Rod McQueen's Blog, page 6

Every day is a winding road

As mistakes go, it was a small one, but the resulting cost did hit hard. I was headed this week to see my eye doctor at Toronto Western Hospital. I usually park at an asphalt lot run by Canada Wide Parking on Bathurst Street opposite the hospital. There were about thirty cars already there and just two slots left, so I was happy to get one.
There’s no attendant, just a pay machine where you use a credit card. It’s a bit of a complicated setup. First, you have to enter your licence plate info so it appears on the ticket you place on your dash. The morning sun was shining on the glass-faced pay machine but I eventually was able to fill in my plate number.
There were now three choices on the glass for length of stay. When I pressed each of the first two, both offered parking until 10:30. That didn’t seem like enough time to see my doctor and get back, but I did think for a moment about pressing one of those buttons on the assumption that if I didn’t return until 11, the likelihood of me being found out was pretty slim.
But I thought better of that sneaky choice and pressed the third spot which looked amid the sun’s glare like 26. I assumed that was $26 for the day rate. I’d paid $24 in the past but concluded there’d been a price increase along with most everything else.
The machine spat out my ticket. I looked at it and my eyes popped. I was there at 9:30 on Wednesday morning but I’d somehow bought parking until Saturday at 6:46 a.m., three days hence. When I looked more closely, I realized I’d paid $100. That’s probably twice as much as the eye doctor charged OHIP for my visit.
When I got home, I looked up Canada Wide Parking online. The (416) number rang and rang. No one answered. The 1-800 number at least had voicemail so I left a detailed message about my expensive encounter. It’s now three days hence. No one has called me back.
Why does that not surprise me? If no one’s at the lot, why would there be someone at the office? Canada Wide Parking sure sounds like a national organization but I have a vision of some guy sitting in far-off Napanee, Ont., raking in the dough, with no one on payroll to worry about. I’d be happy to hear from him to discuss my complaint, but somehow I can’t imagine I ever will. Even Vegas doesn’t take your money that fast.

Building blocks

I live in an apartment building at Bay and Bloor Streets in downtown Toronto. You know, where the shops are. Or should be, except they’re fast disappearing, soon to be replaced by condos. As if we don’t have enough already.
Let me paint a picture for you. Walk with me one block east to Yonge and Bloor. On the southwest corner is The One, an eighty-one floor condo that’s been under construction for about four years. I don’t go too close anymore because work on the upper floors seems to require build-outs that reach over the sidewalk below. Who knows what might fall on your head.
Move back west again to Bay and Bloor. On the northwest corner there was a Hakim Optical outlet that recently closed. I just heard why. They’re going to build a condo running from that corner west along the north side of Bloor as far as the next block, Bellair Street. Harry Rosen menswear is on that corner so it will disappear along with all the other stores in between. Construction, I hear, will begin in 2026 and last six years. It’ll be eighty-two floors!
Go back to Bay and Bloor, then walk north on the east side of Bay to the first street running to the right, Cumberland. Walk east toward Yonge and think about the three towers planned on your right-hand side, all in the 50-60-floor height range, smack dab behind Holt’s. Across Cumberland two condos are already under construction.
Now stay with me for one last trip from Bay and Bloor by walking one block west on the south side of Bloor to St. Thomas Street which runs south. That Bloor Street block will boast another gaggle of condos. How many shops in total will disappear during all these goings-on I have no idea but I’m happy to report that Harry Rosen will have a new nearby location ready to occupy when the current store closes.
If you can’t imagine what all this havoc will look like, go to Yonge and St. Clair and walk south. Most of the stores on the east side of Yonge have been shuttered for some time awaiting who-knows-what. Further down on the same side near Balmoral Avenue there’s a large lot that was cleared long ago and is still empty.
I don’t see myself as an inveterate traveler, but I’ve been lucky enough to visit New York, London, Paris and Rome. In none of those city centres do I see anything like the senseless construction permitted by Toronto’s planners. We deserve better.

