, “a sad-sack national rail outfit that has had more fresh starts than Elizabeth Taylor has had husbands.”

Born in 1939 in the French-speaking farm country of Joliette, Quebec, Tellier earned undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Ottawa and a graduate degree in public administration from Oxford. He moved to Ottawa and rose through the ranks of government until, in 1985, he was appointed Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet, the top-ranking civil servant in Canada.