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.

Six months ago, it could write an entire book or screenplay. True, it needed a human to do one final edit to…humanize it, but likely the human simply put the entire book through an AI bot that makes AI sound more human.

Three months ago, AI wrote a 20-minute speech for a bank executive to deliver to a group of investment bankers.

It was much better than any speech I could write, more comprehensive, deep and nuanced, the kind that any subject matter expert really wants to hear: no glossed-over analysis, no fudging the projections, and lots of new ways to resolve the nagging issues.

What I did to get the speech was write a 140-word ‘prompt’ into Perplexity, the AI platform I use for research and writing. You can do this too.

First, go to perplexity.com and type in your prompt. (You can use it for free for basic search and writing.) Here’s my prompt:

“You are a senior infrastructure banking executive at RBC Financial. You are giving a 20-minute speech to a side-session of the attendees of the Canada Investment Summit in Toronto on Sept. 14 and 15.”

“The Summit is focused on attracting new investment into Canada to advance Canada’s nation-building projects, create new career opportunities for Canadians, and grow our economy. Among the attendees are 100 global infrastructure investment bankers you want to consider investing in Canadian infrastructure, partnering or co-investing with your bank. Write the speech and the slide deck to accompany it.”

“Remember, the audience is highly sophisticated. Yet they might know little about the factors that make Canada such a high-quality investment environment, including the quality of its corporate governance. The speech must be replete with the latest facts and projections for any potential investing partners in the audience.”

10 minutes later, out popped this speech whose quality I urge you to judge for yourself.

Note, I didn’t have to tell Perplexity anything about RBC Financial, or infrastructure investing in Canada. I also didn’t have to tell it anything about me, like I did when I started using AI. But it’s come to know me shockingly well, just as it’s completely fluent in the arcane language of infrastructure investment.

Now it’s your turn: How can you solve your family dynamics problem? What big new thing can you easily do from the old things you already did? How best to take up music again? Are you fit enough to hike in the Alps? How to pitch your architectural services when you’re a distant long-shot for the next big assignment. How to find love in all your unfamiliar places.

You can ask Perplexity anything, and the more you refine your prompt, the better your answer will grow to be.

So when I wrote that speech for the notional banker on infrastructure three months ago, I didn’t put down my pen and step out on to the window ledge, though I was tempted.

I mean, if AI could do this – write a speech better than any I could write with 30 years of experience writing for Canadian bankers – what hope did I have?

But instead, and very much because I’m an old writer and not a young writer, I decided to do what I could to get my friends using AI even more than I now do. Hence my occasional blogs where I exhort readers not to avoid AI, but to embrace it. Hence last month’s writing contest, where I didn’t ask you to write a document or a letter, but to write a prompt, the kind of thing I did for that banking executive. Writing prompts is easy. The first step is to tell AI who it is, i.e. what character it should play throughout. If you’re asking Perplexity to do a detailed itinerary of a 10-day trip through Japan, start by saying: “You are a Toronto travel agent specializing in trips to Japan….” If your dermatologist says you may have skin cancer, start your prompt: “You are an oncologist specializing in melanoma…”

Maybe the strangeness of prompts is what kept the number of entries in our prompt writing contest down. Let’s hope next year’s prompt writing contest draws more because it’s less strange.

The winners are…Silver

“1. Persona: Five years ago I acquired a Covid comfort creature, a kitten named Sophie.

2. Task: How can I get Sophie to like me rather than my husband who never wanted a pet.

3. Constraints: She cannot be bribed with treats and affection; I tried that. She will not accept another cat; she was suicidal when we tried to get a companion cat and we had to rehome the wonderfully affectionate interloper.

4. Format: Create a plan to woo Sophie, and if impossible, to relieve me of jealousy. Explain cats to me and estimate whether she will outlive me.” – D.T.

And Gold…

“I’m sitting beside the hospice room window. The day's first light crawls up the sash and creeps across the bed slowly revealing my friend’s translucent skin and laboured breathing.

I need instructions to prepare him for the end of consciousness and the beginning of what lies beyond, meeting his goal to again be with loved ones gone before and those to follow.

Cost is an issue. He came with nothing; he leaves with only his place in the memories treasured by his friends.

I must be able to convey these instructions in minutes and begin within 48 hours.” – John Dale

So……if you aren’t actively learning how to use AI, why not start here and now?

Who knows what it will bring? There’s an entire industry of AI skeptics and they have good reason to be.

But I do know it’s better to know what life is serving up than not.

Onward.

Meanwhile…

1. Canada slumbers no more. First, what was that B.C. Pipeline deal Mark Carney announced in B.C. one morning last week, and the next day Part B in Alberta? Here’s the ABCs.

