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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.

WHY WE TRAVEL.

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In my earliest memory of traveling, I was 5 and my mom and dad drove us from Edmonton, where we lived, all the way south in our 1956 Chevy station wagon to Calgary. The station wagon’s main job was to deliver flowers for Walter Ramsay Florist, my dad’s flower shop.

Then we drove west to Banff on what’s now the Old Banff Highway. Along the way, we pulled over at an ‘Indian’ souvenir shop. I proudly wore my iconic Davy Crockett ‘coonskin cap’ with leather chaps.

It was thrilling. I’d never seen a mountain before, and the connection between Davy Crockett and the ‘Indians’ and me, between doing a thing and being a thing, turned me into an intrepid lifelong traveller.

Read on…

WHY WE TRAVEL. Read More »

I AM NOT A ROBOT.

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Joanna Stern writes about tech for The Wall Street Journal. She decided to spend a year using AI to do almost everything, and the result is a book, *I Am Not a Robot,*

We may vaguely recall a decade or more ago reading about a journalist who decided to live like a hermit for a week and order everything they needed online – food, toilet paper, clothes, banking, books, the works.

Back then, ordering stuff online was for early adopters. Hence, the news value of a story about someone who actually lived online. Now, of course, nearly all of us do our banking online, check in for our flight, order dinner in and, of course, drive from A to B.

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I AM NOT A ROBOT. Read More »

LEAVING HOME.

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The last time a province tried to leave the country was on October 30, 1995, when a referendum was held in Quebec.

The “Yes” or “Leave” side won 2,308,360 votes, or 49.42% of the vote, and the “No” or “Stay” side won 2,362,648 votes, or 50.58% of the vote. A record 93.52% of eligible voters cast their ballot.

Whew.

I remember in the months leading up to the vote that our view in English Canada shifted from “Quebec will never leave” and “They’re just a small group of rabble-rousers”, to “Once Quebeckers realize what’s at stake, they’ll come around”, to “OMG, they’re going to destroy the country!”

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LEAVING HOME. Read More »

MY TREMOR.

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Three years ago I was having lunch with an old friend. The soup sounded good, so I ordered it. I dipped my spoon into the bowl, and as I was bringing it to my lips, I felt the tiniest tremor. Not so anyone would notice. But I did. I took another sip. The same slight shake of my left hand, my soup hand. Hmmmm. I waited five minutes.

“You don’t like your soup?”

“Yes, yes, I do.” My spoon quickly consumed the rest of the bowl.

As we left the lunch, I thought this was very odd. I certainly did not think: “Do I have Parkinson’s?” or “Am I going to die a dreadful death?”

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MY TREMOR. Read More »

WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR?

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Ottawa is opening the taps to secure our future, just not for the part that tells us who we are.

In last month’s fiscal update, Ottawa earmarked $63 billion for defence spending next year, on its way to $1 trillion in 2035. The new Defence Industrial Strategy alone lets Canadian firms chase $180 billion in procurement promising 125,000 high-paying careers.

AI and digital infrastructure are also lavished with attention, just shy of $1 billion. But it’s nothing compared to the $32 billion earmarked for northern development and defence-linked infrastructure.

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WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR? Read More »

SHATTERING.

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A marathon is the distance between the Four Seasons Hotel in Yorkville and the Ford Assembly Plant in Oakville.

I used to say that when I was the Propagandist-in-Chief for JeansMarines, the women’s marathon training group created by my wife, Jean, to run the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. JeansMarines ran from 2002 to 2008, and hundreds of women joined each February to cross the finish line nine months later at the Iwo Jima Memorial into the arms of a waiting U.S. Marine. Lots of those women carried on running, and Jean ended up finishing first in her age group in the Boston Marathon seven times before retiring in 2020.

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SHATTERING. Read More »

THE FIRE NEXT TIME

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Last month I wrote about the Jewish community’s fear and rage around the shooting up of synagogues. I said… “If someone fired shots in the night at St. James Anglican Cathedral or St. Michael’s Catholic Basilica, the hue and cry would be long and loud.”

