Rod McQueen's Blog, page 7

Letter of the law

I took a guided tour of of the Ontario Legislature this week. I’d previously sat in the visitors gallery and once attended a reception on a lower floor, so decided it was time to see the full panoply. 
Opened in 1893, the main floor, legislative chamber, and vast hallways are magnificent in oak. There are skylights, green and gold trim everywhere, and carvings above the doorways. The Mace, symbol of the Speaker, is displayed in a glass case for all to see up close because the legislature is not sitting. Crafted in 1867 it was regilded recently with two diamonds from northern Ontario added at the top under the crown. Beside it is the original wooden Mace from 1792. Stolen during the War of 1812 it was kept by the U.S. until President Franklin Delano Roosevelt returned it in 1934.
But for all the rich resonance of Ontario oak inside and Credit Valley granite outside, the west wing – reconstructed after a fire in 1909 – is curiously out of sync. The interior columns and walls are made with marble from Italy and the mosaic floor done with thousands of tiny tiles from Buffalo. 
All past premiers have portraits hanging done by artists of their choice. David Peterson’s stands out after a staid lineup of stuffed shirts and seated suits. His right arm is leaning on a fireplace mantel, his left hand is thrust into his pants pocket. He’s wearing no jacket, his tie and the top button of his shirt are undone, and his sleeves are rolled up.
Apparently Peterson told artist Linda Kooluris Dobbs that because he loved horses he wanted horses in the painting. As a result, reflected in the mirror above the mantel is a window with the head of a horse visible through the glass looking in. In case that wasn’t enough, his tie has several dozen small horses. Bob Rae is equally relaxed, wearing no jacket, seated at his desk. I could see no animals in his presence but there is an oddly empty chair dominating the left foreground. 
Strangest sight of all is the bronze bust just unveiled last month of Lincoln Alexander. He was Canada’s first Black Member of Parliament, the first Black cabinet minister, and the first Black Lieutenant-Governor. I knew Linc, worked with him in Ottawa, and I know he would have been proud to be so honoured. But there’s something off about the bust. At best, it’s taupe in colour. At worst, it’s got a green hue. How bronze couldn’t have been darker I cannot say. 

Chapter and verse

Fall and Christmas are the seasons for new books. As an author myself, I admire and appreciate the effort that goes into researching and writing a book. Here are brief reviews of three recent books that I enjoyed.
The Duel: Diefenbaker, Pearson and the Making of the Modern Canada. The thing that bothers me most about John Ibbitson’s book is that Pearson and Diefenbaker – warts and all – are far more interested in the welfare of Canadians than today’s leaders. Dief’s populism overshadows Pierre Poilievre’s poor attempts to align himself with voters. Pearson’s fertile brain makes Justin Trudeau look like a schoolboy. “The House was different then,” Ibbitson quotes Jean Chrétien as saying many years later.
Ibbitson’s writing style is fluid and his thesis is fascinating. Rather than just be foes when they took turns running the country in the 1950s and 1960s, Ibbitson sees Pearson and Diefenbaker building on each other’s work. Pearson gave the country the Canada Pension Plan, begun by earlier regimes, but then made more generous by Diefenbaker. In Ibbitson’s mind, The Duel could almost be The Duo.
George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle. Author Philip Norman must surely be the authority on the Beatles. He has written Shout about the group as well as biographies of Paul McCartney and John Lennon. Sex acts feature widely in this book. Harrison took up with Maureen, wife of Ringo. Meanwhile, Pattie, George’s wife, was with Eric Clapton who wrote “Layla” for her. Said George, “I’d rather she was with him than some dope.”
Harrison wrote twenty-two Beatles songs including “My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Something in the Way She Moves,” and the most-played Beatles song of all, “Here Comes the Sun.” George calls himself “the quiet Beatle” and Norman describes him as “elusive” but the author never really proves his thesis as set out in the title: “Reluctant.”
Elon Musk. Walter Isaacson, following his triumphant book about Steve Jobs and Apple, has written a terrific book about Elon Musk, the most prolific inventor of the age. He’s also the most demanding and least lovable. Musk has Asperger syndrome so has no empathy. During one visit by his mother, he disappeared for hours to play a video game on his phone. His ideas and driven ways have replaced NASA with SpaceX, led electric car sales with Tesla, and brought about Neuralink, which has done a brain implant. Isaacson had total access to Musk for two years. If a meeting collapsed amid shouting or a rocket blew up, Musk never once said, “Don’t put that in the book.” For all his success, the proof of Musk’s capability may come with his purchase of Twitter, now called X. While his co-workers had to accept his many foibles, the world may well take umbrage with the heavy-handed way he is running the popular social media site.

