Category: New

Chuck’s Crowning Coming?

by Peter Lowry

If Bob Hepburn of the Toronto Star had not advised us, would we have known a crowning was coming? The coronation could have come and gone and many of us would have cared less. It always puzzled me in high school just why we were being steeped in the lore of the British monarchy.  It seemed all the early British kings were nasty blokes, but we assumed that you had to be to survive in those early days.

But times have changed. Why haven’t the Brits done something about their outmoded and debilitated monarchy? Sure, Elizabeth the Second was a much nicer person than her vague ancestor Elizabeth 1. The queen would have been an equally nice person as plain Mrs. Mountbatten—even if she had divorced that philandering husband, Phillip Mountbatten.

It is good to see that there is a bit of a movement going on in the Old Blighty with yellow signs saying ‘Not My King.’ It is hard to understand why the Brits, Scots and Northern Irish put up with those regressive conservatives who seem to hold the British Isles in servitude. It seems to be a form of self-abuse to keep themselves subjugated to such an outmoded and backward-facing government.

And they always go back. Who was surprised when Brexit doomed the country to many years of suffering under the disapproval of a progressive continent. And we want to share a king with them?

Maybe those people with their signs saying ‘Not My King’ are just rooting for the next king, who would be Billy 2. I would think it would be funnier if they locked Bill and Kate in the tower along with the crown jewels. Then Harry and Megan can be made regents for the young King George.

We could pretend that they are all just chess pieces, that we move around the board of our fantasy lives. When it comes to Canada though, we really need forward-thinking, progressive politicians. We need to tear into our constitution and bring it up to date into the 21 Century. We want politicians who can earn their salaries and quit wasting their time telling us how bad the other guys are.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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The Plaint of the Pedant.

by Peter Lowry

It might have given a false impression the other day when I was complaining about the stupidity of certain conservatives. I hardly have the right to be pedantic. Despite his deplorable lack of respect for education, Doug Ford actually has more formal education than I.  Neither of us has a university degree. And I have never been excessively concerned with detail unless I have responsibility for things happening that depend on detailed follow-through.

The difference between Ford and I is probably that I have a much more varied life experience and I worked hard at university extension courses and different trades training. I have also had wonderful mentors in many different aspects of working life. For example, how many writers have their news releases critiqued by a former publisher of a major regional daily newspaper. I surprised Ted Rogers and some of his people when I first went into his make-shift studio on Adelaide Street in Toronto. When they told me I was producer, director and switch operator for an as-live production, I got to work. Nobody had told them of the time I had worked with a brother’s TV production company.

I also have to admit that I have learned from my mistakes over the years. You cannot always know which road to take. I had my fill of public relations work in the 1990s and went to work selling for Bell Canada. I found out why so many people had given up on Bell. When I retired from Bell it was my manager who was disappointed as I had always made his numbers look good.       

But I still loved to write I registered Babel-on-the-Bay.com shortly after coming to Barrie, Ontario. I was experiencing condominium life at the time and was not ready to give a blog any attention. When the wife and I had enough of Ontario condominium rules we gave up our wonderful view of Kempenfelt Bay.

After twelve years of writing Babel-on the-Bay, I have a good sense of what my readers like and dislike. Talking with an aspiring blogger a while ago, I was telling him what my readers seemed to like and what did not appeal to them. He interrupted me and said “That’s the difference between us. You have readers.”

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Dumbing Down with Ford.

by Peter Lowry

Premier Doug Ford of Ontario is dumbing down the province. He keeps taking us down rabbit holes for the less literate, the less learned. Today’s lesson from the fount of all ignorance is that new police people do not need to complete high school. We are sliding down a snake in a continuing game of Snakes and Ladders. Only in this case, the snake is named Ford.

First, with the help of the pandemic, he destroys our healthcare system. Nurses and other professionals are fleeing a profession where they are exhausted with impossible workloads. And what is the “stupid” solution from Ford but to promote private clinics. We still seem to have a finite number of healthcare workers, so Ford promotes the less trained to do the nursing task.

It is nice to see that the stupid like to stick together. One of the first asks of Ford when he took over the premier’s office five years ago was that an unqualified friend takeover as commissioner of the provincial police.

And, judging by his provincial cabinet, loyalty beats competency, any day. It is like having a private schooled education minister. We wouldn’t want him to understand the system, would we?

