Rod McQueen's Blog, page 40

The road to immortality

One of the best definitions of immortality I’ve ever heard was told to me by Bill Mulholland, CEO of Bank of Montreal in the 1980s. “The question is, can you mass-produce? Do you want to achieve a self-perpetuating process, one that goes on after you walk out? The ultimate accolade is when they say, ‘Mulholland, we don’t need you anymore.’ Like man’s earliest effort, you have created a tool that can be used over and over again. In fact, there’s no way of knowing how you did until after you’ve left.”

Mulholland rescued the bank from oblivion, launched ATMs in Canada and was the first Canadian banker to successfully expand into the U.S. He also had a machine-gun management style. Matt Barrett, the only senior officer left standing, was appointed to succeed him. Today, few people remember Mulholland. Immortality of the sort he sought is not easy.

A better legacy was demonstrated at a recent retirement party for another officer of the same bank, Michael Cooksey. Cooksey started out in the branches and rose to become vice president and regional director at BMO Harris Private Banking. I first met him maybe 15 years ago when he was manager of the main branch at King and Bay. His door was not only always open, but if you walked in, he was happy to see you and had time to chat. Any previous manager I’d ever dealt with at any of the banks always was a sourpuss who required an appointment.

But Cooksey, who retired after 43 years with BMO, was more than just a successful individual in his own right. He truly left a mark. At his farewell reception, I happened to talk to three people I’d never met before, all bank employees. A woman who had worked with him in Ottawa 40 years ago couldn’t say enough good things about him. The second was a young Asian man who’d been with the bank for five years. He said Cooksey had been a mentor to him. When I asked one memorable thing Cooksey had told him, he replied, “Loyalty goes a long way.”

The third was another employee mentored by Cooksey, a young woman of colour. I asked about her hopes, dreams and aspirations in the bank and she replied, “I want to help people.” Not get a big promotion. Not earn top dollar. Help people. That’s what she learned from Cooksey. Cooksey’s style couldn’t have been more different than Mulholland’s. But he certainly achieved immortality as defined by that former CEO. In Cooksey’s case, he put his own positive stamp on countless people who will carry on with a piece of him within.

The dining room revolution

Bad enough for the Conservative Party to run an ad showing Justin Trudeau wearing a singlet at a fund-raiser and pass him off as some sort of pervert. My grandchildren certainly took a scunner to him as a result and are forever asking me what I see in a man who would act so foolishly. These days, I must admit, I see more faults. Trudeau’s a good retail politician but he can’t tap-dance. By that I mean he comes poorly prepared for major speeches and media scrums. I put it down to bad staff work.

But no one in public life deserves the kind of scuzzy treatment given Trudeau in the latest negative ad from the Conservatives. The ad shows ISIS atrocities while playing the marauders’ national anthem followed by some carefully edited comments by Trudeau from a lengthy interview with CBC news. For a prime minister like Stephen Harper, who presents himself as a hockey Dad kind of guy, such portrayals are not in keeping with his principles.

Harper’s people defend their action with arrogance. In an interview with Global’s Tom Clark, Harper spokesman Tory Teneycke said the ad was germane to the debate about how Canada should act in foreign matters. “We’re better than the news, because we’re truthful,” Teneycke blithely told Clark. You can see the interview and the ad here.

I for one don’t like the idea of CF-18s bombing another sovereign country; it may even be against international law. And it certainly didn’t work when Canada joined other NATO nations in bombing Libya. The result has been tribalism and chaos. Such action manages to be both morally and strategically wrong at the same time.

What we should be doing in the case of Syria is accepting more refugees. Canada is not an aggressive nation; we receive all comers. In recent years we have welcomed Hungarian freedom fighters, Vietnamese boat people, Ugandan Asians fleeing Idi Amin as well as Tamils escaping civil war. On a per capita basis Canada allows more legal immigrants than any other nation. But the Conservatives aren’t following that tradition. We seem to have a closed-door policy on Syria. Despite the many millions displaced by war, the total number of immigrants from Syria to Canada is about 1,500 so far. We’re too busy bombing to be embracing.

There are various polls saying Harper might do poorly in the October election. Given the recent track record of such predictions, I take all of this with a grain of salt. But here’s a survey that might mean something. I visited a friend recently who lives in a retirement home just outside Fergus, Ont. If ever there were rock-ribbed Convservative country, this is it. In the 2011 election, the local Conservative swept in with 64 per cent of the vote. My friend tells me that the talk in the dining room at the home is that it’s time for Harper to go. If the Prime Minister has lost the seniors’ vote in Wellington County, he’s not long for the job.

