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Thursday, July 9, 2009 10:09 PM
Watch out for a case of the Wednesdays
So, The Globe sat on a story – big deal.
Just imagine the unimaginable hurt saved by that one day’s delay. Never let it be said we lack a heart around here.
But there you have it, the Life section story “Wednesday is peak suicide day” appeared on a Thursday when, correct me if I’m wrong, the Thursday Report on Business section reads like an MRI scan not even your attending physician can face.
Researchers at the University of California say they have proven that Wednesday is actually the cruellest day of the week – not Monday, as has always been the claim.
Thursday and Friday, in fact, are the lowest days for self-inflicted damage, suggesting that Thursday’s Report on Business, if it had to come out at all, certainly came out at the right psychological point of the workweek.
It was painful to read through.
Grey hair, it turns out, is the latest thing out to get us. Over the next two decades, the number of Canadians over age 65 will double from 20 per cent to 40 per cent of the population.
So serious is this Adult Diaper Factor, says the International Monetary Fund, that the toll on developed nations will be 10 times that of the current financial crisis …
… and that’s just the opening gambit. Other stories have the demand for oil drying up, hospitals being put on life-support by the recession, and a third straight day of triple-digit loss in the stock market.
As well, on the very front page, “Missing the mark” is the headline over a story on the economy: “Only a month ago, there were whispers of a recovery, but those have long since fallen silent.”
This being the season of convocations, as well as the year of the financial debacle, it is tempting to reflect on the words of comfort Kurt Vonnegut Jr. once offered the graduates of Vermont’s Bennington Collegeď back in 1970.
“Everything,” he told them, “is going to become unimaginably worse, and never get better again.”
Sounds a lot like today, doesn’t it?
Mercifully, it’s not Wednesday.
Link to this postWednesday, July 8, 2009 06:38 PM
Pricey paintings by artist as a (forever) young man
Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park, Ont. – He will be 39 forever – even though it is exactly 92 years since he was last seen alive.
Tom Thomson, strangely, seems to get younger every year; or perhaps it is just because the rest of us are aging and his dark hair never lightens, his eyes never lose that sparkle.
Only a couple of weeks ago, a small sketch of his, Birches and Cedar, possibly painted in his final months, sold for $1,404,000 at auction – just short of the $1,463,500 record his art set a couple of years ago, when the world was flush with walking-around money and no one even imagined such a financial collapse was imminent.
To hold your own in the art world at a time like this speaks volumes.
But then Tom Thomson, of course, is one of those rare people – James Dean and Marilyn Monroe come to mind, Michael Jackson may one day – whose fame vastly increases after an untimely passing.
He once asked a friend back in Toronto to try to sell one of those tiny sketches for him. He was hoping for as much as $10 or $15 for it, but, as he closed out his note, “let it go for what they will give.”
Thomson wasn’t alone in underestimating his worth. He left a dozen or so of these little sketches with his girlfriend, Winnifred Trainor, who lived in the nearby small town of Huntsville. She kept them wrapped in newspaper and stuffed in a six-quart basket. When she died in 1962, she didn’t even have hot water in her place.
The ancient birch tree that marks the little Canoe Lake cemetery.
Her old cottage on Canoe Lake is still standing, preserved almost as it was back in 1917 when Thomson would sometimes hang his paintings there to dry. Out back of her place is a trail that twists and turns and arrives, eventually, at the little Canoe Lake cemetery where he was buried in July, 1917, after his body surfaced just off that small island near the far shore.
Is he still there? Did he drown? Or was he murdered? Was there a baby coming?
Tuesday, July 7, 2009 06:23 PM
It's Canada's turn in the Twitter revolution
"Let the revolution begin. … ”
28 characters down, 112 to go.
Several weeks ago, in anticipation of this little experiment we affectionately/jokingly/sarcastically refer to as “The Clog” – half column, half blog – The Globe and Mail set me up with a Twitter account.
The details were patiently spelled out to me by the incomparable Mathew Ingram – one of those rare human beings who can program a DVD player – and I immediately forgot everything. Having once written a 14,000-word newspaper profile on a Canadian prime minister, I wasn’t about to be reduced to 140 characters.
The way I type, I wouldn’t even get to the subject’s name by that point …
Like most others, I felt nothing but disdain for those with nothing to say who say it anyway. Having never heard of Ashton Kutcher – famous, apparently, for marrying an actress you perhaps have heard of – I couldn’t have cared less if he or CNN, the fright network, was first to reach one million followers.
Nor could I care what the mayor of Toronto is having for breakfast, or what NBA star Shaq O’Neal is thinking at halftime.
