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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.

Quiet, please, there’s a lady on stage.

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum /

I’ve always liked Celine Dion’s songs more than I’ve liked Celine Dion.

I’m not sure what it was: too slick, too produced, too perfect.

Then she started cancelling shows claiming she had a rare and mysterious disease. Since 2020 she’s been silent. No new songs, no new shows. Nothing. But…

Not.

Any.

More.

Her performance last Friday at the opening of the Paris Olympic Games, where she belted out Hymne à l’amour, was stunning in its own right.

But when you think how terribly sick she’s been, and still is, those four minutes singing in the rain became a global event.

It used to be that people asked: “Where were you when..?” and they would follow with some tragedy or assassination. The only good-news-version I’ve heard is: “Where were you when the astronauts landed on the moon?” But it’s not far-fetched, even when Ms. Dion’s 15-seconds of fame have already stretched to 40 years, for us to ask: “Where were you when Celine Dion sang in Paris?”

Read on…

Quiet, please, there’s a lady on stage. Read More »

“No country for old men.”

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Yeats was referring to Ireland when he began Sailing to Byzantium with that line in 1933, and the Coen Brothers used it as the title for their 2007 Western about an old sheriff trying to make sense of a brutal and ambiguous world.

Last week, of course, its meaning had changed again, to “Joe Biden.”

This week it means something else entirely, “Donald Trump.”

We blame old men with money and power for not handing them back when asked nicely. As a result, many don’t. Most don’t. So when an old man with more power than anyone else on earth decides his time has come, the speed and scope of change can be head-spinning.

In the space of two days, Donald Trump is now the halting old man. A convicted felon also found guilty of sexual assault in a separate case, he will now face an opponent who has put dozens of men like him in jail. A …younger…. Black…woman. Can there be a worse nightmare?

Read on…

“No country for old men.” Read More »

“I’m thankful to the people who made my life miserable”

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Katalin Karikó said that when she won a Gairdner Award in 2022 for co-discovering the foundations of mRNA vaccines, which have saved millions and maybe even billions of us from dying of COVID.

On the bell curve of grit and redemption, it’s hard to find a more exemplary case than the Hungarian immigrant woman who was treated shabbily for years by her employer, the University of Pennsylvania, and last year ended up winning The Nobel Prize.

The search for new truths in science is possibly the hardest search of all, because the bar of evidence is so high.

Read on…

“I’m thankful to the people who made my life miserable” Read More »

Death-Defying Denial

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I had a bad stammer as a teen. And to this day, whenever I’m around a person who has a stammer, I start to stammer a little myself.

So when I saw Joe Biden acting his age in the debate last week, I started to feel very old. My mouth wasn’t agape, but I’m almost sure my voice grew hoarse the next day, my gait slowed, and my memory skipped a beat, as did my heart.

Maybe I was just depressed for the future and angry at how Biden’s staff and family had hidden his condition so well. Watching how Trump and Biden left their podiums after the debate told the whole sorry tale.

Most of us believed that White House aides are constantly assessing the President’s fitness to serve and preparing multiple scenarios for his running in November depending on his strength or frailty. In fact, this assumption is so universal that, like breathing, no one would even think to raise their hand and ask if it was true.

But after the debate, The New York Times did ask just that. Then Dan Gardner compared the stupidity of pitting Biden against Trump in an open debate to that of the planners of the Bay of Pigs invasion back in 1961. It called for CIA-trained soldiers to land on the Cuban coastline, make their way inland and overwhelm Fidel Castro’s regime.

Read on…

Death-Defying Denial Read More »

“More immigrants, more restaurants”

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The New York Times’ food critic Sam Sifton blurted that out at a Toronto symposium back in 2018 when he chaired a panel with three Syrian refugees, all of whom were in the food business.

Sam was comparing Canada’s role in immigration to America’s where, in those mid-Trump years, “immigrant” was a loaded word, as it is now in the run-up to what could be the Trump II era. Back then, Canada took in as many refugees as America, a country with ten times the number of people. So Sam was happy to tout immigrants as a universal solvent here in Canada instead of the universal problem they seemed to be elsewhere back then – and are viewed as today.

But if a week is an infinity in politics, four years is…an infinity to the power of infinity.

Today, a record 55% of Americans view large numbers of immigrants entering the US illegally as a critical threat to the US’s vital interests. In Canada, the issue isn’t illegal immigrants; it’s immigrants, period. 

“More immigrants, more restaurants” Read More »

Not Novelty Seeking

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I was on a flight home from Frankfurt last week playing with one of the things Air Canada got right: its storehouse of movies you can watch for 8 solid hours. But rather than try to find a new first-run film I’d never seen, which all looked like lighter-than-air objects, fluffy and predictable, I did the opposite.

I went on the hunt for my favourite old movies, like Bonnie & Clyde and Catch Me If You Can and Dog Day Afternoon and Field of Dreams, Gladiator, and A Few Good Men. I didn’t want to see these faves in their entirety; I just wanted to see my favourite parts, the scenes whose action and dialogue will forever be imprinted in my brain.

Like when Bonnie and Clyde die in a hail of bullets.

When FBI agent Tom Hanks catches up to fake-pilot Leonardo di Caprio and says: “Nobody’s chasing you.”

When bank robber Al Pacino says: “Kiss me….When I’m being fucked, I like to get kissed.” 

When dreamer Kevin Costner hears: “If you build it, they will come.”

When gladiator Russell Crowe says: “My name is Maximus.”

And of course when Marine Colonel Jack Nicholson says to Tom Cruise: “You can’t handle the truth.”

I enjoyed my tour of great scenes from memorable movies enormously.

Rummaging around in these old scenes, and who I was when I first watched them, was new for me. It was much much more fun than trying to focus on the thin gruel of bot-like dialogue and stick-man actions in so many new films.

Not Novelty Seeking Read More »

Treason isn’t what it used to be

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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?

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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

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“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.

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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.

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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 »

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