Omnium-Gatherum – Page 2

Category: Omnium-Gatherum

TRUE NORTH STRONG AND EXPENSIVE.

Yachting, polo, squash and fencing are what I call upper class sports. You need a lot of money, or go to prep school with it, in order to play or want to even watch.

But two sports that used to be proudly middle class are in danger of being played and watched mainly by rich people. It’s worse that hockey and skiing are the very sports Canadians love and excel at – and are at the heart of being Canadian.

But the news last week that the cost for a family of four to go to a Toronto Maple Leafs game will be $1,000 this season sparked protests from thousands of fans who resent the20%+ jump in season ticket prices in a city that’s already the most expensive in the world to watch pro hockey. The Leafs are a unique subset of what economists call a Giffen Good, a product or service whose demand increases as its price rises. Because the Leaf’s home ice attendance averages 99.8%, with occasional rises to 105%, and has for decades now, they are not just immune to the laws of supply and demand, but to the idea that a better product will draw a bigger audience.

Read on…

August 29, 2025 No Comments

DON’T SKATE TO WHERE THE PUCK IS.

A quarter of a century back, my wife Jean and I formed a mid-life women’s running group to run the Marine Corps Marathon. Over its 7 years, JeansMarines took hundreds of women off the couch in February and trained them to cross the finish line in October at the Iwo Jima Memorial in Washington DC, into the arms of a waiting US Marine.

JeansMarines needed financial sponsors to be viable, so we approached Nike, Adidas, New Balance and other usual suspects. They all turned us down. Wouldn’t even meet with us. This made no sense. These were professional women. They had Gold Cards. They spent without limit on their running gear.

Nope. Not interested. Then a friend who used to work for Nike told me why: JeansMarines were too old. At age 40 to 60, we were ‘off-brand.’ Nike’s brand was 20-to-40 year olds. “But the people who actually buy Nikes are 40 to 60,” I countered. “Doesn’t matter,” said my friend. “20 to 40 year olds are who they want to buy their shoes.”

Read on…

August 8, 2025 No Comments

TRAVEL IS COSTLY, RISKY, TIRING, CROWDED AND GROWING FASTER THAN EVER.

Which begs the question: why do we travel anyway?

Because we’re curious, of course, about places and things, but most of all, about people. Boy, do people ever want to know about other people. I once ran into an Arctic Sámi in Sweden who looked like a member of the Oxford Rowing Team. And then there was the food guide who gave us a Marxist tour of Mexico City…But I digress.

It seems we can’t get enough of other people, and the more exotic and oddly-behaved, the better. Or rather, we couldn’t until recently when, like Sartre disclaiming that “hell is other people,” our curiosity about them has turned into a rash.

Americans? Feh.

Airport security people? Don’t get me started.

Musty cathedrals? Never liked them anyway.

Read on…

August 1, 2025 No Comments

“I’D LIKE TO APOLOGIZE…”

Jan Morris once said that Canadians could drown in niceness.

We are notorious for being polite, a view borne out by countless polls that confirm “We’re Number 1” when it comes to helping someone else actually be Number 1. When others say “Good morning” or “Hello”, we will happily say, “I’m sorry.” Indeed, so endemic is this quality that it’s spreading to citizens of other nations, and to a large sub-group of Canadians.

Donald Trump is responsible for the former, and the ideal of truth and reconciliation for the latter.

In 2003, Jean and I joined a group of 75 hikers from around the world to hike New Zealand’s Milford Track. The night before we set out, the organizers asked us all to divide up into groups of the country we were from and sing a favourite national song to the others. Ugh.

Read on…

July 25, 2025 No Comments

ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE. WHERE DO WE ALL COME FROM?

In 2008 Switzerland passed a law that made owning one guinea pig illegal.

Today, pet stores in Zurich won’t sell you a single guinea pig unless you can prove you already have at least one at home. It seems guinea pigs are highly social creatures who get depressed when they’re alone. So what if one of your two guinea pigs dies, leaving the other to grieve their mate on their own? You can rent a guinea pig until you’ve had a chance to vet and buy a new mate for your existing one.

Read on…

July 18, 2025 No Comments

SOME CORNER OF A FOREIGN FIELD.

Rich people give their millions to charities for as many reasons as there are rich people. The fight for love and glory is surely the biggest. Some big givers are also grateful patients or students of their alma maters. Some want to plump their city; others, boost their profession, their grandkids’ sports team, their nation’s military.

