Rod McQueen's Blog, page 10

The strange silence of songbirds

Think about the number of songs with the names of American cities in the title. I’m sure I could cite one from every state: New York, New York, I Left my Heart in San Francisco, Wichita Lineman, By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Tallahassee Lassie, Viva Las Vegas, Streets of Laredo, Hollywood Nights, Philadelphia Freedom, Chicago, Do You Know the Way to San Jose. You get the idea. Even a mere spot on the American map merits a mention. Jackson Browne wrote the first line, “Well, I’m standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona,” Glenn Frey finished the rest, and Take it Easy became a big hit for The Eagles.
Compare that with Canada where I can count the number of song titles containing Canadian cities on the fingers of one hand: Sudbury Saturday Night, by Stompin’ Tom Connors, Runnin’ Back to Saskatoon by The Guess Who, and Bobcaygeon by The Tragically Hip. Even one of Canada’s most prolific songwriters, Gordon Lightfoot, gave us only one song with a Canadian place name, Alberta Bound. To get the list all the way up to my fifth finger I have to include Helpless, by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young where Neil Young managed to sneak the words “There is a town in North Ontario” into the lyrics.
The list of Canadian singers without a Canadian place name in any of their top songs is lengthy: Shania Twain, Celine Dion, Micheal Bublé, Nickelback, k.d. lang, Blue Rodeo, Hank Snow, Leonard Cohen, The Weeknd, Diana Krall, and Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Even our most famous songbird, Anne Murray is silent on Canadian cities. As if to prove my point, the most recent Canadian songster to gain fame in the U.S., William Prince, has done a duet with Willie Nelson and appeared on the Grand Ole Opry in February. There are no Canadian cities in his titles. 
Is this some sort of conspiracy? An oversight? My suspicion is that they don’t want to tempt fate in the U.S. market by singing about some Canadian city that the Americans never heard of. I can almost understand that way of thinking for someone early in their career, but once established, you’d think they’d feel a little freer to celebrate their home country without fretting they’d suddenly be ditched by American fans.
Or maybe they’re representing Canadians exactly the way we are, hiding under a huge inferiority complex. The most we can muster to Americans is, “We’re different from you.” Why don’t we say we’re the same as you, only better? Why not strive to be foremost? That would be the best song of all.  

Offside!

David Johnston, the former governor general, has a new book out called Empathy. Empathy, by his definition, is knowing someone’s need and stepping in to help. The book shines when Johnston reveals personal anecdotes. Early in the book, for example, he talks about his prowess as young hockey player. A Junior A scout came to his house, gave Johnston’s mother his hat, and she planned to make tea. The scout’s opening line was how, if Johnston played Junior A, he would not graduate high school because all his time would be spent on the sport.
Johnston’s mother quickly returned the scout’s hat and he was out the door. Johnston later attended Harvard on a three-quarter scholarship, graduated magna cum laude, went to Cambridge, and was head of two Canadian universities. He was forever grateful for his mother’s intervention. Johnston also is open about how much he has learned from his wife, Sharon, and their five daughters.
However, some of his recommendations about how empathy should become part of our lives are banal. He says we should follow The Golden Rule. Wow. He also says we should say hello to strangers and wave at bicyclists as they pass by. Both of those greetings might work on a quiet street in a rural village but not too well in large cities. And, oh by the way, he admits maybe it wouldn’t work for women.
But the most galling parts of the book are the best written by ghostwriter Brian Hanington. Johnston calls him a “magician” with words. And indeed he is. But some of his passages have no relevance to the topic at hand. One tale describes how writer-director George Lucas’s work on American Graffiti and Star Wars is all about community involvement, a stretch if there ever was one.
Johnston has recently been on the carpet for other reasons. When Justin Trudeau named him as rapporteur to investigate foreign influence in recent federal elections, I thought it was an excellent choice until I learned he and Justin are good friends and neighbours at their respective cottages in the Laurentians. I did not know he was on the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation until he resigned. That had provided another point of harmony with the prime minister. Can Johnston really keep all that at bay when he writes his report? Johnston’s name used to be pristine. His new book won’t help on the road to redemption.

