Rod McQueen's Blog, page 18

Scribble, scribble

I just finished writing a book. It was a four-year-long project. You’d think I’d want to take some time off but you’d be wrong. When you’ve been writing pretty much every day since Grade Twelve, you get twitchy when you’re not typing away at something. The whole thing started with a weekly high school news column in my hometown paper, the Guelph Mercury. I was paid nine cents a column inch. It was due Monday morning so I’d sit down at 9 p.m. on a Sunday night and write until I fell asleep. My forty inches of copy earned $3.60, enough to take my then girlfriend to the movies on Friday night and for chips with gravy and cherry Cokes after. What’s not to like about this, I thought.

Since then I have written countless newspaper features, opinion columns, magazine profiles and executive speeches, but mostly books, twenty of them, all non-fiction. I‘ve tried fiction but I’m terrible at it. It’s tough for a non-fiction writer to give himself permission to make things up. Books take a lot of work, up to 150 interviews, extensive archival digging, and the relentless habit of writing 500 words every day for eighteen months, then re-writing, editing and proofreading.

My books have generally sold well but not because of good reviews. Reviewers always say desultory things, as if they feel it’s their calling to find something wrong with everything they read. Moreover, bookstores seem to give your books poor display. Doug Gibson, who published my first book in 1983, advised me never to go into a bookstore looking for my book because I wouldn’t be able to find it. And if I did go in and couldn’t find it, don’t ask staff where it is, he said, because they will say that they’ve never heard of it.

Promotional tours involved ten-city cross-country trips with eight interviews a day in each city. No one conducting an interview had ever read the book. That was OK, you just took charge. But you’d be part way through a radio interview, getting ready to tell one of your better anecdotes, then think, “I know I’ve already told this story today, but have I told it during this interview?”

As you can see, there’s a lot to dislike about publishing a book. But as with most things in life, it’s about the journey, not the destination.

The ghosts of Christmas past

The earliest Christmas dinner celebrations I can remember occurred at my maternal grandparent’s home in the west end of Toronto. They just had a small bungalow but somehow my mother, father, me, my mother’s brother, his wife and their two children who were both younger than me, could all squeeze around the dining room table with our hosts.

In my mind, the turkey was the size of my elder cousin and carved with gusto, after much sharpening of the knife on a whetstone, by my grandfather. My grandmother always ate the roundish nub at the turkey’s rear, something she called the pope’s nose. The event took days of preparation and much scurrying to and fro in the kitchen by the ladies. Men were not allowed.

About ten days before Christmas there was always a party for employees where my father worked in Guelph. He was in charge of entertainment for the kids that consisted of a two-reeler including a feature film, numerous shorts, news items and cartoons. The movie canisters arrived by bus a week ahead so my father always previewed everything at home, an evening occasion when I got to invite half a dozen friends. In the days when television was still in its infancy, such an event was much prized.

In this year of the Covid Christmas, we will be having none of the usual family gatherings for roast beef on Christmas Eve followed by turkey and all the trimmings on Christmas Day. That’s why I’m revelling in such former youthful times as well as recalling Christmas dinners during various adult years spent in London, England, Paris, France, and Washington, D.C.

I imagine there will be many families suffering a similar drought this year. Cousins will not be flying in from some foreign land; in-laws won’t be driving from Ottawa to join the festivities. And that’s okay, too. For me, Christmas has always been as much about times past as times present. This year will be very different in that regard. And not just because there will be fewer gatherings, but because we not only have our fond memories but also the promise and the premise of a better future next year.

So, enjoy, however you’re celebrating. Good cheer at Christmas and good health in 2021.

Death and indifference

Have we all become inured to deaths caused by Covid-19? Every day the front page of our newspapers and the top of the broadcast news highlight the number of new cases and the mounting death toll. Odious comparisons are made with other jurisdictions; pundits talk about deaths per one hundred thousand; words such circuit-breaker and lockdown take on new meanings.

Obituaries cite Covid as the cause of death. But, the problem is that there is no means of grieving. Funeral services will be held at some future, unspecified, date. There’s havoc being wreaked in long-term care facilities where those who die in such woebegone places or hospital ICU units are not surrounded by loving family as in the past.