 

Good will hunting

Earlier this month I received a notice from the Globe and Mail telling me there would be “a change in the terms and conditions” of my print subscription. Beginning on June 29, if I suspended delivery while away for a weekend or a longer holiday, I would not receive a credit for that period, I would continue to pay just as if I had received the paper.

I was apoplectic. Ever since I could read, I’ve been reading the Globe. It’s one thing to sign up for Netflix and understand that whether you watch 100 hours a month or zero, you’ll pay $7.99 anyway. Or cable TV, where I pay for channels I never watch. But my lifelong deal with the newspaper was different; I signed up under specific circumstances and changing them in such an abrupt way was a step too far.

I contacted Editor-in-Chief David Walmsley threatening to cancel. He turned me over to Bryan Fox, manager of customer care, who considered the matter and gave me an exemption until August 2016. I know, it’s an odd length of time, but I was grateful and said so. So that’s why today, June 30, I am still a subscriber.

That doesn’t mean I have suspended my critical faculties. Let’s look at today’s paper starting with the page one headline, “Greece at a crossroad.” If you’re going to use a cliché, at least use the correct wording: “at a crossroads.” As they did in a headline in the Sports section on the same day about another topic. My page one headline would have been, “Fear Greeks bearing rifts.”

In an otherwise delightful travel piece by Amanda Ruggeri about Oxford she cites Charles Dodgson, the math professor who wrote Alice in Wonderland using the pen name of Lewis Carroll. Ruggeri says it’s only speculation that Dodgson got “too close” to the real-life Alice on whom he based the book. Speculation? Among the many photos Dodgson took in his lifetime, nearly three dozen are of nude or semi-nude children. Among his letters is one to a mother asking for permission to photograph her eight-year-old daughter as a “daughter of Eve” before she gets too old. He photographed his beloved Alice as a sultry street urchin in a tattered off-the-shoulder dress. She was all of six.

Paul Waldie, recently appointed editor of Report on Business, is doing a great job. I like how he’s asking experts to write for the section, rather than just be quoted in a news story. Today’s piece on Greece by Joseph Stiglitz is brilliant. The scales fell from my eyes; I understood the backstory for the first time.

But why let Steven Hudson get away so easily with a misinterpreted and misquoted statement? In There’s more to Element than GE deal Hudson boasts he’s about to do another acquisition. Oh Steven, how well I remember that overweening hubris from your days at the leasing company tied to the moneywagon of the late and unlamented Confederation Life. “The message of growth at Element is: It’s not over, it’s not over, it’s not over,” the Globe quoted Hudson as saying, who then added. “They say you have to say something three times.”

The adage Hudson was groping for takes us to a nonsense poem by the aforementioned Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark that opens “Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:/What I tell you three times is true.” At the end of the poem, one of the crew calls the rest to say that he has found the Snark but when they arrive, their quarry has mysteriously disappeared. The only explanation, according to the narrator, was “the Snark was a Boojum, you see.” May Steve Hudson have better luck.

I’m glad I’m still getting the Globe. It takes me on so many escapades. Not all of which are in the print edition.

 

Parliamentary privilege

Some of Mike Duffy’s Senate expenses certainly look suspect, e.g. $8,000 billed for four days in Vancouver visiting family with one business lunch. A so-called principal residence in his home province of PEI that was snowed in for months at a time. Is it fraud? This current court case, which seems mired in minutiae, will eventually rule.

But to understand how we got here, you have to go back to 1971 when Duffy arrived in Ottawa to work as a radio reporter for the CHUM Group. The Parliamentary Press Gallery was the peak of a journalistic career. Some of his elders were in their 60s and there was Duffy, only 25, hanging with the nobility. And what came with the job? A seat in the hot room with free parking, free stationery, free wire service, plus booze and beer served from the illegal blind pig.

Of course, there was also reserved seating to watch the House of Commons, easy access to all MPs and cabinet ministers as well as evening social events where the gossip was always good. Best of all were the subsidized meals in the sixth-floor Parliamentary Restaurant with its vaulted ceilings and steaks hung for weeks until tender. A three-course meal might cost $6. Duffy particularly enjoyed the food and, according to legend, once he finished dinner would put a closed hand near his eye and wiggle his pinky to tell the waiter: “Same again, please.”

As Duffy’s career accelerated from mere radio guy to commentator on CBC then CTV he was mentioned in despatches in the House of Commons, won an ACTRA award and held a fellowship at Duke University. Why, his head must have just kept swelling. A lot of other people in that closed and coddled culture of Parliament Hill became similarly enamoured by the same sense of entitlement – all paid for by the public.

