Omnium-Gatherum – Ramsay Inc.

Category: Omnium-Gatherum

ONE SMALL THING

A year and a half ago, when the full horror of Donald Trump’s dismantling of America was just a White House work order, the prospect of Canadians not visiting the United States wasn’t even a question. Not go to New York for the weekend? Not spend a week hiking the Appalachian Trail? It never entered our minds that we wouldn’t go to America as an act of political protest.

Indeed, not only is the U.S./Canada border the “longest undefended border in the world,” in America’s entire 250 year history Canadians have never had a reason not to set foot in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Except in 1814 when we burned down The White House. But technically, we weren’t a nation until 1867, so it doesn’t really count.

Then in February of last year, the U.S. imposed tariffs on Canada. Mark Carney urged us to get our “Elbows Up” and lots of Canadians vowed not to travel to the U.S. until Trump changed his mind on tariffs (Trump change his mind? We were Bambis in the forest back then.)

Read on…

August 28, 2026 No Comments

SALVATION SPONSORSHIPS.

If we can slag organizations when they fail us, surely we can thank them when they go out of their way to help us. And this summer, both the Weston Family Foundation and the National Bank of Canada helped Canadian literature and Canadian women in big ways and just in time.

For 20 years, the Giller Prize was the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Riding the bank’s rising commitment, the Giller became one of the best sponsorships in the land. Its purse grew from $25,000 to $100,000, its televised Gala became CanLit’s one big night, and a middle-sized fiction award became Canada’s richest literary award. Indeed, The Giller Effect boosted book sales for all the prize’s nominees.

Then in the Fall of 2023, authors and jurors began withdrawing over Scotiabank’s stake in an Israeli arms manufacturer, Elbit Systems. One author, Madeleine Thien, returned her prize from 2016, though not her $100,000 prize money.

Read on…

August 21, 2026 No Comments

DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS.

Last week Barry Hertz of the Globe and Mail reported on yet another scandal on Toronto’s waterfront, the continued closure of the Cinesphere at Ontario Place which needs major repairs.

Doug Ford promised to make those repairs by late 2023. But the Ontario Government hasn’t even started, claiming now that the Cinesphere will re-open by 2029. Hertz tells this new drama in the context of the bigger ones surrounding Ontario Place and the Ontario Science Centre.

But there’s another tragedy here, of how successive governments of every political stripe have slowly bled and starved architect Eb Zeidler’s jewel on Toronto’s waterfront ever since Bill Davis walked away in 1985. I know this story well; my brother James Ramsay helped create Ontario Place and would fill me in on its decline and fall for years after he’d left government.

Read on…

August 14, 2026 No Comments

…BUT A WHIMPER.

On January 24, 1961, thirty thousand feet above Goldsboro, North Carolina, a B-52 carrying two 3.8-megaton hydrogen bombs, broke apart in midair.

Both bombs began arming themselves on the way down, exactly as they were built to do if their crew released them on purpose. One landed in a tree. The other buried itself in a tobacco field, having finished six of its seven steps to arm itself. A single low-voltage switch, the kind you’d buy in a hardware store, stood between eastern North Carolina and a blast 250 times the size of Hiroshima. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara admitted later that the whole thing came down to the failure of two wires to touch.

Then on September 26, 1983, three weeks after the Soviets had shot down Korean Airlines Flight 007, Air Defence Lieutenant-Colonel Stanislav Petrov sat in a bunker south of Moscow watching a screen that told him, with what his system rated “highest confidence,” that American nuclear missiles were inbound.

Read on…

August 7, 2026 No Comments

DOUG FORD’S DEFINING MOMENT.

The real story about Doug Ford and the northern Ontario wildfires isn’t the loud press conference he’s holding twice a day in Thunder Bay. It’s the 72 hours before anyone thought to bring him a microphone.

Let’s go back a couple of weeks. Namaygoosisagagun (also known as Collins) First Nation Chief Helen Paavola says she called the Ministry of Natural Resources for evacuation help before the fire destroyed her community on Monday, June 13. Nobody came. Whitesand First Nation ended up trying to protect its own infrastructure because, as the Chiefs of Ontario put it, there was “a lack of communication from government officials” about how to even declare a state of emergency. And residents of at least one evacuated community went back in against orders because they didn’t trust the province was committing enough to protect their homes in the first place.

Read on…

July 24, 2026 No Comments

I’M NOT WHO I THOUGHT I WAS.

Jean and I are huge Stratford fans. Most every summer, we get in the car, head west on the 401 and gorge on Shakespeare for two or three days.

