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.
The fact is, though, it may be that Gould is more revered outside Canada than in.
The foundation to carry forward his work was founded in 1983. It has operated for 41 years and does all kinds of outreach, from podcasts to masterclasses, to Indigenous programs and how music intersects with mental health.
But its shining star is the biennially awarded Glenn Gould Prize whose winners include Leonard Cohen, Robert Lepage, Alanis Obomsawin, Philip Glass, Jessye Norman, and the latest laureate, Gustavo Dudamel, the incoming conductor of the New York Philharmonic.
The Foundation has never been robust financially. Some years I sense it’s been held together by bandaids and bailing wire, as well as the relentless energy of its CEO, Brian Levine, and the efforts of its board members.
But now, the Glenn Gould Foundation can do something that anyone who’s perpetually impoverished just can’t do.
It can plan.
It can certainly think about making the Glenn Gould Prize an annual one and not once every two years. (Can you recall the name of even one big award given out every two years? Me neither).
The Glenn Gould Foundation wasn’t the only beneficiary of Ottawa’s pre-election largesse showered on Toronto voters. TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival, got $23 million over 3 years, largely to buffer the absence of Bell Canada’s sustaining sponsorshipwhich ended last year.
But there was another big donation hidden away in the line items of Chrystia Freeland’s budget: $10 million to The Gairdner Foundation. It turns out this was not a life-ring, but a bonus for sustained outperformance.
There are many similarities between “Gould” and the “Gairdners”. Back in 2012, the Gairdner Foundation was slowly sinking into irrelevance. A closely-held family foundation, it too played on the world’s stage, giving prizes to the world’s top medical researchers and their discoveries. If you were a medical researcher in London or New York, you likely knew about the Gairdners. If you weren’t, you didn’t.
The Gairdner President at the time was Dr.John Dirks, the former Dean of Medicine at the University of Toronto (who’s also now on the Glenn Gould board). He knew the Gairdners needed a game-changing donation and a more public board, or there would be no more Gairdners. Dirks was not a fund-raiser, nor is he a political partisan. But he is strategic and he knew the only people who could come up with the $20 million the Gairdners needed to raise the value of their 7 awards and to create a national outreach program, was the federal government. The problem was, the Tories were in power in Ottawa, and Stephen Harper was thought to be not science-friendly.
This turned out to be a great strength of the Gairdner’s application: the Conservatives wanted to show corporate Canada and the voters that, far from being the enemy of science, it was the champion.
That $20 million endowment has enabled the Gairdners to expand its programs nationally and globally. Today, one in four Gairdner awardees goes on to win the Nobel Prize. The new $10 million announced last week will let Ottawa, smarting from voters that it is listless about supporting science, reinforce the connection between the Gairdners and Canada and “best in the world.”
There are lessons every non-profit group can learn from the success of Glenn Gould and the Gairdners in finding big new pots of support. Number one is: if you want money from Ottawa, think how your priorities can align with theirs. Number two: Be lucky enough to ask for that support when Ottawa needs you as much as you need them. Three: keep going back if they say no. Four: If you do manage to get life-changing support, use that to leverage new corporate and individual sponsors like the Gairdners have done. And five, get some third-party validation of how world-class you are. Last year, the Goulds got the Boston Consulting Group to do a study on the effect of a Canadian global prize on Canada and Canadians.
Glenn Gould once said: “It’s true that I’ve driven through a number of red lights on occasion. But on the other hand, I’ve stopped at a lot of green ones, but never gotten credit for it.”
Now, finally, he is.
Meanwhile….
1. AI Dogfight. Last week the US military announced that in September it conducted the first ever mid-air dogfight between a human pilot and an AI-controlled fighter jet.
The computer-controlled F-16 jet took on a manned F-16 aircraft in aerial combat at Edwards air force base in California. Said The Telegraph: “Since it was first built in December 2022, the [AI] jet has been taken out on at least 21 test flights, totalling more than 17 hours of flight time and the first time machine-learning has been used to pilot a fighter jet.”
Here’s footage of that dogfight. The USAF didn’t say who won.
2. LVMH accounts for more French exports than agriculture. The luxury conglomerate, headed by the world’s richest man, Bernard Arnault (His wife, Hélène Mercier, is a concert pianist originally from Montreal), last year exported more abroad, €23.5 million, than all of France’s farmers did. As the FT noted: “Global sales of handbags and perfumes made by LVMH account for a larger share of France’s exports than all of the Camembert and wine produced by the country’s famed agricultural sector.”