And then, the ultimate: a summons to the Senate with an annual salary of $142,000 plus expenses. Duffy, already one of the best-known broadcasters in the country, became Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s go-to guy for political and party communications. Not bad for a boy whose education consisted of attending public schools in Charlottetown.

No, I don’t condone what Duffy became and what he did. But I do know how it happened. We did it to ourselves.

The sounds of the sea

For the second year in a row, my daughter and I headed to the Shaw Festival to see a play that the critics had lambasted. Last year it was The Philanderer; this year You Never Can Tell. The latter was scorned as “over-the-top antics” by The Globe and Mail; The Star knocked it down for having an “overenthusiastic design team.” Both years the critics were wrong. The plays were a great success.

George Bernard Shaw still succeeds at what he set out to do more than a century ago. And that is shock the audience with non-conventional thinking and presentation. Director Jim Mezon ably captures both of those elements in this production.

After all, how many plays feature a dentist? Or a wise waiter? Or lines such as “The great advantage of a hotel is that it’s a refuge from home life.” Or shots such such as all marriages work well but only “from time to time”? Shaw is always at his best as a social commentator, particularly in his light-hearted works. In this case he touches on such eternal topics as feminism, marriage and the class structure in society, all of it under the umbrella of intellect versus emotion.

Most important of all are Shaw’s words. The play takes place at the seaside and his words come at you – phrases, sentences, entire paragraphs, lengthy monologues – like wave after wave crashing onto the beach. In a self-indulgent age when too many people publish their shallow banalities, Shaw offers magnificent rhythms and reassuring sounds that remind us that deeper thoughts and well-wrought words still matter.

As for what the critics say, Shaw would be unsurprised by their misreadings. After all, you never can tell.

Petering out

I was never much impressed with Peter MacKay who has announced he will not be running in the October federal election. My lack of enthusiasm dates from the deal he struck in May 2003 to become leader of the Progressive Conservative Party. After the third ballot, MacKay was in first place, Jim Prentice (who went on to lesser things) was second, and David Orchard third. To obtain the support of Orchard and win the leadership on the fourth and final ballot, MacKay signed a four-point agreement with Orchard that included a promise not to merge the PCs with the Alliance, then headed by one Stephen Harper.

Within five months, MacKay reneged on the deal, and carried out the very merger he said he wouldn’t do thereby creating the Conservative Party of Canada. So much for MacKay’s word being his bond. Ever since, Harper has rewarded MacKay with portfolios well beyond his capacity.

MacKay’s time in Parliament will yield a handsome annual pension of $129,000 that begins in five years when he turns 55. Mackay joins about thirty Conservatives, including three cabinet ministers, who won’t be running this fall. Like MacKay, many are saying they want to spend more time with their families. Or do they think they might lose?

I wish Peter MacKay well but I won’t miss either his chiselled face or puzzled brow on Parliament Hill. In his nearly twenty years as an MP I can’t think of one thing he accomplished that matters.

 

Love is all you need

You get to a certain point in your life when you realize that a lot of the goals you sought were irrelevant: fame, promotions, or supremacy in your surroundings. All those meetings, office politics and impatience with others were just a waste of time. And what about all those worries? A doctor I used to see always said, “Most of the tragedies in my life never happened.”

David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, has written an excellent book on this very topic: what matters in life. In The Road to Character he says there are resume virtues and eulogy virtues. The list of accomplishments you put on your resume are different than what somebody says at your funeral. Brooks wants us all to seek moral success and attain admirable character; he also says he wrote this book to save his own soul.

What he’s created is kind of a “Lives of the Saints” in that he presents chapters on people for the rest of us to follow as we set aside career aspirations for a better inner life. Among the ideal individuals are President Dwight Eisenhower, champion of Catholic social teaching Dorothy Day, and my favourite of all the examples, George Eliot, author of Middlemarch, among other novels. I always assumed Eliot changed her name from Mary Anne Evans because a male writer was more likely to get published in the nineteenth century. In fact, she changed it to save her family from embarrassment after she took up with a married man, George Lewes. It was Lewes who encouraged her to write fiction and then became her agent, editor and publicist.

Buried in the chapter on Eliot are seven pages about their love: intellectual love, romantic love, the love that you feel when you meet someone with what Brooks calls “a thousand-year heart.” Brooks is a wonderful writer but these pages (168-174) soar on such lofty wings that it’s hard to imagine they were written by the same man. “They don’t even think of loving their beloved because they want something back,” he says. “They just naturally offer love as a matter of course. It is gift-love, not reciprocity-love.”