Next, the submarine deal, which Germany and Norway won over South Korea. Here are their respective promo videos, and possibly why Ottawa chose Europe.

Lest we think we’re not innovative, here’s a history of Canada in 24 Canadian objects.

2. Dance 10. Looks 10. Spanish is flamenco no more. No more. More. Plus a new take on Bohemian Rhapsody. And nearly ninety minutes of Thom Yorke at the Sydney Opera House.

Finally, in March the Boston Symphony Orchestra fired its revered conductor Andris Nelsons. The BSO’s President, Chad Smith, has been flayed for being tone deaf to the wishes of the musicians, audience and donors. Here’s an analysis of one of his justifications (you may need to be a CPA to understand it).

3. Worth joining. Are you a citizen researcher? Do you want to be? Bellingcat is calling. Plus, who actually goes to therapy? Plus, it’s time to talk about pregnant pooping. Finally, connect yourself to the 60s via its 100 best songs.

4. This is your mother. Are you coming home? Also, another ‘man’s occupation’ falls to women. Plus, Wimbledon women wear white (including kimonos), not pink. Finally, the economics of women’s weight.

5. The Dementia Industry. “Even with the best of care, we cannot always diagnose the true cause of dementia while the patient is alive.” Meanwhile, AI is transforming medicine. Just ask Medscape, the site doctors use, whose AI answers anything medical.

6. Big World Cup winners. Cape Verde of course. Just ask the Cabo Verdeans when their team got home. The man who told their story best (and so many other World Cup tales) is UK content creator Rob Oseh. Hear him on Norway who knows how to unite their country of 5.6 million people.

Plus Messi’s old coach breaks down how he plays. And finally, a non-World Cup sport, competitive rowing, or crew, and what it teaches you.

7. Report cards. First, the world’s top universities. MIT is #1, Imperial College London and Stanford, tied for #2. The U of T is 32nd, McMaster 174th, York is 322nd, and TMU is 669th. And career advice from George Monbiot.

Also, after six months as Mayor of New York, how is Zohran Mamdani doing? Also, peering into New Yorkers’ windows.

And earlier this week, Prince Harry (and Elton John and more) lost their civil suit against Associated Newspapers for breach of privacy. Harry and his fellow claimants could face a £50 million legal bill.

8. Canadians explore two of the world’s most famous shipwrecks. Explorers from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society are partnering with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on a “once-in-a-generation” expedition to survey Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Quest and Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova.

If this rings a bell, in 2024, Quest), the ship that Shackleton died on in 1922, was first discovered by the RCGS and Expedition Leader John Geiger in the Labrador Sea. You can follow their progress here.

9. Last chance to touch the hem of heaven this summer. Join us at The Canada Summit, the fabulous four-day heli-hiking trip from Aug. 30 to Sept. 3, where four leading Canadians (Steve Paikin, Dr. Heather Ross, Ron Deibert, and Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux) will discuss where we're headed around politics, healthcare, cyber and Indigenous relations. If you can walk around your kitchen table, you can heli-hike. Details here and register here.

10. Then and now. Here’s what America was in 1926, and here’s what entertains us today. We’re even smashing yesterday’s croissants for a better tomorrow. But some things never change, including mechanical pencils (invented in 1822).

11. Up and coming. The annual Massey Lecture (delivered this year by urbanist Leilani Farha) lands in Toronto on September 8. Tickets here.

And already here, corporate scents. Plus brands that get worse on purpose. Plus, rabbit holes galore, and oddest of all, Trump’s very short fingers.

12. What I’m watching. This week I went to see The Secret Chord, which began as a Soulpepper production about Leonard Cohen and his songs, and has now moved to Mirvish, where it’s on until Aug. 9. The great old songs are never newer and fresher, and everyone on stage is spectacularly original. Sprint to see it.

In fact, on your 250th birthday, you look a lot like your 80-year-old President who's aged you terribly in less than two years: sclerotic, slow, bloated, bruised and rheumy-eyed.

Fifty years ago I was in Boston with college friends to celebrate America's Bicentennial. My only memory from that presumably wild weekend in 1976 was that it was "okay", from the fireworks to the President's speech (he made six of them in all on July 3 and 4). But this was because the President was Gerald Ford, who hadn't been elected President, but was appointed to replace Richard Nixon, just as he'd been appointed to replace Spiro Agnew as Vice President. It was a major national birthday with a minor national leader.

This year, I doubt America's 250th birthday will be anywhere near "okay."

