I’ve always liked Celine Dion’s songs more than I’ve liked Celine Dion.
I’m not sure what it was: too slick, too produced, too perfect.
Then she started cancelling shows claiming she had a rare and mysterious disease. Since 2020 she’s been silent. No new songs, no new shows. Nothing. But…
Not.
Any.
More.
Her performance last Friday at the opening of the Paris Olympic Games, where she belted out Hymne à l’amour, was stunning in its own right.
But when you think how terribly sick she’s been, and still is, those four minutes singing in the rain became a global event.
It used to be that people asked: “Where were you when..?” and they would follow with some tragedy or assassination. The only good-news-version I’ve heard is: “Where were you when the astronauts landed on the moon?” But it’s not far-fetched, even when Ms. Dion’s 15-seconds of fame have already stretched to 40 years, for us to ask: “Where were you when Celine Dion sang in Paris?”
It doesn’t take much to know that Celine Dion eats willpower for breakfast. She epitomizes self-discipline. But what puts this woman, the youngest of 14 children raised in Charlemagne, Quebec, whose mother is a homemaker and father a butcher, on a Podium of One is a determination seen only in young children (“I will be a prima ballerina”) and the truly desperate, (“I will beat this stage 4 cancer and walk out of the hospital.”). As she told Adrienne Arsenault: “I will sing again.”
As such, she is an obvious role model for the much younger women and men on Team Canada at the Paris Olympics. Dion is 56 and unlike every other 56-year-old superstar, she looks older than her age, and doesn’t seem to care about that.
She’s also a Canadian, and at a time when real heroes are in short supply here, heroes who have overcome impossible odds to make a happier, better world, a grateful nation should embrace her even more.
But what takes Celine Dion’s ambition, willpower, discipline and singing to a place I don’t think anyone’s ever gone before is that her disease, Stiff Person Syndrome, flares up to cripple her precisely when she is doing what she does best and loves most.
It’s as if a best-selling novelist gets deathly ill only when she begins writing her masterpiece novel which keeps her from writing another word. She gets ill because she’s writing her masterpiece.
Celine Dion conquered the world in Paris; she has still not conquered her disease.
“So …put your hands together and help her along…All that’s left of the singer’s all that’s left of the song…Stand for the ovation…And give her one last celebration.”
Meanwhile…
1. Now this is therapy. Yikes!…and dozens more here. But you can get some quick cheer here.
2. Don’t let the high of Kamala Harris blind you to the low of Donald Trump. The sanest commentator on what we have to fear from a Trump victory is MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.
The clear and present danger of Trump is his 920-page policy document, Project 2025, written by the Heritage Foundation and Trump aides, on taking the reins of government after he’s sworn in next January 20th. (The news that the director of Project 2025 stepped down on Tuesday because of the heat it was generating from Democrats is cold comfort).
This is a sobering antidote to anyone who still views Trump as a make-it-up-on-the-fly kind of guy. Like this. But as Hannah Arendt wrote: “This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore.”
3. Can’t sleep? Don’t count sheep. Read storied short stories instead. Ones designed to lull you to sleep via their familiarity.
4. Overachievers overachieving. What James Cameron is doing now: deep (insanely deep) sea diving. What Peter Thiel is thinking now. Where Siri is driving now. Where Canada stands in GDP growth. Where nice old couples meet. Where the Brits get mad.
5. The upside of addiction. Canadians spend 4.4 hours every day on our smartphones and half of us check our phones just before we go to sleep. I am one of those, and am keenly aware of the nasty side-effects of social media and their handmaidens, TikTok and Instagram.
But one night last week, alone in bed (my wife, Jean, is in Norman Wells this month), I let my fingers wander to Instagram Reels where a feast of wonderful song and dance awaited me. Ohmigawd, they were toe-tappingly wonderful! (a hard thing to pull off when you’re prone).
I kept saying to myself: “It’s 11 o’clock. I really must stop this.” Then it was 11:30, then midnight. And then, well, propriety forbids me from confessing how late I got to sleep.
When I went to bed the next night, I said: “There’s no way I’ll do that ridiculous Instagram music thing tonight.” And of course, like all good addicts, I did.
The fever broke on Night Three. But it was a close call, and I’m going to have to exercise extreme diligence not to fall back into my old ways.
But don’t think you can’t benefit from my failings. I kept a list and now you can enjoy what I did without any of the lack of sleep, or the gobs of guilt or shame.
First, let me introduce you to the tap-dancing Gardiner Brothers from Galway, Ireland, and everywhere. Here’s their Irish Dancing tutorial. Plus their many cousins. And more cousins. And Mitzi Gaynor and Gene Kelly. And speaking of Michael Jackson, here’s your Moonwalk tutorial.
Then there’s just great dancing. And more. And yes, more.
Oh, and songs that turn 60 this year. Plus some classics almost as old, like Eye of the Tiger. Singin’ in the Rain, You Don’t Own Me, You Give Me Fever, Gimme Gimme Gimme,Für Elise, and You Make My Dreams Come True.
6. TV is much smaller than life. So says Dame Sybil Thorndike. But it’s much biggerthan teenage boys, especially if you’re David Tennant.
7. Two big reads on counterintuitive things. First, why do people believe true things? These days it’s always “why do people believe false things?” But, as Dan Williams writes, “the truth is not the default – it is an exceptional, fragile improbable achievement.” Second, from Niall Ferguson, higher education is helpless in the face of unethical behaviour. “The German professoriat…..acted as Hitler’s think-tank.”
Both of these pieces, by the way, are from The Browser, which delivers a daily dose of five exceptional essays on just about anything. I urge you to subscribe as I do.
8. The floating surfer shot. Here’s the shot seen round the world. And the moving picture behind it.
9. Is your threat intelligence up to snuff? Don’t just play defence when it comes to hackers and spam-artists. Why wait for the fire to start before putting it out? Get threat intelligence.
10. Guess the song. What is the band playing? Also, a 10-year-old profile on “the Gagosian gallery of the fine-instrument business.” Finally, a pianist’s nightmare when the piece she prepared is not the piece she performs.
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THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN GET ON THIS SHIP, ON THIS TRIP, IS WITH US.
From Jan. 19 to 26, 2025, Jean and I are taking friends on what was once America’s largest private yacht, the famed four-masted sailing ship, the Sea Cloud.
We’ll be with the ghost of Marjorie Merriweather Post, whose husband, financier E.F. Hutton, gave it to her as a wedding present when they married in 1931.
Today, the Sea Cloud holds 58 passengers in classic luxury. (Just look at the cabins!). We also know the Sea Cloud’s younger sister, Sea Cloud II, which we took 16 friends on in June down the coast of Italy, and …..oh la la, was it ever wonderful!
Our warm-winter trip begins on January 19, 2025, in Barbados and ends there a week later on January 26. In between, we’ll visit some of the Caribbean’s most storied destinations. All the cabins, except those reserved for RamsayTravels, are booked, with waiting lists.
But coming with us also means you save 5% off the prices you see here (prices listed in USD). And of course you’ll be travelling with a band of gentle adventurers eager to take on the best the world has to offer.
Here is the detailed itinerary and Registration form.
So please join us where it’s hot when Toronto is cold. Just call Lindblad at 1.833.985.1261 or email groups@expeditions.com and be sure to mention that you’re with “RamsayTravels.”
Sail on…
Onward,
Bob Ramsay