Dance of the dialectic

After finishing second in the Iowa caucuses, Ron DeSantis decided he would depart the Republican presidential race, saying he was “suspending” his campaign. At first, I thought the verb he used was a weasel word that would allow him to reactivate his run. Then I realized that he was just going with the flow in public pronouncements by using a euphemism. 
A similar subterfuge has infected the business world. When a chief executive officer leaves abruptly, he’s said to be “stepping aside.” Is he still on the executive floor and attending important meetings? I think not. But it’s better to do a lateral arabesque than suffer with a more accurate description of what the board of directors did.
This kind of sashay rhetoric is not new. During the Second World War Prime Minister Mackenzie King managed to walk both sides of the debate about conscription by saying, “Conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription.” 
I’ve had my own foray into wordplay. In the run-up to the 1972 election, when I was working for Opposition Leader Robert Stanfield, the federal and provincial governments announced a second international airport would be built east of Toronto in Pickering. I wrote a report on the issue that said while there was some support, most people in the Toronto area were against the plan. 
In the midst of the election, Stanfield declared he would hold a news conference on the topic the following morning. That evening, as I travelled on the press bus toward our overnight hotel, I was pestered by several journalists about what Stanfield planned to say. It was easy for me to remain silent. Stanfield had not yet decided his position. Several of us were meeting that very night to come up with something he could safely say. 
The meeting began around 10 p.m. and included Stanfield staffer Bill Grogan, campaign chair Finlay Macdonald, guru Dalton Camp, Research Director Geoff Molyneux, and me. Debate was protracted and went on until dawn. Finally, I think it was Dalton who came up with a phrase: “The case for a second airport has not yet been made.” Perfect! Stanfield was neither for nor against and he’d thrown the ball right back to the proponents. As Mark Twain has said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is like the difference between a lightning bug and the lightning.”

Cry, the beloved country

I read in my morning newspaper that both Bell and Rogers are thinking about increasing monthly charges for wireless and Internet customers. Funnily enough, both companies were considering hikes of a similar amount. I’m not suggesting collusion –  Heaven forbid – but it doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to conclude we have too few big media companies in Canada competing for customers.
By contrast, in the U.S., Verizon is giving away iPhones with any trade-in in any condition. Rog/Bell will never make such an offer. Why? Because Canadians are complacent and compliant, not demanding or desiring. At this time of year, all we care about is surviving winter.
We’re also lazy. Productivity per capita has been falling for at least twenty years while that same measurement continues to rise in the U.S. One problem is that too many Canadian businesspeople are content to chug along at a certain level of effort making $250,000 a year by operating a small business with six employees. They have no interest in expanding so don’t invest capital in the firm. And far too many founders feel their just reward is to be swallowed up by a U.S. firm so they can retire to Florida.
I keep reading American success stories like the one about the guy in New England who started Staples in 1985 because he couldn’t find a typewriter ribbon on a weekend. Today, there are more than 1,200 Staples stores in the U.S. and Canada, plus some in Europe and South America. We need more such founders like Frank Stronach (Magna) and Frank Hasenfratz (Linamar) who emigrated to Canada in the 1950s, penniless, but with tool and die training learned in their respective home country. Too many of today’s immigrants arrive with no skills at all.
Worse, Canadians don’t celebrate success. For example, we don’t embrace or admire our singers and actors until they make it in Hollywood or New York. What kind of country waits for the applause of another nation before feeling proud of their own? About the only star I can think of who stayed home and gained any level of reverence and respect in Canada was Gordon Lightfoot. Three hundred musicians did covers of his songs but he lived in Toronto and played Massey Hall 170 times and we loved him.
I weep for my country. We could be so much more. If only we believed in ourselves.