“Faith, hope and love,” sayeth the Bible, “but the greatest of these is love.” This book is a timely reminder of what we already knew, but all too often forget.

As seen on tv

Nobody makes the news like newspeople. ABC chief anchor George Stephanopoulos gave $75,000 over a three-year period to the Clinton Foundation and we are supposed to care because he used to work for Bill in the 1990s. Is his credibility suspect all this time later when he reports on Clinton matters?

NBC bingo caller Brian Williams lied about his participation in a war-zone event and is off the air for six months. Vanity Fair hired ace writer Bryan Burrough to dig into the matter in the current issue. Most of those quoted in the article are not named, a possibility not usually offered in such numbers to ordinary folk, but newspeople get a break when they talk about their own. Comcast, owners of NBC Universal, is blamed. One of those in charge had, gasp, no experience in journalism. For a journalist writing about another journalist, that’s the biggest sin of all.

Williams comes off as an egomaniac (surprise) who was poorly managed by those on top. The thesis is that Williams would be a lot happier if he moved to CNN and became the replacement they never found for Larry King. In Canada, we’ve had similar imbroglios recently over CBC personalities Peter Mansbridge and Amanda Lang taking money for giving speeches in their spare time.

The trouble with all of this is that the newspeople are getting in the way of the news. We’ve elevated journalists, particularly broadcasters, beyond their merit level. I pine for the days of Knowlton Nash and David Brinkley when newsreaders and journalists were just a bunch of people doing their jobs.

Flatlining on Front Street

If Justin Trudeau’s speech to the Canadian Club of Toronto today was any indication of his oratorical capacity, he’s going to flounder and fail in the fall election. Usually politicians are pumped, even passionate, on such important occasions. He was deadly; the speech was a dud. Trudeau was purportedly there to elaborate on his fairness for the middle class message that he launched last week. If there was any fresh meat, it must have been lost in the morass.

The words were workmanlike. There were no applause lines. I’d hate to be a television producer looking for a news clip. The closest he got was when he said, “I stand for success.” The rest was muted and milquetoast. There was no peroration calling for action or anything else.

This speech date would have been set up at least a week, maybe ten days ago, plenty of time for a good speechwriter to have crafted phrases that were far more memorable. Is there no one on Trudeau’s staff who can read a draft and say, “This isn’t good enough. Make it better.” Or what about the candidate? Why didn’t he demand higher-octane material? Campaigns don’t survive on half measures.

The 450-member audience was hushed throughout. At first I thought maybe they were listening carefully. Then I concluded they were stunned by the boredom of it all. The dozen candidates from the Greater Toronto Area who attended must have wondered what they’d signed up for.

They say all a politician needs is good health and a good speech. Well, he looked fine even with his formerly abundant locks shorn, but the speech wasn’t worthy of a high school valedictorian.

 

Good play, sweet prince

Jonathan Goad plays Hamlet at the Stratford Festival with the full range of emotions that the role demands. At various times he is confused and bemused, antic and pedantic, foul and befouled, vital and vengeful. The stage is spare, the costuming portrays a relatively drab 1914 era, and the special effects almost nil. None is required. In this Shakespearian play, more than most, the words are all.

And delightful words they be. I have to admit that I sometimes get lost and frustrated by the romantic comedies where there are three couples, some in disguise, and the dialogue becomes little more than word play. In Hamlet, the poetry advances the plot and unveils character, with words sounding all the while like old friends whispering in your ear.

This play has probably produced more phrases for everyday speech than any other of the Bard’s works. Here are just a few examples: to be or not to be, that is the question; to thine own self be true; to sleep, perchance to dream; brevity is the soul of wit; sweets to the sweet; the lady doth protest too much; something is rotten in the state of Denmark; and good night, sweet prince.

Goad is surrounded by an excellent cast. Adrienne Gould is a delightful Ophelia who masterfully plays her madness; as Horatio, Tim Campbell is a worthy friend; Tom Rooney is the appropriately picky Polonius. My only disappointment was with the usually reliable Geraint Wyn Davies. Too often, his back was to the audience, so his words were muffled. Otherwise, he was the suitably arrogant and self-satisfied usurper of the throne.

The play officially opens May 25. Yesterday’s performance was to a house that was only 60 percent full. I hope as word of mouth spreads, the numbers grow. Meanwhile, musicals continue to pay the freight for the rest of us to see the best Shakespearean drama in the world. At Stratford, musicals regularly produce two-thirds of the total annual revenue. This year, officials are expecting that The Sound of Music will yield as much as three-quarters of the total box office. Thank goodness for the von Trapp family or Stratford would be facing its own to-be-or-not-to-be moment.