To be fair, the mailman just dropped a pamphlet from my member of parliament through the mail slot. It showed his constituents how fat he is getting living the high life in Ottawa. Of course, the member of parliament for Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte would be a conservative. I have no idea how smart he is but this pamphlet reads like a kindergarten piece. He wants his constituents to answer three simple questions that would identify them as conservative or other.

What else would you be if you voted ‘yes’ to supporting conservatives in a plan to vote against all new tax increases. And then there is being concerned about the rising cost of living under the liberals. Sure, blame Canada’s liberals for the world-wide inflation. There is one open question and I hope his conservative constituents tell him to join a gym and take off some of the excess weight. That is also a good thought for Doug Ford.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Journeying With Journalists.

by Peter Lowry

It is very rare that I read other blogs. That is not being snooty, it is practical. I would just want to correct some of the writers and commiserate with a few others. I find getting a blog done every day is a challenge. Despite a career in public relations, I never considered myself a journalist. I designed and wrote many tabloids, newsletters, pamphlets, scripts and mailing pieces as well as news releases and never thought of myself as a writer. Every page I write is another part of me. When I reread what I have written, I always feel I could have said it better.

And in my lifetime, I have made the journey with many reporters, editors, publishers, and fellow public relations people—all, I am sure, were doing a superior job to me. I think I suffered the ultimate insult one day when a carefully crafted and lengthy news release I had sent out for a client was run in a prime location by a newspaper—with the client’s name carefully removed.

I came into writing with small steps. I was selling food for a major food company and living in what was then the Town of Leaside with my wife when I was asked to join the town safety council. There I was asked to try my hand at writing the safety news for the Leaside Advertiser weekly newspaper. That got me noticed and soon I was involved in town politics and helping a friend get elected to town council.

You might find it incredulous that I was soon working for the Globe and Mail. It would be if I forgot to say that I worked in the advertising department selling advertising in the Report on Business. Even there, I was soon dragged into other areas such as the publisher’s office to strategize the related advertising potential of upcoming special reports. We had some labour strife after I had been there a while and I ended up running the ad alley in an other-wise automated composing room. That was an experience worthy of a book but there was little writing involved.

My first major newspaper writing was for John Basset’s Toronto Telegram. It was just freelance stuff and I got out just before Basset sold off the paper to concentrate on his TV station. I put that writing down to hard lessons learned. There is more to this subject but I will save it for another time.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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The Dark Side of the Elite.

by Peter Lowry

It is good to see that a real grocery person is slated to take the reins at Canada’s largest chain of grocery stores.  It hardly means that the time of the galloping inflation in groceries is over, but we will not have it rubbed in by the scion of the Weston empire, Galen Weston Junior.

Galen Weston is no Dave Nichol. The late Dave Nichol was the marketing expert who developed the No Name and Presidents Choice lines of products for Loblaws back in the 1980s. He brought simple products to radio and television and made them famous. It is Nichol’s style that Galen Weston uses today to huckster the products for Loblaws.

As president of the family business, Weston was recently one of the three grocery executives invited to Ottawa to tell our MPs why grocery prices seemed out of control. He coldly told the MPs at the hearing that they did not understand his business.

I do understand his business and I go back to the days before he was born and my late friend Leon Weinstein moved from Power Stores to be president of Loblaws. I was out of town when liberal Keith Davey embarrassed Leon by taking him to a liberal party meeting that was choosing a candidate to run for mayor of Toronto. I was lucky Leon lost. Keith had me in mind to manage Leon’s campaign.

And I have nothing against the Weston family. I respected Junior’s father as a businessman and I liked his mother when she was lieutenant governor of Ontario. She understood the duties of the elite.

But when Galen Junior and others, such as Ted Rogers’ son Edward, inherit and try to run these huge companies, their first responsibility is to the thousands of employees who have also been part of the company’s success. The long-term security of those jobs is secured in the reputation of the firm. That means that there is a time to protect earnings and a time to ease up on earnings to maintain the position of the company. A company that has had an illustrious past, deserves a strong future.

Neither Edward Rogers nor Galen Weston Junior need worry about earnings growth quarter by quarter. They have a responsibility to the past generations and the future of the companies they control.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Flying False Flags.

by Peter Lowry

With 50 people running for many different reasons for the mayoralty in Toronto, one of the problems is finding out which political party each represents. I know there are not supposed to be political parties at city hall but if you barred all members of political parties from the chamber for a council meeting, the council chamber would look very empty.