One reader wrote to me to say he doubted anyone would notice at all. He then encouraged me to look into the shocking rise in arson at Canadian churches since COVID.

Shocking rise in arson? In churches? In Canada? What was he talking about?

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THE FIRE NEXT TIME Read More »

STEEP GRADE AHEAD.

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You have to be smart (or nepo-ed) to get into Harvard.

54,008 students applied for this year’s Freshman class and just 1,937 (or 3.58%) were admitted. But once you’re in, you’re in. This year, 66% of Harvard grades are A’s, up from 25% twenty years ago.

Such careening grade inflation has caused Harvard’s faculty to vote this week on a proposal to limit the number of “A”s to 20% of students taking the course. Needless to say, the students think this is a terrible idea.

But Harvard is not alone. By 2021–22, over half of McGill undergrad courses had average grades of A or A‑, and percentages only slightly less exist at Queen’s, Western and the University of Toronto.

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STEEP GRADE AHEAD. Read More »

HOW TO BOARD A PLANE.

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Canada’s Governor General Mary Simon is bilingual. Her first language is Inuktitut and her second is English. She’s not fluent in French. But this is an exceptional circumstance. And when she speaks to groups of Canadians, which is pretty much every day, she tries to say a little in French, like her 2025 New Year’s message.

Simon is the symbolic head of Canada.

On the other hand, the actual head of Air Canada is its Chief Executive Officer. But the minute that fire truck drove out onto Runway 4 at LaGuardia two weeks ago, Michael Rousseau became the company’s symbolic head as well.

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HOW TO BOARD A PLANE. Read More »

REMEMBER ‘DEATH PANELS’?

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Sarah Palin used them in 2009 to fight Obamacare reforms by scaring U.S. voters into thinking that groups of doctors would decide which patients would live and which would die. Back then, one in three healthcare dollars went to treat Americans 65 and older. Today it’s 37%. Still no death panels, nor are there in Canada.

But Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is pushing Bill 18, The Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act that will act much like Death Panels, except they will constrain Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) instead of encouraging it.

This week, the Globe and Mail’s Robyn Urback wrote why this is a terrible idea made worse by Smith invoking the “notwithstanding clause” which lets any province veto any Charter right or Supreme Court decision, such as the one in 2015 when the Court voted 9-0 to allow MAiD because not to allow it constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

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REMEMBER ‘DEATH PANELS’? Read More »

JETS AT TORONTO’S ISLAND AIRPORT.

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Alex Bozikovic is the architecture critic of the Globe and Mail. Last weekend, he wrote a column titled “Doug Ford’s obsession to expand downtown Toronto Airport would be economic vandalism.”

I asked myself why an Ontario Premier would want to vandalize the economy of the city responsible for half the province’s wealth creation.

So I took my pencil and marked everything in Bozikovic’s piece that’s vague, sloppy, partisan or just plain wrong. I’ll begin at the beginning.

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JETS AT TORONTO’S ISLAND AIRPORT. Read More »

HOW CAN THE WORLD’S MOST DIVERSE CITY HAVE SYNAGOGUES RIDDLED WITH BULLETS?

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In the span of a few days, three Toronto-area synagogues were hit last week by gunfire. Temple Emanu‑El in North York was struck during Purim, with 20 shots fired into a building where the rabbi was still inside. Days later, Shaarei Shomayim near Bathurst and Glencairn, and Beth Avraham Yosef of Toronto in Thornhill, were both shot at in the middle of the night, their doors left pocked with bullet holes but, by good luck or bad aim, no bodies.

Police aren’t yet sure if the incidents are linked, but they’re clear about one thing: they’re hate‑motivated. They’re also being lived as hate‑motivated; every Jewish parent now drives past their synagogue’s doors and quietly re‑calculates how many seconds it would take to get their kids out if the bullets came at 11 a.m. instead of 11 p.m.

Read on…

HOW CAN THE WORLD’S MOST DIVERSE CITY HAVE SYNAGOGUES RIDDLED WITH BULLETS? Read More »

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