But then came Iran, and the main conveyor of news of the unrest turned out to be … Twitter. At a time when journalists were incapable of providing much of anything, ordinary citizens were sending out some 220,000 “tweets” an hour.
Former U.S. security adviser Mark Pfeifle has even written in the Christian Science Monitor that Twitter deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for becoming “a window for the world to view hope, heroism and horror.”
Now it’s China. With scores dead from racial turmoil in Xinjiang province, the authorities quickly shut down Twitter lest it be used to incite others.
Something that powerful is obviously not to be ignored.
And so, with some trepidation, and even less thought, I have sent out my first tweet: “Let the revolution begin. …”
With 112 characters still to go, however, I hit a wall.
This is Canada, after all. What, exactly, are we going to rise up over? And who would we tell?
Monday, July 6, 2009 06:23 PM
Mourning Michael as spectator sport
Paul was right.
Not the Pope Paul, the Beatle Paul or even the Prime Minister Paul – but the apostle guy.
Where is the sting? Paul asked. All he could see was “victory” in leaving this mortal coil. At least that’s the way one commentator in the Evening Herald sees it. The Jakarta Post goes even further with a headline, When Dying Is A Smart Career Move.
Today, funeral day in L.A., sees Michael Jackson at the top of his game. He has 27 singles on Britain’s Top-100 chart. So crazed are the Brits – who some say invented public mourning – over his death that British Airways has been swamped. Flights are not only sold out to Los Angeles, but also to Denver and San Francisco, where fans hope to catch connecting flights to complete their pilgrimage.
As of Sunday evening, 1.6 million fans had applied for the 17,500 “tickets” being made available for the memorial. Will scalpers respect the dead? Get real.
The television broadcast of the event, rather ironically, is expected to rival the original moon walk for worldwide interest.
Surely it doesn’t matter what you think of Michael Jackson – brilliant musician or the last person on Earth you’d ask to babysit – there is something bizarre about all this.
They call it the Diana Phenomenon, dating the near-hysterical mourning for someone you’ve never met back to that Paris accident 12 years ago, but in fact the flowers and handwritten notes and trinkets were around when John Lennon was shot in New York and Elvis Presley died at Graceland.
But given its popularity since Diana – Pierre Trudeau in 2000 and the Queen Mum in 2002 being just two examples – we should perhaps be grateful that florists and teddy bear manufacturers were not there at the beginning when television made the funerals of JFK and Churchill admissible to everyone.
Today, each outpouring seems to require a new “record” – almost is if death for celebrities has somehow become a reality television competition for those who never even met the ones being buried.
Thursday, June 25, 2009 07:50 PM
One nation, under a canoe
Here it is, National Canoe Day, and so far I have only dumped once.
Ah well, what would a summer be without that helpless feeling of being picked up by hurling water and cuffed upside down so quickly you barely have time to close your mouth and pray you’ll miss the rocks before having even to think about how far downstream you’ll end up before you can right the damned thing and start all over again?
Quite frankly, I was probably in far more danger two years ago when I and two other panelists, Trooper’s Ra McGuire and aboriginal leader Roberta Jamieson, sat on that CBC panel and picked the canoe as one of the Seven Wonders of Canada.
As the one who probably argued loudest for the canoe, I was the one who got the death threats after we picked it along with Pier 21, Old Quebec, Niagara Falls, Prairie skies, the Rockies and the igloo over a few other suggestions that had received more votes.
The threats weren’t serious – unless, of course, these dancing rapids along the Madawaska River have somehow been rigged? – but they were indicative of the passion when it comes to the things and places Canadians love most.
Which brings us right back to the canoe.
I am, admittedly, in awe of the foresight that had North American natives design a craft that would fit perfectly, upside down, on cars that hadn’t yet been invented.
What other vehicle on Earth can you use as a hat when it rains – or a shelter when it snows, or even a table when it’s time to eat?
What other country defines its people by their ability to make love in such a vehicle – though fellow paddler Phil Chester insists a true Canadian “knows enough to take out the centre thwart” before proving citizenship.
In these times of cutbacks and soaring fuel costs and increasing concern about the environment, the canoe deserves its special day.
As Pierre Trudeau once put it, “paddle a hundred miles in a canoe and you are already a child of nature.”
Wednesday, June 24, 2009 10:45 PM
Clear your worries with a click of the mouse
Fear sure ain’t what it used to be.
North Korea’s threat to “wipe the United States off the map” barely lasts a couple of hours on the Web until it’s bounced down the page and eventually right off in favour of a truly terrifying story – the cost of parking in downtown Calgary.
But there you have it: Faster than U.S. President Barack Obama or Dear Leader Kim Jong-il can press the button, the world clicks its mouse and moves on.
