Rod McQueen's Blog, page 28

Bidding wars

Among the first stories I wrote for Maclean’s after joining the newsmagazine in 1978 was a behind-the-scenes account of how governments helped Windsor, Ont., beat out Lima, Ohio, for a $500 million engine plant Ford was planning to build. I was able to reveal all the negotiations that took place among Ontario Premier Bill Davis, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and Ford President Roy Bennett during the Calgary Stampede of all places. When I next saw the premier, he said the story read as if I’d been in the room, just the sort of comment a young magazine writer wants to hear.

Looking back, that public support was a pittance. Ottawa contributed $40 million and Ontario $28 million to secure hundreds of direct jobs and thousands more spinoff jobs. We’re back in a similar situation today with Amazon dangling the possibility of a second headquarters that will entail an investment by Amazon of $5 billion and the creation of 50,000 jobs. Amazon’s request for proposals asks what financial incentive any jurisdiction that makes a bid would be prepared to offer.

The Government of Ontario has gone all lily white. Former TD Bank CEO Ed Clark, the province’s point man on the project, says no “bribe” will be paid, but they might help with land. Beyond that, nothing. A coalition of municipalities under the leadership of former CFL Commissioner Mark Cohon has been formed but has not said what incentives the group might have in mind.

I say, go for it. Offer $1 billion, minimum. We’ve spent more for less. Look at e-health. I can’t imagine how much that fiasco has cost us yet doctors and hospitals are still swamped under paper-based medical records. If we win, the arrival of Amazon would forever change the region for the better. If Denver wins, as the New York Times has predicted, we keep our money. Meanwhile, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Fun on Fogo

When you ask the locals living on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, about the weather, they don’t begin with sun, cloud or temperature. They talk first about the wind. A south-westerly is best and can signal several fine days to come. We had just such luck during our recent time at the Fogo Island Inn.

The inn, which opened four years ago, dominates Joe Batt’s Arm, a community that’s a 10-minute walk away. The most wonderful aspect of a vacation on Fogo is that you encounter folks in ways you don’t usually while on holiday. One man called John that we happened to meet on a dock held us in his spell for an hour while he recounted his life as a carpenter and fisher, all the while poking my chest with his finger. Clem Dwyer, a life-long resident of Tilting, a nearby Irish Catholic village, took us on a two-hour tour that included a visit to the home in which he and his nine siblings were born.

A boat ride with Aeneas and Mike brought sightings of puffins and razorbills as well as a hike up a hill on Little Fogo Island for a 360-degree vista with what must have been twenty-mile visibility. The cod are coming back to such an extent that I, the world’s worst fisher, caught two that each weighed 12-15 pounds. Beyond the people, nature beckons at every turn. There are more than a dozen hiking trails. Our favourite was Oliver’s Cove, a 4.5 km footpath along the granite-strewn seacoast that we meandered for three hours and never saw another soul.

Among the menu items at the inn were variations of local cod pot cod, shrimp and snow crab, served in evocative presentations that included edible flowers. They have a ways to go before they win a Michelin star, but no complaints from us, given the friendly staff that included Sandy, Brandon, Amanda and Rosemarie who knew your name and treated you like family.

Hidden figures

When the most recent Statscan census declared that the Anglophone population in Quebec had increased by 57,325 during the last five years, Quebec politicians were apoplectic. There was talk about the need for a quick legislative response because this news somehow indicated that the French language would soon disappear from daily life. English-speakers were making a comeback, even outside Montreal. Mon dieu!

When experts checked the numbers, they found that the Anglophone population had not ballooned to 8.1 percent of the population. It was a more reasonable 7.5 percent, a drop of 0.2 percent over the five-year period. The number of Anglophones in Quebec City was not 6,400 as previously reported, is was 660 instead, hardly enough to fill the funicular from Lower Town. The relief that rolled across the province was as welcome as snow for Carnaval.

But all of this foofara over a few thousand poorly counted tongues masks a more important truth. While the Rest of Canada slept, Quebec has achieved the very kind of sovereignty-association it has long sought. Remember all the angst about the PQ, referenda, Charlottetown and Meech? In the Rest of Canada, we thought all that had been settled, and it was, but Quebec carried on with Plan B, quietly creating everything from language laws to special provincial exams for financial planners.

Now Quebec has the best of both worlds; hardly any Anglophones, and the Ottawa government at its beck and call. Quebec has long had control over immigration to the province, but when the walk-ins became too numerous, Ottawa sent in the army to build a migrant tent village. Whenever Bombardier needs help, it has been forthcoming. National political leaders must be bilingual. To my mind, all this is well and good. All I’m asking is that no one pretend Quebec’s clandestine strategy hasn’t worked.