A life lives on

In all the shuffling involving Onex Corp. and RBC Wealth Management, an important element is getting lost. The name of the former investment firm, Gluskin Sheff + Associates, is disappearing even though it’s at the heart of this deal. Onex bought Gluskin Sheff from the founders, Ira Gluskin and Gerry Sheff, for $445 million in 2019 and made the team of financial advisors part of Onex.
That deal didn’t last long. Four of the Gluskin, Sheff stalwarts were recently preparing to move to RBC. Rather than let them go, Onex decided all of the forty-one people at the firm should be allowed to go to RBC. Are you with me so far? Then, in the most inexplicable part of the whole transaction, according to the Globe and Mail, Onex said RBC didn’t have to pay anything for picking up the entire crew. How this make sense I do not know.
My real point about this is that I want to salute Ira and Gerry, who have long since retired. I never met Sheff, but I did interview Ira Gluskin a few times and he was one of the oddest and brainiest people I’ve ever interviewed. I was ushered into a boardroom for one of our sessions so I took the seat to the immediate left of the head of the table. I assumed Gluskin would take the top chair. Instead, he walked down the other side of the table and chose the last seat of a dozen about ten meters from me.
As if that weren’t crazy enough, he slid down so far I could barely see his curly-haired and bespectacled head above the table. He was, however, articulate, and enjoyed making wry remarks about specific players on Bay Street as well as the business community in general.|
But such views will not be his main legacy. Instead it will be the philanthropy of Gluskin and his wife, Maxine Granovsky Gluskin. Their first major donation was for the 1994 showing of French impressionists at the Art Gallery of Ontario from the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Their gift was a reputed $1 million. The couple has since made bequests to the University of Toronto, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the United Way, among many others. So Ira, I’m sorry to see the fabled firm’s name disappearing, but your name will live on in the community. And I’m sure that’s how you’d rather have it.

Chaos and disorder

It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. Everywhere you turn these days the world seems to be coming apart at the seams. Climate change, global warming and greenhouse gases are causing flooding in Africa, ten feet of snow in California, Colorado lows, and tornadoes touching down whenever and wherever they want.
In the cities, everything seems to be coming asunder. Toronto is now more congested than New York, meth addicts are all too visible on the streets, and a gang of girls as young as thirteen swarm and beat a homeless man minding his own business on a bench. 
A retired and beloved CBC employee is randomly shoved on the Danforth and dies. Women are beaten on the streets or pushed in front of subway trains. Persons unknown demand Canada Goose coats off the backs of their owners. 
There are no longer any rules of the road. Drivers, three at a time, zoom through red lights rather than wait two more minutes for their left turn. In Quebec a bus driver rams into a school. A few days later a copycat intentionally mows down pedestrians. In Vancouver, drivers and their passengers blocked from crossing a bridge because a man in the middle claims he’s ready to jump into the river below, shout at him to get on with his suicide.
A proxy war in far-off Ukraine threatens to cause a global calamity. Previously healthy banks show the frailty of the financial system by collapsing. Central banks driving up interest rates to slow inflation fail to achieve their goals while wreaking havoc on small businesses forced into bankruptcy and beleaguered families who can’t make ends meet. 
What’s the cause for all this chaos, trauma, and stress? The Covid-19 pandemic? The abandonment of churches by their flocks? Disintegration of the ties that bind?
Where is the light that shines in our darkness? Not in the hide-the-truth Justin Trudeau. Not in the dotty Joe Biden. There’s only one place left to turn. We must find the light within ourselves.

The lost cause

There’s been a lot of ink spilled in recent days about the closing of the thirteen Nordstrom stores in Canada. I feel badly for the 2,500 employees who will lose their jobs and the mall owners that have to fill the empty spaces. As a loyal Nordstrom shopper who has bought goods in U.S.-based Nordstrom stores over the years while visiting in New York, Florida, and California, no one was happier than I was when Nordstrom first arrived in Canada in 2014. 
I was well served with outlets. There was a Nordstrom in the Eaton Centre, a short subway ride away, and a Nordstrom Rack at Yonge and Bloor, a five-minute walk from where I live. But neither of them was a real Nordstrom, like I was used to. For the greater part of its existence, the menswear department at the Eaton Centre did not even carry the popular shirt I regularly bought in the U.S. Nordstrom, the Smartcare button-down. As for Nordstrom Rack, which carries good quality items in the U.S., the Toronto store did not even come close. I went there once; the stuff was universally junk. The socks felt like the cheapest from China. And staff? They were non-existent.
Separate from the off-price Nordstrom Rack, the quality of some Nordstrom items was also poor compared with other vendors in Canada. During the last year I happened to buy three pairs of pyjamas, one pair at Harry Rosen, another at Dapper Depot Menswear in Orillia (I get around!) and the third at Nordstrom. The first two stores provided good quality. The pyjamas from Nordstrom shrank in the wash.
The departure of Nordstrom has also been linked with the brief, unhappy stay in Canada of Target. I’ve read that both Nordstrom and Target were too upscale for price-conscious Canadian consumers. Such a claim is nonsense on stilts. I used to shop at Target in Cloverdale Mall in Toronto’s west end. I’d go with a list of household, paper and other products. Half the items I wanted would often be out of stock. So don’t give me any guff about how hard both Nordstrom or Target tried. We got only a half-hearted effort. Bye bye, Nordstrom, I wish it were otherwise, but I won’t miss you.

Play ball!

