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Bob Ramsay

Born in Edmonton. Educated at Princeton and Harvard. Speechwriter. Book editor. Copywriter. Communications strategist. Presentation trainer. Marathoner. Explorer of the world's distant places. Travel writer. Op-ed page writer. Fund-raiser. Board member. Speaker series host. Arts addict. And of course, relentless enthusiast.

…BUT I KNOW WHAT I LIKE.

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I don’t know much about art. I especially don’t ‘get’ abstract art. This has caused me to avoid it and to shy away from the people who love and consume it. Where modern art-lovers gather, you won’t find me.

I know I should try harder. Many friends have tried to help open my eyes. Some say art is not about getting an emotional reaction, the way you do with music or books. It’s about making you think of what the artist is saying about the world.

I think a lot of us are fluent in one art form and ignorant or fearful of other forms.

Read on…

…BUT I KNOW WHAT I LIKE. Read More »

WEAPONS OF SELF-DESTRUCTION.

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Last weekend our family went for its annual Thanksgiving Walk, a two-hour hike through Awenda Provincial Park above Georgian Bay. Behind me were my stepson and his 11-year-old daughter. Their conversation twisted and turned through as many subjects as they did navigating the fallen trees and winding forest paths. I was listening idly to their back-and-forth when I heard: “But when can I have a phone?”

I won’t say the skies clouded, but the mood changed at this, the most insistent question of our age. Because asking mom and dad when you can have your first phone has turned into asking them when you can have your first shot of heroin.

Clearly, this was not the first time she’d asked, and I was impressed by her father’s patience as he calmly listed all the reasons an 11-year-old shouldn’t have a mobile phone. “But Mary has one, and she’s 12!”

Read on…

WEAPONS OF SELF-DESTRUCTION. Read More »

SHORT FAT GENERALS.

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Last week Pete Hegseth dressed down America’s generals and admirals saying their weight and height will now be measured twice a year: “Today, at my direction, every member of the joint force, at every rank, is required … [to] meet height and weight requirements twice a year every year.”

The weight part I get: obesity in the military is a big recruiting problem which makes it a national security issue.

But the height part is odd because…you can’t really do much about how tall you are.

SHORT FAT GENERALS. Read More »

WHY AI IS WORSE THAN THE WORST STREET DRUG – AND BETTER THAN THE BEST MIRACLE DRUG.

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When you’re too addled to stop drinking booze or snorting cocaine, your brain stays very clear on one thing: the only person you’re killing is yourself – and maybe your family. You can take some comfort that your bottle a day habit isn’t ruining the lives of the young family three doors down or the teller at your bank branch, or the total stranger in the nation next door.

In this regard, consuming too much AI is much worse than grossly abusing addictive substances. Every AI search you make, every AI prompt you create contributes to the Gross Global Misery that’s starting to emerge about AI’s unique seductive ability to charm its way into your brain and control it. What we know now is that AI thrives on big information; the more in, the more out.

Read on…

WHY AI IS WORSE THAN THE WORST STREET DRUG – AND BETTER THAN THE BEST MIRACLE DRUG. Read More »

SLOW TALKERS.

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In the days ahead we’ll be seeing more tremulous, slow-talking, slow-moving people in public life. This is inevitable; our world is growing older. It’s also a good thing that we can help that become a normal thing.

Last week, I attended the Weston International Award for Nonfiction at the ROM which was given to Leslie Jamison, the American essayist and memoirist who writes deeply confessional pieces for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. My interest was professional; I, too, had written a recovery memoir.

Jamison speaks quickly, with manic energy. As with most events like this, the author spoke about her work, then she was interviewed by a high-profile person in the world of writing, then she answered questions.

Read on…

SLOW TALKERS. Read More »

STILL WAITING FOR THE CAVALRY TO COME.

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The idea that there is no cavalry first hit me in 2005 when I saw the news reports fromHurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Tens of thousands of people took shelter in the Superdome, and waited…and waited…for help to come. It never did. What came was looting and violence and other trappings ofLord of the Flies. How could this happen? This was America, for heaven’s sake.

It turns out I was right about the country, and wrong about the direction it was headed.

But this social collapse is also happening in Britain where not only is the National Health Service breaking down, but so is garbage pickup and public transit and immigration, and the police. Of course it’s worse in the US where being a white, Christian male can be the only defence against the predations of its government.

Read on…

STILL WAITING FOR THE CAVALRY TO COME. Read More »

THE NATIONAL GUARD BECOMES THE NATIONAL GARDENER.

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Donald Trump will soon send the National Guard into Memphis or into Chicago, a city where violent crime has been way down and the White House posted images headed“Chipocalypse Now,” and “I love the smell of deportations in the morning.”