 

 

 

Just wait and see

This morning, in a neighbour’s garden, there was a flurry of Monarch butterflies. I tried to count them, was it four, or five? Hard to tell, they were having so much fun flitting among the flowers – roses, zinnias, coneflower, snapdragons and a tall purple item I couldn’t identify. Not so long ago, Monarchs had all but vanished. If there are this many nearby, they must be making a comeback.

So, too, with birds. Earlier in this decade, West Nile virus meant there were neither crows nor blue jays in Toronto. Robins, chickadees and others songsters were also reduced in number. For the last couple of years, the crow’s “caw” and the jay making the sound of its own name “jaaay” are abounding again.

The right whale is still endangered, but this summer there are enough swimming in the Gulf of St. Lawrence that they are regularly colliding with ships. No one laboured mightily to save the Monarch, the jays or the whales; things have just improved.

Some people follow similar patterns of benign neglect. I once worked with a man who would let things that people sent him – urgent and otherwise – just pile up on his desk. He’d keep documents for six months, then throw them away. Whatever the problem, it had passed. He’s in his 90s now. It could be good genes or his zen attitude that caused such longevity.

Of course, all this is biblical. Lamented Job: “How long, oh Lord, how long?” Sometimes, patience can be a plan, too.

No winners here

The fact that the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) is about to privatize some of its operations does not sit well with me. First of all, look how well Ontario’s previous privatization effort worked with Hydro. In the case of the OLG, the negative impact on individuals could be even more serious.

Let me explain. The first tortured reason OLG casinos came into existence was to attract tourists. That may have worked for a while in Niagara Falls and Windsor, but the nearby states – New York and Michigan – now have their own fleecing houses. As for the other sites, I never could understand the “tourist” argument. Out of curiosity, I have visited casinos in Brantford and at Mohawk and the majority of players looked like seniors who lived nearby. Worst of all, nobody appeared to be having any fun.

This new privatization deal is all about expanding the facilities at Woodbine as well as erecting a new casino somewhere in downtown Toronto. I can’t imagine that very many tourists will be drawn to the city by either outlet no matter how many chandeliers are hung. If I’m living in Cleveland, am I really going to drive six hours to a new casino at the former site of Ontario Place? Most bridal groups will still go to Vegas.

More casinos in the Toronto area will simply mean more local addicts and more unhappy households. I already know people who regularly blow their pension cheques on the slots and other video bandits. The fact that OLG is creating the conditions for even more such vacuum cleaners shows they don’t care about the social outcome. Just like those poor fools who line up to play.

The last round-up

According to my morning newspaper, BlackBerry is no longer the only smartphone secure enough for federal government employees. Samsung has now met all necessary standards. The article also said that it was easy to figure out who in Ottawa was a government bureaucrat. They’re the only ones in parks, stadiums or streets using a BlackBerry.

That somehow seems unlikely. First of all, I thought I was the last person in North America still using a BlackBerry. Second, I would wager that a lot of bureaucrats long ago bought iPhones or some other smartphone, even if it didn’t meet security standards. That’s how new technology often permeates companies and government departments, via the back door.

Meanwhile, former BlackBerry co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie are faring just fine. Lazaridis, whose net worth is about $1 billion, is financing quantum startups with his high school chum and BlackBerry co-founder Doug Fregin. Balsillie, who’s worth about $750 million, has become a powerful voice for innovation. All are generous benefactors to many causes.

At the current iteration of BlackBerry, the strategy is to become a software company, but it’s taking a long while. Ironic, really, when one of the reasons BlackBerry failed is because it bought a software company to create a new operating system that took forever while the market moved elsewhere. Maybe Samsung could grab even more of the government business by using a marketing tool followed by the original, successful BlackBerry: give away the first few hundred of the product so entire companies became wholly dependent. If Samsung did that, we taxpayers would save a dime replacing all those BlackBerrys that are supposedly still being thumbed in the nation’s capital.

Enough is too much

For a while, Donald Trump was a firebrand, the outsider who rattled cages. Then he was the louche lothario who demeaned women. Next he floated through various guises from narcissist to boyish, from arrogant to brutish. He made his cabinet ministers fawn for the cameras. He stretched the truth and twisted the past to suit his future. Loyalty mattered, but only as it was lavished on him. As the first senator to support Trump the candidate, attorney-general Jeff Sessions got little loyalty in return.

Along with a lot of other people I endured all that, including his admiration for strong men like Vladimir Putin of Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Jaroslaw Kaczynski of Poland, none of whom respect democracy. Yet Trump wouldn’t even take the offered hand of Germany’s Angela Merkel during their meeting in the Oval Office. And there was his nonsensical belief that China was somehow going to put a lid on the madman plan by North Korea’s Kim Jong-un to blow up the world.