A United States navy destroyer is tailing a North Korean ship thought to be transporting banned weapons, and the official Korean Central News Agency warns any interference will require them to “wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all.”
Yawn.
It is most difficult for those of us who were around – no matter at what age – in the late 1950s and early 1960s to comprehend how fear could come to this. Children remember school drills that had us cowering under our little desks. Adults remember backyards dug up for bomb shelters.
The Soviets were going to attack from outer space or Cuba – or else they were going to come over the North Pole and plow right through whatever defenceless community you lived in.
I used to sleep with a Daisy BB gun under the bed, just in case.
In Carp, Ont., the Government of Canada built a massive concrete bunker for the Prime Minister and vital cabinet ministers, just in case.
Whether it is the cause of racing media – 24-hour screaming on Fox and CNN, web pages rolling as fast as the screen can change, a revolution in Iran reduced to 140 characters – something has all but inured today’s population to worrying about matters they can do nothing about anyway.
Besides, nothing ever seems to amount to the terror first promised in the news. We didn’t all die from Legionnaires’ disease, Lyme disease, West Nile, SARS and swine flu. Terribly sad that some have, but since nothing ever seems as bad as it did on first glance, why keep looking over your shoulder?
What was that again about North Korea?
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 09:53 PM
In feudal age of pensions, renaissance must come
He calls it our “Modern Feudal System.”
A system where a few have a lot and the majority have – or will have – very little indeed.
The difference-maker in our futures, says Bill Tufts, is going to be our pension plans. Public or private. Gold-plated pensions versus pensions that might not even hold a coat of yellow paint.
“Church and King have been replaced by Government and Big Business,” says the Hamilton-based pension specialist with WB Benefit Solutions. “In the feudal age, the church and nobility always wrestled for the purse of those trapped in the caste system. But the poor serf still paid with everything he grew or could make.”
On his blog and in articles and talks, Tufts has been arguing that the average public servant in Canada will end up with a pension valued at close to $1-million – while the average taxpayer is looking at retirement with less than $150,000 in RRSPs or a small company pension.
The world financial meltdown, he says, has created a situation in which private-sector pensions are under siege – some to the point of vanishing – while public plans are not only protected but, in certain cases, will be topped up in the event of a shortfall by taxpayers who will never collect such a pension themselves.
“People are resentful,” he says.
He also says people are becoming increasingly aware of the situation. The North American media have called it “pension envy,” while the British press has warned about a “pension apartheid” in which retirement lifestyle will be decided largely on whether or not the retiree collects a healthy, protected and often indexed public pension or a squeezed and potentially fragile private one.
Tufts’s message is not popular in certain quarters. He calls himself a “libertarian” with a deeply conservative bent, and says he understands perfectly why some government and union workers would lash out at him when he talks about the growing and unfair “gap” between their pension plans and the plans of most Canadians.
“There’s a lot at stake,” Tufts says. “I would be struggling just as hard as them to keep what I had.”
Monday, June 22, 2009 06:29 PM
The death of privacy: See Mario celebrate
It would help to be able to say he is the most private celebrity we have – but, of course, I don’t know him well enough to say any such thing. In fact, I don’t know him at all.
How strange, then, to receive – for perhaps the 10th time this past week – yet another e-mail bursting with photographs of Mario Lemieux’s much-guarded inner sanctum.
You want to know, finally, what is in that vast wine cellar that, until now, had been just gossip among his few friends and rumour among the many who do not know him?
Want to see inside his private office? (Why, you want to ask, would he need a name plate on a desk seen only by family and close friends?)
The occasion, obviously, was a celebration of Lemieux’s first Stanley Cup win as an owner – he won two as a player with the same Pittsburgh Penguins – and, as always seems to happen these days whenever anything is going on, more cellphones were being held up to eyes than ears.
See the Stanley Cup floating in Mario’s pool. See Mario’s stunning red-brick mansion with its six chimneys and more balconies than Buckingham Palace. See the trophy room with the replica trophies he has won: Stanley, Hart, Ross, Conn Smythe ...
See the date Evgeni Malkin brought! See Sidney Crosby dutifully posing with fans. See nothing, of course, of Mario – one can only imagine what he would have done if he had sensed a cell phone being pointed his way.
But this is nothing. All winter long the web delivered cellphone shots of various members of the Montreal Canadiens and Washington Capitals so out of it they probably didn’t even notice the flash.
And what of swimmer Michael Phelps, the 14-time Olympic gold medal winner, having a snap-happy cellphone owner all but drown his marketability with that shot of Phelps doing a “bong” of marijuana.
