Gallery Royale, Vancouver, BC
Opened Vancouver's largest art gallery in the old Royal Bank building. Sold it to Ken Heffel, now the Heffel Gallery, which is arguably the largest art gallery in Canada.

Pacific Western Brewery, Prince George, BC - $6 million.
Reopened this closed brewery. The opening ceremony ribbon was cut by 17 year old Wayne Gretzky as his first job as a professional hockey player.

Formed Eprime Aerospace in 1995.
The business plan was to design rocket vehicles to launch commercial satellites to orbit the earth. The head office was in Titusville, Florida, just down the coast from Cape Canaveral. It was staffed with six or seven scientists from NASA. One day when I was in the office in Titusville, three suits walk in and flashed me their FBI identification. They asked  to see everyone’s passports and asked who were the directors and major shareholders. Eprime was a private company wholly owned by a public company and I was the major shareholder and CEO of the company. After looking at the information, one of them said I have 30 minutes to pack my bags and leave the office. It seems that no one working on this aerospace technology that was not an American citizen and needed security clearance. I ended up selling my interests to the American scientists for less than a dollar and returned to Vancouver. The one takeaway for my money and time on this project is that I learned the meaning of ‘escape velocity’. Escape Velocity is the speed a rocket needs to achieve in order for the rocket to escape the Earth’s gravitational pull in order to orbit the Earth, which happens to be 25,000 mph.

Downey Street Sawmills, Revelstoke, BC.
Bought a closed sawmill (union problems) that had lost its timber license. Reopened and secured the timber license and is now the largest employer in City of Revolstoke. Sold it to Gorman Bros.

Malibu Grand Prix - 51 theme parks acquired from Warner Bros. for $30 million.
Owned and operated as vice-chairman with the head office in Woodland Hills, CA.

D2Fusion Inc. in 2000.
In 2000 a Vancouver lawyer tells me of his client in San Francisco that has two unique technologies that need funding. As I was on my way to Loa Alamo, New Mexico to my Solar Energy office, I said I would stop in and see him. So I meet Russ George on a beach just south of San Francisco. Russ tells me of two potential globally significant technologies that require a lot of money, time and talent. I don’t have enough to do one of the projects, never mind both. So what do I do as I could not decide which to try. I said, lets do them both. So I formed D2Fusion Inc, which is to explore ‘Cold Fusion’. If you can tap the fusion energy stored in a cup of heavy water, you would have enough energy to run the City of Vancouver for a month. Then in parallel, I formed a company called Planktos Corp.

Formed Planktos Corp. in parallel with D2Fusion Inc. in 2000.
The goal was to explore iron fertilization of the ocean with the idea ‘to save the earth and make a 'little money on the side’. A  tonnes of iron compound placed in the right ocean location would eliminate over 200,000 tonnes of atmosphere CO2 while at the same time ‘feed the fishes’. Both of theses technologies (Planktos Inc. and D2Fusion Inc.) we pursued, but not without running afoul of the law both locally and internationally.

Formed CUV (Canadian Underwater Vehicles) with Phil Nuytten in 1972.
"Phil, owner of Nuytco Research Ltd., became a world leader in manned and unmanned mini submersibles and was awarded the Order of Canada. Phil came to me and says he has a contract to design two mini subs for the Russians for $18m. His cost was projected to be $12 million so we formed a 50/50 company, CUV (Canadian Underwater Vehicles) and started the design in his shop in North Vancouver. After 4 months we were visited by two people, an RCMP officer and an FBI officer from the US. They informed us that they knew what we were doing and said we have to stop as it is illegal for us to be exporting this delicate technology to the enemy. The result was, I sold my 50% share of CUV to Phil. He then went to Finland and had the Finns build the two subs for $24 million under a new contract. The result is well documented. The Russians issued globally a photograph of one mini sub planting a Russian flag on the ocean floor right at the geographic location of the North Pole presumably claiming sovereignty of the North pole." - Nelson

Purchased this 90 year old company in the UK from the Receiver and sold it to L. Aquilini.

Zeolite Mira - $10 million.
Purchased this industrial mineral company near Venice, Italy.

PCL Plastics Ltd. - $20 million.
A plastic bag manufacturing company with $100 million sales in five plants.

Franklin Supply Co. Ltd. - $15 million.
Oil services company based in Calgary, AB with over $100 million in sales. Sold to Sam Belzberg.

Nine different hotels.
Rembrandt, Georgia, Devonshire, Wedgewood Hotel, etc.

Made a full length feature movie, "Dead Wrong", starring Britt Eckland and Winston Rekert.

Seven different restaurant chains.
Malibu, Beach House, Horse & Carriage Inns etc.