Indeed, my bet is that Trump's speech will embarrass even his most ardent loyalists and confirm to the world that America is run by a madman.

It's not that we have to go looking for evidence of that. I am reading *Regime Change*, the big new book on the second Trump administration. It serves as a reminder of just how vast and sprawling his empire of pain and corruption has spread.

But there was one story, barely reported, that epitomizes the irremediable depths of America's decline under its 47th President. It concerns the Boy Scouts of America, an organization that's hard to imagine could be in a life-and-death struggle with the Trump administration, but is.

It seems the Scouts have had a relationship with the U.S. military for the past 116 years. Indeed, scouting is one of the most reliable pipelines for recruiting young men into the U.S. armed forces, and in hundreds of communities scout troops hold their meetings on military bases.

The news is not so much the relationship between these two groups. It's not even the fact that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth ordered the Scouts to stop being so woke, which he did in a video posted in February where he told the Scouts, among many other things, to stop accepting girls, even though they've been doing that since the early 60s, and 200,000 girls are Scouts today.

No, the news is not that the Trump administration doesn't find the Boy Scouts manly enough, nor that it forced the Scouts to change many of its programs, as it tried to do with Ivy League universities, and Big Law, and Big Pharma. The news last week was that no one could agree on what they'd agreed to do. This has echoes with America's negotiations with Iran, its free trade negotiations with Mexico and Canada, and its dealings with just about everyone. You think you've agreed to something, et voila, The White House says: "Nope. Don't know what you're talking about."

As The New York Times reported, The Pentagon and the [Scouts] have given contradictory accounts of an agreement reached in February.

Said The Times: "A gay rights activist has sued the Pentagon to obtain the text of an agreement that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says bars Scouting America from promoting diversity policies."

Hegseth claims the Scouts agreed to ban transgender teens as members. Scouting America says transgender teens have been and still are welcome. They even sent this statement to The Times: "Scouting America will continue to welcome all youth into our programs, and we remain committed to creating an environment where all youth feel valued and respected."

The Pentagon basically said: "No comment."

As the man who filed the suit, activist James Dale, said: "Both accounts cannot be true, and the stakes are of profound public importance."

As with most everything in the world of Donald Trump, this story is not about values or gender equity; it's about money. Scouting enrollment is falling, as it is here in Canada, and the Scouts need money.

Mr. Trump's legacy to his country is to turn 'grift' into a philosophy, and to turn money into the basis of pretty much every human interaction.

So here's to his demise and to a nation that's so much better than him and just has to outlive him to become itself again.

Happy Birthday, America. And here's to many more.

Meanwhile…

1. Goooooooooooaaaaaaaaaal! More on Stephen Eustáquio. And his goal. And the World Cup. And how did Japan get 10 goalies?

2. This just in. Inspection reports of every long-term care home in Ontario. Plus the best of chic Europe. And the rise of self-mediclaytion. And the link between writers and drugs (enduring!), and the colours your screen can't show you.

3. American Pie. Who are Canada's hot new tourists? Americans. Plus the United States of Abandoned Places. Plus how the World Cup may save America's 250th. And how Trump's grift just keeps on giving.

4. All politics is local. For example, why AI Data Centres need environmental assessments. Plus the myth of Carney and private jets. And what Obama thinks of Trump. And finally, the most and least corrupt countries on earth.

5. Hate food. Here are the most hated foods on earth. Plus how to reduce food noise. And finally, love babies, especially when they're sleeping. Plus some fruits your lips have likely never touched, and some yummy art for your walls. Finally, the curious case of Stalin's wine cellar.

6. Want to touch the hem of heaven this summer? Join us at The Canada Summit, the fabulous four-day heli-hiking trip from Aug. 30 to Sept. 3, where four leading Canadians (Steve Paikin, Dr. Heather Ross, Ron Deibert, and Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux) will discuss where we're headed around politics, healthcare, cyber and Indigenous relations. If you can walk around your kitchen table, you can heli-hike. Details here and register here.

7. Value and Values. First, the world's 50 most valuable companies. And 9,400 Roman and Greek letters on the decline and fall of you know where. Also, weddings used to cost too much to host; now they cost too much to attend. And how extreme heat cancelled an event on how to deal with extreme heat. Finally, is who you were who you are?

8. A day in the life…of a Sugar Plum Fairy Queen…of an Arctic expeditioneer…of Harry and Meghan and their comeback tour.

9. Canada wins at Cannes. Here are the Canadian winners of Cannes "Lions" in the Oscars of advertising. Worth scrolling through these clips of our best and brightest, and latest.