Those of us who came of age in the late 60s and early 70s would never have survived such intrusion.
Thursday, June 18, 2009 11:42 PM
Father’s Day is just a Hallmark holiday
Thanks all the same, but I’ll take a pass.
Forget that new putter – it’s hopeless, anyway.
No need for a flat-screen TV – nothing’s on, anyway.
As for a whole day to myself – makes me fidget.
This Sunday will mark the 100th Father’s Day since Washington’s Sonora Smart Dodd got struck by lightning – well, figuratively speaking – while listening to a sermon on Mother’s Day. While “Sonora” is a fascinating name to have while listening to sermons, “Smart” isn’t exactly what some of us would call Mrs. Dodd’s little gift to the world.
That she would wish to honour her own father is perfectly understandable. Bill Smart had fought in the Civil War and then won an even tougher battle when, after the death of his wife in childbirth, he raised six fine children, Sonora included.
She got local churches and the Y to buy into marking the day on June 19, 1910, and by the 1970s, much to the delight of Hallmark – with its approximately 800 cards to mark the occasion – it had become a recognized day of observance in countries around the world.
Sonora lived long enough, to age 96, to see what her little idea had twisted into, but she could never have imagined the advertising and attitudes of the 21st Century.
Some people call it the “Second Christmas.” Before this recession hit, Americans were spending almost $10-billion a year on Good Ol’ Dad.
For many, the day also became a “freedom day,” a day to do whatever one wished: golf, fish, open a beer before noon.
In parts of Germany, they don’t even pretend otherwise, men gather on Father’s Day to hike together while pulling a wagon filled with beer and wine. There is, not surprisingly, a movement to ban the celebration.
In Canada, it is mostly about gifts, none of which ever appear necessary.
Personally, I want none of it.
But then, in respect of full disclosure, I feel obliged to admit that my birthday also falls in June.
Thursday, June 18, 2009 05:30 AM
Balsillie’s dream not all about Canada
"I got into hockey because I wanted to be recognized in the streets." Peter Pocklington
They were calling it “repatriation” on CBC radio Wednesday and in some ways you can see it that way: the Winnipeg Jets come home – or at least back to Canada – after years of wandering aimlessly in the desert, perhaps even Wayne Gretzky gets to move back in with Dad in the home Walter never left in Brantford and, of course, all Canada gets to live happily ever after.
It isn’t that simple, of course, but there are moments when Jim Balsillie’s pursuit of the Phoenix Coyotes takes on a bit of a Bobby Gimby tune. There’s the “Make It Seven” website and the petition signed by well over 100,000 Canadians to put a seventh NHL team in Canada. There are even reports of people in Western Canada cheering for Balsillie’s intention of putting a second NHL team in southern Ontario – though fervent nationalists are cautioned that such behaviour might have more to do with getting a shot in at the Maple Leafs than firing a cannon for Canada Day.
That Balsillie wants a team is well known. He went after Pittsburgh, then Nashville and has now pursued Phoenix by trying to force a move, whether the league likes it or not, through the courts. Even with this week’s setback – the judge deciding the NHL has the say on relocation – he has not given up.
Mr. Balsillie may well love his country, but it’s a fair bet he loves himself more.
It’s simply the nature of the beast that is the sports owner. Having succeeded wildly in some other capacity – in Balsillie’s case the ubiquitous BlackBerry – they begin looking for something that can bring them what the greatest corporate success cannot: popular fame, virtual automatic respect, a new first name, “Mister,” that is said almost as if it were a title and, most curious of all, reporters eager to report your every utterance versus reporters who pay attention only when the securities commission does.
This Country Contributors
Roy MacGregor
Roy MacGregor was born in the small village of Whitney, Ont., in 1948. Before joining The Globe and Mail in 2002, he worked for the National Post, the Ottawa Citizen, Maclean's magazine (three separate times), the Toronto Star and The Canadian Magazine. He has won numerous awards for his journalism, including two National Newspaper Awards, several National Magazine Awards and twice the ACTRA Award as the best television drama writer in the country.
He is also the author of nearly 40 books, 23 of them in the internationally-successful Screech Owls Mystery series for young readers. His adult books include A Life In the Bush, which won the Rutstrum Award as the best book on the wilderness published in North America between 1995-2000. His previous book, Home Team: Fathers, Sons and Hockey, was nominated for the Governor-General's Award in 1996. He has also written two novels, Canoe Lake and The Last Season.
His latest book is Canadians: A Portrait of a Country and Its People.
In 2005 he was named an officer in the Order of Canada.
MacGregor lives in Kanata, Ont., with Ellen. They have four children.