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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.

Air Apparent

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum /

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.

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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.

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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?

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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 »

ArriveCan can’t – and doesn’t care.

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In 2021, I launched my memoir online. I used an idea from my friend, Robert Rotenberg, who’d launched his latest novel online earlier that year (and who has a #1 mystery best-seller out now, What We Buried.) 

The idea was to use quick video testimonials from people important to the book to spice up the hour-long online launch. I asked friends from different phases of my life to comment on its sharp peaks and deep valleys. 

Read on…

ArriveCan can’t – and doesn’t care. Read More »

Negotiate up, not down.

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Twenty years ago we took the Hurtigruten, Norway’s storied sea-ferry service, up the Norwegian coast, docking at tiny towns where it delivered mail, passengers and freight. At most of these often isolated ports, we were greeted by a brass band playing Norway’s national anthem, sometimes a boys and girls choir, and even the mayor wearing their ribbon of office. It was a big deal for these small places.

Last week on a Lindblad Expedition, the National Geographic Orion docked in Samoa, on our way from Fiji to Tahiti. We were greeted by a band playing traditional Samoan music and a troupe of male and female dancers wearing leis and grass skirts. They performed for 20 minutes just for us.

But this time our reaction to the local citizenry greeting a visiting ship was ….mixed. Should the 59 of us onboard feel guilty for enabling an old trope between oppressor and oppressed? Or should we feel good that we’re helping Samoans promote their Indigenous culture via traditional regalia and age-old dances?

I say good.

Read on.

Negotiate up, not down. Read More »

“They are not failed versions of us.”

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Anthropologist Wade Davis’ famous dictum in The Wayfinders on the wisdom of indigenous cultures hit home when we heard a talk off the coast of Fiji this week onboard Lindblad Expeditions’ National Geographic Orion.

It was about how the Polynesians discovered thousands of islands across the Pacific Ocean hundreds of years before European explorers dared to take their own boats beyond their home shores. The Polynesians, who had come from the area around what is now Taiwan, navigated an ocean that is larger than the landmass of all the continents combined.

Read on…

“They are not failed versions of us.” Read More »

The most important person in modern Russia.

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It isn’t Alexei Navalny whose body Russian authorities still aren’t serving up, even though they announced his death on Feb. 16. It’s another Russian.

He was not a prisoner or a leader of the opposition, but a 36-year-old second-in-command of a Soviet submarine parked below international waters off Cuba on October 27, 1962.

VasilyArkhipov was one of three officers onboard the “B-59” who knew the sub not only carried a 10-kiloton nuclear torpedo, but that it could be fired without direct permission from Moscow. This was the height of the Cuban missile crisis, and on that day the B-59 was cornered by 11 US destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph. They started dropping depth charges. Their goal wasn’t to sink the sub but to force it to surface, as US officials had already told Moscow.

The most important person in modern Russia. Read More »

Old problem gets new thinking

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As surely as we believe that fat makes you fat, heart surgery demands bedrest, and wet sidewalks cause rain, we believe that abused women who flee to shelters should be granted secrecy and anonymity.

But that ‘given’ may be taken away, at least from our conventional thinking.

Last week, The New York Times columnist Rachel Louise Snyder wrote about the movement to make the locations of domestic violence shelters less secret and more public. They’re secret, of course, because we equate secrecy with safety. Otherwise, your abuser can track you down and hurt you or even kill you. It’s happened.

Read on…

Old problem gets new thinking Read More »

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