Rod McQueen's Blog, page 17

The next best thing

I’ve just completed an extensive project, Volume Five of the history of CIBC, covering the years 1973-1999. Four other authors wrote the previous four volumes, one of whom was Arnold Edinborough, editor and publisher of Saturday Night, so I am in good company. Research for the commissioned book included lengthy periods poring over the bank’s archives as well as conducting 150 interviews with people who worked at the bank and others who had relationships with the institution during that era. The book will be published by ECW Press later this year.
This is my twentieth book in the nearly forty years since my first, The Moneyspinners, was published in 1983. I well remember the feeling as I delivered that manuscript (produced on a typewriter in those days) to the publisher. It seemed like I was saying goodbye to an old friend. In fact, it was more like a sending a son off to war. The editors urged changes all the way from restructuring chapters to the proper use of semi-colons. Reviewers took swipes and, of course, there was the repetitive nature of a national promotional tour. I visited a dozen cities doing seven or eight interviews a day. I’d start to tell an anecdote from the book during a radio interview and then wonder, “I know I’ve told this story previously today, but have I already told it during this interview?”
As an author, people regularly tug on my drinking arm at receptions and then say, “I’ve always wanted to write a book.” I listened to numerous ideas until I finally devised an answer. “All you have to do is write 500 words a day,” I’d say. “At the end of a year, you’ll have more than 100,000 words, plenty for a book.” People would look askance, thinking, “Can it be that simple?” Of course, It’s not. Few can muster the commitment required to write every day. One who took my advice was Arthur Labatt. He wrote a wonderful book called A Different Road about how he did not want to work for the family brewers in London, Ont. Instead, he founded Trimark Investment Management, and made his fortune.
Over the years I have focused mostly on business, writing about the Eatons, Edgar Bronfman Jr. and BlackBerry, but I’ve also ghosted autobiographies for politicians including Thumper about Donald Macdonald and The Duke of Kent about Darcy McKeough. When people ask me, “What’s your favourite of all the books you’ve written,” I always reply, “The next one.” Whatever that turns out to be.

Everywhere a sign

To quote Geoffrey Chaucer, “Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote (When April with its sweet-smelling showers) The droghte of March hath perced to the roote.” (Has pierced the drought of March to the root).” Beginning at 4 a.m. coyotes bay at the rising half moon that lights up the early morning sky. Once dawn has fully arrived, we notice more activity in the pond. The pair of mallards that were there yesterday has been joined by two pairs of hooded mergansers, preening and diving beneath the water for breakfast. Compared with the mallards, the mergansers appear tiny, but both sexes offer magnificent crests with the male displaying other features: a white splash on each side of his head as well as black and white stripes toward the tail and a reddish-brown belly. And the peepers are saying their name.
At a feeder, a female pileated woodpecker makes repeated trips. Last year, there was just a male pileated making his raucous cry. Has he found a mate? Is she stoking up for egg laying? At one point, while she is feeding, there’s a three-bird line-up patiently waiting their turn: both the male and female hairy woodpecker and a blue jay. Once they’re all satiated (for now) the chickadees flit in while juncos forage below for scraps on the deck. Two butterflies adorn the freshening air: one is black with lacy white; the other, brown and gold.
The garden also shows propitious signs. Red pokes in the soil announce that the peonies have survived. Hosta and day lilies have sent up two-inch sprouts. A coneflower has a clutch of tiny green leaves at the base of last year’s plant. Some clean-up will be required … but not today.
In the woods, the path is clear and dry with some snow patches left in low-lying areas. In the days to come, woodland flowers will bloom: trout lily, dutchman’s breeches and trilliums. The warblers will return, as they always do. I once knew a man, now dead, who claimed he could mimic the songs of all fifty-plus warblers in North America. I never heard anything from his repertoire; I took him at his word. Who would lie about such a thing? Nor can spring lie; it is here.

