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- Francesco with his father, Luigi, at their Golden Eagle Golf Club in Pitt Meadows. Photo: Rick Ernst/Vancouver Sun

Vancouver's Aquilini family have built one of the most substantial business empires in Canada from scratch, starting from humble beginnings in a $4 a month bathroom-less rental home in 1953.

At the time, family patriarch Luigi bathed in a river.

Fast forward sixty years and the Aquilini family now control a multi-billion real estate empire, not to mention the NHL's Vancouver Canucks, and a string of the highest end restaurants in town, including Yaletown's Bluewater Cafe.

The family's investment strategy has been to buy, hold, add value, and always run scared, as if they were about to go broke, according to a terrific BCBusiness magazine profile of Francesco Aquilini published today.

Read: Q&A with Francesco Aquilini

Francesco will be interviewed on stage by Peter Legge at the BCBusiness Top 100 Event this Thursday.

Last year Francesco's friend Frank Giustra had the honor (here was our account).