Last week I was on the phone with the nice woman from the Festival, and she happened to say: “I see the last time you came to the Festival was in 2019. Welcome back!”

2019? Seven years ago? No way.

She replied. “Perhaps if you used a different credit card?”

Hmmmm…I haven’t changed my credit card in eons.

Read on…

July 17, 2026 No Comments

I DIDN’T PUT DOWN MY PEN AND STEP OUT ONTO THE WINDOW LEDGE. NOR SHOULD YOU.

Three years ago, AI was a tekkies’ fever dream, barely real but high on the magic of what’s coming.

Two years ago, AI could put together a sentence, but you had to double-check every word for hallucinations.

Eighteen months ago, AI could write sentences, even paragraphs. They weren’t clunky, either.

Twelve months ago, AI could write a speech, though it still sounded disembodied.

Read on…

July 10, 2026 No Comments

SHATTERING.

A marathon is the distance between the Four Seasons Hotel in Yorkville and the Ford Assembly Plant in Oakville.

I used to say that when I was the Propagandist-in-Chief for JeansMarines, the women’s marathon training group created by my wife, Jean, to run the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. JeansMarines ran from 2002 to 2008, and hundreds of women joined each February to cross the finish line nine months later at the Iwo Jima Memorial into the arms of a waiting U.S. Marine. Lots of those women carried on running, and Jean ended up finishing first in her age group in the Boston Marathon seven times before retiring in 2020.

Read on…

May 1, 2026 No Comments

HOUSE CONCERTS.

Years ago, we went to Austin, Texas, home to SXSW and a concert format we’d never experienced.

A friend who knew a local musician would ask them over to play in their living room, then invite the neighbours, who each put $20 into the jar, and everyone enjoyed an evening of music, along with some basic food and drink provided by the host. That was it.

The musicians sold a few CDs, the audience got an intimate performance, and occasionally, a career got a nudge. In a world where great artists struggle to be seen online, this kind of high-touch, in-person gathering can make all the difference.

THE FIRE NEXT TIME

Last month I wrote about the Jewish community’s fear and rage around the shooting up of synagogues. I said… “If someone fired shots in the night at St. James Anglican Cathedral or St. Michael’s Catholic Basilica, the hue and cry would be long and loud.”

One reader wrote to me to say he doubted anyone would notice at all. He then encouraged me to look into the shocking rise in arson at Canadian churches since COVID.

Shocking rise in arson? In churches? In Canada? What was he talking about?

Read on…

April 17, 2026 No Comments

STEEP GRADE AHEAD.

You have to be smart (or nepo-ed) to get into Harvard.

54,008 students applied for this year’s Freshman class and just 1,937 (or 3.58%) were admitted. But once you’re in, you’re in. This year, 66% of Harvard grades are A’s, up from 25% twenty years ago.

Such careening grade inflation has caused Harvard’s faculty to vote this week on a proposal to limit the number of “A”s to 20% of students taking the course. Needless to say, the students think this is a terrible idea.

But Harvard is not alone. By 2021–22, over half of McGill undergrad courses had average grades of A or A‑, and percentages only slightly less exist at Queen’s, Western and the University of Toronto.

Read on…

April 10, 2026 No Comments

HOW TO BOARD A PLANE.

Canada’s Governor General Mary Simon is bilingual. Her first language is Inuktitut and her second is English. She’s not fluent in French. But this is an exceptional circumstance. And when she speaks to groups of Canadians, which is pretty much every day, she tries to say a little in French, like her 2025 New Year’s message.

Simon is the symbolic head of Canada.

On the other hand, the actual head of Air Canada is its Chief Executive Officer. But the minute that fire truck drove out onto Runway 4 at LaGuardia two weeks ago, Michael Rousseau became the company’s symbolic head as well.

Category: Omnium-Gatherum

ONE SMALL THING

SALVATION SPONSORSHIPS.

DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS.

…BUT A WHIMPER.

DOUG FORD’S DEFINING MOMENT.

I’M NOT WHO I THOUGHT I WAS.

I DIDN’T PUT DOWN MY PEN AND STEP OUT ONTO THE WINDOW LEDGE. NOR SHOULD YOU.

SHATTERING.

HOUSE CONCERTS.

THE FIRE NEXT TIME

STEEP GRADE AHEAD.

HOW TO BOARD A PLANE.

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

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

Benefits of being a subscriber:

RamsayWrites

RamsayWrites

Subscribe to my Free Weekly Omnium-Gatherum Blog:

Get posts directly to your inbox

Sign Up for Updates!

Get news from Ramsay Inc. in your inbox.

Email Lists