Moreover, many individuals have turned social distancing into full avoidance. We have become paranoid about someone coming toward us who is not wearing a mask. A sneeze or a cough let loose nearby sends us scuttling for safety. The paucity of concerts, movies, gallery outings and the like have turned us into hermits. For some, a barbecue restaurant doing business when it should have been closed, becomes a flashpoint for irate “freedom” fighters, one of whom spat at police

During all these shenanigans there is too little community-based activity and not enough thought for the plight of others. What is happening to our world? While no one wants to die, is this the sort of place anyone would want to live? What if we survive and the world is forever changed because caring has disappeared? Let us hope that, after the cure, kindness returns.

 

Make haste slowly

The just-released memoir by former Bank of Montreal CEO Tony Comper is an unusual achievement. To the best of my knowledge, no other Big Five Bank CEO in the modern era has published a memoir. In “Personal Account,” Comper writes that he didn’t want to follow the usual “when I was three” chronological rendition. Instead, he picked out twenty-five incidents in his business life that demonstrate qualities of leadership or character. Among them is his explanation how he went into banking rather than join the priesthood or become a professor teaching Chaucer.

With help from Calgary-based ghostwriter Bruce Dowbiggin, Comper also describes how he left the path to become a branch manager by accepting an appointment in computer systems even though he took a salary cut. The move paid off; at thirty-two in 1978 he was named a vice-president, the youngest ever in the bank’s history. There are also chapters explaining how he increased the number of female executives and one where he defends CEO compensation, although not too successfully.

(Full disclosure: after his wife Elizabeth died in 2014, LifeTales editor Eloise Lewis and I helped Comper publish Liz’s speeches about FAST, the organization she and Tony had established, Fighting Antisemitism Together.) Comper credits his success in banking to being what he calls a “catastrophizer,” someone who visualizes all the things that could possibly go wrong in a new project and tries to ensure that none of them happen. Another secret to is “to do the right thing” which is hardly novel but all-too-rarely practiced in the business world.

Comper’s philosophy during his forty-year career was “festina lente” translated as “make haste slowly.” It seemed to work. In retirement since 2007, he is a philanthropist, has a real estate portfolio, as well as curators overseeing his art collection and his rare book and first edition library. His goal in life has been to make a difference. With any luck, one of those differences will be to spur others in business to reveal all about their own lives.

Ups and downs

My morning paper delivers good news and bad. Today’s edition contained a legal notice under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA). CCAA is the last gasp of a firm that has become insolvent. Justice James Farley, who reigned from the insolvency bench and has now retired to arbitration work, delighted in pronouncing CCAA as “caw.” Farley had other jokes, too, that always made the lawyers who appeared before him laugh uproariously. He liked to hear their laughter; they hoped it would improve their cause.

The legal notice was for Sears Canada Inc. and was aimed at unsecured creditors, the last in line for money after the banks and other secured creditors get paid. I have not seen the list but I imagine it includes the likes of a plumber owed some amount such as $10,809.59. This notice has been amended from a previous proposal. Imagine the millions of dollars already billed by lawyers and accounting firms acting for clients trying to squeeze something from the Sears corpse.

Chicago-based Sears, Roebuck & Co. first approached Simpson’s in 1952 to propose joint ownership of the two companies’ catalogue and mail-order business. When the deal closed the following year, retailing in Canada was changed forever. Simpson’s agreed to be restricted to the urban centres where it already had stores. Sears could build anywhere as long as the new store was at least 25 miles away from a Simpson’s outlet. The first Simpson-Sears department store was in Hamilton, Ontario. Six more soon followed as Sears chased the market leader, Eaton’s.

By 1976, Eaton’s catalogue was gone. Such was the prowess of Sears that it eventually replaced the Eaton’s store in the mothership, the Eaton Centre. Then came its slow demise. In 2018 the last Sears store in Canada closed. In the Eaton Centre, Sears was replaced by another U.S. giant, Nordstrom. Who knows how long it will last. Even before Covid-19, shoppers were too few. As for Nordstrom Rack, any Canadian who has shopped in a Nordstrom Rack south of the border knows full well that we are getting only half the choice and one-third the quality. It took Sears sixty-five years for its rise and fall. My five cents says it won’t take Nordstrom anywhere near that long to close up shop and retreat back home. Canada has become a Wal-Mart nation. We can only hope that’s all we import.