I love baseball. With players now in spring training, I begin to look forward to the season. I usually attend half a dozen Blue Jays games as part of a group with shared seats just six rows behind the Jays’ dugout. 
But changes are afoot, and I fear for the game. In the last couple of years, Major League Baseball tried to speed up games by automatically putting a man on second base if the game went into extra innings. That was minor compared with this year’s numerous new rules. For example, pitchers and batters will have fifteen seconds to get set and for a pitch to be thrown. No more batter backing out of the box, taking several practice swings; no more pitcher going to the resin bag a second time. And the pitcher can only throw over to first base twice for pickoff attempts.
In addition, bases will be larger, presumably to allow more runners to slide in safely. There’s no more infield shift, moving players to the side of the infield where a batter usually hits. We’re told all this and other changes will mean that the average game will last about 2-1/2 hours, not the three hours it now takes.
Professional basketball, football, and hockey all have quarters or periods that last a specific amount of time. Baseball is the only major league sport where there has been no clock. As a result, you conceivably could go to a baseball game and never come home, waiting all the while for the game with a tied score to be concluded. To me, such a languid pace is perfect. 
Rogers Centre, home to the Blue Jays, has carried out its own foolish alterations. They’ve reduced the number of seats by 3,000 and put in more dining chairs, tables, and drinking areas. They’ve even created standing room around the spot where a relief pitcher warms up so people can leer down at him. Is nothing sacred? Stadium officials say they’re trying to bring in spectators who wouldn’t normally attend. I can’t see how more non-fans in the stands will improve the game.
Beyond that particular dumbing down, I’m sure you get my point. A baseball game is like Beethoven’s Ninth. You could play it faster, but why would you?

Oh Canada!

A few years ago, I spent most of a day with six men huddled over a bank of computers and green-glowing radar screens deep within Cheyenne Mountain, 500 meters below a rough-hewn granite peak near Colorado Springs, Colorado. At one point, a buzzer sounded, a bell rang, and a wall light flashed red. An unidentified blip had popped onto a screen in the missile warning centre, a 10m by 10m low-ceilinged room at North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad).
The duty officer snatched a beige phone from its cradle and was instantly linked to Norad command post, another nearby room within the mountain’s hardened core. “Missile initiating,” he said. “Secure com[munications] in progress.” Within sixty seconds, seven officials in the military chain of command were on the line, waiting on every word.
The deputy commander of Norad was a Canadian, as is the case today. They quickly concluded that the missile was just another test, one of more than two hundred fired by the Russians that year. Whether it’s an unknown missile, a friendly launch from Cape Canaveral, or debris tumbling out of orbit and headed for earth, Norad sees every sparrow fall.
Norad was created in 1957 to centralize continental defence against Russian bombers. Recently, Norad has been tracking an increasing number of unknown objects floating across North America. Just a few days ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took to Twitter to say, “I ordered the takedown of an unidentified object that violated Canadian air space.” After that bit of bravado, it was made clear that Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden had conferred by phone. The announcement was made that both leaders had ordered the takedown over Yukon.
But just how collective is our activity? In 2010, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper talked about buying sixty-four F-35 fighter jets for $9 billion to replace our four-decade-old CF-18s but then did nothing. When Trudeau and U.S. President Donald Trump met in 2017 they issued a joint statement saying that Norad “illustrates the strength of our mutual commitment.” The statement also said that the U.S. welcomed Canada’s plan to immediately acquire eighteen new Super Hornet aircraft to supplement the CF-18s. That has not yet happened, either.
In 2022, the Trudeau government promised $40 billion over the next twenty years to upgrade Norad. If the past is prologue, most of that money will never get spent as we continue to rely totally on the United States for our defence. Oh, Canada!

Ghosts in the pages

The first ghost-written modern-day book that I am aware of is the autobiography of Lee Iacocca, published in 1984. As CEO of Chrysler Corp., he resurrected the company. Right on the cover are the words “With William Novak.” Novak was reputedly paid $1 million for the collaboration. Every ghostwriter since has sought that same cover line “with.” Few have been paid in the seven figures.
My first role as a ghost was for Sean O’Sullivan. At twenty, elected an MP in 1972, he was the youngest parliamentarian at the time. He won again in 1974 and then, in 1977, resigned his seat to become a priest. In 1985, he asked me to be his ghostwriter. I had written other books, but this was my first as a ghost, or in this case, the Holy Ghost. I called Ron Graham, who had ghosted the successful 1984 autobiography of Jean Chretien, Straight from the Heart. Graham’s recipe: thirty-five hours of interviews yields a 1,000-word transcript, enough for a 300-page manuscript. I followed the formula and recorded O’Sullivan’s recollections, including poignant descriptions of his recent diagnosis with leukaemia. I sat down on May 1, 1986, and by working eighteen-hour days, wrote a 100,000-word first draft in a month. I’ve written many books since, but that month was the most fun I’ve ever had writing. Both my Houses: From Politics to Priesthood, was published that fall.
I’ve done two other ghosting jobs since: Thumper, about Donald S. Macdonald, and The Duke of Kent, about Darcy McKeough. I was a “with” in both cases. The key to such memoirs is to submerge yourself and capture the voice of the subject. You want their best friend to read it and say, “That sounds like him.”
All these thoughts sprang to mind when I read in a recent issue of The New Yorker about J.R. Moehringer, the ghost who wrote Spare, Prince Harry’s memoir. After quoting Harry as saying he once looked at Hamlet and decided not to read it or any other Shakespearean play, the ghost goes on to gild the lily with exact phrases from The Tempest, King Lear and the shunned Hamlet. He also used Americanisms such as “on the fritz.” Such writing is not an accurate depiction of Harry; this is just the ghost showing off. Moehringer is more novelist than truth-teller and the book suffers as a result.

