There; I’ve said it. The guilt of carrying around my deep secret just got too much to bear; I need to come clean and confess that every week, I buy “Three Lotto Max tickets (with Encore).” This costs me $16 a week or $832 a year. But I forget some weeks (I’m old), and I’m out of the country other weeks (I wander), so let’s make that $600 a year.
Please don’t tell me I could find a better way to invest or spend that $600. I know a lottery is a tax on the mathematically challenged. As Morgan Housel said: “Buying a lottery ticket is the only time in our lives we can hold a tangible dream of getting the good stuff that we already have and take for granted.”
Note: my RRIF isn’t made up only of lottery tickets. It has stocks and bonds and all the usual safe, predictable things that make Canadian pension plans the envy of the world. I also suspect that if you scratched the average prudent Canadian, you’d find someone like me who believes that one day, all of those hundreds of previous days over the years, when at most I won $20, though if I won anything, it’s usually been a free ticket, that day would yield a spectacularly different result.
The low point of my week is having to rip up my used and worthless losing Lotto Max tickets and finding an easy place to throw them away. The thing about a lottery, about betting on a series of numbers coming up roses, is that once it’s over, it’s over. You lose once and your ticket is worthless.
It wasn’t always like this.
Back in the 1970’s, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation started a program for the millions of Ontarians who bought “Wintario” tickets. They cost $1 each.
At the time, the arts and cultural attractions were starving (hum along if you’ve heard this part). Not enough people were buying tickets to our museums and opera companies, or buying books written by Ontario authors. Kind of like today, when the arts are starving not only for customers, but for financial supporters.
Back then, some bright spark said: “Why don’t we give people 50 cents back for their used (i.e. losing) Wintario tickets when they use them to buy a ticket to a public gallery or a museum, or buy a book by the next Margaret Atwood ?” Thus was born the “Half Back” Program. It was a huge and instant success, and it ran for eight years, expanding into sports and other community initiatives.
But on the theory that everything old is new again, maybe we should think about reviving the Half Back Program.
Tickets won’t cost $1 any more, of course. And there would be no paper tickets, just an app we can all download on our phones. Also, I’m not saying my losing weekly lottery ticket, which costs me $16 a week to buy, should give me half that amount back, i.e. a discount of $8. So maybe we call it the Quarterback Program, which gives me a $4 discount off my ticket to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra or $4 off the $35 cover price of Margaret Atwood’s Book of Lives. And what if I bought three lottery tickets each week instead of one? The Ontario Government would be happy for the boost in lottery business as would Atwood’s publisher and your local bookstore.
But today’s crisis in the arts isn’t just at the box office, although most every arts group and publisher is still trying to get back to pre-COVID audience levels. The arts crisis today is much worse: corporate support is declining perilously as well. Companies have new funding priorities; they’re much more risk averse to ‘externalities’ where their brand can be sullied instantly and out of the blue. As for governments, well, “elbows up” is necessary and nice, but it doesn’t funnel much new money to the arts.
So why doesn’t the Ontario Lottery Corporation, which makes $2 billion a year for the Ontario Government, let you donate that $4 per ticket to support the arts group or authors group of your choice? And…because you could keep track of your donation on your phone, which would have been impossible with paper 50 years ago, why don’t you get a tax receipt at the end of the year for the total of all your Quarterback donations throughout the year? I spend $600 a year on lottery tickets, and if I recycle all of my losing ones into arts and cultural things, I can get a Quarterback receipt for $150 for the year.
Which is not nothing.
Meanwhile…
1. Carney’s Speech. Never doubt the ability of a great speech to galvanize people. You’ve heard about Mark Carney’s speech that opened Davos on Tuesday. But if you haven’t actually listened to it, do so now as an act of lifelong learning and good citizenship. Its 30 minutes are worth taking to the barricades. See also James Fallows’ exegesis here.
By the way, the U.S. is not new to horse-trading for Greenland. In 1917, it recognised Danish sovereignty in northern Greenland as a condition for buying the Virgin Islands from Denmark. The story grows even murkier.
2. The year ahead…The best books in 2026, the top universities, the best places for adventure. And the best day-jobs for writers.
3. Stay safe up there. Airline safety videos used to be signals not to watch the screen. Then the airlines decided to turn them into mini-movies. Air Canada’s is oddly good. ButPhilippine Airlines’ and British Airways’ are from a different world.
4. The food of love. Tchaikovsky plays Paris. Plus how Nessun Dorma became so famous. Plus Big Brass Bands (and why Brits have better Biker Clubs). And why Twelfth Night is so eternally great.
Plus, could Beisl be Toronto’s best new restaurant?
5. Great journalism on tap. The Pulitzer Prize people run a website where you can read the best investigative journalism from their winners and grantees, on subjects ranging from free speech and addiction healing camps — to long-reviled but life-savingwolves — and loudly whispered photos. Toronto-based Katie Engelhart won a Pulitzer Prize for her piece on dementia.
6. Celebrating 25, 80, 100 and 250. Hard to believe that Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia of everything, is alive today after 25 years. Indeed, it’s the single authority I trust with anything online. Dan Gardner tells the story of its growth and survival in the Age of Untruth.
It’s also the 80th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials.The 100th anniversary of the birth ofMarilyn Monroe and, of course, America’s 250th birthday.
7. A new species of asexual males. Scott Galloway warns they’re being created right now, and AI is their big enabler. Maybe they need help from the new British non-profit,Friends of Attention. And speaking of attention, here’s how to get yours back.
8. “A lot of fucking movies.” Sean Penn on acting. And how Alexander Skarsgård told his dad Stellan Skarsgård to fuck off. Plus, odd casting calls. Plus, it is with heavy hearts that we announce the death of the 90-minute movie.
9. Advice when…crossing the U.S. border…fleeing ICE agents if you’re in Canada…. assessing global risks…finding a missing mountainer…looking for a new book to read…and looking inside your body.
10. World champions in odd categories. Like stone-skimming, and Powerpoint-making, and marbles and big ball pushing.
11. What I’m liking. The second season of The Night Manager, now on Prime and extending Season One which was taken from John le Carré’s 1993 novel. Indeed, the series star, Tom Hiddleston, is good at playing le Carré himself…according to le Carré.