Matthias Li

Wild Life

Christine Ward

To celebrate his graduation from U of T Mississauga—then Erindale College—in 1978, Matthias Li bought a two-week, $65 Greyhound ticket and headed west. He wound his way along the Trans Canada Highway, passing Thunder Bay and on to Winnipeg, Calgary and eventually Vancouver before returning to start his MBA at U of T’s Rotman School of Management that fall.

A year later, with a second degree in hand and, this time with a bit of money in his pocket, Li flew to Halifax, rented a car and camped throughout Nova Scotia, P.E.I. and New Brunswick.

Almost four decades later, those cross-country trips remain synonymous with his memories of U of T Mississauga. “Studying is very important, but maintaining a sense of curiosity, being open to new things and seeing the world is important as well.”

It’s a philosophy Li continues to live by. Now chief executive officer of Ocean Park Corporation, an animal-based theme park in Hong Kong, Li was the first in his family to emigrate from Hong Kong to Canada. He studied commerce because he wasn’t “handy” enough to excel at engineering, earned his CA at accounting firm Arthur Andersen & Co. and then spent a decade in corporate and international banking at the Bank of Montreal. As the Toronto-based director of the bank’s Asia Pacific region, he travelled to the region multiple times a year to meet with government and financial institution clients. It was on one of those trips that he saw the ad for Ocean Park’s finance director.

“I purposely chose a completely different industry. I wanted to see if I could rise to the occasion,” he says. Li and his wife also liked the idea of moving closer to family with their two young daughters.

Twenty-two years later, Li is lauded as Ocean Park’s saviour. He steered the park’s fortunes from near collapse during the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, through a HK$5.5 billion expansion and a 185% increase in attendance, from 2.6 million in 1994 to 7.4 million today. Still, he counts as his biggest accomplishment the establishment of the Ocean Park Conservation Foundation Hong Kong (OPCFHK), the park’s fundraising, research and education organization committed to the conservation of Asian wildlife. Since 2005, OPCFHK has allocated HK$58 million to 400 research projects, including several involving giant pandas, and provided opportunities for more than 250 university students to engage in paid field work through the University Student Sponsorship Program in Wildlife Conservation.

“The same reason I had for experiencing Canada years ago is true for these young people today,” explains Li. “They want to associate the real world with what they’ve learned.”

So many years in one place hasn’t dampened Li’s own wanderlust either. In fact, he says he’s still revelling in new lessons and experiences every day. “I’m the same person I was in 1978, wanting to go out and embrace the world.”

He chuckles. “Just not in a Greyhound bus!”



Reprinted from the Spring 2016 issue of M Magazine