The challenge of change

The trouble with Erin O’Toole is his job title: Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. As long as the Conservative leader retains that role, he won’t get any respect from the Ottawa press corps. I know whereof I speak. After all, I was press secretary to Robert Stanfield from 1970-1975 through two losing elections, back in the day when it was the Progressive Conservative Party. As Stanfield once said, “If I walked on water across the Rideau Canal, the headlines would read, ‘Stanfield can’t swim.’”
That’s because most journalists then and now are left of centre, more likely to give positive coverage to the Liberals or New Democrats. Finding divisions among the members of O’Toole’s caucus is their daily delight. The dismissal of an MP who accepted a $131 campaign donation from a questionable source is just one example of how little things can end up meaning a lot.
But O’Toole does himself harm because he hasn’t put forward a consistent message. On Friday night his address to the party policy convention was filled with high-falutin’ rhetoric about change. For the life of me, I couldn’t tell you what exactly he wanted to change. Or more important, what he wanted to change to. As for climate change, the Luddites in his party even rejected the milquetoast phrase, “Climate change is real. “
O’Toole’s speech was likely the first time many Canadians heard anything directly from him. What a missed opportunity. I believe that an opposition party doesn’t win an election based on its policies. They come to power because the voters decide that the current bunch needs to be thrown out. O’Toole should have spent much of his address reminding people of the Liberal Party’s failures. He could have cited Justin Trudeau’s holiday travel, the WE scandal, the inability to choose an appropriate Governor General or head of the Armed Forces and the laggardly COVID-19 vaccine program. Voters need to be shaken loose from their previous support of the government and put in a mood to jettison them and embrace another. Only then will Erin O’Toole stand a chance of winning. Presuming that he has along the way won over his own recalcitrant MPs.

Half a life

Everybody is suffering due to the COVID-19 pandemic: death of a loved one, the fear of illness and the relentless loneliness that grips so many. Of those who enjoy good health, I believe that the group who will bear the heaviest long-term cost are high school students. Think back to your own youth. You might be loved and well taken care of at home, but where you really wanted to be was with your friends at school, playing team sports, participating in clubs and choir, or just hanging out. What might seem simply like fun activities are actually lessons in leadership, gaining social skills and figuring out who you can trust.
Today‘s young people are missing so much. They lack ready access to part-time or summer jobs where getting paid for work accomplished teaches independence, entrepreneurialism and exactly who you want to be when you grow up. As a teenager I worked retail where I helped quietly increase all sticker prices by 15 percent and then watched two weeks later as the store announced a 20-percent-off sale. One year I was night clerk at a motel where I learned what the members of the local baseball team did after games and who they did it with. Another summer, my role on the production line at a dairy spurred me to go to university. I concluded that I did not want to spend my life doing such repetitive tasks.
Beyond such work and what it brings, imagine how students are suffering on a daily basis as they sit all alone during online learning. A majority of them say Zoom school it is not anywhere near as enriching as in-class teaching. They worry that grades given will be lower than they otherwise would have been under the usual methodology. As a result, those in their final years in high school fear that they may not have good enough marks to get into the university of their choice. Their self-confidence will forever be eroded.
It has been said that youth is wasted on the young. Never has it been more true.

The red coat syndrome

The head of a pension plan loses his job because he got a vaccine shot on foreign soil. A veteran journalist is told to resign because of something he may or may not have said two years ago. A governor undergoes an independent inquiry because of complaints by two former staffers. And Charlie Rose is toast. I miss him still.
Welcome to the cancel culture where your life’s work and reputation can be destroyed in an instant. What has happened to us? Where is the forgiveness factor that used to be more freely given? Meanwhile, a former president continues to command adoration from millions of followers who can’t swallow enough of his lies.
It’s easy to blame social media for the cancel culture because it is an active and faceless foe. But that very ability to attack without evidence by repeating someone else’s allegations affords a protective shield no police force could match. The whole thing reminds me of the woman accused of adultery in The Scarlet Letter, shunned by society, living in a cottage in the woods. In those earlier times, failing to meet the community’s standards was so unusual it was fodder for a book. These days, it seems like there are fresh outings on every newscast.
When I was about ten, a bunch of us decided we’d pepper a passing car with snowballs. In our exuberance, we broke a window, but I was the only one who got caught. The driver identified me by my distinctive red coat. I paid for the damage over time from my weekly allowance. I never ratted out any other perpetrator.
Ever since, I’ve tended to be on the side of someone who pays the price while others go free. I know what it’s like, on a small scale, to be sure. Maybe that’s why the cancel culture is such an anathema. I detest the crowing that ensues when someone comes a cropper. Hasn’t everyone done or said something wrong? Maybe many times over? They just haven’t got caught.

