Calvin Ayre

Calvin Ayre (born May 25, 1961, in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, Canada) is a Canadian entrepreneur and founder of the Bodog entertainment brand. In 1992 he laid the groundwork for the organization that eventually became online gambling company Bodog and the associated Bodog Entertainment Brand. In 2000 he launched Bodog.com, the success of which ultimately made him a billionaire. Ayre's notoriety increased in the mid-2000s as online gaming’s popularity surged, eventually landing him on the cover of Forbes Magazine's 2006 annual “Billionaires” edition and Star Magazine’s "Most Eligible Billionaire Bachelors” list in late 2007.

Ayre modeled his personal brand after Virgin Group founder Richard Branson and the way Branson applied the Virgin brand to a diverse range of business ventures. Ayre plans to build Bodog into a mainstream 21st-century digital entertainment conglomerate. He is noted for his "billionaire bad boy" image yet shrewd business sense.

Early life

Ayre grew up on a farm outside Lloydminster, where his father Ken grew wheat and raised pigs. Ayre received an early lesson in the benefits of entrepreneurship when his father gave him his own baby pigs to look after, allowing Ayre to keep the proceeds when the pigs went to market. Ayre, who describes his father as his "number one hero", later put these lessons to work when he paid his university tuition by renting a truck and running loads of fresh fruit from orchards in British Columbia to northern Saskatchewan.

Ayre

(Manx: Inver Ayre) is one of six sheadings in the Isle of Man and consists of the parishes of Andreas, Bride and Lezayre.

The derivation of the word ayre is from Old Norse"eyrr", meaning a shingle beach. It refers to a storm beach forming a narrow spit of shingle or sand cutting across the landward and seaward ends of a shallow bay. This may partly cut off a sheltered stretch of water from the sea to form a shallow freshwater loch. This word is still in use for the particular landform in the Northern Isles of Scotland.

MHKs and elections

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Coordinates: 54°19′37″N 4°26′38″W / 54.327°N 4.444°W / 54.327; -4.444

Ayre (landform)

Ayre is the name used for shingle beaches in Orkney and Shetland. The word is derived from the Old Norse "eyrr" meaning a shingle beach or gravelly place and may be applied to ordinary beaches, to cliff-foot beaches (such as the Lang Ayre in Northmavine, Shetland http://www.landforms.eu/shetland/lang%20ayre.htm ) to spits, bars and tombolos, but only if formed of shingle. More than 130 such shingle beaches are named on Ordnance Survey maps of Shetland, but far fewer in Orkney, where most beaches are formed of sand. The word in its Old Norse form is common in Iceland and it also occurs in a few place names in the north and west of the Scottish mainland which had a strong Norse influence, such as Eriboll ("a homestead on a shingle beach"). Churchill Barrier number 4 in Orkney used a shingle spit, the Ayre of Cara on South Ronaldsay, as its southern landfall. The ayre is still named on maps, despite its having all but vanished under the causeway and the sand dunes that have accumulated on its eastern side.

Ayre (disambiguation)

Ayre is one of the six sheadings (governmental subdivisions) in the Isle of Man.

Ayre may also refer to:

People

Geography

Other uses

See also