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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.

The Prime Minister’s Next Career

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He will likely retire when the Liberals are defeated in the next federal election, an outcome most every poll points to, which should be in  October 2025. Or he’ll leave before that if the Liberals coalition with the NDP falls apart. Or, on the vanishingly small chance he leads the Liberals to victory in 2025, he could stay on until 2029. He took office in 2015 so he would then be the second-longest serving Prime Minister in Canadian history, four years longer than his father Pierre.

Whether he leaves this year at age 52, or in 2029 at 57, Justin will still have time for One More Big Job before he retires to the world of board membership, consulting, teaching and honorary degrees.

Read on…

The Prime Minister’s Next Career Read More »

Play your Trump Card

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Donald Trump didn’t just win in Iowa. He won Huge!

But recall that two weeks before the Iowa caucuses in 2016, then-candidate Trump said at Dortd University in Sioux City:  “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?…It’s, like, incredible.”

Incredible, but true, and Trump isn’t the only one anticipating his inauguration one year from today on January 20, 2025.

Credit card companies are as well, particularly American Express.

Read on…

Play your Trump Card Read More »

Plagiarism trumps racism.

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Should someone be forced to resign if they’ve plagiarized work that helped them get the job they have?

I say ‘yes’, if the plagiarism is material (I heard of a revered professor who was hauled before her university’s Senate because she copied writing from a long ago paper she’d written, but failed to cite that passage even though she was copying from herself. That’s not material).

But what if the plagiarist is a female University president? Is that sexism? Possibly. But also not material.

What if that university president is Black? Is that racism? Possibly. Again, not material.

Read on…

Plagiarism trumps racism. Read More »

What better way to endure a wet January than taking part in Dry January?

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Calling someone an old soul says they’re wise before their time.

In the 1960s, whenever a commercial flight passed over Alberta airspace, the plane would stop serving alcohol until it was safely flying above BC or Saskatchewan. This was because Alberta’s Bible-belting government was also a teetotalling one, and to the Social Credit Party airspace meant drinkspace meant sin.

Flash forward to 2013 when a British charity, Alcohol Change UK, launched its first “Dry January” campaign, asking Brits to abstain from drinking alcohol in the first month of the year. Today, Dry January has grown into a social movement that’s driven by health and financial benefits instead of religious ones.

Read on…

What better way to endure a wet January than taking part in Dry January? Read More »

Would it kill you to smile?

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You know how those models look back at you from the pages of luxe publications: pouty, pale, thin and rich? Not a good look these days.

I’ve always wondered why, among all the categories of ‘stuff’ for sale in the world that luxury goods is the only one where the people enjoying the products are not enjoying the products. Everywhere else, from beer to travel, cars to lottery tickets, the connection between smiling people promising you’ll be smiling too, is swift and sure.

You’d think a $10,000 watch, a Louis Vuitton suitcase or a Dior suit would make you happy. Or happier, at least. But no.

Read on…

Would it kill you to smile? Read More »

Holiday gifts for budding antisemites.

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For less than $100 you can save someone — a family member, a university student, a wayward stranger — from becoming an antisemite.

That is, someone who’s hostile or prejudiced against Jews because they’re Jews, in the way that racists are hostile to Black people. No reason, really. They’re Black, is all.

This is actually a big public health issue. Antisemites spread a disease that is more infectious and deadly than COVID ever was. While COVID has killed 7 million people, antisemitism killed 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, plus millions more from antisemitism’s earliest days in the 5th century.

When I speak of antisemites, I don’t mean someone who doesn’t like particular policies of the Israeli government or its leaders (I think Bibi Netanyahu is a dreadful Prime Minister), or someone who doesn’t like a particular Jew because, for example, she’s a jerk and drinks too much.

Read on…

Holiday gifts for budding antisemites. Read More »

Leave your high perch – and save your child’s life.

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I know some couples who are household names in business and public service. They check all the boxes: virtuous without being virtue-signallers, hard-working without being owned by it, all while being powerful and household words.

Three of these couples in particular have kids who are in trouble: with substance abuse; mental disorders; or what I’ll call ‘chronic purposelessness.’

The parents are frantic, searching for the treatment or cure that will restore calm in their family and security in their kids.

One of them perches very high in a giant company. He oversees the people who oversee the people who run the company’s group benefits program. That is to say, the insurance company that manages many thousands of medical claims each year, including a rising number of mental health claims.

Read on…

Leave your high perch – and save your child’s life. Read More »

Asymmetric Antisemitism

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Just as Hamas hides within the general population of Gaza, so do Canada’s antisemites walk among us. And since October 7th both these groups have come out from under cover to show their lethal true colours.

I’m not talking about protesters here. Plenty of people of every belief think Israel is practising a form of apartheid against Palestinians, and that its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants no Arabs, none, in Israel where 1.5 million live now.

Nor am I talking about “soft” antisemites who may still say quietly to a friend: “I got Jewed out of that deal.”

No, I’m talking about people who don’t just dislike Jews, but who hate them. In fact, they want Jews wiped from the face of the earth simply because they’re Jews.

This venomous hatred is both ancient and volcanic. It is also changing fast.

Read on…

Asymmetric Antisemitism Read More »

Did you forget to remember that today is Remembrance Day?

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It’s easy to do, especially in Canada where our military is starved into invisibility and seems to have missed the gender revolution completely.

Sure, we may remember those who fought and died for us on the 11th hour of this 11th day of this 11th month, but that memory will fade almost instantly for most of us. Even though two dangerous wars are now burning uncontrollably.

We shouldn’t forget so quickly or easily. Because millions of us have some direct family connection to our armed forces and hence, to war. My father fought in the Second World War, and my brother, in Korea. Yet I never think of myself as coming from a military family.

Read on…

Did you forget to remember that today is Remembrance Day? Read More »

You better have a forensic fact-checker.

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Two scandals this week show how the business of shame is always evolving.

The first involves Buffy Sainte-Marie who seemed as Indigenous as can be.

But the CBC’s Fifth Estate shocked us all by uncovering documentation and witnesses that claim she was not born into the Cree First Nation north of Regina, but is an Italian-American raised in Stoneham, Massachusetts.

Read on…

You better have a forensic fact-checker. Read More »

Allons enfants de la Patrie.

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Do you think Jews should pay twice what non-Jews pay to attend the University of Toronto? Or Blacks twice as much as whites to go to Western? Or women, twice as much as men to go to Queen’s? Non bien sûr que non!

But this month, Quebec announced it would double university tuition for students from outside the province. Double it at the Université de Montréal, the Université du Québec, or Université Laval? Non. Fees are only doubling at English-speaking universities like McGill and Concordia.

Said Quebec’s Minister of Higher Education Pascale Déry: “Quebeckers will no longer pay for the training of English-speaking Canadian students, most of whom return to their province after graduation.”

Read on…

Allons enfants de la Patrie. Read More »

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