Rod McQueen's Blog, page 7

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.

Going, going, gone

I think enough time has passed since the end of the Blue Jays’ baseball season that I can write something about the team without grinding my teeth right into the gums. They scraped into the wild-card round, scored one run in two games, and were gone. 
In similar circumstances, someone among the higher-ups in such a moribund organization would be fired. Not so with the Jays. Club president Mark Shapiro, general manager Ross Atkins, and manager John Schneider all remain firmly ensconced despite making the most bone-headed decision I’ve ever seen in baseball. That brains trust decided prior to the critical second game that they would pull starting left-handed pitcher Jose Berrios in the fourth inning and bring in a right-hander. Their plan was to confound the Minnesota Twins who would have to shuffle their batting order in response.
Berrios then proceeded to pitch the best game of his life. Rather than dump the plan and stay with a winner, the switch went ahead anyway. The replacement pitcher, Yusei Kikuchi, immediately gave up two runs and the game and the series was over.
Even as the desultory affair dragged on, manager John Schneider did what he does best: nothing. He made no thoughtful substitutions in an attempt to get a hit, just stood in the dugout, spitting out sunflower seed husks, as if he were a spectator in the stands.
Players were equally bereft. Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s bat was silent as it has been too often this season. I blame the home run derby that he won during the July All-Star break. Seventy-two dingers in three rounds, with all pitches lobbed softly toward him, seemed to disrupt his timing at the plate. But getting picked off at second base had to be the low point of his career. 
To me, the most amazing aspect is that the Rogers Centre was full during the last weeks of the season. Toronto fans cough up a lot of money to watch losers. Well, not this guy. I’m a member of a group that has for years shared a pair of seats behind the Blue Jays dugout. Next year, we were offered renovated seating and cup-holders, and it would only cost 30 percent more. Our group’s commissioner of baseball decided not to renew and I supported that decision. The Blue Jays won’t have me to kick around anymore.

 

Apple of my eye

I am still struggling to make sense of the now infamous interview Pierre Poilievre recently gave near Kelowna, B.C., to a local journalist. You likely have seen portions of this interview that’s gone viral conducted while the Conservative leader chows on an apple. The surrounding orchard sets the scene. While we’re not in the Garden of Eden, there is a certain biblical tone.
In the beginning, as the journalist (let’s call him LJ for local journalist) flounders around trying to frame a question about Poilievre’s “populist path,” you can see the leader smirk and reply “What does that mean?” Right wing, left wing, says LJ. “I never really talk about left or right. I don’t really believe in that.” (Insert from me: “A total lie. He uses such words all the time.”)
Then LJ tries a new tack by declaring that PP is taking a page from Donald Trump’s book. A gotcha look crosses PP’s face and he blurts “What page? Give me the page!” (Insert from me: “LJ was speaking metaphorically.)
To be sure, LJ should have been better prepared, but I wonder, was this interview approved in advance and scheduled? It seems more likely that it was a chance encounter during PP’s orchard tour. That would explain LJ’s difficulty finding his footing. And why does that smirk keep appearing on PP’s lips. Surely a national party leader who gives countless interviews each week could cut some slack in the case of LJ who’s probably doing his first-ever interview with a national leader.
But no such favours just yet. LJ puts a question that he say reflects the attitude of a great many Canadians. PP won’t accept generalities, he wants specifics. “Like who? You’re asking the question. You must know somebody.”
Finally, in desperation, LJ asks, “Why should Canadians trust you with their votes?” PP seems to realize he’s had his fun and reverts to his usual self, saying, “Common sense. We’re going to make common sense common in this country.” (Insert from me: A campaign slogan it ain’t.)
What have we learned about PP? I think we’ve learned that PP is a bit thoughtless about other people’s feelings, that he likes to toy with those who might not have had his life experience, and that he has an ego bigger than all the apple orchards in the world. I voted for Justin Trudeau in 2015. I won’t be doing that again. After this haughty performance by Johnny Appleseed, I won’t be with him either. Next election I’ll be voting for the Green Party, no matter the colour of their apples.

 