It’s certain there will be marches, riots, arrests, blood and likely death in the weeks to come – because Chicago is not the District of Columbia, which is a government town. For Mr. Trump, Chicago is enemy territory, and it’s time to break heads the way Mayor Richard J. Daley did in 1968 when anti-Vietnam War protestors marched on the Democratic Convention.

There may be a better way.

Read on…

THE NATIONAL GUARD BECOMES THE NATIONAL GARDENER. Read More »

OZEMPIC FOR ALL.

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The word “Ozempic” first entered the language in 2018 when it was approved as a diabetes inhibitor. That same year, in what has to be the world’s biggest ‘off-label’ transference since the heart-disease drug Viagra became a multi-billion-dollar erectile dysfunction drug, Novo Nordisk started selling Ozempic as a weight-loss drug for very obese people.

Then in 2023, Ozempic and its fellow “GLP-1” drugs were shown to prevent strokes and heart attacks.

The next year, it made a claim to reduce kidney disease.

This year, it showed promising results in reducing the effects of Parkinson’s, as well as alcoholism and addiction, and to reduce obesity-related cancers as well.

My physician wife often says that the more unrelated diseases a drug claims to cure, the more it looks like snake oil. In the case of Ozempic, she’d be happy to be wrong. It really does look to be a universal solvent, curing most everything it touches. True, it’s so new that there hasn’t been time to understand its long-term effects. Maybe it will be the next thalidomide whose crippling effects revealed themselves not in its patients, but in their children.

Read on…

OZEMPIC FOR ALL. Read More »

TRUE NORTH STRONG AND EXPENSIVE.

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Yachting, polo, squash and fencing are what I call upper class sports. You need a lot of money, or go to prep school with it, in order to play or want to even watch.

But two sports that used to be proudly middle class are in danger of being played and watched mainly by rich people. It’s worse that hockey and skiing are the very sports Canadians love and excel at – and are at the heart of being Canadian.

But the news last week that the cost for a family of four to go to a Toronto Maple Leafs game will be $1,000 this season sparked protests from thousands of fans who resent the20%+ jump in season ticket prices in a city that’s already the most expensive in the world to watch pro hockey. The Leafs are a unique subset of what economists call a Giffen Good, a product or service whose demand increases as its price rises. Because the Leaf’s home ice attendance averages 99.8%, with occasional rises to 105%, and has for decades now, they are not just immune to the laws of supply and demand, but to the idea that a better product will draw a bigger audience.

Read on…

TRUE NORTH STRONG AND EXPENSIVE. Read More »

TRAVEL IS COSTLY, RISKY, TIRING, CROWDED AND GROWING FASTER THAN EVER.

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Which begs the question: why do we travel anyway?

Because we’re curious, of course, about places and things, but most of all, about people. Boy, do people ever want to know about other people. I once ran into an Arctic Sámi in Sweden who looked like a member of the Oxford Rowing Team. And then there was the food guide who gave us a Marxist tour of Mexico City…But I digress.

It seems we can’t get enough of other people, and the more exotic and oddly-behaved, the better. Or rather, we couldn’t until recently when, like Sartre disclaiming that “hell is other people,” our curiosity about them has turned into a rash.

Americans? Feh.

Airport security people? Don’t get me started.

Musty cathedrals? Never liked them anyway.

Read on…

TRAVEL IS COSTLY, RISKY, TIRING, CROWDED AND GROWING FASTER THAN EVER. Read More »

“I’D LIKE TO APOLOGIZE…”

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Jan Morris once said that Canadians could drown in niceness.

We are notorious for being polite, a view borne out by countless polls that confirm “We’re Number 1” when it comes to helping someone else actually be Number 1. When others say “Good morning” or “Hello”, we will happily say, “I’m sorry.” Indeed, so endemic is this quality that it’s spreading to citizens of other nations, and to a large sub-group of Canadians.

Donald Trump is responsible for the former, and the ideal of truth and reconciliation for the latter.

In 2003, Jean and I joined a group of 75 hikers from around the world to hike New Zealand’s Milford Track. The night before we set out, the organizers asked us all to divide up into groups of the country we were from and sing a favourite national song to the others. Ugh.

Read on…

“I’D LIKE TO APOLOGIZE…” Read More »

ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE. WHERE DO WE ALL COME FROM?

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In 2008 Switzerland passed a law that made owning one guinea pig illegal.

Today, pet stores in Zurich won’t sell you a single guinea pig unless you can prove you already have at least one at home. It seems guinea pigs are highly social creatures who get depressed when they’re alone. So what if one of your two guinea pigs dies, leaving the other to grieve their mate on their own? You can rent a guinea pig until you’ve had a chance to vet and buy a new mate for your existing one.

Read on…

ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE. WHERE DO WE ALL COME FROM? Read More »

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