Lifelong learning

Look around you and the symptoms of a society in decay are everywhere. Parliament has become a mockery of its former self. It’s no longer a place where ideas are debated, it’s a schoolyard where epithets are thrown. Traffic has become an angry nightmare. On a downtown Toronto street this week I watched as one car chased another, horn constantly honking, around a corner and down the next street as if the driver was avenging some sin, real or imagined.
Said a woman on the sidewalk beside me; “That’s my definition of a moron.” I agreed but my heart went out to the driver of the first car who must have been panic stricken. A few days earlier, I saw a bicyclist hammering his fist on the window of a taxi and hollering at the occupants about who-knows-what. Good Samaritans are few and far between.
Time was when politicians made friends across party lines. When Darcy McKeough was Treasurer of Ontario, he and NDP leader Stephen Lewis would debate fiercely in the Legislature but then go out and have dinner together. Traffic seemed much calmer. You could count on no one running a red light as they turned in front of you. Now, it’s wise to wait a few extra seconds after your own light goes green.
To be sure, as I get older, I sometimes yearn for the good old days, but there seems to be more divisive goings-on than can simply be explained by my being out of time and place. Fortunately, there are many thinkers who offer comfort and guidance. I just recently read Hans Selye’s memoir, “The Stress of my Life,” in which the celebrated Montreal doctor recounts his discovery of stress as the cause of most personal problems. His advice is simple and can be reduced to one instructive sentence: “What matters is not what happens to you but the way you take it.”
By chance I also just read “Marcus Aurelius the Stoic Emperor,” by Donald J. Robertson. In the past I was drawn to stoicism as a possible way of life and I now regard myself as a total convert. Here’s my newfound philosophy in a nutshell: Live in the moment. Be indifferent to what others think of you. Be self-aware. Assume responsibility for your own happiness. Don’t wish for what you don’t have. Seek virtue and tranquility. Live each day as if it will be your last. Because it might be.

Life at the top

Chief Executive Officer has become a four-letter word. These days you’d no more trust your money to many CEOs than ship lettuce by rabbit. I’ve interviewed numerous directors over the years who’ve been involved in selecting CEOs and I’ve also interviewed many of those who have been chosen for the top job.The trouble is that no one can predict with certainty how well or otherwise a new CEO will do until they’re actually in harness. As an individual moves up the corporate ladder, the rungs are all pretty equal. But the distance is vast between being number two in an organization and number one.
One of the best natural talents any leader should possess is intuition. That doesn’t mean you’re always right, and it certainly doesn’t mean that others are always wrong. The toughest part of having good instincts is learning to trust them.
The second trait of a good leader is the patience to convince others to share your view by getting them to understand and agree to your position, and then be willing to act in unison. Thirdly, a leader must have a certain rare quality. That was best expressed when CIBC bought investment banking firm Wood Gundy. Then CIBC CEO Don Fullerton wrote to John Hunkin, soon to be president of CIBC Wood Gundy, saying, “You’ve got accountants and lawyers who could do the legal and financial due diligence. I want you to do the human due diligence and what I want to know is: Do they still have a soul?”
Here are my picks for Canada’s top five CEOs. First is Bruce Flatt of Brookfield. I’ve admired Flatt ever since 9/11. He didn’t wait for calm to return or airports to reopen. That same day he hired a car and headed for Manhattan to personally supervise repairs to the company’s office properties at One Liberty Plaza. My other picks are Darren Entwistle of Telus, Tobias Lütke of Shopify, and two women: Tracy Robinson at CNR and Linda Hasenfratz of Linamar.
All five have demonstrated the qualities any CEO needs for success. First, no leader has all the answers. It’s what you learn after you think you know it all that really counts.
Second, every leader must realize that while it’s OK to stoke your own fire, you can’t let anyone see you fanning the flames. Egofeed may be fine for film stars. Business leaders should not be celebrities. Humility is the new watchword.
The third and most important attribute is character. J. P. Morgan might have been the first to endorse character. “Before money or property or anything else,” he said. A robber baron from the Gilded Age may be a curious person to cite, but in this case, he was absolutely right.

