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Category: Omnium-Gatherum

TRUE PATRIOT LUST.

The opportunity for one of the most patriotism-shy nations on earth to gorge on that very thing begins the week of May 12. That’s when we learn which of Mark Carney’s Liberal MPs will be sworn in to what Cabinet posts.

The split second the Cabinet is announced, dozens of organizations who have been preparing their “Elbows Up” wish lists for federal funding will push “send” and shoot their proposals into the offices of the Ministers of Canadian Culture, of Sport, Innovation, Indigenous Relations, Foreign Affairs and more.

Read on…

May 9, 2025 No Comments

A MASTERCLASS GETS SOME MISTRESSES.

Until a few years ago, the chances of seeing a woman on the podium conducting an orchestra were approximately zero.

Today, they’re popping up everywhere. Keri-Lynn Wilson, a Canadian-American, guest-conducts all over the world, Barbara Hannigan, also a Canadian, guest-conducts and singsthe world over too. And the American, Marin Alsop, is the leading woman conductor on any podium.

But a Canadian woman conducting a Canadian orchestra on more than a drive-by basis?Fuhgeddaboudit.

But that too is changing.

Read on…

May 3, 2025 No Comments

WAR BY OTHER MEANS.

Last weekend an ad appeared in The Globe and Mail announcing a campaign to raise $30 million “to bring the best scientific minds to Canada’s #1 hospital.”

The University Health Network, which runs Toronto General, Toronto Western, and Princess Margaret Hospitals, is not only Canada’s best hospital, Toronto General is ranked #3 in the world (next to the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic in the US) and the #1 public hospital in the world.

So UHN is already on the podium and now sees a chance to own it.

Read on…

April 25, 2025 No Comments

ONCE YOU MAKE CONCESSIONS ONCE, IT’S HARD NOT TO MAKE THEM AGAIN.

Last week, the Gairdner Foundation announced its 2025 awards to some of the world’s best biomedical scientists. The Gairdners are Canada’s top international prize, and one in four awardees goes on to win the Nobel Prize. This year, in addition to the first Gairdner in its 68 years going to a nurse practitioner, there was talk by the eight awardees and Gairdner head Dr. Janet Rossant about the threats to science by the Trump administration.

Make no mistake, those threats are existential; they threaten science’s very existence.

Read on…

April 18, 2025 No Comments

HOW NOT TO DISINVITE SOMEONE TO YOUR PARTY.

But what if they turn up anyway? 

This happens a lot these days as speakers are cancelled, invitations revoked, and passports seized.

Mexican conductor Enrique Bátiz died last week at the age of 82. His family posted a notice about his funeral, prohibiting 13 musicians from attending it. Why?  “Owing to circumstances known to everyone, his family and friends respectfully request that the following persons abstain from attending the funeral and the burial…”

Read on…

April 11, 2025 No Comments

GOING OUT AT THE TOP OF YOUR GAME.

Last year, the world’s authority on decision-making ended his life in a clinic in Zurich.

How Daniel Kahneman decided to do that is instructive. True, the Nobel Prize winner and author of Thinking Fast and Slow was 90, but he wasn’t actively dying. He didn’t have cancer, or heart disease or Alzheimer’s. But as he wrote in an email to his close friends: “I have believed since I was a teenager that the miseries and indignities of the last years of life are superfluous, and I am acting on that belief. Most people hate changing their minds, but I like to change my mind. It means I’ve learned something.”

Read on…

March 29, 2025 No Comments

HIS KARMA RAN OVER HIS DOGMA.

The biggest business collapse in history happened in 2008 when Wall Street banker Lehman Bros., which had $691 billion in assets, filed for bankruptcy. Lehman’s fall sparked the 2008 global financial crisis and proved that no bank, and no company, is too big to fail.

In this vein, what happens if Tesla goes broke?

It’s lost $777 billion of value since December and a tide of analysts is claiming it’s been wildly overvalued from Day One.

Read on…

March 22, 2025 No Comments

YOUR CHEATIN’ HEART.

On September 24, 1988, the Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson placed first in the 100-metre dash, setting a new world record at the Seoul Olympics. Thirty million Canadians went wild for the born-in-Jamaica runner who was one of ours.

We’re #1!

Seventy-two hours later Johnson was disqualified for using the banned steroid stanozolol. Thirty million Canadians were crushed. This born-in-Jamaica runner was one of theirs. We’re #171!

A Grade 3 student could tell you why we were bereft:

Cheating is bad. A drug that gives you an unfair advantage corrupts the whole competition. Cheating on an exam cheats everyone. If people know the bid is rigged, they won’t enter. Just this week, Norwegian ski jumpers were caught manipulating their ski suits. Norway!

Read on…

March 15, 2025 No Comments

ARE THE ANTI-TRUMP AMERICANS THE JEWS OF THE 1930s?

No one knows; it’s just too early to tell.

But the fact that it’s even possible to ask the question speaks to how fast and fully Donald Trump has grabbed and bent the levers of American executive, legislative, judicial and military power to his will. Not to mention how he’s already exercised his unquenchable revenge on his enemies.

So did Hitler, but he was slower.

Read on…

March 8, 2025 No Comments

PEOPLE FORGET.

Last week Louise Penny pulled the plug on her appearance at The Kennedy Center to launch her new mystery, The Grey Wolf.

Said Penny: “I’m in DC, but in the wake of Trump taking over, I have pulled out. It was, of course, going to be a career highlight. But there are things far more important than that.”

“Trump taking over” means his self-elevation to the Chair of the previously bipartisan leadership of Washington’s leading concert hall, which he engineered earlier this month. Trump promised to “make the center GREAT AGAIN,” adding “The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and must reflect the brightest STARS on its stage from all across our Nation.”

Since then, Trump has fired the board and its CEO, Deborah Rutter, and appointed a new board who then appointed him Chair – and ticket sales have dropped by 50%.

Read on…

March 1, 2025 No Comments

A HUNDRED WORDS FROM YOUR LIFE.

In 2024 the New York Times launched a reader contest, inviting their teenage readers to tell a true story about a meaningful life experience in just 100 words.

The Times’ inbox was swamped. So they ran the contest again last year, and this month, after over 25,000 entries, they published the 20 winning stories.

Read on…

February 22, 2025 1 Comment

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