10. What's the one thing that sells books? Ann Patchett should know. It's someone saying to a friend: "You must read this book!"

11. How to be a poser, not a poseur. A user's guide to looking your best on someone else's phone.

12. What I'm reading: *Regime Change* by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. The New Yorker calls it "exceptional" and The Economist "a masterpiece." It is that and more, reminding us of just how far, wide, deep and fast America has fallen -- as I noted in the essay section above.

This week, the Quebec town of Terrasse-Vaudreuil became the first government in Canada to recognize trees as living things with rights.

It is part of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Trees, a global movement begun in Paris in 2018 to treat trees like people, with rights including "the right to life, to natural growth, to integrity and to regeneration."

The town's gesture of recognition is largely symbolic, but it sets the stage for tests in various courts in Canada around its legal validity. All to say, what used to be thought an absurd proposition by many will soon be treated seriously by the law.

The same path was forged by the idea that a river is a living creature as well. Last year, British naturalist Robert Macfarlane) wrote Is a River Alive? (declared "a masterpiece by The Economist), which fleshed out three examples of rivers being declared living things who should be recognized as such, both in law and in our imaginations. One of those rivers is in India, another in Ecuador, and a third, the Mutehekau or Magpie, is in northeastern Quebec. It is being defended from death by damning in a river-rights campaign.

Macfarlane points out that this is not a new idea, created to help environmentalists preserve and protect vast swaths of land from mining, tourism, rapacious development and climate change. It is one of humankind's most ancient ideas, that humans and nature are all connected, all one. It's also a fundamental precept of most Indigenous people as well, and very much alive in their view of the world and their politics around reconciliation.

My sense is that the "trees are living things" movement has been fueled by the success of UBC Forestry Professor Suzanne Simard's global best-seller, Finding the Mother Tree, which came out in 2021 and popularized the idea that trees can think and communicate, and that they behave as groups as well as individuals.

All of this – that trees and rivers are much like people in that we have certain unalienable rights – must come as a surprise to those who believe humans (and especially white-skinned humans) are at the top of the food chain with everyone else, and certainly everything else, working and heaving below in order to keep us at the top of the pyramid.

The fact that the movement to endow rivers and trees with rights is largely a governmental and legal initiative puts it years ahead of movements that are simply carrying signs in the public square.

All the more we should ready ourselves with news from the animal rights movement, which has also been gaining strength in the courts around the idea of "non-human persons."

But it seems a popular book like Is A River Alive? and Finding the Mother Tree can congeal public opinion and accelerate it to give new rights to the previously disenfranchised.

So stay tuned to American legal scholar Cass Sunstein's new book in January on why Animals Matter: The Case for a Kinder World.

Then get ready for huge blowback from the meat and fish industries.

Meanwhile…

1. A problem redefined is a problem half-solved. Ask Rolex how to appeal to crazy rich Asians. Or Air Force One, which isn't a plane, but a call sign. Or shooting ten years in the air. Or delivering a speech for the ages to celebrate the New York Knicks' first NBA championship in 53 years. Or like McKinsey, capitalizing on your intellectual capital. And finally, how FIFA uses technology to wipe out bad calls.

2. You can be healthier. First, as if more proof was needed, "Alcohol consumption is a major risk factor for global burden of disease, injury and premature death." Next, the FDA has just approved the first new sunscreen option in two decades. And...is AI smarter than doctors? It's growing to be.

3. Is Trump flailing? Look, I know nothing, but I get a sense that the world has tired of cowering whenever he barks. There's Iran, of course, and Italy. And Americans watching his accelerating mental decline. (See his flailing over Washington's Reflecting Pool.) And now, an arch-enemy from Trump's first administration, George Conway (ex of Kellyanne Conway), is running for Congress, and he sure doesn't sound afraid. In fact, I'm predicting that when Trump speaks to the world next Saturday, July 4, celebrating America's 250th anniversary, he will perform so disgracefully, even his flunkies will flee. But I've been wrong about Trump before, as have we all.

4. The World Cup's real heroes…prove you don't need to be big to matter…Canada's captain, Alphonso Davies, has a backstory we should all know, and cheer. And what's with Curaçao and its 78-year-old manager?

5. Men acting badly, unconsciously…get caught when women infiltrate their networks, as Avery Haines did, winning her a Governor-General's Award for Investigative Journalism.

And why Ron MacLean in particular should stop saying 'roofies'. Also, cities need to be more aware of how they can serve women better…And women (or at least Michelle Obama) speaking well of her husband…and why the RCMP still needs work. And how one father-daughter combo flies high.

