Yearly Archive: 2008

Thank goodness Industry Minister Jim Prentice is taking an extra month to consider the sale of MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA) to foreign interests. At the end of his consideration, he must reject the transaction. Canada has too few global brands. In our more than 140 years as a nation, you can count on one hand the Canadian manufacturing firms known around the world: Massey-Ferguson (long gone), Bata, Nortel (for a time), Bombardier and Research in Motion. MDA belongs among the celebrated because of Canadarm, Canada’s contribution to the International Space Station, as well as Radarsat-2, an observation satellite....

Never in my thirty years as a business writer have I seen so many scary stories following one upon the other. JP Morgan’s offer to buy Bear Stearns may lance that particular boil but there remains a toxic waste of acronym debt that until recently few knew about but far too many held. Some of those deadly instruments were peddled by the very investment banks that are now threatening to bring down other houses. The investments, which today seem ludicrous, were touted by the wounded right until the moment they reared up and snakebit their creators. I asked the wisest...

March is a glorious month in Italy. The warm weather arrives; temperatures moderate from winter’ss chill to the mid-teens Celsius. Buds begin to burst; shop owners stuff sidewalk pots with flowers. We visit Lombardy to pay homage to two sixteenth century women. In Parma there’s Giovanna da Piacenza, a Benedictine abbess who discovered Antonio Allegri, the painter later known as Correggio. He created a gazebo in Giovanna’s bedroom, Camera di San Paolo, by painting the thin ribs of the domed ceiling to look like bamboo surrounded by fruit, putti, and allegorical panels. The other leader is Isabella d’Este, wife of...

Andrew Ross Sorkin has an excellent piece in today’s New York Times about Edgar Bronfman Jr. that expands upon the themes in my recent post and adds some other thoughtful comments about everyone’s favorite corporate pinata.

The first commandment about writing a book is to care passionately about your topic. For each of my dozen books, I have spent two years researching and writing the work, so you have to care deeply about what you are doing. If there’s any chance you’ll get bored along the way, don’t take on the project. If you lose interest, imagine how readers will feel. OK, how do you recognize the right topic? You can’t simply say, “I’ve always wanted to write a book,” you have to say, “I want to write a book about [fill in the blank].” The...

When last we looked in on the life of Edgar Bronfman Jr. (July 13, 2007), he’d just sold his Manhattan townhouse on East 64th Street for $50 million, a stratospheric sum that remains among the top prices ever paid in New York. He’d bought the 31-foot wide townhouse in 1995, renovated the heck out of it, then dwelt there starting in 1999. Edgar Jr., subject of my book, The Icarus Factor, now appears to be seeking an even faster real estate flip. Last month he paid $19.5 million for an eleven-room co-op on Fifth Avenue at 85th Street, with views...

Paolo Bruscoli, one of many artisans featured in Fantasy in Florence, has been chosen by the city as part of a twenty poster display at the railway station that illustrates the most representative local businesses for history and art handicraft. The station, known as Santa Maria Novella (SMN), serves as a gateway to the city for millions of visitors a year and offers a wonderful venue to introduce artisans as the celebrities they should be. Built in the 1930s by Mussolini’s Fascists, the station was among the first structures in what became known as the National style. The flat-roofed three-storey...

Dalton Sinclair Robertson died this week. He was 80. I first met Dalton in 1967 when I was toiling in “the trades,” as the Maclean-Hunter business publication division was known. I was a lowly assistant editor on Modern Purchasing magazine and Dalton was executive editor of The Financial Post but was a “secret” contributor. Each month his commentary on the economy ran in the front of the magazine – with no byline – and it was my job to edit his column, a task that consisted of putting paragraph marks on his stellar copy and sending it to the plant...

Today we received two copies of our book, Fantasy in Florence, bound in finely tooled leather, the work of our friend Paolo Bruscoli. (That’s him at the top left of the blog with Sandy.) Paolo has purchased several boxes of our book and proudly displays the book in his shop window at Via Montebello 58R. You can visit his website here. Both of these handworked volumes have gold engraved lettering and tooling with the title and our names along with beautiful Renaissance patterning in the background. Paolo, the fourth generation to run his firm, and his wife Silvia, became caring...

Of all the ideas put forth to save Florence from itself, the plan announced this week by Mayor Leonardo Domenici to move Michelangelo’s David from the historic centre of the city to the suburbs in order to ease crowding has to be the most foolish. David’s current home in the Accademia Gallery, next door to the art school, the Academy of Fine Arts, is perfect. There is easy access for tourists by foot; most hotels are a mere fifteen-minute walk away. No fewer than ten city bus lines stop in nearby San Marco, a one-minute walk. I often saw the...

Every once in a while I receive an accolade by email that makes writing books worthwhile. Such praise arrived recently from British Columbia and I want to share it with other readers. “This is a very small thank you for a wonderful travel book. For a few days, while on the ferry to Victoria and before bed, I was there with you and Sandy savouring the sights, sounds, and smells of Florence and environs. Although I have not been to Italy, my husband and I shall go there one day. In preparation, I will reread the lively, informative and often...

There are several excellent bookstores in Florence that carry English-language books, but the one we haunted most was Edison in Piazza della Repubblica. In addition to the usual guides, art books and novels, Edison also carried such popular travel writers as Paul Therault, Bill Bryson, Frances Mayes, and the nonno of them all, Peter Mayle. Every travel writer pines for the same exalted category as Mayle’s best-seller, A Year in Provence, first published in 1989. I don’t expect to reach similar stratospheric success, but I wouldn’t mind rubbing shoulders with Mayle and the others, by placing copies of Fantasy in...

This day, January 6, produced one of my favorite moments during our stay. Epiphany in Florence features a pageant with hundreds of individuals in medieval costumes representing nobility, the military, and the city’s major industries. The official party, seated on the chairs on the Duomo steps, included church officials, local dignitaries, and representatives of regional organizations. Pride of place went to three Roman Catholic priests, all in black cassocks, with colorful hats signifying their status. Ennio Cardinal Antonelli wore red, the bishop violet, and the monsignor black. The officials presided over an hour-long parade as couple after enrobed couple strolled...

If there’s one thing an author enjoys (beyond giving readers pleasure), it’s hearing that an interview went well and the published description aptly captures the subject. Such was the news in an email I recently received from Sandra Cemulini who runs an exclusive travel agency you can read about at http://luxury-services.net/default.aspx Ms. Cemulini knows Stefano Bemer, the custom shoe maker who I spent some time with in Florence watching him work and seeing his passion for the leathers, skins, hides and other items he uses for his creations. Stefano is such a pleasure to be with that Daniel Day-Lewis, who...