And there is a simple reason for this. Where do you think council candidates get the physical help they need?  The easiest answer to that is you need a group of people who know how to call on their neighbours, ask them to support their candidate in provincial and federal elections and then help them get to the polls on election day.

While using the same boundaries for federal, provincial and municipal elections saves some money, Doug Ford was malicious when he forced Toronto councillors to stay with the federal boundaries when he became premier. The councillors had cut the wards in half in hopes of easing their workload. Ford was just getting even with them for the way they had treated him and his late brother Rob Ford.

The smaller wards would have enabled some independent candidates to win without assistance from a political party. That also was a lost cause.

The other side of the party coin is whether a candidate is or is not an active supporter of the party he or she claims to support. Neither federal nor provincial liberals currently charge a membership fee and all you have to do to be called a liberal is get your name on the e-mail lists to be continuously asked for money.

Frankly, councillors Ana Bailão and Josh Matlow, who claim to be liberals must be from some right-wing pocket of the party that I have never noticed. I think they looked at the lists and noted all the conservatives in the running and decided there were some openings to run as liberals.

Mitzie Hunter is the proven liberal in the race, giving up her seat at Queen’s Park to be able to run for mayor. It might come down to a race between NDP Chow and liberal Hunter. We will have to wait and see.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Leaning on Labour?

by Peter Lowry

It has always amused me that the news media, depending on their leanings, are always reporting what labour groups are supporting what parties or candidates in elections. The assumption that the labour movement only supported the CCF and then the NDP always was fiction. The only way the labour vote helped conservative Doug Ford in the last Ontario election was by staying home and not voting.

But in the June vote for a Toronto mayor, it will be the post-election analysis of some polls in certain electoral districts that will provide the answers. I have found over the years that there is no certain point in an election that people on the cusp make a decision or decide not to make a decision. I see it as a drift. It is the 30 to 40 per cent of voters who are not committed to this or that party or candidate, who hold the answers. Many of them just go with the flow. Some lose interest and fail to vote. And then there are others striking out to seek change. It was usually at the door where you can catch it. It was always the campaign manager who did not get out and canvas some doors during the campaign, or who did not know how to debrief their canvassers, who did not see it coming.

Hoped for union support, as well as seeking public approbation, was very much in evidence at the recent announcement in St. Thomas, Ontario. The proposed Volkswagen battery plant could have a major impact on the economy of south-western Ontario and both premier Doug Ford and prime minister Justin Trudeau came to have the TV publicity lights shine down upon them.

Meanwhile, back in Ottawa, Canada’s largest government union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) is striking across Canada for a little more meat on the dinner table. And Mr. Trudeau did not seem worried.

I haven’t done my analysis yet for my morning line but I expect NDP candidate, Olivia Chow will be among the top four or five contenders. She finished third in 2014 behind John Tory and Doug Ford. She could take another step back this time.

My sense of the Toronto by-election, at this time, is that this will be a younger persons’ game. There is an interesting dichotomy developing between the younger generation in the suburbs and the younger people in the downtown condos. I think this is their election. Prepare to be surprised.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

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Trump’s Stand in Dixieland.

by Peter Lowry

I always thought Dixieland was just a form of jazz. After the years of Donald Trump, today’s Dixie is just a place of darkness. It is a place of closed minds wrapped in ignorance. It is a place of small steps towards the light. It has chosen Donald Trump and it matters to the entire world.

It is not just Canadians and Mexican’s who fear Trump’s return. He cares nothing for Canada. It is his place of only one hotel in his world-wide game of Monopoly. He is titillated by his pal Putin in Russia. He would abandon Ukraine. He would have the might of America stand down. He would abandon America’s friends in his admiration for petty dictators and brutal regimes.

Trump builds walls, not bridges. He cares little in a country of guns, that are used to kill children. Trump Land is a place where people shoot first, alibi later. Never knock on a stranger’s door. The criminal National Rifle Association lobbies hard for more guns instead of better control of guns.

It is hard to explain why Trump wants the hollow victory he can get at the polls. He has little to no respect for America’s Republican Party. They are his toilet tissue, of brief use and function. He uses lies about those who oppose him. Why bother with truth when lies titillate and deceive. He is not fit to rule. He does not care for people. He wants subjects, not their problems. It is all about him.