6. Two left feet. They don't have them. Nor does he. Nor they. Finally, here are the 20 greatest dance routines ever.

7. Good advice for…families' Chief Memory Officers (plus what old photos of our parents say about us)...and advice for we who like wild maps. Plus, the London Underground from overground…plus people who only flush the toilet once…those of us who make every second count…and finally, Americans who want a coat of arms.

8. Big mistakes. 19 big errors that will make you feel better about your next ones. Gwyneth Paltrow shilling for condos in Israel…Plus Mark Twain was a hater when it came to Jane Austen. And old people shouldn't do this.

9. Second thoughts on what we do. First, 100 ways to tie your shoes. Next, is cheap travel overturning the world for good? Plus, how one new word on an AI prompt can change everything. And the Nobel Prize-winner who spent 40 years learning why smart people lose money. Finally, does the world need another museum? The Last Museum doesn't think so: it already has 5.8 million items.

10. Big money. First, how to make a billion dollars (give people what they don't know they want). Next, how to hack a superyacht. Finally, what does it mean to have a trillion dollars?

In my earliest memory of traveling, I was 5 and my mom and dad drove us from Edmonton, where we lived, all the way south in our 1956 Chevy station wagon to Calgary. The station wagon's main job was to deliver flowers for Walter Ramsay Florist, my dad's flower shop.

Then we drove west to Banff on what's now the Old Banff Highway. Along the way, we pulled over at an 'Indian' souvenir shop. I proudly wore my iconic Davy Crockett 'coonskin cap' with leather chaps.

It was thrilling. I'd never seen a mountain before, and the connection between Davy Crockett and the 'Indians' and me, between doing a thing and being a thing, turned me into an intrepid lifelong traveller.

This past week, 72 years later, I kayaked down the Thames River from Henley into London with Jean and our friends from Denver. As we turned east from Boulter's Lock 8 km west of Windsor, there stood Windsor Castle, silent and vast on the horizon ahead. The tourist sites hadn't exaggerated. It really is the largest inhabited castle in the world.

Even better, tracking us all day on the water were bevies of swans and rowing crews, practising for the Henley Regatta next month, plus the rowers from Eton College, the private school founded in 1440 by King Henry VI that still only admits boys and remains the largest boarding school in England.

Jean and I have kayaked a lot over the years, so we know that seeing the world from on the water offers a perspective that even seeing it standing up rarely does. Its most lasting lesson I learned 25 years ago when we were kayaking close to a glacier on the Inside Passage to Alaska. The captain of our tiny 10-passenger ship who let us use the ship's kayaks simply warned: "Don't get too close." Then a huge chunk of ice broke off and hit the water, creating a deep wave in front of us. We were lucky. Our kayaks hit it head on. At any other angle we'd be swamped. The wave picked us waaaaaaay up, then threw us waaaaaaaay down. Then again, and by the time his tiny ship had chugged in to rescue us, we felt lucky to be alive. The captain looked at us askance. "It was big enough to thrill you, but not big enough to kill you."

We'd learned the first lesson of adventure travel.

These random memories rattled in my head while on the Thames as I realized this would be one of our final kayak expeditions. We have too many aching bones to risk them much more in a Georgian Bay storm. Certainly it was too risky to go out on Lake Ontario in the spring when the water's frigid and no other kayakers, let alone any other boats, are in sight.

I asked myself: why are people so addicted to travel? Why do so many of us get up and go so that travel has now become one of the largest industries in the world?

Curiosity, of course. People everywhere want to see how the world looks somewhere else. We want to see Komodo Dragons instead of Golden Retrievers and a Windsor Castle instead of a Windsor Arms. We also want to see people who do things differently from us.

Indeed, we are raised to believe that travel broadens the mind, creates tolerance among different people, religions and political systems and turns strangers into friends. Sadly, the effect of travel on bettering human relations seems to have been wildly overstated. And still, we paddle on.

The other great myth is that the key to happiness is to collect memories and not things. The better your memories, the happier your life. So don't buy that suit, but go to Quebec City for the weekend instead.

This philosophy is particularly in vogue today. But even if you travel 'everywhere', I don't think you often sit down in the rocking chair on the porch and ponder in detail the joys and perils of an especially memorable holiday. It's a belief that drives us and nourishes us, but like the one about thrilling us and killing us, isn't overfilled with truth.

No, what travel has taught me is how much people the world over are alike.

The 8 billion of us alive today, and the 109 billion who came before us, are all part of the same old story: the fight for love and glory. Because the fundamental things apply as time goes by.

Just ask Davy Crockett.

