Bob Ramsay

Treason isn’t what it used to be

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

No matter which parliamentarians, if any, are exposed for sleeping with the enemy, the penalty for doing that has changed drastically.

It used to be death.

Indeed, Canada’s National Defence Act prescribed the death penalty for treason until 1999, although no military executions had been carried out since 1946. In the US, the last American convicted of treason and hanged in 1862 was William Bruce Mumford for tearing down a United States flag during the Civil War. And in Britain, the last person executed for treason was William Joyce, also known as Lord Haw-Haw. He was hanged in 1946 for his Nazi propaganda broadcasts in World War II.

But today, just as the meaning of treason has changed, so too has the punishment for it.

Spies and collaborators used to betray their countries for money, ideology or resentment.

Read on…

Treason isn’t what it used to be Read More »

Remember when a night in a decent hotel cost less than a new car?

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

Two years ago, I got my first whiff that hotels cost staggeringly more than they did before the pandemic.

Some American friends were coming to Toronto for a family event in 2022. I said I’d cover their two nights here and set about booking a mid-price hotel. All I could get was the Delta Chelsea Inn in downtown Toronto, by no means five-star, for $500 a night.

That was nothing. Today, global hotel rates are like Toronto housing prices.

The big issue is supply and demand. Millions more of us are breaking free not just from our homes to travel, but from our home and native lands.

This is especially true with luxury hotels. As this week’s Air Mail points out: “The rich are continuing to get richer, and there are many, many more of them. Today, according to Statista, there are 59 million millionaires on the planet; in 2000, there were only 15 million.”

I remember growing up in Edmonton where my father had a flower shop in the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald. One night, a wholesaler took a display room at the hotel and invited my dad up to see his wares. All I remember is that the room cost $80 a night. Ever since then, I’ve used $80 a night as my baseline for what a luxury hotel room should cost. I know that makes no sense. It was 65 years ago. But we all carry these childhood markers for value, just as I search in vain today for bacon and eggs and coffee for $5.

Today, the cheapest room at the Royal York in Toronto costs $957 per night, while the Four Seasons is $875. The Chateau Lake Louise is $1,427 and the Fogo Island Inn is $2,875.

Remember when a night in a decent hotel cost less than a new car? Read More »

Last to survive

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

“Last to Die” is a form of life insurance, like its cousin “First to Die”.

But with people dying much later in life (if you’re a baby girl born this morning in Toronto, the chances of you living to be 100 are 1 in 3), I’d like to expand the idea of “Last to Die” beyond life insurance into a cash award called “Last to Survive.”

It can be for any group of people bound together not by blood, but by camaraderie and interest, and “it” can be a joint savings account, mutual fund, or other recognized financial vehicle: that is, anything you can contribute to over time.

Many of life’s most tight-knit groups form when we’re young. High school and university friends. Sports team. Military buddies. Sorority sisters. Political interns. Biker gangs. String quartets. Sous Chefs. Knitting groups. Book clubs. Jewel thieves. Big brass bands.

All it takes is a 50th reunion to remind you just how enduring those bonds are and how regret tinges our memories for not having made them stronger before now. And now, hell, everyone’s getting sick and dying. Okay, not everyone. But when you’re 74 like me, it feels that way, especially for our friends whose old age is not their golden years but their tin cup ones.

Some of us boast morbidly that our retirement plan is Lotto 649. But the odds of any of us actually winning that jackpot are 1 in 14 million. The entire population of Ontario is around that. So, no, you won’t win.

Read on…

Last to survive Read More »

Walking by cars on a sunny evening.

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

I used to walk from “A” to “B” in downtown Toronto to feel good about myself. Clocking 10,000 steps on my FitBit; finding delightful new alleyways and shortcuts; neither spending money nor polluting the world; all these gave my steps an extra lift.

That’s all changed now, and for the better.

This summer Toronto’s traffic congestion will be something the city itself perpetually strives for and fails to be: world-class. Indeed, it’s already on the podium. Last year Toronto ranked 7th among the worst cities in the world for traffic congestion, just below New York and Bogota.