Fearless forecast

Here are my top ten predictions for 2024. 
1. Justin Trudeau will remain leader of the Liberal Party. Pierre Poilievre’s 10-point lead will evaporate. No election will be caused or called.
2. A recession as defined by two quarters of slow or no growth will occur. Previously compassionate Canadians will turn mean and blame immigrants for both the housing crisis and hard times.
3. The S&P/TSX Composite Index will fall 18 percent.
4. Donald Trump will win the U.S. presidential election. All hell will break loose.
5. Israel will reject international pleas for peace and continue to pursue Hamas even as the number of dead Palestinians rises to 50,000.
6. Forest fires will repeat last summer’s sultry proliferation thereby bringing cries of outrage and threats of reprisals by the United States toward Canada.
7. Russia will offer peace to Ukraine in return for keeping all the territory it has won. Ukraine will refuse. Fighting will carry on as the world loses interest and aid to Ukraine dries up. 
8. Toronto and other cities will rename more streets and remove more statues in a futile attempt to forget a past that will always haunt us.
9. We’ll wish Artificial Intelligence had never been invented.
10. In spite of everything, may all your hopes and dreams come true.

Peter Godsoe 1938-2023

In 1976, when I left the Ottawa office of Opposition Leader Robert Stanfield, I tried to get back into journalism, but no one would have me. I guess they all thought I would somehow promote Tory propaganda in my stories. So I became director of public affairs at the Bank of Nova Scotia. I reported to Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Cedric Ritchie so I had a first-hand look at the power politics that dominates the internal affairs of any large corporation.
Among the rising stars was Peter Godsoe who had a Harvard MBA and was working his way ever higher in the organization. Short and cherubic, Godsoe could never dominate a room the way a tall man can, but he had other ways. His main competitor for the top was Scott McDonald, just such a tall man.
In 1975, when Godsoe reported to McDonald, he was put in charge of Latin America, the U.S., and international treasury. Godsoe renamed the organization, calling it Western Hemisphere International Regional Office, or WHIRO for short. That’s where he was when I spent my two years at the bank before joining Maclean’s as business editor.
Godsoe ran WHIRO in a manner I have not seen anywhere since: he made it fun. There were books, cartoons, and jackets. The WHIRO hero award took the form of a crest with a bull on it and a Latin motto which, when translated, meant, “If you don’t have a hernia, you’re not pulling your weight.” The methodology worked. Over a four-year period, the unit’s share of international profits doubled.
Godsoe had fun outside the bank, too. Along with competitors such as Warren Moysey of CIBC and Continental Bank president David Lewis, Godsoe belonged to a thirty-member group whose sole purpose was to play an annual game of golf. The prize was a trophy stolen twenty years earlier from a University of Toronto fraternity bearing a plaque dedicated to Milton Flugelman. Again, there were jackets and a crest with a Latin motto, Numquam super + in numquam, which was translated as “Never up, never in.” The group played at various courses including Toronto Golf, Miami’s Doral, and in Las Vegas.
As CEO of the bank from 1993-2003, Godsoe brought about major progress in Mexico, improved diversity, and made money for shareholders, but when I look back, what I see is a guy who didn’t take himself too seriously and always had time for fun in his life. The business world needs more like him.