Meanwhile…

1. Goooooooooal! The World Cup rarely runneth over when it comes to ripping at your heart. Here's what some teams are doing to ensure that: Norway went Full Viking in its team photo…and snowbound in its fan reel. Plus U S A, Ireland, France, England, (okay, maybe the Burberry part), Canada, And of course, Nike. Finally (for this week), why Brazil will win the World Cup – again.

2. How to board a plane faster. It's not what you think. Plus how to get people addicted to AI. Plus how real things (like pencils) really work. Plus how to reduce your daily fart rate.

3. The most colourful stories on earth…are the stories of the most colourful colours, from Alabaster to Uranium Red.

4. It's all about the branding. Hilton has opened 34 hotels near U.S. and UK college campuses called Graduate by Hilton. Like this one in Princeton.

Plus the latest from Gucci. Really? Plus the first smart toothbrush for women. And finally, Starbucks is opening "EV lounges" for you and your electric car.

5. Mayor repeals kid's bedtimes. New York's Zohran Mamdani did that so the city's kids would watch the Knick's finals run.

6. Still not booked to go somewhere glorious this summer? Join us at The Canada Summit, the fabulous four-day heli-hiking trip from Aug. 30 to Sept. 3, where four leading Canadians (Steve Paikin, Dr. Heather Ross, Ron Deibert, and Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux) will discuss where we're headed around politics, healthcare, cyber and Indigenous relations. If you can walk around your kitchen table, you can heli-hike. Details here and register here.

7. I'm sure nothing will go wrong. The American electronic trading platform, Robinhood, just entered Canada last week. It's launched a product where your AI agent invests your funds for you and manages your credit card purchases.

8. Health-check. Is another bad disease -- Atherosclerosis – on the run? Plus, a new way to predict your driving risk from medications.

9. Mourning is out of the shadows. Grief tourism is on the rise, and it doesn't just embrace death. One of the top grief retreats specializes in healing hearts broken in love. Also Miraval offers one of the top grief retreats in the Berkshires.

10. One more week to put your best prompt forward. From last Saturday's OG blog "… I'm now asking you to write an AI prompt in 100 words or less. A prompt is the instruction you give Claude or NotebookLM or whatever AI platform you use to find, sort and generate the content you want.

This should be your magic prompt, and could be your secret one that you're willing to share with our readers. Like how to write a speech, or how to sue your neighbour for cutting down their tree which shaded your porch.

The first rule of prompt engineering is "Persona" + "Task" + "Constraints" + "Format", and the basics of prompt writing are here.

So…here's an example:

1. Persona: You are a travel agent with 30 years experience in Southeast Asia.

2. Task: Create a "foodie tour of Japan and China."

3. Constraints: Two weeks door-to-door. Budget of $15,000 for my wife and me.

4. Format: Include a detailed day-to-day itinerary with recommended restaurants and menus.

For this Prompt Writing Contest, please submit your entry here.

Deadline is Saturday, June 20, 11:59:59 p.m. ET.

The committee will choose three winners: Bronze, Silver and Gold, and publish them in an upcoming issue of the Omnium-Gatherum. Other Honourable Mentions may also be published. In terms of prizes, we found that saying the winners would get their reward in Heaven limited the number of entries. So in this contest, prizes include your name in lights, the envy and respect of your peers, and the feeling that you've done something useful and good for humankind."

Publication Notice: The Omnium-Gatherum is taking a short break and will not publish on June 20. We'll be back in your InBox on June 27.

Joanna Stern writes about tech for The Wall Street Journal. She decided to spend a year using AI to do almost everything, and the result is a book, *I Am Not a Robot,*

We may vaguely recall a decade or more ago reading about a journalist who decided to live like a hermit for a week and order everything they needed online – food, toilet paper, clothes, banking, books, the works.

Back then, ordering stuff online was for early adopters. Hence, the news value of a story about someone who actually lived online. Now, of course, nearly all of us do our banking online, check in for our flight, order dinner in and, of course, drive from A to B.

Fifteen years ago, the online life was novel. You had to cope with new things, like passwords, and use your thumbs to type.

We are in exactly the same place today with Artificial Intelligence. A few of us are both adept and addicted to it. Some of us use AI to write everything from a speech to a book. Shopping or complaining online now means talking to an AI bot to speed up the process.

AI companies are rushing to catch up with what they believe will happen within the next five years, let alone 15. Despite delays, I think driverless cars will be everywhere by 2031, as will robots, which today can fold a tee-shirt, but not one that's fallen on the floor.

Waymo's driverless taxis already operate in a dozen U.S. cities and could be in Toronto soon. Most of us already have wearable devices, like watches and rings and bracelets, monitoring our health by the second.

