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What Leadership Is

By |2020-08-02T12:48:08-04:00June 1st, 2020|Categories: Society|Tags: , , , , |

What Leadership Is From Lincoln to Trump During the height of the Civil War, cemetery construction was, of course, brisk. Some committee members charged with planning and location-finding for these proliferating grave sites approached Lincoln for some advice about a particular site. He said to them, "Put it where I can see it from the windows of my summer home. Thus, will I be reminded what my decisions cost." Can you imagine the Great Denier -- Donald Trump -- acting like the Great Emancipator? Two photographs of [...]

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The Future of Work

By |2020-07-23T13:28:36-04:00May 10th, 2020|Categories: Society|Tags: , , , , , , |

The Future of Work - Part 1 Universal Basic Income In 1915 there were 22 million horses in the United States and most of them had jobs.  By 1960, there were 3 million horses in the U.S. bred mostly for the recreational pleasures of their human masters. Are we headed towards a future that sees large segments of the human workforce  permanently displaced like their former equine partners?  A future where workers do not migrate from one dying sector of the economy to a new and upcoming sector that needs the displaced [...]

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Graft, Quebec & COVID

By |2020-05-06T12:18:08-04:00May 5th, 2020|Categories: Society|Tags: , , , , , , |

There is no shortage of COVID-19 coverage in the media these days; but I have seen very little analysis as to why Quebec is leading the country in COVID cases by a significant margin. I grew up in Quebec and have the greatest admiration for the culture and general joie-de-vivre to be found in Montreal where I spent my formative years -- I am often found comparing it favourably to the nose-to-the grindstone aspects of life in Toronto. There is however a dark side. Those of you who have never been immersed in the local politics of [...]

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Selective Memory

By |2020-04-25T09:59:21-04:00April 24th, 2020|Categories: Society|Tags: , , , , , |

My father was a formidably erudite man who wore his wide-ranging scholarly acumen lightly and conveyed it deftly often with a kind of mordant humour.  He was fluent in German and French and read Russian somewhat haltingly (it is a difficult language).  Born in 1920, it was not surprising that, given his cultural interests and intellectual talents, the totalitarian nightmare and world war that framed his youth and early adulthood, preoccupied him.  He wanted to understand what at the deepest level seemed to defy comprehension.  When I became old enough (12 maybe) we would talk often about [...]

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