Losing the game

The Toronto Blue Jays are off to what I would call an okay start with a 6-6 record. They seem to have a goodly number of position players although pitching may be a problem. But this season I won’t be at the renovated Rogers Centre anywhere near as often as in the past. Since day one in 1977 I’ve been part of a group that had a pair of seats. Actually, two groups, one following the other.
The most recent group had excellent sightlines just five rows behind the Jays dugout. Usually, I’d chip in for seven games spread throughout the season. But the Jays organization decided to upgrade the seats behind home plate and turn them into a high-rent district. The price for “our” pair went from $13,000 to $28,000. To make matters worse, you had to make a two-year or four-year commitment. And they wouldn’t even tell you where the seats would be located. They kept touting the slightly wider width and the fact that it would have a cupholder. At that price you couldn’t afford to buy a drink to put in the cupholder.
I fully agreed with the decision not to renew. In fact, I’d lost interest at the end of last season. After squeaking into a wild card spot in the playoffs, the Jays demeaned themselves by scoring only one desultory run in the two playoff games. I thought my spirits would rise again as spring came but the jump in pricing put an end to that.
I’ve watched parts of the early home games on television and tried to figure out exactly who these people behind the plate are in the seats with cupholders. At first you might think they all work at TD Bank there are so many logos repeated on the brick wall behind them. Whoever they are, they can’t be real fans. By the late innings, even in an exciting game with the Jays doing well, about half the fifty seats in that section are empty, the tenants long gone.
So, for me, it would seem that the $500 million renovation at Rogers Centre was all about attracting a wider audience that doesn’t really care about baseball. It’s mostly guys with hats on backwards swilling beer beside babes who wouldn’t know that a double is not just a drink. Only in Toronto would aficionados of the game become so forgotten. Tradition has been traded for traffic.

Bring on the empty rhetoric

Not since soldiers marched on the parade square have I seen anything quite so regimented as the annual meeting. I’ve been to many such corporate gatherings and it matters not a whit whether it’s held in Calgary or Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver – everything is interchangeable from one city to another, one company to another.
Shareholders assemble outside a downtown hotel meeting room for free coffee and cookies then take their seats as close as possible to the rear of the hall for a quick departure. The top corporate executives sit at a long table with their names emblazoned on placards in front of them, as if they were delegates from emerging countries attending the United Nations.
Directors occupy the front two rows. They wear identification badges so shareholders can corner them later and ask penetrating questions about the intricacies of corporate governance. However, the directors always seem to disappear as soon as they can without facing even the most modest scrutiny.
Near the podium sit the investment bankers who count on the company for their livelihood earned from stock issues and other offerings. They’re the ones who laugh heartily at the chief executive’s jokes. Once all participants are assembled, the chairman taps the microphone then blows into it to make sure it’s working and summons the meeting to order. 
The first agenda item is to introduce all those people who already have placards or name tags, as if no one among the assembled can read. Then begins a sad charade of corporate democracy as pre-arranged individuals pop up to propose or second motions that will be little noted nor long remembered. Votes on those various items have already been counted in advance by scrutineers. Autocrats, take note for new techniques.
Next, the chairman praises the chief executive officer who bashfully thanks him and then delivers a twenty-minute message as minds wander off all around the room. Just as name tags exist for those who wouldn’t otherwise be identifiable, some of the CEO’s finest phrases are flashed on a huge screen, apparently for the benefit of those who cannot hear.
At last comes the part of the meeting that causes some CEOs sleepless nights: the question and answer session. Once, in my brief corporate life as a PR man, I prepared a briefing book for a CEO. What’s the point? Rarely are there any tough questions from the floor.
Given all that buffoonery, I hereby propose all annual meetings be cancelled forthwith. Most companies already have quarterly conference calls with analysts, why not open up those sessions to include media and shareholders who want to attend via Zoom? Oh, and how about posting the boss’s briefing book online, the one that contains the answers to any and all possible questions? The contents would certainly be more interesting than any speech.