The way we were

What has happened to the scallywags of yesteryear? You know who I’m talking about, those high-flying, job-creating entrepreneurs who always seemed to be mouthing off on topics about which they knew nothing. They were in-your-face outlandish spenders with the latest private jet, a palace in the Caribbean, and women draped all over them. 
Take Nelson Skalbania, for example, who loved to gamble, owned the Vancouver Canucks and the Calgary Flames among other teams, several fine cars, a yacht, artwork, and tore down many a mansion as he bounced through a variety of sectors including forestry, air cargo, and an engineering firm. Peter C. Newman called him “a figment of his own imagination.”
Or how about those two least likely high-flyers, Jack Rhind and Pat Burns. Said Rhind: “I’m going to be the only kid on the block without an electric train. Get me an electric train.” Burns was a willing partner, declaring in 1990 to a Canadian Club audience, “We are ready to take on the world.” They took a formerly staid insurance company, Confederation Life, into deep doo-doo by investing far too much of the company’s assets in real estate just when values were about to plummet and stay down there for a decade. In 1994, regulators seized the firm and wound it up.
And there was Robert Campeau, who began as a house-builder in Sudbury, passed through Ottawa on his way to the U.S. where he convinced bankers to lend him some $10 billion to acquire two department store chains, Allied followed by Federated. Interest payments alone ran to $1 billion a year. He ended up presiding over their bankruptcy and, by some accounts, causing the October 1987 stock market crash. 
There’s also Edgar Bronfman Jr. who liked to do deals but cared little about actually running his acquisitions. The conquests included Hollywood studio MCA Inc. and Polygram records. His comeuppance arrived when he joined with Jean-Marie Messier of Paris-based Vivendi SA, and in so doing managed to lose three-quarters of his family’s $8-billion fortune. The prediction of his grandfather, Sam, “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations,” turned out to be all too true.
I can’t think of a Canadian business leader today with anything like an entrepreneurial profile similar to those described. Maybe that means they’re more likely to find long-term success in the future.

Darcy McKeough 1933-2023

When Darcy McKeough, former Treasurer of Ontario, talked to me about helping with his memoirs, he said he’d done some work. You never know what that means: a few scrawled recollections or maybe a stack of newspaper clippings. For McKeough, it was a three-inch-thick binder with 1,200 double-spaced typed pages – 601,189 words in all.
I told McKeough that the average published book had 256 pages and ran to 75,000 words. Moreover, I would be interviewing friends, colleagues, and family for additional information and anecdotes so that more than 90 percent of what he’d written wasn’t going to make it into the final version. I don’t think he believed me. The book, entitled The Duke of Kent, came out in 2016 from ECW Press.
McKeough died two days ago from complications with pneumonia. He was 90.
When McKeough was a child, his parents were curious about his future. His father placed a Bible, a bottle, and a deck of cards on the table in front of him. The idea was that if McKeough picked up the Bible, he’d go into the church; if the bottle, he’d be a drunkard; if the cards, a gambler. When he grabbed all three, his mother shrieked, “My God, he’s going to be a politician.”
In fact, politics was bred in the bone. McKeough’s great-grandfather and grandfather had both been mayors of Chatham. McKeough ran for alderman on Chatham City Council in 1959 and won on his first attempt. He was next drawn to John Robarts, the new leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. In 1963 McKeough was elected to the Ontario Legislature and was soon named to cabinet. That most suitable name, the Duke of Kent (after the county he represented) was given to him by Elmer Sopha, a Liberal member of the Legislature.
After the 1967 election, McKeough was named Minister of Municipal Affairs, then later Treasurer. In 1970 when Robarts announced his retirement, McKeough ran for leader. Bill Davis won with McKeough’s support, but McKeough admitted to me that he admired Robarts more. “Maybe it’s because he was my first leader and mentor, but thinking back to the cabinet table, it’s always John Robarts I see in command,” said McKeough. “Davis also performed well, but not with the same gravitas. ‘Bland works,’ Davis once told the Legislature. John Robarts never had a bland moment in his life.”
A 1972 newspaper article claiming McKeough’s ministry had approved a housing project in which he had an interest meant he had to resign from cabinet despite having nothing to do with the project. McKeough was in Europe on government business. Media awaited at the Toronto airport, but staff spirited him to a provincial plane bound for Chatham. Aboard were newspapers containing coverage of his alleged misdeed. “Portions had been already been read to me, but seeing everything in print was far worse,” he told me. “I was appalled. I cried halfway home.”
He resigned from cabinet. But, by 1975, McKeough’s rehabilitation was complete when he was re-appointed Treasurer. It didn’t take long for him to become bored, something that few politicians will ever admit. Said McKeough: “I attended too many meetings where I said to myself, ‘God, I’ve heard all this before.’”
But McKeough still wanted to be premier, so, on August 15, 1978, McKeough met Davis for lunch. Following the soup course, Davis, who new full well what the lunch was all about, said, “I’m not going.” Replied McKeough, “Well, then I am.”
On his last day at Queen’s Park McKeough invited about fifty people for farewell drinks in his seventh-floor office at the south end of the Frost building. The office balcony had a clear view of the annual parade of clowns and floats, marking opening day of the Canadian National Exhibition. As the cavalcade trekked south past the Legislature and then down University Avenue, lawyer Eddie Goodman, a close advisor to Davis, commented, “Leave it to Darcy to arrange a parade on the day of his resignation.” Let the final parade begin.

