Rod McQueen's Blog, page 32

Book ’em Danno

Word-of-mouth and published reviews are good ways to find out about new books of interest. Word-of-mouth is probably the best because you can judge the passion and the source then decide if you’ll buy based on what you’ve heard. Increasingly, published book reviews are untrustworthy. Not because some editor chooses the wrong titles, but because reviewers don’t take the assignment seriously.

Here’s an example from last Saturday’s Globe and Mail. Zadie Smith’s new novel, Swing Time, was clearly the pick of the week. It takes up a full page with a photo of the author and a four-column review. But the first quarter of the review is about the reviewer’s thoughts and experiences on cruelty among girls and mother-daughter relationships. This, I regret to say, has become all too typical. Rather than read the book and give a thorough report, reviewers believe tales from their own lives are more important. One recent offering in the London Review of Books didn’t even mention the book in question. The writer just blathered on about his own thesis.

In addition to these lazy reviews, book pages are now filled with Q&A pieces where authors answer inanities such as (a) Which writers would you invite for dinner? (b) What book made you cry? (c) What books are on your night table? In a New York Times interview along these lines earlier this month, the aforementioned Zadie Smith rattled off twenty books by her bedside. Imagine what a teetering pile that must be.

All of which is to say that book review sections have joined the rest of this crazy world: self-centred and not credible. Sadly, the more curated process has fallen into disrepute.

Mystical Landscapes

Mystical Landscapes, a special exhibit currently at the Art Gallery of Ontario, opens with a trumpet fanfare. Three paintings by Paul Gauguin, all circa 1890 before he fled for the debauchery of the South Pacific, are displayed like a medieval tryptic. Gauguin painted them to be hung together but this is the first time the artist’s wish has been achieved. They include Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, The Yellow Christ and Christ in the Garden of Olives, usually hanging in Edinburgh, Buffalo and West Palm Beach respectively.

The rest of the exhibit of 90 paintings and 20 drawings is equally compelling and includes two by Vincent van Gogh. The Olive Trees is done in his roiling style that resonates from the soil, through the trees and the mountains to a single cloud in the sky. Starry Night over the Rhone demonstrates van Gogh’s search for the spiritual. When he sought religion, he said, “I go outside at night to paint the stars.” He’d wear lighted candles on his hat to help find his way.

Among my favourites was The Sun by Edvard Munch, the joyous side of the artist best known for The Scream. Another Scandinavian artist, Eugene Jansson, is represented by three works that, like van Gogh, see the world by gaslight and the setting sun. And there are works by Georgia O’Keeffe like I have never seen before.

While there are some excellent Canadian paintings in the show, including Tom Thomson’s iconic The West Wind, there are a few from the First World War that I didn’t think fit the mystical landscape thesis. The rest of the show, however, is the best since the AGO brought the Barnes Exhibit to Toronto in 1994.

 

Tranquillity base

I don’t like Donald Trump any more than anyone else, but I think we should all follow Barack Obama’s lead and give the president-elect some time and space. Forget about the early White House appointments and what they might signal. And don’t fret about the bond market losing $1 trillion in a matter of a few days. The traders are just sending Trump a signal not to count on spending whatever he wants on infrastructure. An inflationary economy is a bad idea.

Nor should we worry overly about rowdy demonstrations and police with assault rifles at the ready. This is nothing compared to 1968 after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy when riots convulsed 100 cities. Memphis took decades to recover. And let’s remember that the U.S. was able survive Richard Nixon’s resignation and Bill Clinton’s dalliances. It’s hard to Trump either of those.

Will the world be different? Absolutely. Does any CNN panelist know how it will be different? Absolutely not.

Along with everyone else I’ve been watching The Crown with its wonderful production values, excellent casting and intimate portraits of the Royals as real people. Of all the characters, John Lithgow’s Winston Churchill has been my favourite. Seeing Churchill so well played reminds me of one of his quotes that we would all do well to apply in the current Washington circumstances. “I’m an optimist,” Churchill once said. “There’s no use being anything else.”

 

Doing the two step

Ontario Minister of Transportation Steven Del Duca wrote me a letter recently to say that I’d been chosen at random for a traffic survey. I was delighted to participate. After the weather, traffic is the number one topic of conversation in Toronto. The survey was straightforward. They designated a specific day and asked where I went and how I traveled. In my case, it was simple: a three-point trip by subway downtown to the Toronto-Dominion Centre, on to Yonge and St. Clair, and then home.

