Monthly Archive: December 2012

You can go home again (The Sequel)

Joey Slinger, long-time columnist at the Toronto Star and winner of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour Writing, has been pummelling me with messages ever since my recent post about Guelph. Slinger also grew up in Guelph where he rose to the rank of sergeant-major in the cadet corps at Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute. I was just a lowly private. Both of us wrote for the Guelph Mercury. He was full-time. I was merely a weekly high school news columnist while I was a student. So you can see he was always one step ahead. Slinger took umbrage at...

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Shifting sands

My opinion about Stephen Harper began to shift last March. I met him for the first time when he was in Toronto for the official sod-turning of the tunnel to Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport. Unlike his cold and stand-offish public image, the Prime Minister was warm, gracious, and relaxed. My two grandchildren were also present. With a smile, he said to each of them, “Shake my hand, look me in the eye, and tell me your name.” He took time to chat even though the official ceremony awaited. Last month during a lengthy Q&A session at the Canadian American...

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You can go home again

My co-author, Susan Papp, and I attended a reading and book signing today at The Bookshelf, a wonderful bookstore in Guelph. Susan and I each read passages, we did a short Q&A with Frank Hasenfratz, the subject of our book, Driven To Succeed, and then Frank answered questions from the 75 or so people on hand. Barb and Doug Minett, owners of The Bookshelf, have done a terrific job in a difficult industry. Their establishment – which also offers first-run movies and has an excellent cafe – is among the best independent bookstores in Canada. For Susan and I, the event served as...

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Getting closer all the time

I have seen the new BB10 from BlackBerry and it is both sleek and slick. I viewed the touchscreen version and can report that the keys are bigger than the keys on either the iPhone or Android smartphones in the hopes that businesspeople will find the larger size helpful and won’t flee elsewhere. Overall, it looks and behaves like the PlayBook. No surprise there, the two devices share the same software. The audio and the video both work well. There are only two issues. One is that old bugbear, the developer community is slow to produce apps. Second, when exactly is...

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