This happened because City Hall and Queen’s Park banded together (a rare thing) and green-lighted the annual pothole repair work, lane widening, lane narrowing, and bike-lane building that turns every summer into a driver’s nightmare.

AND they decided to dig up Queen Street West and East at the same time.

AND do major repairs to the Gardiner (through to 2027).

AND build the Ontario Line, a major new subway that runs through gobs of blocks of downtown.

Read on…

Walking by cars on a sunny evening. Read More »

Our exits and our entrances.

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

One great lesson the pandemic taught us is how to buy everything online. I take great pride that, just by typing a few keys, a world of goods and services can land at my door.

But last weekend when Jean and I wanted to see The Fall Guy, with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. I discovered that, despite being in movie theatres for an entire two days, the film still wasn’t available online. Not Netflix. Not Prime. Not even Cineplex.com, in whose theatres it was playing.

WTF.

So I was doubly annoyed when I logged on to buy two seniors’ tickets to actually go to the theatre, something I haven’t done in two years, and discovered I couldn’t buy those tickets online because I kept keying in the wrong password, then got locked out after the third try, then when I tried to open a new account, was told that another account already exists with that same username.

Arrrrghh.

But hold on, I thought. We live two blocks from the Varsity Cinema in the Manulife Centre at Bay and Bloor in Toronto.

I could…..walk to the theatre, buy the tickets and be home in 10 minutes.

During that walk, my thoughts naturally turned to growing old and dying.

True, I’ve trained myself to stay fluent online. I walk my 10,000 steps each day. I even use AI every day! But my memory is a sieve, and growing sieve-ier every day.

Read on…

Our exits and our entrances. Read More »

Air Apparent

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

Back in 2019 when newspapers were made of paper, I would take part in an annual ritual of disbelief: I’d turn the page of The Globe and Mail and there would be a full-page ad for Air Canada congratulating itself for being voted the Best Airline in North America.

I would quickly check to see if it was April 1st. Then I would read the small print to find out who gave them the award for four consecutive years from 2019 to 2022.

It’s a magazine called Global Traveler for “U.S.-based frequent, affluent travellers”. It claims the average Global Traveler reader has a net worth of $2.8 million. Yes, Air Canada’s business class is….respectable. But the Best in all Classes in North America? Puleeeeze.

True, this was before Air Canada reduced its routes; slashed the value of Aeroplan Miles; made spontaneously cancelling flights a sunny-day activity; amped fares; admitted its Montreal-based CEO, Michael Rousseau, can’t speak French; saw customer complaints to Ottawa rise from 18,000 in 2020 to 30,000 in 2022, then 57,000 last year; fought to avoid offering refunds if a flight failed to take off; and claimed its own chatbot was “a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions;” before all this, Canadians had a love-hate relationship with our national airline.

Read on…

Air Apparent Read More »

Gold for Gould.

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

The philanthropist Arthur Labatt noted that Canada has so few institutions that can stand up straight on a global podium, we need to do everything we can to ensure they survive.

Last week’s budget offered one of those institutions that chance. Ottawa gave The Glenn Gould Foundation $12 million.

Even though the Toronto concert pianist Glenn Gould died 42 years ago at the age of 50, his name shines brightly the world over – not in spite of his many quirks and eccentricities, but likely because of them. He loved recordings and hated live audiences (and told them so); he wore mittens in hot recording studios; and he hummed loudly while he played. But his genius at interpreting composers like Bach; his unyielding sense of what’s musically right (which caused even the mighty Leonard Bernstein to back down); and his album cover notes which codified his views on the future of music – make him 92 years after his birth a very big planet indeed.

Indeed, in the galaxy of music, Gould remains a god. When the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev performed in Toronto, he would go to Gould’s gravesite in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery to pay his respects.

Read on…

Gold for Gould. Read More »

Women, enter stage left.

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

I hosted a RamsayTalk last week about AI.

Nothing new there. The world is awash in AI pundits, AI books, and AI doom and rapture.

What was new is that the speaker and author of AI Needs You, a big important book about AI, is a woman. Indeed, Verity Harding is the woman in the arena when it comes to tech’s latest save-the-world-end-the-world invention.

