Slain Entrepreneur Recalled as Kind, Dynamic

The murder of Canadian Internet entrepreneur Roger Boisvert has provoked an outpouring of shock and grief on both sides of the Pacific as friends and family mourn the dynamic Tokyo-based businessman who was shot to death early Sunday in what authorities believe was a random crime.

Sheriff’s investigators say Boisvert, 50, was killed during a robbery after he and an associate got lost while driving through Hawthorne to a Torrance hotel.

A gunman approached their Audi after they pulled off Imperial Highway near Hawthorne Boulevard to study the vehicle’s computerized navigational system, authorities say. After taking money and a cell phone, the assailant shot passenger Boisvert in the chest and ran.

On Friday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department released a sketch of the suspect based on information from Boisvert’s companion, whose name has not been disclosed.

Investigators have revealed few details about the crime and have sealed the coroner’s report and an initial Hawthorne police report.

At this point, they say, they have frustratingly few leads.

Response to the murder has been swift and heartfelt. A native of Ontario, Canada, Boisvert was a recognized rifle marksman and rock climber who was also well-known in international business circles.

On Friday, after a small memorial service in Los Angeles for family members, Boisvert’s twin brother, Gerald, said that despite his recent success, Boisvert put personal relations first--often at the expense of his business.

“He made ridiculous decisions in business helping people,” his brother said.

Sometimes it paid off lavishly, sometimes it didn’t. Either way, “whether he made money was not important,” Gerald Boisvert said. “Relationships were. That’s not how people do business in North America, but it’s what won hearts in Japan.”

Boisvert and his Japanese-born wife, Yuriko, were in college when they met, after Boisvert held the door open for her in the library where they studied. They worked closely together thereafter as partners in business, and raised two sons.

Boisvert had come to Los Angeles to see entrepreneurs and venture capitalists after a meeting in Seattle with a community service group.

He had been in Los Angeles for a day, and met with one of his sons, who is studying at a California college. But because he was still on Japan time, he couldn’t sleep, and he was returning to his hotel about 4 a.m. with an associate when the crime occurred, his brother said. After the shooting, the associate drove to the nearest phone booth.

As news of Boisvert’s death has spread, Japan-based Web sites have been flooded with e-mail tributes.

Among those eulogizing him on the Internet on Friday were an acquaintance from a computer group to whom Boisvert paid hospital visits, and a man from whom Boisvert had bought a motorcycle--then sold it back to at a loss when the man regretted the sale.

If the suspect in the killing “had just walked up to him and said, ‘You don’t know me, but I have no money . . .’ Roger would have said, ‘Come back to my hotel and we will figure something out,’ ” said longtime friend and climbing partner Thomas Caldwell of Tokyo, a journalist who has been working on a biography of Boisvert. “That’s the guy he was.”

Boisvert lived large. He loved climbing icy waterfalls and often bicycled to work. But he also smoked cigarettes “like there was no tomorrow,” Caldwell said.

Once, not long after breaking a leg in a rock-climbing accident, Boisvert went to a recreational climbing rock to watch others. “He could hardly bear it,” his brother said, and finally tossed aside his crutches and scaled the sheer face, cast and all.

It is Gerald Boisvert’s first visit to Los Angeles. Asked to describe his brother, he simply took off his glasses to show his face and smiled faintly. “Just like this,” he said. “We’re identical.”

He said he and his brother grew up in a large French Canadian family in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, and nearby.

As members of a French-speaking minority community, Boisvert and his siblings experienced discrimination, said Gerald, a preacher who lives in Quebec. Because of this, Roger Boisvert remained deeply concerned about helping others who faced obstacles throughout his life, his brother said.

Discrimination also meant the Boisverts were ostracized by other children, and found pastimes away from the crowd, including climbing and marksmanship. Both brothers started with slingshots, and eventually mastered rifles. Despite an impaired right eye, Roger Boisvert excelled in the sport and as a young man briefly earned his living at rifle competitions.

Boisvert attended St. Catharines Collegiate and Humber College in Toronto, graduating with a degree in business administration in 1974, according to his hometown newspaper, the St. Catharines Standard. Afterward, he briefly worked as a truck driver.

In the early 1980s, Boisvert decided to go to Japan with his wife because her family’s coffee shop was saddled with debt. The couple worked there five years, and paid off the debt.

In 1985 he was hired by the Tokyo office of the New York-based consulting firm McKinsey and Co., where he remained until 1993.

By then, he had taken an early interest in the Internet, was a leading proponent of the idea of Internet commerce, and was eventually hired to lead the first Japanese government-authorized commercial Internet provider. Later he founded e-commerce provider Global OnLine Japan K.K., an influential player as Japan struggled in the early 1990s to catch up with the United States and Europe in Internet use.

In 1999, he sold the firm and set up CTR Ventures in Tokyo, where he began focusing on venture capital.

The sale brought him wealth for the first time. He had struggled for years with debt, in part because he had extended his own resources to ward off hostile would-be buyers of the company, and declined other buyout offers by suitors he thought would harm his employees, Gerald Boisvert said.

Even after the sale, he was reluctant to live like a rich executive and his lifestyle was little changed, his brother said.

Friends were shocked by the apparent viciousness of the crime.

“It’s just hard to put things into words,” said Chuck Olson, a longtime friend and colleague.

“He was a person of great courage. He went into debt to keep the company going. He was . . . a real risk taker.”

Besides his wife, Boisvert is survived by his sons Christopher, 21, and Steven, 18, of Japan; his mother, Carmen, and stepfather, Lorne, of St. Catharines; and six siblings, including Gerald.

A second memorial service will be held in Japan, and a memorial fund there is being set up in Boisvert’s name.