3. Would you pass Trump’s jury test? More prospective jurors failed this test than passed. If you lived in New York, could you be sitting in judgement this week of America’s 45th President? Here’s the test that led to the 12 jurors and 6 alternates who are.
4. Canada Geese fly off people’s backs. People who like Canada Goose jackets like them so much that in Britain this past winter, they stole them off wearer’s backs.
5. Animal Hackers. First, fighting fire with beavers. Next, two links to too-cute, over-sharing animals. Finally, mini-rope bridges for British dormice. But as Harry Truman said: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”
6. Daily newsletter on Canadian politics. If you’re a political junkie, and especially the Ottawa kind, you should get Politico’s Ottawa Playbook, “five days a week, zero dollars.” All kinds of people, places, things and quotes. Like this, from Randy Quarles, former co-chair of the Fed: “Almost 20 percent of everything that we in the United States send abroad into this world of 8 billion people goes to the 40 million people in Canada, who are only one half of 1 percent of the world.”
Also, Bill Maher, once a big Canada fan, has fallen out of love.
7. Useful for work, love, life, sports and reading. First, I don’t think you’re a good reader. Next, some useful numbers in biology. Next, a dictionary of slang, plus an etymological dictionary which doesn’t have definitions, but explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago. As it says: “This is a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English.” And speaking of words, April 23rd was Shakespeare’s birthday, a reminder of all the words he brought us, from ‘advertising’ and ‘misquote’ to ‘scuffle’ and ‘swagger.’ Next, do conversations end when we want them to? Seems not. Finally, one of the best half-time coach-talks ever.
8. How movies get made. William Goldman once said: “In Hollywood, no one knows anything.” As the man who wrote Butch Cassidy (1969), The Princess Bride (1973) and All the President’s Men (1976), he would know.
Here’s an update on his informed disbelief.
And here’s Brian Cox on something other than Succession….but very Hollywood.
9. Retiring robots. After the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, the robot-maker Boston Dynamics surprised us all with how their robots could help injured spectators and runners who’d lost limbs be mobile again. One spectator, a dance teacher, even danced on stage again.
Here’s what those robots are doing now, including a robot retirement video for Atlas who started at Boston Dynamics 10 years ago.
10. Amazing grace notes. Four items on music. Wild Mountain Thyme at The Kennedy Center (something amazing happens at 4:25). Sarah Vaughan sings Misty. Then, behind the scenes with Cirque du Soleil’s music director. Finally, the singing denouncer: British tenor Ian Bostridge stopped mid-concert at Symphony Hall Birmingham to denounce the Hall’s new audience rules, to wit: “We are very happy for you to take photographs and short video clips at our concerts, but please refrain from recording the whole performance.”
11. What I’m liking. Perplexity. It’s an AI writing and research app I use half a dozen times a day now, up from once a week two months ago. It’s like a faster, deeper version of ChatGPT. So if you’re still “googling” to find information, think of Perplexity as Google without the ads, rankings, and other distractions.
But Perplexity is also a writing app. I don’t use it for that, yet, but as soon as I get used to treating “prompts” as a highly useful and learnable skill, I will.
Will I ever prompt: “Write a weekly 750-word blog that gathers odd and interesting information, with links, titled “OG” blog for “Omnium-Gatherum” and preceded by a 500-word opinion piece by Toronto writer Bob Ramsay.”
Whoops. I just did and…..uh…..it may be time to hang up my skates. Not now. But soon. AI is coming even for my job!
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THIS SUMMER, TRAVEL WITH US TO THREE GLORIOUS PLACES.
Because we do group travel for people who don’t do group travel.
We go places – like the Alta Valsesia in Italy and the Great Bear Rainforest in BC –which are empty of crowds and deep in beauty, authenticity and fun.
We also do things that change our view of the world, like sailing in a square-rigger down the Amalfi coast.
To make this happen, we partner with the best people in the world of small-group travel, like Lindblad Expeditions / National Geographic and karibu adventures.
But the real difference is the people who join us on our trips. They are engaged and grownup, and in the words of E.M. Forster “sensitive, considerate and plucky.”
But most of all, they are curious.
Not as in ‘odd’, but as in eager to learn more about life, the world, and especially other people and cultures. Just like you.
Indeed, it’s this abiding sense of curiosity that keeps Jean and me exploring as much of the world as we can.
Because you don’t slow down when you get old; you get old when you slow down.
So join us, and whet your appetite for life