Fredrik S. Eaton 1938-2021

About eighteen months ago I was early for lunch with a member at one of Toronto’s finest clubs. I was guided to a sitting area to wait for my host. As I began to take a seat, I realized Fred Eaton was a couple of chairs away, waiting for his lunch companion. I had not seen Fred since my book on the demise of the family department store some twenty years ago.
“I’m Rod McQueen,” I said. “I know who you are,” he harrumphed. I sat down nearby anyway and for the next five-to-eight minutes we had a conversation that got warmer as time passed about a number of topics including the success of our respective sons. Fred had given me a lengthy interview for my book, but when it came out, he was quoted in the Toronto Star saying that he planned “to form a committee to horsewhip me.”
Fred did well when he ran Eaton’s in the 1980s as a result of a strong economy and an extraordinary executive officer named Greg Purchase. In 1991, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney named Fred as Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. He took up his post as only an Eaton could by bringing along a Rolls-Royce for town use and a yacht for holiday-making.
While he was abroad, younger brother George ran the shop until they declared bankruptcy. In a privately published memoir that came out recently, Fred wrote mostly about sailing and hunting but he did talk about retailing. He blamed George for the sad, final turn of events. In fact, the thesis of my book had been that Eaton’s was on a downward slide since the 1930s. As one who conducted extensive research on the family, I can say that Fred lived an estimable life. In addition to representing Canada with distinction, he was a philanthropist of note, lending his name and his fortune to many causes, particularly health care and the arts.
As for our relationship, I don’t say he forgave me or forgot the stories in my book. But our conversation that day showed he was a good and gracious man. Even when there was no need to be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shout it out

Do you find yourself shouting at the television these days because your Covid-19 fatigue has reached new heights? We do. A favourite target for our ire is Justin Trudeau who regularly assures us that the vaccine program is “on track.” At one press briefing he must have used the phrase half a dozen times. All of which is punctuated by his quick intakes of breath, an unlikely but annoying leftover from his days as a drama teacher. In fact, the only Canadians I know who have received shots are both in their 90s and live in retirement homes. They deserve the early help; some of us might get a jab by June. Some “on”, some “track.”
Chrystia Freeland is another irritator who has taken on airs. Have you seen her media interviews, conducted in what appears to be a specially created stage set complete with desk and backdrop? She wears a wide smile, demonstrates unnecessarily with her hands, speaks in what can only be described as a simpering tone and repeats the journalist’s name several times. The overall effect is unctuous, to say the least.
TV ads for products and services are little better. The slip-and-fall lawyers are particularly galling as are burger outlets with takeout offerings stacked so high with jalapenos that you’d need a firehose to actually eat one. And what about all those new drugs with spiffy names that are plugged on the evening news reports of the American networks? The accompanying camera work showing footage of families at play is meant to take your mind off the announcer’s palaver about multiple possible side effects. The upshot is that it would seem no one could possibly live through a month’s prescription usage without contracting some fatal condition.
In Sao Paulo, Brazil, an entrepreneur has opened a “rage room” where, for about C$6, you can enter, grab a hammer and then smash old computers and printers until your stress about Covid has been safely assuaged. In Canada, maybe there could be a hockey room where you take slap shots at a fake goalie or throw ready-made snowballs at leering faces pasted to the walls. Me, I don’t need any such outlet. I’ve got my television to shout at.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where were my eyes yesterday?

It’s coming up on a year since the pandemic began and, oh, how our lives have changed. No theatre, no art galleries, too few times with family. You’re left with asking people what they’re recommending among Netflix offerings. The Dig, with Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes tops my list. As for Ozark, after sitting through too many bizarre plot twists and grisly incidents, we abandoned the series early in the second season.
But there’s a whole other world out there, one that’s always been around, we just haven’t paid as much attention as we should. The moon is a prime example. I once drove at dusk to a parking lot near Lake Ontario to watch the rising of a so-called super moon. And from time to time paid attention to the crescent moon, just because it was such a sliver in the sky. Now, I’m always on the lookout for the next phase, or discovering the name of the full moon. Last month’s was the Wolf Moon, so I was told, named after wolves foraging for food.
Then there’s the sun. On Florida’s Gulf Coast, people gather every night on the beach to watch the disc of the sun sink slowly into the water. There always seemed to be someone playing the bagpipes. But that was just a holiday thing. These days I know the exact time of every sunrise and sunset and will position myself as often as possible to see both or either on any given day.
No one was sadder than I to miss the December 21 “great conjunction” of Saturn and Jupiter, the first since mediaeval times. For several days before and after the magic moment, it was always cloudy so I missed the reuniting. Other reunions of a sort occur when I call someone I haven’t talked to in months. I always come away feeling better. I hope they do, too.
As for walks, now I never miss a day. In the woods with moose prints in the snow. In a park past the statue of Edward VII. On semi-deserted streets in Toronto. I recently discovered the iPhone I’ve had for two years has an app that’s been counting my steps whether I cared or not. Now I care! I haven’t hit the 10,000 steps in a day sought by aficionados, but one day last week I reached 9,309. It’s like I’m in training for I know not what. So, yes, I’ve learned a lot about cases, lockdowns, variants and antibodies. But I’ve also learned a lot more about life and how to live it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The power gap

