Well in Stelco, to your point, management is a moat. In Fairfax's own case, culture (which is a follow-on from entrepreneurial management). I note that a lot of Fairfax deals are really about partnering with a savvy operator/entrepreneur on an opportunity. Stelco was that. I think Sleep Country is too. So is BDT, Poseidon. In many ways Fairfax India is like that too. Fairfax really seems to almost identify the entrepreneurial partner first and the opportunity second. They believe in the management as a moat piece.
Your point of appreciating the differences and embracing them is fine, but I would note that Buffett was not a "buy and hold forever", moat driven investor earlier in his career. He was much more like Fairfax. I think the evolution to "buy quality and compound" comes as a reaction to size. After a certain point of size, finding the marginal transaction becomes hard. And at that point you better have compounders, otherwise buying and selling just won't get you there. Noticeably, after "compounders" he is now going for infrastructure because it is just about the only thing he can chuck money at that moves the needle for him.
As Fairfax grows, I think it is an inevitability we will see similar shifts. But we are still in the early innings of Fairfax.