Echoes from the past

I read recently that the iPhone has more capacity than computers did at the time men were first sent to the moon. The author then went on to cite the Apollo 13 mission when the astronauts spoke those scary words: “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”
As it turns out, Houston didn’t turn to any computer for help, they used slide rules to right the wrong. The slide rule has been around in one form or another since the 1600s. My father was an engineer; I used his slide rule to solve Physics problems in Grade Thirteen. But both the slide rule and Grade Thirteen have since disappeared.
That got me thinking about what else of worth has disappeared in my lifetime. I came up with quite a list. We used to walk everywhere: to school, music practice, or friends’ homes. Not today. Everyone gets a drive until they can drive themselves and even then they still get chauffered regularly. Few parents in the past watched their kids play organized hockey. Today, they’re all there, shouting epithets at the referees. Mothers are the biggest beraters of all.
How much snow has fallen? Not six inches anymore; it’s fifteen centimetres. And the temperature is not 40 Fahrenheit, it’s 4 Celsius. What do we read? I used to read three newsmagazines – Maclean’s, Time, and Newsweek – every week. Now, I couldn’t tell you when I last picked any one of them up. I think Maclean’s has become a monthly. Too many other members of the media have gone out of business. Social media fills in a few gaps but some of what appears is fabricated. But which items? And how much further will AI take us from reality?
And whatever happened to safety patrols run by public school students? There was a time when those participants were respected by their peers and got to arrive a few minutes late for class. Nowadays it’s a paying job for adults. And bicycles with no gears? Long gone.
But among all of the things that have disappeared perhaps the best and worst example is daydreaming. Train and bus passengers no longer stare out the windows and admire the passing scene. Everyone’s on their phone, playing games or wasting time on other nonsense. Daydreaming is good for you. Ideas pop into your head that could bring about a better world rather than the divisive place in which we now live. 
Or am I just echoing the elders of times gone by who rued what was happening around them. After all, in Rome, Cicero lamented, “O tempora, o mores!” meaning “Oh the times! Oh, the customs.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Face up to it

A few months back I wrote about the statue of Queen Elizabeth II that would soon be installed at Queen’s Park. The statue has been mired in disputes for several years. Something to do with donors, unpaid bills, and who knows what else.
But that’s not what caught my eye. No, it was the dimensions of the statue. According to a newspaper article, the statue plus the plinth it would sit on was going to be thirty feet high. That’s like three storeys of a condo building. It was supposed to be placed to the left of the main door of the Ontario Legislature and be a pendant to a more petite statue of Queen Victoria (after whom Queen’s Park is named) to the right of the main door.
I wrote a letter to the Honourable Ted Arnott, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, expressing my shock and dismay at this monstrosity about to be unveiled. Just so he’d know I wasn’t against Royal statues per se, I told him that the equestrian statue of King Edward VII, which is also under the purview of the Speaker, was one of my favourite statues in all the world. He did not reply to my missive.
A few day ago, the statue of the Queen was officially unveiled. What a relief. It was “only” two stories tall. That article was wrong. But there’s another problem. The face is supposed to look like the Queen in 1977. Not only does the face not look like the Queen, it has a certain masculinity that gives it a very unfortunate nature. You can view the statue and the face here in a CITY-TV news report to see for yourself. Other institutions fare better. The Royal Canadian Mint’s new coinage with the face of Charles III looks accurately done.
I don’t know what it is about Queen’s Park but they can’t seem to get their statues right. Sir John A. Macdonald has been boarded up on the front lawn for three years following vandalism. I remember talking in 2021 with members of a committee tasked with what to do about Sir John. I believe the matter has since been handed on to another group but nothing has come from them either.
I don’t know about you, but I believe that statues are meant to be erected – and viewed – to remember our best. Recently, all we’re doing is our worst.