So, what was once alien, bizarre and hard to get good at becomes the norm.

All the more reason when we bump into AI, we should embrace it, ask how it takes its coffee and how it can help ease our path through life. The last thing we should do is avoid it, or run from it. Those of us who did this when the digital world started seeping through our door 15 years ago…well, the next time you board a flight, count the people who still offer a paper boarding pass, then count their age. Then ask them about the horror of losing their pass.

The big difference between digital adoption and AI adoption is that AI is much faster. Banks and credit card companies all use visual recognition software to save you from having to key in your password; and they're well along in using voice recognition technology to fight AI scammers.

All this is my way of saying, the best time to start learning about AI was two years ago when ChatGPT was hallucinating and safety protocols barely existed. The second best time is today. Because AI is not just wicked fast; it's getting faster, faster. And I repeat: today's version of ChatGPT is the slowest version you'll ever work on.

There are all kinds of courses and colleagues and loved ones who can help get you on the AI wagon. Microsoft offers AI for Beginners; MIT Open Learning has 13 foundational AI courses and resources; the U of T School of Continuing Studies offers a certificate program in AI.

And as I said, scores more groups offer beginner's training; and Claude itself offers free training.

Okay, enough preaching to the unconverted.

For those of you already using AI - to write reports, plan holidays, diagnose patients, or cheat on exams - I have a different message.

It's time to enter our third writing contest.

Last year we ran two of them. In the first, you were asked to write a very short but true story about yourself; in the second, you were asked to write 100 words to your 25-year-old self.

This is different.

I'm now asking you to write a prompt in 100 words or less. A prompt is the instruction you give Claude or NotebookLM or whatever AI platform you use to find, sort and generate the content you want.

This should be your magic prompt, and could be your secret one that you're willing to share with our readers. Like how to write a speech, or how to sue your neighbour for cutting down their tree which shaded your porch.

The first rule of prompt engineering is "Persona" + "Task" + "Constraints" + "Format", and the basics of prompt writing are here.

So…here's an example:

1. Persona: You are a travel agent with 30 years experience in Southeast Asia.

2. Task: Create a "foodie tour of Japan and China."

3. Constraints: Two weeks door-to-door. Budget of $15,000 for my wife and me.

4. Format: Include a detailed day-to-day itinerary with recommended restaurants and menus.

For this Prompt Writing Contest, please submit your entry here.

Deadline is Saturday, June 20, 11:59:59 p.m. ET.

The committee will choose three winners: Bronze, Silver and Gold, and publish them in an upcoming issue of the Omnium-Gatherum. Other Honourable Mentions may also be published. In terms of prizes, we found that saying the winners would get their reward in Heaven limited the number of entries. So in this contest, prizes include your name in lights, the envy and respect of your peers, and the feeling that you've done something useful and good for humankind.

Meanwhile…

1. Baby in a bulldozer. That's what Tim Snyder calls Donald Trump's relationship with the world.

2. The Army of Drones Bonus System. The Ukrainian Army has advanced the video gamification of war by creating a competition among its frontline drone pilots, with points and prizes for high scorers. The Washington Post reports "[It's] the only program of its kind in the world. Units earn points for each Russian soldier they incapacitate or kill and each weapon, vehicle or piece of military equipment they destroy. Points may be redeemed in an online government marketplace for more drones, with which to target more Russian forces." Gory details here.

Speaking of death, pancreatic cancer may no longer be a death sentence. 80% of patients today are diagnosed in the metastatic stage, and just 3% of them are alive after 5 years. But a new pill, Daraxonrasib, doubles patients' survival rates and boosts their quality of life. Bladder cancer seems to be on the run as well. Doctors are hailing a British drug, Durvalumab, that spares bladder cancer patients "life-changing" surgery and stops tumours from coming back.

Meanwhile, a large majority of Canadians support Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) as it's now constituted, but not the proposed reforms around mental illness.

3. Two Canadian cities. Last year, Toronto's luxury housing market fell more than any city in the world, except Guangzhou, China. Also, what is the world's most photographed hotel? Quebec City's Chateau Frontenac.

4. One fine evening. On June 27, Canada's storied rock-jazz group, Lighthouse, will perform at The Concert Hall. They're celebrating the Anniversary Edition of their global hit One Fine Morning first recorded 55 years ago. Tickets here. See you there.

5. What's on, and what's good at Stratford. Dr. David Goldbloom is an eminent psychiatrist who chaired the Board of the Stratford Festival and attends opening nights and writes about them for his friends. Here's what he said about Stratford's six new productions this past opening week.

