Category: General

I happened to be in Montreal on this day in 2000 when Pierre Trudeau’s funeral service was held. Notre-Dame Basilica was packed with mourners so I stood outside in Place d’Armes, one among the many hundreds listening to the service on loudspeakers and saying our sad farewells. I was struck at the time by how the very architecture of the surroundings spoke to the always frosty relationship between the former prime minister and the business community. The soaring spires of the Basilica, erected in 1830, dominated one side of the square. On the opposite side stood the head office of...

There are unsung heroes in our lives who are often forgotten. I just realized recently that high on such a list are librarians. Favorite teachers, friendly neighbors, family members, we honor. But librarians do not have the same prominent profile. This revelation came to me when I recently visited the Yorkville branch of the Toronto Public Library. I had ordered a book online and a few days later received a message that it was ready for pickup. I found it myself on the reserved shelves, scanned my library card on the checkout machine, and – eureka – it was mine...

For the past couple of years, whenever I rode the subway, I always picked out the ten people sitting or standing closest to me and then counted how many of those ten were wearing masks. Nine months ago, it was six riders in masks. Three months ago it was one. Last week I was the only masked warrior. Using this methodology, Covid is over. At least in the minds of those people I was viewing at that moment in time and in that place. Another way to measure better days have arrived showed up Monday when Amazon told its employees...

There seems to be a rash of terrible deaths in recent days. Fourteen-year-olds shooting classmates. Someone being set on fire outside a school. Such events lead the news so often that we are all becoming inured to such behaviour. Let’s call it what it is: evil incarnate. I can’t put my finger on exactly when such violence had its beginnings, but my best guess would be twenty-five years ago, about when iPhones began to become all-pervasive. Contrast what is happening now to the days of your own youth. There was none of this. In my day (you knew I was...

You know you’re getting older when your youngest grandchild goes off to college. When getting out of a car takes longer than it used to. When you sometimes have to ask for people to repeat themselves. But you know things are still generally all right when you read a wondrous book like “A River Runs Through It” and revel in the wording that flows as smoothly as the rippling water described therein. When you see a shooting star in the nighttime sky. When you hold someone you love in your arms. When you bite into a juicy peach. When you...

Last night as I watched the opening of the four-day Democratic Party convention in Chicago, I was impressed by the high level of speech-making and the choreography of events. Speaker after speaker sounded like a professional with words written that seemed to come – and may have – from a small cadre of writers who produced fine work. Whether it was New York Governor Kathy Hochul, former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, or the three Bidens, daughter Ashley, First Lady Jill, or the President himself, all climbed the pinnacle to give one of the best speeches...

Of all the people I met while living in England in 1987-8, among the most memorable was Bernard Ingham, press secretary to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher was not too available to us out-of-country types, so every Monday while Parliament was in session, Ingham would brief members of the Foreign Press Association.  Journalists, myself included as a columnist for the Financial Post, who attended the Economic Summit in London in 1988, agreed that of all the briefings by staff of leaders, Ingham was the best. Not just information, either, but performance as well. Ingham’s manner was gruff, his face ruddy,...

Pardon me for blowing my own horn, but I was asked to write a column in the Saturday Business section of the Toronto Star, the largest circulation newspaper in Canada. The criteria set out was to describe people I had interviewed during my journalism career and talk about lessons I learned from those sessions. So far I’ve done five columns: Martha Billes of Canadian Tire, Conrad Black who needs no introduction, former Royal Bank president Earle McLaughlin, real estate developer Don Matthews, and grocer Galen Weston. Weston was the most recent, appearing last Saturday. The column runs biweekly so look...

Why do we read? To escape. To learn. To swim in someone’s wonderful words. To pass the time on the bus. To lull a child to sleep. But what books do we choose? Here are brief descriptions of my top ten selections for your own reading pleasure. “Surfacing” by Margaret Atwood is her best novel. For me, all others since 1973 are unreadable. A nameless narrator as alienated loser is an unusual device, to say the least, but I appreciate her anti-American stance. Only the ending confuses by offering so many possibilities. Does she stop being a victim? Pregnant, does...

A line popped out at me in an opinion piece I was reading yesterday: there are 4,350 journalists working in Ontario. In a province of 14 million, that number is so minuscule I can’t even determine what it is as a percentage of the total population. There must be more people cleaning windows right now than there are researching and writing newspaper articles. My writing career began in 1960 with the simple act of putting up my hand. As a member of the Athletic Council at John F. Ross Collegiate in Guelph, Ont., I was attending a regular meeting led...

As someone who writes for a living, you want your words to satisfy the editor of a book or a politician if you’re a speechwriter. But wordsmiths can sometimes suffer. Joe Clark once told me that when he was an aide to Robert Stanfield, then leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, he became fed up by Stanfield’s consistent refusal to use speech material that Clark wrote for him. As a result, Clark quit his job to run for Parliament in 1972 in order to champion his own ideas. Just as well for me that Clark left – I replaced him...

I am saddened to see the result of acrimonious protests at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law at Toronto Metropolitan University. Things have become so heated over the Israel-Hamas war that some Toronto law firms have said, never mind which side you’re on, we won’t be hiring you to come and work at our firm. I have never before heard of a student demonstration extinguishing a career in that individual’s hoped-for profession. When Alexander’s name was given to the law school earlier this decade, I was delighted. After all, Alexander was among the first Black lawyers to graduate from Osgoode...

Words are nothing. Words are everything. Both statements are accurate, depending on the circumstances. Some words can get used far too often and become annoying. For example, take the phrase “not so much.” I’m sure you’ve recently read some columnist who’s describing Person A in glowing terms and then goes on to compare Person A to Person B, by saying, “Person B, not so much.” As soon as I see that phrase I search for something else to read that doesn’t contain those all-too-easy, dare I say lazy, words: “not so much.” But fancy words can cause just as much...

As mistakes go, it was a small one, but the resulting cost did hit hard. I was headed this week to see my eye doctor at Toronto Western Hospital. I usually park at an asphalt lot run by Canada Wide Parking on Bathurst Street opposite the hospital. There were about thirty cars already there and just two slots left, so I was happy to get one. There’s no attendant, just a pay machine where you use a credit card. It’s a bit of a complicated setup. First, you have to enter your licence plate info so it appears on the...

I live in an apartment building at Bay and Bloor Streets in downtown Toronto. You know, where the shops are. Or should be, except they’re fast disappearing, soon to be replaced by condos. As if we don’t have enough already. Let me paint a picture for you. Walk with me one block east to Yonge and Bloor. On the southwest corner is The One, an eighty-one floor condo that’s been under construction for about four years. I don’t go too close anymore because work on the upper floors seems to require build-outs that reach over the sidewalk below. Who knows...