 

 

 

The road less travelled

By now, everyone in the world must have viewed that TikTok video of the man roller-boarding on a roadway, lip-synching a snippet of “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac, and drinking juice from a jug. He’s just an ordinary guy, living in an RV outside his brother’s house, on his way to work as a labourer in a potato factory. Yet his carefree mood, the music, and the movement created magic for so many. I guess the explanation must be nostalgia as we recall the easy freedoms of pre-pandemic times.

Covid-19 has drastically changed the way we communicate. A businessman told me he was recently deposed for a long-running dispute about a deal. In the past, he’d fly to the U.S. state in which the lawsuit was filed. So would the other parties plus lawyers for all sides. Instead, the seven-hour session was done on Zoom. No flights, no hotel overnights, no taxis to and from airports. Similarly, my partner spoke at and helped organize two online panels last week hosted by the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. She was the only speaker in Toronto. The other six presenters appeared via Zoom from various European venues.The 200-member online audience was much larger than a sit-down session would have been and follow-up commentary was more voluminous than usual.

To be sure, not everyone participates in such thoughtful exercises. More than one-quarter of Canadians live alone and many are lonely at the moment. This past Thanksgiving was the first in my lifetime where I did not celebrate with family. And, while online buying has mushroomed, it doesn’t always work well. How many times have you been told that something is either unavailable or delivery has been delayed because of Covid. When retailers tell you that, there is nothing you can say, even if you are suspicious they’re just using Covid as an excuse.

Covid has altered us in ways both good and bad. We are far more watchful of people nearby but on the other hand more trusting that proper steps are being taken. That makes us both more in tune with society yet less comfortable. It’s a gentle balance that calls for a roller-board and a song.

 

Fit to print

Earlier this week, the Globe and Mail ran an ad promoting a new member of staff at the newspaper, Tanya Talaga. She certainly has a high-achiever’s background: nominated five times for the Michener Award for public service journalism and twice a contributor to stories that won National Newspaper Awards. As an Ojibwe, Talaga brings a particular perspective, said the ad, “to give voice to those who were not being heard.” Moreover, she will set “the record straight on Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences.”

This is all very commendable, but is this the right job for a newspaper? Can such a role as an advocate be properly carried out with the necessary objectivity and lack of bias that readers deserve? Will her pieces appear as bylined news stories or will they be labelled “Opinion” or “Insight” to set them apart as a point-of-view presentation rather than something based on straightforward research and fact-gathering.

To be sure, there is already advocacy in some journalistic areas, such as sports. Sports writers and broadcasters are referred to as “homers” because they rarely criticize, usually taking the side of the local team. In the Jays’ first playoff game, star pitcher Matt Shoemaker was pulled after only three innings. I was listening to the radio broadcast where those calling the play-by-play quickly embraced the party line that this decision was not made by manager Charlie Montoyo acting alone. Upper management was involved, they said, so don’t make Montoyo into a scapegoat. The Globe followed suit on Friday with an equally palsy piece under the headline “Early exit stings, but Jays exude confidence.” And here I thought the team barely made the playoffs after a disappointing year.

When does that kind of mollycoddling become advocacy? Business reporters shouldn’t take it upon themselves to explain away poor performance by floundering corporate executives. Political writers can’t promote a party’s propaganda. Journalism should always be fair, balanced and accurate. Advocacy is for lobbyists and the like, not the pages of my morning paper.

From the shelf

The fastest-growing activity during the pandemic must surely be reading. A neighbour recently told me that he’d read sixty books. I’m behind that at about two dozen. Among them are some re-reads such as Gentlemen, Players and Politicians by Dalton Camp, still the best ever Canadian political memoir. I’ve also read books I’ve always meant to but never did such as Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, written fifty years ago.

The best I’ve read so far is Radical Wordsworth by Jonathan Bate, telling how William Wordsworth changed poetry forever in the late eighteenth century by writing about nature, imagination and feelings, a long way from the stultifying verse that had previously existed. Wordsworth, in combination with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, launched the English Romantic movement. Their impact reached to the New World, too, infusing the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau.

One of the many fascinating aspects of Wordsworth’s poetic life is that he had done all of his best work by the time he was forty. Much of the reason for those good years was his friendship with Coleridge. The two made each other better. After forty, Wordsworth wrote about three memorable poems but it was mostly all dull and downward until his death at eighty. By then, his work was selling well, but he also had a patron who helped keep him afloat.

