Omnium-Gatherum – Ramsay Inc.

A STREETCAR NAMED EXPIRE.

Last week at Bloor and Bay I saw a bedraggled man pick himself up off the sidewalk and nonchalantly jab a needle into his toes. I had to assume this was because the veins in his arms were so shot up that they didn’t work any more.

The sheer normalcy of this reminded me that Toronto is now a world-class city in something our child-like view of ourselves has a hard-time computing. All summer, I saw men sleeping across three seats in a subway car and women with everything they own in two plastic bags. They’re not only in the ravine behind the tennis club, and on the sidewalk outside Tim Hortons, their needles change hands as unselfconsciously as a Presto tap.

Read on…

September 18, 2026 September 18, 2026

WHERE WERE YOU…?

On November 22, 1963, when JFK was shot? (Me: at prep school in Port Hope. A student ran into the dining hall yelling: “Kennedy was shot! Kennedy was shot!” We thought it was a fellow student named “Kennedy”)…

On July 2, 1969, when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon? (Me: In Edmonton in a friend’s basement rumpus room.)

On October 16, 1970, when Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act saying “just watch me” during the FLQ Crisis? (Me: at university in the States, where it wasn’t so momentous.)

Read on…

September 11, 2026 September 11, 2026

SOMETIMES YOU’RE JUST WRONG.

And when you’re wrong with 6,000 people reading why you’re wrong, well, I’m gulping the gulp you gulp when all you can say is: “My arguments may have been wrong, but at least they were well put.”

I was wrong about expanding Billy Bishop Airport and letting jets take off and land there. I said it was a good idea. Lots of readers disagreed. The longer runway would have all kinds of knock-on effects that would change what’s wonderful about the waterfront. One of these readers, the indefatigable and relentless Anne Golden, threatened me with an invitation for coffee, which I attended and was well finger-wagged.

Anne was actually in despair. For her, the prospect of taking on Doug Ford’s government was Everestian. Everybody knows that the dice were loaded. Everybody knows that the fight was fixed. Everybody knows the good guys lost.

Until of course, they won.

Last Friday, after the polls showed Doug Ford sitting in the mid-20s in public opinion brought on by his fumbled effort to buy and sell a private jet, and his fumbled effort to rationalize his government’s efforts in fighting the forest fires raging in the North, Ottawa announced that it would not allow Billy Bishop to be expanded to accommodate jets.

Read on…

July 31, 2026 July 31, 2026

I DIDN’T PUT DOWN MY PEN AND STEP OUT ONTO THE WINDOW LEDGE. NOR SHOULD YOU.

Three years ago, AI was a tekkies’ fever dream, barely real but high on the magic of what’s coming.

Two years ago, AI could put together a sentence, but you had to double-check every word for hallucinations.

Eighteen months ago, AI could write sentences, even paragraphs. They weren’t clunky, either.

Twelve months ago, AI could write a speech, though it still sounded disembodied.

Read on…

July 10, 2026 July 10, 2026

MY TREMOR.

Three years ago I was having lunch with an old friend. The soup sounded good, so I ordered it. I dipped my spoon into the bowl, and as I was bringing it to my lips, I felt the tiniest tremor. Not so anyone would notice. But I did. I took another sip. The same slight shake of my left hand, my soup hand. Hmmmm. I waited five minutes.

“You don’t like your soup?”

“Yes, yes, I do.” My spoon quickly consumed the rest of the bowl.

As we left the lunch, I thought this was very odd. I certainly did not think: “Do I have Parkinson’s?” or “Am I going to die a dreadful death?”

Read on…

May 15, 2026 May 15, 2026

WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR?

Ottawa is opening the taps to secure our future, just not for the part that tells us who we are.

In last month’s fiscal update, Ottawa earmarked $63 billion for defence spending next year, on its way to $1 trillion in 2035. The new Defence Industrial Strategy alone lets Canadian firms chase $180 billion in procurement promising 125,000 high-paying careers.

AI and digital infrastructure are also lavished with attention, just shy of $1 billion. But it’s nothing compared to the $32 billion earmarked for northern development and defence-linked infrastructure.

Read on…

May 8, 2026 May 8, 2026

SHATTERING.

A marathon is the distance between the Four Seasons Hotel in Yorkville and the Ford Assembly Plant in Oakville.

I used to say that when I was the Propagandist-in-Chief for JeansMarines, the women’s marathon training group created by my wife, Jean, to run the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. JeansMarines ran from 2002 to 2008, and hundreds of women joined each February to cross the finish line nine months later at the Iwo Jima Memorial into the arms of a waiting U.S. Marine. Lots of those women carried on running, and Jean ended up finishing first in her age group in the Boston Marathon seven times before retiring in 2020.

Read on…

May 1, 2026 May 1, 2026

Tags: Omnium-Gatherum

A STREETCAR NAMED EXPIRE.

WHERE WERE YOU…?

SOMETIMES YOU’RE JUST WRONG.

I DIDN’T PUT DOWN MY PEN AND STEP OUT ONTO THE WINDOW LEDGE. NOR SHOULD YOU.

MY TREMOR.

WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR?

SHATTERING.

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