Tags: Millionaires

WEAPONS OF SELF-DESTRUCTION.

Last weekend our family went for its annual Thanksgiving Walk, a two-hour hike through Awenda Provincial Park above Georgian Bay. Behind me were my stepson and his 11-year-old daughter. Their conversation twisted and turned through as many subjects as they did navigating the fallen trees and winding forest paths. I was listening idly to their back-and-forth when I heard: “But when can I have a phone?”

I won’t say the skies clouded, but the mood changed at this, the most insistent question of our age. Because asking mom and dad when you can have your first phone has turned into asking them when you can have your first shot of heroin.

Clearly, this was not the first time she’d asked, and I was impressed by her father’s patience as he calmly listed all the reasons an 11-year-old shouldn’t have a mobile phone. “But Mary has one, and she’s 12!”

Read on…

Walking by cars on a sunny evening.

I used to walk from “A” to “B” in downtown Toronto to feel good about myself. Clocking 10,000 steps on my FitBit; finding delightful new alleyways and shortcuts; neither spending money nor polluting the world; all these gave my steps an extra lift.

That’s all changed now, and for the better.

This summer Toronto’s traffic congestion will be something the city itself perpetually strives for and fails to be: world-class. Indeed, it’s already on the podium. Last year Toronto ranked 7th among the worst cities in the world for traffic congestion, just below New York and Bogota.

This happened because City Hall and Queen’s Park banded together (a rare thing) and green-lighted the annual pothole repair work, lane widening, lane narrowing, and bike-lane building that turns every summer into a driver’s nightmare.

AND they decided to dig up Queen Street West and East at the same time.  

AND do major repairs to the Gardiner (through to 2027). 

AND build the Ontario Line, a major new subway that runs through gobs of blocks of downtown. 

Read on…

RamsayWrites

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