The biggest of the two, and the one I did entirely by myself, was the first office in eastern Canada for Canaccord Capital, the biggest full-service broker-dealer in Canada that is not owned by a big bank.

When I first walked onto the penthouse floor of the Toronto Stock Exchange tower and saw the marble palace of the Deutsche Bank representative office for Canada on the one side, I knew immediately I wanted the other half.

This was 13,000 square feet of unimproved ("raw concrete") space. The most expensive real estate in Canada, but it had a post-free layout of 61 feet from demising wall to outer wall (in each building section) that I needed for my original design for an optimally-functional trading floor.

The photos here don't reproduce too well because I photocopied galley proofs and then did a scan of the photocopies and a screen capture of the files. I'm not a pro at publishing, and it shows.

But, I did build this beautiful rosewood and mahogany amphitheater facility for effective trading, back in 1986-87, well ahead of its time.

amphitheater (English entry by John Bullokar 1616)

AMPHITHEATER: Amphitheater. A place hauing seates and scaffolds in it, vsed among the olde Romanes to shew spectacles and strange sights in. Offenders condemned to dye, and Prisoners taken in warre, were often brought to this place to fight and be deuoured by wilde beastes, the people sitting in safe places aboue, & inhumanely sporting themselues thereat: Also the Gladiators or Swordplayers did fight here.

The circular design with diverse height allowed my 39 traders to look one another in the eye " without twisting and contorting their bodies, and to speak " not shout " to their colleagues within a maximum distance " person to person " of just 31 feet.

Yet nobody felt crammed. It was rather like luxury. Each trader had a high-back leather chair, dual monitors and phone sets, plus about 90 direct telephone access buttons to clients or other traders.

I designed this immense desk without one iota of understanding whether the sight lines from top level to below would work. I am a financial guy, you know, not an engineer.

After the contractor had built the huge trading desk frame, my head trader Gary who is pictured in the middle of the last photo, sat in his position and I sat in a chair on top. Gary shouted, "Beam me up Scotty!" and we both knew immediately it worked.

We both raised our arms in touchdown mode. What a feeling.

Whenever the pressure got too much, or a client dropped in, the staff had a two-person shared private office to the side " or at least the 18 most senior traders did " complete with the same telecom system they could switch to back and forth. The private offices also had a TV and bar fridge.

You might say I like to take care of my people. I know the incredible pressures traders go through.

Bankers, brokers and potential clients came from Europe and across the U.S. to take photos (and, in some cases, measurements), and all had agreed they had never seen anything like this particular trading floor.

I was kinda proud of it. The photo below shows me " sans beard " leaning up against the desk.

Outside my office, my staff reminded me that the two traders closest to me were ex-pro football players " big guys with muscles " to "protect" me from upset clients (or staff?). John Cimba and Mark Bragagnola had been fullbacks in the Canadian Football League, but they also knew their business in the securities world too.

This was the money making part of the whole office. The "back" office was elsewhere " we had a complete securities cage " and then there was the lunchroom, reception and boardroom and private client meeting room areas in a third section.

My architect friend, Michael Wong, who has built some beautiful structures in his life, was most impressed with my boardroom. My pride and joy was the custom-built 36-foot mahogany board table.

Then one day, my number two, Gord Bradshaw, who ran the back office, requested six feet more space in his area, so I just closed my eyes as the carpenters came in and cut six feet out of the middle of the world's most beautiful table, and cut down our boardroom that much to give Gord the space he needed. I was flying by the seat of my pants, but the project was completed early and under cost budget.

I had drawn it all out on a blank paper months earlier and then went to Toronto's number one interior design and furnishings firm to put it all together. These designers told me later that out of 13,000 square feet there wasn't more than six inches variance between concept and actual.

I tend to do things that way. I know what I want and then I go get it. But I did make that one mistake in not giving enough space to the admin department.

In my big corner office, I met the four founders of a tech company that I immediately took a personal interest in. After a $20 million tax-related scam had bankrupted their company before it really got started, they were about to move home to the U.S. Then they saw my photo in the Toronto Star, crossed their fingers and paid me a visit. Eleven days later, me and four clients, put up $800,000 to get them started. It was called Genesis Microchip (NDQ: GNSS) and it started right in that corner office a month after I had built it.

But that's the nature of the business. You have to do everything fast, which requires risk. Sometimes you win, like Genesis Microchip, and sometimes you lose. I've lost my share.

The other trading floor I was responsible for was for an order entry operation that serves credit unions and small independent banks. This one is located in Vancouver, right across the street from the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver.

From concept (July 1999), through my designs, hiring and building a Waterhouse-equivalent platform, to the reality of being fully registered to trade in securities in all Canadian provinces except Quebec, and having agreements in place with over 60 financial institutions aggregating a potential client base of about 4 million, in just 15 months (September 2000), for under $1 million, was immensely satisfying.

But people are funny sometimes. They don't want to recognize those who created the value. So I departed. As this is rather personal, I'll just say that what goes around, comes around.

And, I'll be coming around.

BCara@BillCara.com