I asked her a couple of months ago who she would like to interview her from the stage, and instantly she said: Diana Fox Carney.

So there were 325 of us in the Bader Theatre last Wednesday watching two deeply expert and authoritative women discuss the prospects of an industry almost totally dominated by men.

Read on…

Women, enter stage left. Read More »

Is being nice a civic virtue?

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

If so, Canadians should be the most virtuous people on earth. But does virtue count for anything these days? I mean, aside from offering a retiree your seat on the subway, which is its own reward. Like chopping wood once, virtue warms you twice.

Let me raise my aging hand to say I believe being nice is better than being loud and even better than being right. Saying “please” and “thank you” is the lubricant for lots of life.

So I was relieved last week that a group of Worthy Canadians™ penned an open letter to our political leaders that they “address urgently the rise of incivility, public aggression and overt hatred that are undermining the peace and security of Canadian life.”

Read on…

Is being nice a civic virtue? Read More »

Am I a whiner to mourn the death of my diner?

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

The news that Flo’s Diner in Toronto had closed hit me hard. But why? It was just a diner.

True, I’ve eaten there since it opened on Bellair in 1991, and long after it moved to 70 Yorkville. I was a regular and wore my old-guy-corner-booth-bacon-and-eggs persona like a medal. Not for me The Four Seasons or Park Hyatt, where a piddly bowl of porridge and coffee will now set you back $40.

I’ve always been a diner guy. Years ago, Brothers on Yonge just below Charles was my eatery of choice. It was run by two brothers who kept baseball bats behind the counter to go after anyone who forgot to pay. No one forgot to pay. But Brothers closed long ago, and the idea of opening a diner today seems as viable as the idea of buying a stick-shift car or a Hungarian restaurant on Bloor St.

Flo’s co-owner Pierre Hamel said it was a dispute with their landlord that led to its closing and laying off 15 staff. Hamel said: “We came out of COVID really, really strong, and we would like to stay as long as we can.”

Read on…

Am I a whiner to mourn the death of my diner? Read More »

Arts Go Broke.

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

I fear the domino of much-loved arts groups gasping their last breath has just begun:

– Soulpepper and Factory Theatre Lab have had to pull shows from their schedules or cancel premieres.
– Hot Docs and its famed Festival could cease to exist.
– Artscape is in receivership.

The Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council predict that by the end of the year many more groups will turn out their lights.

The reasons are as real as they are clear: ticket prices are rising even faster than restaurant meals and airfares; government support is wobbly, and corporate sponsors are going ‘in a different direction.’ That trifecta of doom has hit exactly when galleries, theatres and concert halls are coming out of rehab after COVID blew up their audiences and shredded their balance sheets.

Arts Go Broke. Read More »

The Personal Sacrifices.

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / Bob Ramsay

There’s not a government on earth that doesn’t have political staffers. History and Shakespeare are littered with them. Their job is to keep their leader in power. Occasionally, they need to speak truth to power so their leader doesn’t go off the rails. But in Canada today, the Prime Minister’s staffers face a very different task: speaking truth to lack of power.

The number of Presidents and Prime Ministers who, when their prospects for re-election looked dim, took their staffers’ advice and left with their heads held high in order to avoid a bloodbath at the polls is vanishingly small. This is because power is not just an aphrodisiac, it’s the crack cocaine of occupations.

So asking Justin Trudeau’s Chief of Staff, Katie Telford, to take him for a walk in the snow, just like his father did on Feb. 28, 1984, and decide not to run again, I don’t think that will happen.

Read on…

The Personal Sacrifices. Read More »

Treason isn’t what it used to be

Remember when a night in a decent hotel cost less than a new car?

Last to survive

Walking by cars on a sunny evening.

Our exits and our entrances.

Air Apparent

Gold for Gould.

Women, enter stage left.

Is being nice a civic virtue?

Am I a whiner to mourn the death of my diner?

Arts Go Broke.

The Personal Sacrifices.

Subscribe to Bob's Free Weekly Omnium-Gatherum Blog:

Benefits of being a subscriber:

RamsayWrites

Sign Up for Updates!

Get news from Ramsay Inc. in your inbox.

Email Lists