My poetry is limited to poems to my grandchildren; writing books has been my metier. Nor have I tried songwriting, to my mind an almost mystical process. Arlo Guthrie has said, “Songs are like fish. You just gotta have your line in the water. And it’s a bad idea to fish downstream from Bob Dylan.” In his memoir, Testimony, Robbie Robertson seems to be saying that he wrote everything The Band performed but never tells how he did it. According to the reviews, in her new book about The Band’s drummer, Levon Helm, Sandra B. Tooze declares that there may have been more collaboration involved among the group than Robertson has admitted. And that’s what sends you to the next book. Always in search of good research and good writing that makes you think.

What’s past is prologue

The advertising sign on the bus shelter was like a punch in the nose. “A name to match our history,” said the line at the top. In the middle was a bottle of Coors beer and, at the bottom, a line saying “Now called Original.” Imagine the hours of Zoom meetings it took for some ad agency to come up with that brilliant, new moniker – “Original.”

But that wasn’t what bothered me. Was the word “our” about the history of Canada, the history of Coors, or a presumptive both? And what was an American beer doing there anyway? Of course, all the major Canadian breweries have long since become foreign-dominated. Labatt was bought by Belgium’s InBev, Molson merged with Coors, even little Sleeman was taken over by Sapporo. Similar hollowing-out has occurred in Canadian mining (Inco and Falconbridge), steel (Dofasco and Stelco), and hotels (Fairmont and Four Seasons).

In some cases, the reason was globalization, in others, poor management. In his excellent new book on Labatt, Brewed in the North, Matthew J. Bellamy points out that none of the Canadian brewers developed a popular international brand (such as Heineken, Corona, or Stella). Instead, they all just buckled under to entreaties by outsiders.

In this era when Canadian history is being vilified, with statues of Sir John A. Macdonald a particular target, how long will it take before other great figures from our past fall to equal mindlessness. Parliament Hill is dotted with statues about whom the rabble-rousers could probably find some complaint. Statues in Montreal, Halifax and Vancouver have already come under fire. Who’s next? The Champlain monument in Québec City? Louis Riel in Winnipeg? Evangeline in Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia?

Besmirch them with paint or pull them down with ropes and soon we’ll be left with nothing connoting “our history” except for tag lines from foreign firms. What sort of a future can you possibly have without a past upon which to build?

Machine politics

The sound you heard over the weekend at the Conservative Party leadership convention was not only machines mutilating ballots but also the last gasp of the Red Tory wing of the party. There was a time when Red Tories dominated under leaders Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark, and Brian Mulroney. With the defeat of Peter MacKay they’re no longer even a wing, barely a prayer.

What exactly is a Red Tory? Well, someone who is pro-choice, favours intrusion by the state, and might even lean towards a guaranteed annual income. She is a caring person, not someone who thinks everyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. First of all, as Hugh Segal said in his most recent book, you have to have boots to begin with. Segal’s a Red Tory but was OK with the name change of the party from Progressive Conservative to Conservative.

I was not happy with the new name although Progressive Conservative is an unusual combination of words. When I worked for The Financial Post in Washington D.C. the only thing harder to explain to Americans than Progressive Conservative was Leader of the Opposition. As close as I could come to describe the latter was to draw a parallel with the minority leader in the Senate. I got about as far with that as claiming the cold air coming from Canada actually had its beginnings in Alaska and we did our best to warm it up on the way through.

Just as there used to be Red Tories, there were also Blue Liberals, those who were sufficiently right-wing they were not part of the mainstream. These days, with a deficit of $363 billion no one in that party can claim to be Blue anymore. There’s too much government activism for that.

In 2015, I voted for Justin Trudeau. I hadn’t voted Liberal since I cast my ballot for his father in 1968. When the next election is called, I don’t know where I’ll go. I can’t vote for the prime minister, he has no idea how to run a cabinet or where the line is when it comes to ethical behaviour. My former party has disappeared but I’ll keep a close eye on the new Conservative leader and see how much he kow-tows to the social conservatives who put him in the job. Failing that, maybe I’ll mail in my ballot and hope it gets destroyed by some machine.