Monthly Archive: August 2011

The silence of the wolves

Last Thursday I was at the public wolf howl in Algonquin Park with good friends Bob and Menna Weese and I can tell you that it was a wonderful evening. But first, a little background. Naturalists studying wolves in Algonquin found they could attract howls from packs in the wilds if the naturalists howled first. A notice in a park bulletin in August 1963 attacted 650 people and the program – now the largest naturalist-led interpretative program in the world – was well and truly launched. The public howls are scheduled in August because that’s when the wolf packs, averaging...

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The party’s over

It was my maternal grandfather who first got me interested in stocks. Robert R. Work was a retired druggist living in Toronto when I was a boy growing up in Guelph. I was about twelve when he told me that he owned some shares in a gold mine called Couchenour-Willans. “If it doubles, I’ll sell it, and give you half the proceeds,” he said. Soon after, he announced that he’d sold it and gave me $300. There was no advance arrangement about what I was to do with the money, but reinvestment in the market seemed appropriate. My father subscribed...

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The ins and the outs

This year’s nominees for The Canadian Business Hall of Fame have recently been announced and all are most deserving: Aldo Bensadoun, Guy Laliberte, Seymour Schulich, and Galen Weston. It’s a nice mix of old money and entrepreneurs, mining and entertainment. Over the years about 150 individuals have been inducted, both living and dead, and it’s a great list. And yet. The closer you look, the more questions arise. For a time, it seemed the committee that chooses the winners would pick some who were living and also name one dead inductee. But dead people don’t buy tickets for the awards...

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