 

 

Paperback writer

Once, when I was a much younger and more callow man, I was sitting with friends over dinner at one of those restaurants that has brown wrapping paper covering the table as well as crayons for decorative activities. Someone said, “Let’s write down what we want in life.” Various declarations were made: marriage, money, good health. I wrote “Fame.” Looking back, it was a foolish and immature ambition.
The closest I ever got to fame was the 1998 publication of The Eatons: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Royal Family. Canada’s most famous department store had gone bankrupt and I wrote the authoritative book, beginning with founder Timothy Eaton and going all the way to the young fifth-generation family members who were working in the stores at the end. “You own that story,” said the late arts and culture authority Peter Herrndorf at the time when he was chairman and CEO of TVOntario.
While mine was never the fame of Margaret Atwood, who has become unavoidable, it was as close as I got. And you know what? There isn’t much chance of fame for most authors, including me. Books have a shelf life somewhere between milk and yogurt.
Where do book ideas come from? When Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, was asked how she chose one idea over another among the many possibilities presented at any given story meeting, she replied, “My nipples get hard.”
My physical reaction was usually a little lower down; a good idea literally hits me in the gut. For example, while holidaying in rural France in August 1994, by sheer chance I happened to stop at a newsstand where a page one headline in the Financial Times leapt out: the Canadian government had seized Confederation Life. Without reading further, I knew immediately that was my next book. Who Killed Confederation Life? won the National Business Book Award.
As it turned out, my failure to find fame didn’t matter a hoot because I discovered something I hadn’t realized was possible during that earlier time in the restaurant. I found the pure, unadulterated joy in the very act of writing itself: word by word, sentence by sentence, page by page, rewrite by rewrite. And, as time rolls on, you discover that you need not retire from writing. Writing never abandons you. Fame may be fleeting but writing is forever.

A woman’s place

HBO’s “Succession” is all about which one of his offspring would succeed the feisty founder Logan Roy. In fact, the autocrat’s belligerent handling of the topic gave the four-season television series its vigour. CEOs of the big five Canadian banks cannot conduct any such shenanigans. In those institutions, succession must be as smooth as a kitten’s wrist.
That’s why eyebrows popped in 2022 when the board of Scotiabank chose a director, Scott Thomson, to become president, then president and CEO in 2023. To be sure, the board makes the final decision to appoint the CEO, but I cannot recall any other occasion in modern banking history when the directors picked one of their own.
More typical Scotiabank behavior occurred when Ced Ritchie retired as CEO in 1993 and long-time designated heir Peter Godsoe took over. Scott McDonald had also been in the running for a while, but must have realized it wasn’t going to be him because he left the bank in 1987 well before the transition occurred.
Today, bank shareholders are pressing to be part of the process. No CEO should stay too long, they say. At TD Bank, Bharat Masrani has been CEO for ten years, so attendees at the TD annual meeting earlier this month were expecting an announcement on succession. None was forthcoming. The closest Masrani came was to say that there were “very detailed and robust succession plans across the bank.” My bet is that there will be an announcement at or before the next annual meeting.
At CIBC, Victor Dodig is facing a similar anniversary as Masrani, ten years at the top. At CIBC’s annual meeting last week, Dodig went so far as to offer the names of three bank executives as possible successors. “This is a team sport,” he told the Globe and Mail. “This is about the baton. Sometimes you hold it on your own for a while, but you hand it over.”
My substantial problem with CEO succession at all of the big five banks is that there is a scarcity of women in the running. Like Masrani and Dodig, at Royal Bank David McKay has been CEO for ten years. Jacynthe Côté has been board chair for only a year, but was previously CEO at Rio Tinto Alcan, so she has experience in the CEO role. Maybe the Royal board of directors could pull a Scotiabank and not only designate one of their own as CEO, but pick a woman as well. Wouldn’t that be leadership, both for Côté and the bank.