Spare the truth

When Spare, the book by Prince Harry, came out in January, I vowed not to read it just out of obstreperousness. I wasn’t moved by the fact that Guinness World Records named it the “fastest selling non-fiction book of all time.” Nor did I bow to temptation when I saw stacks of copies in my local Indigo. A week ago, however, out of nowhere, I got a message on my iPad saying I could renew Spare for another three weeks on Libby. The notice looked official and included my Toronto Public Library number. Turns out Libby is an online provider of library books for free.
I knew, of course, the book had been ghosted by novelist J. R. Moehringer and that Harry had received an advance of a reported $20 million. I thought, well, I guess I’m supposed to read this book. I read it all, more than 400 pages, in two riveted days. Written in the first person, Spare covers every detail of Harry’s life including his crepe-draped memories of the death of his mother, Lady Diana, when he was twelve. For a number of years he thought she was still alive and had gone into hiding to escape the paparazzi.
And, oh the paparazzi, whom he calls the paps. Even though he’s the Spare and his older brother William is the Heir, Harry was constantly followed or spied upon by the British press who made up tales about him and all the Royals.
But Harry doesn’t spare the Royal family. Charles comes off as a distant father who would rather write Harry a letter than speak directly to him. William is very competitive and did not even acknowledge Harry when both attended Eton. Margaret, he writes, “could kill a houseplant with one scowl.” There are no anecdotes about Philip and too few about the Queen whom he calls Granny. 
His marriage to Meghan Markle, a biracial American, caused some well-documented concern. A Royal who remains unnamed in this so-called tell-all was said to have worried about “how dark” Meghan’s unborn child would be.
Is it all accurate? I wonder about the many direct quotes that are cited from years gone by. Does anyone have that good a memory? And if they really wanted peace and quiet, why write a book? South Park did a wonderful parody called The Worldwide Privacy Tour. So, read Spare if you like – it is very readable – but you don’t need to believe everything.

Send in the clones

Everybody’s writing about Artificial Intelligence (AI) these days. My morning paper has as least two articles a day on the topic. Now that apparently anybody can write something using AI, those of us who write for a living are out of luck. This is the end of the line, maybe even the end of an era.
Writing had its beginnings when he/him she/her first started telling stories to others around fires and continued through the invention of moveable type, stage productions, and then the silver screen. The Industrial Age replaced the Agrarian Age but farmers continued to grow food. I can’t see a scenario where AI and real writers can co-exist.
Imagine a future without real writers. All newspaper articles will sound the same. There will be no individual voices, no columnists, no editorials, unread or otherwise. Even Letters to the Editor will present predictable prose. TV newscasts will be delivered by zombies. Sixty Minutes will show footage of flora and fauna. Any protest to the new ways will be mired amid all the other forgettable items on Y, formerly known as X.
Even Tom Hanks is into the act. “Beware,” warned Hanks recently on his Instagram account. ‘’There’s a video out there promoting some dental plan with an AI version of me. I have nothing to do with it.” And you thought we already had a problem with fake news. As Bachman Turner Overdrive sang in 1974, “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.” Of course they cribbed that from Al Jolson when he said “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet” in 1927 but both references were long before AI.
To date, accuracy by AI has been an issue. I heard about someone who asked one of the CHAT bots to write a biography of himself. According to the bot, the man was dead. Institutions from high schools to universities have a bigger problem. So far, a professor can usually spot most AI-produced essays because they sound like they’ve been written by a machine. At some schools, students are sent packing on the second AI submission. Such oversight will have to continue and will get in the way of good student-teacher relations. Other fields of pursuit will become equally corroded. All in all, I see a fraught future where nothing seems real and everything is suspect. I don’t look forward to suffering through an even more divisive world.

Deliver us from evil

Of all the unnecessary imbroglios you might imagine, the resignation of Anthony Rota as speaker of the House of Commons must rank right up there. And, of course, all the participants climbed on their high horses and played their parts as if this were some dark Shakespearean tragedy.
Let’s begin at the beginning with the focus of this public hanging. Yaraslov Hunka, a constituent of Rota’s, was invited by the speaker to hear Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky address Members of Parliament last week. Hunka was introduced from the speaker’s chair by Rota as a “Ukrainian hero and a Canadian hero” and he received sustained applause from all who were present.
But wait, some group soon pointed out, Hunka was a member of the Waffen SS during the Second World War, might have committed activities as a Nazi, and so shouldn’t have been celebrated in 2023. But Hunka, who is 98, was born in 1925. He was 19 or 20 when the Second World War ended so was unlikely to have been in any leadership position. 
Despite a lack of specific information, everyone involved – and a few who weren’t – went into action. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed embarrassment, Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre demanded hearings into how this faux pas could have happened, and the Kremlin called it outrageous that Hunka could be cited as a hero and wondered why Canadians don’t have better knowledge about the Second World War and the history of fascism.
Speaker Rota resigned in disgrace and Hunka returned to his home in northern Ontario as a newly reviled member of his community.
One can call upon great quotes in such circumstances. George Santayana comes to mind: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Or Winston Churchill who riffed off the same motif: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
I have an even better idea. Rather than worrying about the terrible actions of the past while donating more armaments for this war, why don’t all participants focus instead on peace talks between Russia and Ukraine? With a total of 500,000 dead from both sides and millions of refugees, time is long since past to establish a process that leads to peace.
As for the distant past, I’m sure there was abominable behaviour on all sides. I have a quote for that, too: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”