Same old, same old

Canada has been a whipping boy forever. The references to our incapacities are legion. In Sean Connery’s last James Bond film, Diamonds are Forever, Bond’s enemy in that 1971 movie was Blofeld who had taken up a position on an oil rig where he operated a laser satellite that had already blown up nuclear weapons in China and North Korea. As Blofeld sought other targets, the dot on his world map indicating a possible strike point crossed over Canada. He said something like, “If we hit Canada, it would be a long time before anyone knew.”
These days, The Economist ranks us number two (after Hong Kong) among the countries with the best business environment. What a joke! To me, all that seems to be happening is that U.S. firms are acquiring our best and brightest companies. As for the government of Justin Trudeau, daily they announce more money to build Canada’s business environment, but little help actually gets to the firms in need.
That’s just one among the many issues that makes Canadians angry these days. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre rode that anger until his party is seven points ahead in the national polls. Recently, he has wisely begun to expand his talking points so he can convince other Canadians that he is more than just a leader for the cantankerous.
In Winnipeg, for example, he met with a journalist whose opening line was, “You’ve been highly criticized for limiting the amount of questions you take from the media.” Yet, said Poilievre, “I’m taking all your questions.” She admitted she had been given no time constraints and didn’t have to submit questions in advance. Poilievre went on to say that the only journalists he wouldn’t meet were in the Parliamentary Press Gallery because they just “regurgitate Justin Trudeau’s talking points.”
That sounds all too familiar to me. I was press secretary to Opposition Leader Robert Stanfield through two elections, 1972 and 1974, both won by Justin’s father Pierre. After Stanfield was replaced as leader in 1976 by Joe Clark, Clark asked for a memo about the media. My main recommendation was for Clark to stay away from the Parliamentary Press Gallery, they were all cowed by Pierre Trudeau. Instead, Clark should get out into the country where journalists would be more likely to report his message without any filter. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Then and now

Paul Waldie’s story in The Globe and Mail today reminds me how lucky we Globe readers are to have such excellent coverage on the war in Ukraine as well as its impact elsewhere. The piece, a heart-wrenching story about abusive treatment of Ukrainian refugees by Russians living in the former East Germany was just one of many situations on which Globe journalists have recently reported. In addition, Waldie usually manages to write his weekly instalment about someone in Canada who has donated to a good cause.
I don’t mean to focus solely on Waldie because Globe coverage of Ukraine is also carried out by Mark MacKinnon, Nathan VanderKlippe, and Rome-based Eric Reguly who in December landed the “big get,” an interview with Sergii Marchenko, Ukraine’s finance minister. MacKinnon, for example, had a thoughtful piece earlier this week that interpreted how Putin, a former KBG agent, runs the military. When it’s helpful the Globe runs pieces by writers from Associated Press or the New York Times.
By contrast to such intensive coverage as the Globe provides, television networks all tend to sameness: footage of bombed-out buildings, rocket launchers firing at unseen targets, or men moving among walls on their way to who-knows-where. A good print journalist supplies context, information from knowledgeable sources, and depth.
Beyond the war in Ukraine, the Globe has other excellent reporters including justice writer Sean Fine as well as Robert Fife who breaks more stories in a week than most other Ottawa-based journalists produce in a year.
Maybe I’m focused more on the Globe’s coverage at the moment because I just finished reading Big Men Fear Me, Mark Bourrie’s excellent biography of George McCullagh, who owned the Globe from 1936-52 then died when he was only forty-seven.
In those days, newspaper owners were all-powerful, pulling strings at Queen’s Park and in Ottawa. Bourrie conducted extensive research and brings that era to life with vivid descriptions of everyone and everything from Ontario Premier Mitch Hepburn to the Klu Klux Klan. I’m happy that newspaper owners are more reticent these days, but happier still that in-depth coverage continues to keep us informed and involved.