Hard to imagine what they learned from that. In fact it’s hard to imagine what they’ve learned or what action has been taken as a result of past surveys. According to the letter, this survey has been conducted every five years for the past thirty. As any denizen of the city can tell you, traffic has only gotten worse during that time. In the 1980s, I could drive downtown from where I lived in the west end in twenty minutes. Now it takes at least twice as long.

Here’s the simple solution. First, declare the downtown area bounded by University Avenue, Dundas, Jarvis and Front Streets a congestion area where non-essential vehicles must pay a daily fee to enter. Such a cordon has worked well in London since 2003 and has raised about 3 billion British pounds for improved transit. Second, charge tolls for all vehicles using the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway. Why should they be free? Public money built the subway system but I pay every time I use it. A similar user-pay scheme for road travel is only fair.

Follow that two-step, Minister Del Duca, and I can assure you that the next five-year survey will show a remarkable reduction in gridlock and road rage. Plus, there will be a lot more revenue to spend on improved transit facilities and infrastructure projects. Otherwise, it’ll all just be life in the slow lane.

Loonie tunes part two

Previously, I chided Stephen Poloz for having exporters too much on his mind as governor of the Bank of Canada. It would seem that he’s driven down the C$ to help exporters yet export sales have not risen to any great extent. In fact, the number of manufacturing firms is dropping all the time. Over the last ten years Canada has lost more than 10,000 manufacturers. Even at a modest 10 employees per plant that’s 100,000 jobs no longer tied to exports.

Moreover, most Canadians don’t work in export businesses. About 80 percent of all Canadian jobs are in service roles such as real estate, education, finance and healthcare. A typical success story in the services sector is GoodLife Fitness that employs 14,000 people. Not too many manufacturers can match that.

Consumer spending accounts for three-quarters of our economy. Automotive sales are an important component. The weak Canadian dollar is beginning to cause sticker price increases. “US-based products have become unnaturally expensive,” said Fiat Chrysler CEO Serge Marchionne a few days ago. Resulting price hikes on Fiat/Chrysler vehicles sold in Canada have meant fewer sales .

I buy more books than cars but the weak loonie hits me, too. I just bought Larry Tye’s Bobby Kennedy. The U.S list price is $32; in Canada it’s $42. To rub salt into the border, Barnes & Noble sells the book online for $21.20, or 34 percent off. Chapters/Indigo’s online price is $35.09, a puny 16 percent reduction. Stephen Poloz can’t do much about our uncompetitive retail environment, but he can boost the C$ back closer to par if he chooses. He’s scheduled to deliver a speech in Vancouver tomorrow. Is it too much to hope that he’ll have something to say to the average Canadian who’s getting hurt by the low loonie?

Loonie tunes

David Rosenberg, chief economist with Gluskin Sheff + Associates, parsed the recent pontifications of Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz and noticed repeated use of the word “exports.” Three times in two sentences, in fact. And how Poloz seemed to want an even lower Canadian dollar when measured against the U.S. dollar. So much so that Poloz said the central bank considered lowering interest rates last week but kept them flat.

Such an admission by a central banker is very unusual. Rarely do they say what they might have done. Maybe Poloz counted on such talk driving down the C$ even further. If interest rates go down, money moves elsewhere, making the C$ in less demand, thereby causing Canadian exports to be cheaper, so sales to the U.S. increase, and the economy improves. Or so goes the fond hope.

What Rosenberg did not mention is that Poloz seems to have had a penchant for a lower C$ and higher exports ever since he became governor in June 2013. And why does Poloz hold this view? Could it be because Poloz spent the fourteen years before rejoining the Bank of Canada (he’d been there early in his career) at the Export Development Corporation?

Has the strategy worked? Well, during his term the C$ has fallen from 95 cents U.S. to 75 cents while exports are up only about 10 percent in the more than three years. Hardly worth the effort given the higher costs for Canadian consumers because of the increased cost of imports. So, here’s my poor pitiful request for the governor: Could you please forget your exporting past and instead plan for a future that benefits all Canadians?

Strike out

Just when you thought Toronto couldn’t look any more foolish, what with a baseball fan throwing a beer can at an outfielder, someone goes to court to stop Cleveland from being called the Indians. Douglas Cardinal, a renowned architect and indigenous Canadian, argued he would be affronted to see the Indians play last night at Rogers Centre. Then Cardinal went to China where he probably couldn’t or didn’t watch the game anyway.