I have admired most U.S. presidents. Along with a small group of journalists, I interviewed George Herbert Walker Bush in the Roosevelt room in the White House. I tracked along with Bill Clinton as he and Al Gore campaigned in Florida and snagged an exclusive interview with Clinton simply by waiting until he’d shaken every hand at an outdoor rally. The rest of the media had long since boarded the bus. I’ve read all four volumes, more than 3,000 words, of Robert Caro’s stunning biography of Lyndon Johnson.

But from this day forward, I’m going to pay no attention whatsoever to Donald Trump, unless he causes World War III, which is entirely possible. His speech this week to the Boy Scouts jamboree in West Virginia was a braggadocio too far. He spoke to them as if they were red-neck supporters instead of impressionable young people. He bullied, he swore, he debased the office of President. It will matter not a whit to Trump that I am no longer paying attention, but it matters to me.

 

Time travel

I once spent an evening listening to The Ink Spots. Of course, they weren’t the real thing. It was the 1970s and the vocal group, formed in the 1930s, had broken up in 1954. Dozens of groups were touring using their name. The closest the group I saw came to the original quartet was maybe one of them had an uncle who might have seen them perform.

Such film-flammery was not an issue with The Doobie Brothers and Chicago, two groups who did their best work in the 1970s, and appeared last night on the Budweiser Stage (formerly the Molson Amphitheatre). Both groups were terrific and included original members. For the Doobies (formed in 1969 when a doobie was a marijuana cigarette), Tom Johnston, now sixty-eight and the original lead vocalist, performed, as did guitarist John McFee who has been with the band for forty years. Their two biggest hits were Listen to the Music and Long Train Running.

Chicago had way more hits including Colour My World, Saturday in the Park and I’m a Man. Of the nine-member troupe, celebrating fifty years in 2017, I think three were founding members: Robert Lamm on keyboards, Walter Parazaider on saxophone, and Jimmy Pankow on trombone, who was my favourite. At sixty-nine his energy and choreography added poise and power to the staging.

The average age of the 15,000 in attendance was probably 65. Nostalgia is one obvious reason why we all went but I think the draw runs deeper than that. As Chicago sings: “Does anybody really know what time it is/Does anybody really care?” For three-and-a-half hours we all felt thirty-something again. Or maybe we didn’t even care how old we were.

A hit and a miss

The Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario is spectacular. Organized by the Tate Modern in collaboration with the AGO and Bank Austria Kunstforum, the exhibit includes not only eighty works by O’Keeffe but also photographs by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, and her good friend Ansel Adams.

By far the best are her giant flowers, especially the Red Amaryllis, Oriental Poppies and Jimson Weed. The time she spent in New York in the 1920s produced some excellent urban abstractions; her later years in New Mexico yielded everything from horse skulls to mountain landscapes.

As with any groundbreaker, O’Keeffe took risks. “It takes courage to be a painter. I have lived on a razor’s edge,” she once said. “So what if you fall off? I’d rather be doing something I really wanted to do. I’d walk it again.”

A less successful exhibit, ReBlink, combines technology with some of the AGO’s masterworks. If you use a smartphone app and look at Paul Peel’s “After the Bath” showing two children before a fireplace, suddenly they’re in front of a television screen showing all manner of nonsense. Or the Marchesa Casati in Augustus John’s magnificent portrait is seen holding a selfie stick. If the AGO thinks this will attract young people, my grand-daughter, soon to be twelve, was not impressed. “It’s not real art,” she said. “You can’t learn anything from it.” Amen to that.

 

Say you want a revolution

I’m not even half-way through my Sunday New York Times and already I’ve read four stories about Canada. The first was President Trump’s tweet about his “new found friend” Justin Trudeau; the second described up and coming Canadian comedians; the third focussed on Trudeau’s penchant for wearing socks that commemorate the occasion; and the fourth featured a couple living in Brooklyn with three children still at home who each have three passports: U.S., U.K. and Canadian. Canada is not only the most popular, two of the three kids are on different canoe trips in Canada even as we speak, one of which is fifty-two days in duration.

What gives? For years the only mention of Canada in the U.S. was the TV weather forecaster blaming tomorrow’s cold spell on an Alberta clipper. Suddenly, we’ve become inescapable and could soon see Canada on the cover of Time with the line: Canada’s Turn at the Top.

What will happen if Americans start paying attention to us? Where will this leave our lack of self-confidence when we compare ourselves to their presumed might and moxie? What will become of our love-hate relationship if they decide to like us? NAFTA might survive but will our Id?

For my part, I say let them feel jealous for a change. We might even have to stop making excuses for ourselves and be forced to perform at a level above mediocre where far too often we function. Bring it on!