Canada’s 1% have not been as generous or as loud as America’s in supporting our charities. But this year, when Canada’s elbows are way up, that might change. Especially for causes that promote Canadian excellence on the world stage, like Own the Podium and the Canada Gairdner Awards.

But it’s also time to think of those Canadians who are promoting our country abroad, sending big signals in foreign lands about our values, our standards and our staying power.

Read on…

July 11, 2025 No Comments

RUGBY IN VEGAS, TOUR DE FRANCE IN SCOTLAND.

Sports tourism used to mean spending a week in Dunedin watching the Jays in spring training, or running the Berlin marathon with a gang from the Beaches Running Club, or going to New York to watch the US Open, or across to Jersey for the Super Bowl. No more.

The days of flying somewhere to see your favourite team have morphed into your favourite team flying somewhere to see you. This spring, The Wigan Warriors played theWarrington Wolves, two Northern England towns just 18 km apart, to a packed Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, among them 15,000 British rugby fans who didn’t have to fly 8,400 kilometres or spend thousands of US dollars each to see a rugby match, but did.

Read on…

June 27, 2025 No Comments

HOW TO USE AI.

If you read about AI and turn the page, thinking it’s not for you, or you’re too old to learn now, or technology and you never got along, or you use AI to do research or write papers, and stop there, you need to keep going. You must.

Because last week I used AI to plan a trip to Japan next year.

What I got back will not only change how Jean and I travel, but change how most everyone will travel. And travel itself, which is one of the world’s largest economic sectors, is a teensy thimbleful of what AI is already changing.

Read on…

June 20, 2025 No Comments

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF BOYS.

Millions of girls were once aborted for being girls. But now, the stunning decline in having boys reflects their sharp fall in value to their families, their economies and the world.

Last week, The Economist reported on this sudden reversal of fortune.

“Globally, among babies born in 2000, a staggering 1.6 million girls were missing from the number you would expect, given the natural sex ratio at birth. This year that number is likely to be 200,000—and it is still falling.”

Read on…

June 13, 2025 No Comments

YET ANOTHER EXISTENTIAL THREAT.

When I was a kid, the big fear, aside from a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union, was too many people. The world’s population in 1960 was 3 billion, with predictions it would grow exponentially, until the earth collapsed from too many people living on its surface. Billions would starve or die of thirst.

That isn’t happening. In fact, the opposite is happening: the world is facing a catastrophic decline in population.

There may be more than 8 billion people alive today, but within just two generations, it’s predicted that the population will start to decline.

Read on…

June 6, 2025 No Comments

UNDERTOURISM.

This week thousands of Canary Islanders marched against the 18 million tourists who visit the tiny Spanish island chain each year.

One marcher said, “We’re not against tourism. But the current model is predatory.” The Spanish government also removed 60,000 Airbnb listings across the country and by 2028 Barcelona will ban Airbnb completely.

Oh…and Amsterdam has banned the construction of new hotels, except to replace closed ones, and Florence has banned key boxes and guides with loudspeakers. Athens has limited visits to the Acropolis to 20,000 a day.

Read on…

May 30, 2025 No Comments

A WALK IN THE PARK.

Even in the 1970s if you drove 10 minutes outside any Canadian city, you would be in the bush, or on a country road. But today, such is the hold of Canada as a vast wilderness nation that for 99% of our 40 million people who don’t live in the wild, we feel its mythical tug.

Sadly the majority of the seven million people who live in the Greater Toronto Area (which is bigger than the Greater Chicago Area) will have little to no chance to ever see or experience the wilderness.

Category: Omnium-Gatherum

TRUE NORTH STRONG AND EXPENSIVE.

DON’T SKATE TO WHERE THE PUCK IS.

TRAVEL IS COSTLY, RISKY, TIRING, CROWDED AND GROWING FASTER THAN EVER.

“I’D LIKE TO APOLOGIZE…”

ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE. WHERE DO WE ALL COME FROM?

SOME CORNER OF A FOREIGN FIELD.

RUGBY IN VEGAS, TOUR DE FRANCE IN SCOTLAND.

HOW TO USE AI.

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF BOYS.

YET ANOTHER EXISTENTIAL THREAT.

UNDERTOURISM.

A WALK IN THE PARK.

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