Robyn Doolittle, along with half a dozen colleagues at the Globe and Mail, has spent months investigating the status of women in the workplace. Usually, such studies just look at business, but this work not only covered public companies, but also universities, cities, cultural institutions, hospitals, police services, and not-for-profit organizations. What they found, published on Saturday, was that while pay was still a problem, “what really stood out was the overall lack of women. At entity after entity, women were dramatically outnumbered. In the higher bands of salaries, it wasn’t unusual to see five times more men.”
The problem wasn’t just at the top. “We noticed they also seemed to be underrepresented among vice-presidents, directors, managers and supervisors.” Their conclusion: “The wage gap was a problem, no question. But the term seemed inadequate in describing what we were seeing: This was a power gap.”
I have followed this issue closely for twenty-five years. In the 1990s, while at the Financial Post, I launched an annual feature called “The 50 Most Powerful Women” in order to honour and highlight those who’d made it to leadership roles as well as encourage other women to strive for similar heights. Progress since has been paltry. Society now needs to take drastic steps so that women, who comprise more than half the people in most organizations, get the future they deserve.
There already exists an organization that could assume a leadership role to at least alter the lacklustre approach by public companies: the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC). The OSC is currently undergoing a review by the Government of Ontario. Among the seventy recommendations made by the task force in its report released last Friday, publicly listed companies are exhorted to increase to 50 percent the number of female directors and executive managers within five years.
But there’s no declared punishment for slackers. In 2015, the OSC urged business to increase the numbers of women on boards and then describe in annual reports how they complied or, if not, explain why. Far too many firms neither complied nor explained. No penalties ensued. Let’s attach teeth to those targets recommended by the task force. Without goals and consequences, too many accomplished women will continue to remain mired in middle management.

The dogs of war

When I think back to my time as bureau chief in Washington, D.C., for the Financial Post, it feels so long ago compared to what is happening now it might well have been the Pleistocene Age when mammoths walked the earth. During my posting from 1989-1993, Washington was an idyllic spot troubled only by a few eccentricities. As Jack Kennedy quipped: “Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.”
Pansies bloomed all winter when the worst that could happen was a forecast of an inch or two of snow. The federal government would promptly send everyone home. Residents would clean out their local Safeway in preparation for the Armageddon that never came. Spring arrived six weeks earlier than in Toronto; magnolia grandiflora presided over front lawns. Redbud lit up the rural roads.
To be sure, there were problems in south-east D.C. where most of the Blacks lived while the privileged white folks inhabited tony Georgetown with its rows of federal-style red brick homes. But the people in charge and their places of work were held in high regard. Standing amid other journalists in the Oval Office was an honour. Hearings on Capitol Hill produced knowledgable witnesses and thoughtful outcomes.
Today’s Washington is unrecognizable. Donald Trump, the 45th president, has disgraced the office. Partisan politics dominates; Congressional compromises are rare. There are too few individuals fighting for a good cause. Networks and Internet sites have become raucus platforms for their narrow views. Perversely, the attack on Capitol Hill seemed aided and abetted by some guards who should have been repelling the mob.
Trump, who incited the murderous siege, doesn’t likely know much Shakespeare, but he would readily salute this call to arms from the playwright’s Julius Caesar, ”Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.” Given the sorry state of affairs in Washington and elsewhere in the U.S,, those slavering dogs will be running amok for a long while yet.