I’d like first to declare my bona fides when it comes to such matters. I’ve helped raise money for the Native Canadian Centre so I think I can say, without being accused of racism, that Cardinal’s actions made Canadians look like a bunch of tinpots. There we were, down two games to none, trying to get the other guys to miss practice and spend the day instead ripping letters and Chief Wahoo logos off their uniforms.

Fortunately, the judge dismissed the case, although Cardinal has lodged his complaint with other boards and commissions. Such nonsense has nothing at all to do with baseball. In support, I quote my favourite New York newspaper columnist of all time, Jimmy Breslin, who said, “Baseball isn’t statistics, it’s Joe DiMaggio rounding second base.” Substitute whining for statistics and you’ll know what I’m saying.

So, what did the Indians do in the face of such an epic attack? They won to go three games to none. When it comes to Indians, now I know how General Custer felt.

Tell me that it isn’t true

When I heard that Bob Dylan had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I felt like a member of the crowd at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 when the folksinger first went electric: I booed. Dylan might have been a wonderful musician in the 1960s, with or without electrical amplification, but hardly worth a Nobel Prize for Literature. How does “The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind/ the answer is blowin’ in the wind” compare with the works of previous winners such as John Steinbeck, Alice Munro or Boris Pasternak.

Was the Nobel Committee in some sort of time warp that they would go so far back in history to name such a bogus winner of the world’s most prestigious award? Dylan doesn’t even sing all that well anymore. Ever since 1988, when The Traveling Wilburys was released, Dylan has sounded like Daffy Duck.

This is the worst mistake the Nobel Committee has made since 1973 when they awarded the Peace prize to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho for a war that went on. And on.

What’s next, a Nobel Peace Prize for Bashar al-Assad? Dr. Phil for medicine? How about Donald Trump for chemistry because of his loving ways with women?

 

Fish out of water

Clover Leaf Seafoods has a new website where you can look up information on the tuna in the can you bought. Go to cloverleaf.ca/trace-my-catch. Once on the site you enter the numbers and letters on the can. My can contains albacore tuna. No surprise there.

Next, there’s a map showing that the tuna was caught in the South Pacific, east of the Solomon Islands, using longline fishing gear with baited hooks. That’s good, no net scraping the ocean floor. The vessel was the Sui Yuan Yu 30 from China and my tuna was caught sometime between August 9 and September 3, 2015. A year ago.

I’m starting to wish I hadn’t bothered, but I press on and find that each tuna weighed 10-80 pounds, was blast frozen aboard the ship and sent to a processing plant in Thailand where the fish was thawed, cleaned and steamed. After the fish cooled, the meat was removed from the bones, then packed into cans ready to wend its way to my table.

I previously laboured under the naive delusion that my tuna was caught off one of Canada’s coasts, brought live to the local cannery, and trucked to my grocer. My can of tuna is good until November 2018, more than three years after it was caught halfway around the world. I am reminded of the old saying, “Laws are like sausages, it’s better not to see them being made.” Or to learn your fish’s life history.

 

Memories are made of this

Along with a lot of other Canadians, I was saddened to hear that BlackBerry will no longer make smartphones. To be sure, the company has been irrelevant for some time. In February 2012, I was in Arizona, thumbing away on my BlackBerry when someone said to me, “You must be the last man in America with a BlackBerry.” Only two years before, when my book on BlackBerry came out, Research In Motion was flying high with 50 percent of the U.S. smartphone market. I remained loyal, and bought the Q10 in 2014, but most didn’t. Market share is now barely measurable.

I wish BlackBerry well as the company tries to stay alive by selling software. The worst part about all this is that we will probably never again see a Canadian product such as Mike Lazaridis invented and Jim Balsillie sold. Canada has had so few global manufacturing firms in its 150-year history that you can count them on one hand and still have fingers left over: Massey-Ferguson, Nortel, and Research In Motion. All gone to graveyards every one.

To be sure, Lazaridis and Balsillie were not without their faults. Lazaridis didn’t think iPhone would catch on. He was convinced everybody was like him and preferred a keyboard over glass. As for Balsillie, he got distracted and spent too much time on other pursuits.

More important, Lazaridis and Balsillie have directly and indirectly caused the birth of scores of hi-tech companies in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. Lazaridis also created the Perimeter Institute and the Quantum-Nano Centre. Balsillie was behind the Centre for International Governance Innovation as well as the Balsillie School of International Affairs. Such lasting contributions to society are what yields immortality, not some product, no matter how popular it became for a time.