He laughs at the charges against him in New York. The effort for justice will have the same effect as the wasted shells fired on Fort Sumter in the First American Civil War. In Dixie, they manage to forget that while the South captured Fort Sumter, the South also lost that war.

America is a country deeply divided. There seems to be little effort between the red and blue states to seek peace. Yet peace can be achieved. Compromise is possible.

All it takes is leadership. There was a lot of admiration for Liz Cheney—a Republican who put truth first. In a population of over 300 million people, there have got to be peace makers. They deserve support.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Well, That Was Wrong.

by Peter Lowry

The one thing to remember about political forecasting is that sometimes, you get it wrong. The other day I wrote that Olivia Chow must be older and smarter and was staying out of the mayoralty race in Toronto. I was wrong. She is just older. She obviously has learned little during her last time-out from politics.

Olivia has done well by politics. She worked her way up the political ladder since getting elected to the Toronto School Board in 1985. Her mentor was far-left MP Dan Heap. He hired her as his constituency office assistant during a gap between her elections.  Nobody paid much attention to her until she tried the jump to city politics in 1985. Her political career tended to be two steps forward and then one step back.

I started to pay closer attention to her when she was fighting the expansion of the Island Airport for jet aircraft. I think the funniest incident though was when I was roped into working on Bob Wong’s campaign for the liberals in the Toronto riding of Fort York. It was a hard-fought campaign. What made it unusual was that that Olivia Chow was working for the returning officer. At the same time, she was living with fellow NDP Jack Layton who was doing something for the new democratic candidate in Fort York. (Olivia and Jack were married the next year.)

My stance was “so what.” We decided to let the conservative candidate or someone else complain, if they wanted to. I knew what Jack Layton would be doing for the NDP anyway. The funniest part of the incident was on election day. I had brought my wife to campaign headquarters and while I was out looking after a problem, the campaign manager sent her on an errand to the returning office.

When I got back to the office, the campaign manager was on the phone with my wife. The story, as I got it, was that my wife was sitting at Olivia Chow’s desk, on her phone, reading the information that we wanted off a white board at the desk. The information was useful, as it confirmed that we had already won the election.

This latest and belated step by Olivia to come back into Toronto politics is helpful in that it makes a clear demarcation between the conservative, liberal and NDP candidates for the mayoral by-election.

And here is the key question: Since we all know that the money, Toronto so desperately needs, has to come from Toronto voters, provincial voters or federal voters, what party should the new mayor come from?

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

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The Egress of the Elite.

by Peter Lowry

For conservative supporters who read this: An ‘Egress’ means a way out and an ‘Elite’ is a class of person who are considered as above others in their society. Some of these elites just have money, others have accomplished something that makes them stand out among their fellows in academics, in business or in sports or on stage or screen. The prime minister would know that. And that is who we are writing about today.

Not that I think you need to be told but Justin Trudeau holds court among the elites of Canada. He is not terribly rich but he is not going hungry because of the current inflation. He also draws a substantial salary as prime minister and has a number of nice residences available to him and his family.

It seems logical that most Canadians would not begrudge the prime minister the perquisites of his position. He has a stressful job and he carries a great deal of responsibility on our behalf.

But the leader of the opposition is paid just $100,000 less than the prime minister and has Stornoway as an official residence. Obviously, Mr. Poilievre, the current leader of the conservatives is a bit jealous and tells everyone that he wants Mr. Trudeau’s job. His only problem seems to be that he wants to spend all his time trashing Mr. Trudeau instead of proving to Canadians that he might do a better job in the position.

It looks like the nastiness of his treatment of Mr. Trudeau is based on the frustration of being a conservative from Alberta. In all the years that Mr. Harper was prime minister, he said he was going to do something about global warming. He never did. And obviously Mr. Poilievre, being a good conservative, will never do anything about global warming. And the same goes for universal dental care or pharmacare.

Mr. Poilievre has many words that he learned in his Calgary school but it seems ‘care’ is not one of them. ‘Caring’ about the environment, ‘caring’ about those Canadians who cannot care for themselves, are not part of Mr. Poilievre’s concerns.

But between the choice of a tight-assed, western conservative and an elitist eastern liberal, the liberal is going to win. He knows the real meaning of “Nobless Oblige.”

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

[email protected]