Many years ago, I interviewed a medic who flew with Ornge, Ontario’s air ambulance service. My job was to write up a personal profile of him for the Ornge website. In our brief phone call, he taught me a lesson in life and leadership that we can all use today. I asked him what he […]
The Plague-Ground – “Not much use being anything else.” Read More »
Raise your hand if you don’t like music. Good. Not one person raised their hand. It’s amazing that 100% of us can agree on one single thing these days (even staying away from each other, as these darkly funny appeals from Italian mayors attest). Few art-lovers claim art is the universal language. Or dance-lovers, dance.
The Plague-Ground – THERE AIN’T NO MUSIC UNLESS THE WORDS SING. Read More »
COVID-19 isn’t the only thing going viral. It took just a week for us to be swamped with astounding new ways to help us cope with the dark days ahead. We can learn to cook everything in our fridge just by taking a picture of what’s inside. We can join a virtual choir to
The Plague-Ground – COMFORTS AND JOYS Read More »
“We’re all going to die!” No one I know is actually saying that, or even screaming it. But today I’m feeling it. I catch a story out of New York about a young man dying, and quickly shut it off. I talk on the phone with a friend who took his family south last week,
THE PLAGUE GROUND – A MOMENT OF DESPAIR Read More »
My 39-year-old step-daughter dropped off some toilet paper at our condo this morning. While we don’t need toilet paper, I was touched by her gesture. In return, I gave her one of our three tubes of Clorox Disinfecting Wipes. Before last week, that interaction would have been unnecessary, unthinkable, preposterous. Today, it’s a tale of
THE PLAGUE-GROUND – PRACTICE SOCIAL TIGHTENING Read More »
This morning, I went into my Home Hardware on the Danforth searching for a metal box I could hide my secret stash of end-of-the-world cash in. They were out. But what they did have fresh in was a shipment of Clorox Disinfecting Wipes. So fresh the delivery guy was leaving when I was arriving. Limit
One island, 49 kilometres, 10 hours: This epic tour of New York City’s most populous borough is a marathon of sights and sounds — and dangers My wife Jean and I have kayaked on Ontario’s Georgian Bay for years, often sleeping on rocks on weekend trips. The farthest we’d paddled was 30 kilometres in a
Circumnavigating Manhattan by kayak Read More »
Counting the commentaries on International Women’s Day last Friday could fool us into thinking women are breaking the glass ceilings in the corridors of power. This may be true for white women, although their advance is slow and halting. But it is absolutely false for women of colour. Knowing just how far women of colour
Where can women of colour be women of power? Read More »
Last May my wife and I flew from Broome, on the west coast of Australia, to Sydney. Just before landing, the flight attendant made this announcement: “Qantas acknowledges the First Nations peoples of Australia as the continuing custodians and traditional owners of the land on which we live and work.” As we landed, I thought
Canadian airlines should make Indigenous landing announcements Read More »
They say a problem redefined is a problem half-solved. Nowhere is this truer than with the problem of women on boards and in corner offices. The problem, of course, is that while there are scads of women qualified for these positions, far too few actually fill these leading indicators of power. Osler LLP recently came
A new way of looking at how men dominate the business world Read More »
Lecture Delivered by Bob Ramsay University Lecture Series University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies November, 2018 This lecture is not called New Places to Travel, but rather New Ways to Travel. By that I mean new ways to think about travel. Because how you view travel is how you will travel. It also means looking at
New Ways to Travel Read More »
“Male, pale and stale.” Is this the fate of the foundations that give out billions to Canadians? This summer, Britain’s Association of Charitable Foundations revealed the race, age and gender of the board members of the nation’s 300 biggest private foundations. (Private foundations are the ones set up by families and companies vs. by governments.) What percentage
Private foundations would benefit by having diverse leadership Read More »
