As general counsel of Terrion, the country’s first dedicated wireless tower operator, Patrick Mathurin is building the legal and governance spine of a neutral-host platform that he says must move at “startup speed” while carrying multi-billion-dollar infrastructure. From that vantage point, universal connectivity is “a business imperative” that shapes which communities are connected, which projects get built and how legal teams show up at the strategy table, he says.
Mathurin’s lens has been forged across mining, broadcasting and telecom infrastructure work that rarely gave him the luxury of staying in his legal lane. Early in his career, he left Montreal for Johannesburg for a role at Fasken that he describes as “a formative, high-stakes introduction to complex cross-border work,” where he focused on negotiating and drafting a wide range of commercial agreements and supporting M&A and joint ventures in a fast-moving environment. His time there “tested my adaptability early in my career and gave me a global view of corporate structures,” he says, and it dropped him straight into headline cross-border deals such as the merger between Canadian company Diamond Corporation and South African company Diamond Core Resources Limited, followed by a dual JSE–TSX listing valued at around $150 million.
The work was demanding, but it exposed a structural gap that has driven his decisions ever since. He enjoyed “the rigour of private practice,” yet realized he “wanted to be in the room when strategy was being shaped, not only when the contracts were being negotiated,” and saw that moving in-house would allow him “to be a trusted business partner who happens to be a lawyer,” he says. He approached that shift by “learning the business side deliberately – sitting with the operations team – so my advice would be framed in their language and anchored in the commercial and operational reality.”
CBC/Radio-Canada became the proving ground for that approach. Mathurin initially joined to support the commercial and procurement teams, but his role quickly expanded into areas such as intellectual property, real estate and privacy. It was the first place where he “really saw that I was not afraid to get my feet wet outside of my original comfort zone,” and that willingness “to dive into unfamiliar fields” later earned him the nickname of “Swiss Army knife.” The timing made the learning curve steeper because CBC/Radio-Canada’s role and funding were under intense scrutiny, and he had to help the organization meet its mandate of being Canada’s national public broadcaster with significantly reduced resources. Working in that environment, he says, taught him how “to be pragmatic, adaptable, and creative as in-house counsel.”
If CBC/Radio-Canada showed him how public institutions wrestle with risk and resource constraints, TELUS exposed him to the scale and regulatory complexity of national infrastructure. Over his nine years at the company, he served as the legal lead for real estate operations across Canada, supporting the deployment and maintenance of telecom infrastructure for TELUS 5G wireless and PureFibre networks and guiding internal teams on high-value transactions, site acquisition for network expansions, and deployment of TELUS and other major telecom carriers in major transit builds in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. His role quickly expanded into what he calls “particularly innovative projects,” including co-developing a national EV charging network with JOLT and a “ground-breaking Indigenous-led partnership” with the Nisga’a Lisims government that has drawn national attention.
Those projects made connectivity tangible and personal. He highlights the nine-million-dollar partnership to bring wireless service to the entire Nass Valley, which involved constructing wireless towers along the highway to connect the four villages of Nisg̱a’a and close a safety-critical coverage gap for citizens, visitors and first responders in a remote region. Those experiences highlighted how “Canadian telecom regulation demands pragmatism and creativity in designing solutions that maintain business momentum while satisfying public policy requirements.”
That balancing act came into sharp focus when TELUS carved out its passive wireless assets into a joint venture with La Caisse to create Terrion, a $1.2 billion transaction in which he played a central role by leading key legal workstreams. The move did not just change an asset base; it also shifted him into the general counsel role at Terrion, responsible for building a legal and governance framework to match a new, national tower infrastructure platform. “Terrion sits in a rare position: being Canada’s first and largest dedicated wireless tower operator from day one, but with a fresh startup mindset,” he says. The company has “a great opportunity to operate as a true neutral host – building infrastructure, enabling co-location for all carriers, and upgrading sites for future technologies,” yet it must do that while recalibrating internal habits away from single-carrier assumptions. “The challenge is cultural: shifting from a carrier mindset to a fast-moving platform model that delivers startup speed services to multiple customers on a shared infrastructure,” he says. Mathurin’s remit now is to ensure that legal and governance frameworks move in step, “so Terrion can enable meaningful connections for all communities through technology and innovation.”
That community lens is not rhetorical, and it influences how he builds his team and chooses outside partners. “I see external counsel as a strategic extension of our internal capabilities,” he says. At Terrion, that means “framing risks as strategic choices the business can structure properly,” and building credibility by helping leaders reach decisions that “hold up under real pressure,” where “risks were explicit, trade-offs clear, and outcomes managed – not accidental,” so that legal is at the table earlier, as a trusted partner that protects the business while enabling growth.