 

Brian Mulroney 1939-2024

After Robert Stanfield announced in the summer of 1975 that he was stepping down, potential candidates for his job as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party bestirred themselves. Brian Mulroney, one of the party’s very few high-profile stalwarts in Quebec, began calling me at home every Sunday afternoon. The reason was not to seek my support but to read me his draft of a possible speech, opinion piece, or policy proposal and ask for comment.
Mulroney ran for leader in 1976 but lost to Joe Clark. That must have hurt, but Mulroney kept his curses close. While Mulroney served as president of Iron Ore Co. of Canada, he’d hold meetings in a private dining room at Montreal’s Mount Royal Club, plotting his revenge. After Clark lost the government in 1980 and battled grimly to keep his post, Mulroney worked so hard behind the scenes to oust Clark that he almost befouled his own future.
As former party president Dalton Camp told me, Camp said to Mulroney in 1982: “You’re being measured for a shroud.” Only then did Mulroney declare public peace, but let his loyalists engineer Clark’s downfall, leading to the 1983 leadership convention won by Mulroney.
A few days after Mulroney’s 211-seat electoral victory in 1984, I received a call from Sam Wakim, a lawyer and best friend of Mulroney since their university days at St. Francis Xavier. Wakim asked if I’d like to be Mulroney’s press secretary. I turned him down, saying I’d been press secretary to Stanfield and didn’t want to go back to Ottawa.
I much preferred my role as a journalist and was among the first to conduct a sit-down interview with Mulroney as prime minister, in my case early in 1985 on assignment for Fortune. Of Canada, asked Mulroney in the article that ran in a March issue, “Who wants to buy it? What is there so compellingly attractive about Canada that causes us to think that anybody is going to rush in simply because somebody says, ‘I’d like to do business with you.’”
On a personal basis, Mulroney honestly cared about the sufferings of others. I can’t count the number of people who told me over the years that they heard from Mulroney after some personal illness or a death in their family. But those winning skills came with a weakness. While he would back a friend in a manner that was almost tribal, he never forgave an enemy. Most caucus members who failed to support him for the leadership fared poorly at his hand during his years in office.
But Mulroney healed a political party that had feuded for twenty years. His electoral victories in 1984 and 1988 yielded the first back-to-back majorities by any Tory leader in the twentieth century.
Moreover, he reinvented Canada. He tackled abuse of social programs, privatized government agencies, and launched the goods and services tax to reduce the deficit. He also pushed business to be less reliant on government largesse and instead break into new markets through the Canada-U.S free trade agreement. As with all politicians, he wanted to be liked, but he was willing to do the unpopular.
There’s just that one thing. After leaving office Mulroney accepted a total of $225,000 in cash from German businessman Karlheinz Schreiber during clandestine meetings in hotel rooms. Despite that failing, if Mulroney could, I’d be happy to take his call and hear from him one more time.

The dying of the light

The Globe and Mail has recently added a new feature, a half-page wanna-be-there story about some sunbaked resort, festive cruise, or guided tour so grand that it will turn you into one of those sought-after influencers. At the end of each massaged piece there’s always a reverent sentence, displayed in an italic font, that says something like: “The writer was a guest of Fantasy Farm but the Farm did not read or approve the story before publication.”
Last Saturday there were two such articles in my morning paper, both on skiing in Japan, written by two different authors about two different resorts in that one far-off country. Such abundance! The war in Ukraine could not keep up.
While the generous hosts may not approve these stories, they might as as well have. The articles are usually fawning flapdoodle efforts except for some minor complaint as a lawn chair that would not open easily. Rarely does anyone find surprises like hair clogging the bathroom sink or having to suffer a surly waiter. 
To be sure, other writers have enjoyed an equally special status. During the 1970s, members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery could order a drink delivered swiftly by a gallery staffer to their seat while they typed. Back at home office, however, editors pored over everything from the accuracy of their submission all the way to proper punctuation.
But today when newsroom layoffs are occurring two before tea, outlets across the country are closing down, and thoughtful television documentary programs such as W5 are being killed, I worry about what will remain for us to read and watch in the not-too-distant future. Already there are two- and four-page spreads in my morning newspaper with stories and topics that have been penned by advertisers or interest groups. Fortunately, so far they are marked at the top with the word “Content” much like the mediaeval leper at the castle gates who uttered “Unclean” to anyone who strayed too close. 
As a result of all these failings and firings, the future of journalistic institutions that used to set the agenda for debate across the country is becoming clearer. Here’s my prediction: newspapers will soon be written using Artificial Intelligence paid for by advertisers thereby making them little better than those flyers you throw away as soon as they slither through your mailbox. Not even George Orwell, author of the novel 1984, could have imagined a totalitarian regime so bleak.