Speaking of Stratford, Sara Waxman wrote a review about the opening of Waiting for Godot, which featured her grandson, 12-year-old Asher Albert Waxman. Her son Adam Waxman was also in two Stratford productions, and her late husband, Al Waxman, played Willy Loman in Stratford's Death of a Salesman in 1997. A new production of Salesman debuts at Stratford this summer.

6. Learn more about UFOs. Unidentified Flying Objects have had a bad rap. But serious science is now looking at them and finding…well, they're still not sure. After a name change in 2021, UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) are getting their own conference, the first outside the U.S. On the weekend of July 24-26, the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (UAP) will present Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and former Minority Staff Director, U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Details here.

7. Connections. What happens when you map every friendship in the U.S.? Something odd. And how the new Major League Baseball salary caps and floors are related. Plus, the global spice map, and how the ROM Walks connect you with the city. Plus, how rising temperatures impair your judgement. Finally, how to get fired from "60 Minutes."

8. Still not planned to go somewhere glorious this summer? Join us at The Canada Summit, the fabulous four-day heli-hiking trip from Aug. 30 to Sept. 3, where four leading Canadians (Steve Paikin, Dr. Heather Ross, Ron Deibert, and Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux) will discuss where we're headed around politics, healthcare, cyber and Indigenous relations. If you can walk around your kitchen table, you can heli-hike. Details here and register here.

9. Louche luxury and precarious doctors. Amidst the crowd of far-from-the-madding crowd experiences are a new British train and the world's most intelligent hotel. Plus an interesting theory on where the middle class disappeared to, what a portfolio career looks like, and where the ultra-rich are now living.

10. 250 for 250. The 250th birthday of the United States is coming up. To mark the occasion in a decidedly non-jingoistic manner, historian Heather Cox Richardson is producing a series of one-minute videos, each featuring one of 'the many people, places, and events that have built America and remind us of the power of each person to make history'. Here are the first.

Plus, The Washington Post's review of The Obama Center in South Chicago. It opens June 19.

Speaking of citizenship, Mark Carney spoke on June 1 at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. [start from 11:10] Plus Dambisa Moyo on the first innings of the new world order.

This week the City of Toronto unveiled its new Drug Toxicity Crisis Acknowledgement, an addition to its existing Land Acknowledgement and African Ancestral Acknowledgement.

It didn't actually unveil what City Hall staffers are expected to read or display at the start of certain formal events or meetings. The drug acknowledgement was leaked to an Instagrammer who sent it to the world, including my Instagram feed.

Here's part of what it says: “We acknowledge that this crisis is rooted in systemic discrimination. People who use drugs often experience stigma, and multiple intersecting forms of discrimination, including racism, sexism and colonialism.”

I don't mind these acknowledgements. I may be bored hearing them recited over and over, like grace before dinner. But they do remind me of the great ill that was done to Indigenous and Black Canadians, often in the name of colonialism.

But I do mind the Drug Acknowledgement because its righteousness is wrong on so many fronts.

First, it confuses “drug use” with “drug addiction.” Most drug users aren't drug addicts. Many people can take street drugs and walk away and not clean out their savings and end up living on the street. What's different from 30 years ago when I was addicted to cocaine is that your chances of dying are much higher today. One snort of fentanyl laced with whatever and your life is over. Russian roulette is a safer bet. In this environment, you may not live long enough to become addicted.

Second, drugs are equal opportunity destroyers. You can be rich or poor, Black or white, come from Yale or jail, and these drugs will find you. If you have control of your schedule and some money, that just means your bottom will be lower than if you get intervened on sooner.

I spent four months at a treatment centre that was geared to help doctors, lawyers, pilots and even admirals. They weren't poor, a very few of them weren't white and yet all were just as addicted as the all-Black population of the county-run treatment centre where I interned as a very junior addiction counsellor.

My real problem with the Drug Acknowledgement is that it doesn't go far enough.

Rich white men haven't generally been using drugs to keep poor Black men and women sick and powerless. Nor have colonizers, whoever they are.

The fact is, everyone has been discriminating against drug users since forever.

The reason isn't colonialism; it's human nature. Even though addiction was labelled a disease back in the 1970s, vast swathes of us still think it is a character flaw: “You're ruining your career! Your family! Your life!”

“Why can't you just stop?!”

Well, maybe we can just stop in the same way that we've slowed the incidence of discrimination around mental illness. Three decades ago, no one raised their hand to say: “I'm depressed.” Today for the most part we do, knowing we won't be labelled as weak or crazy.

It will take 20 to 30 more years to de-stigmatize drug addiction, the same length of time it took to de-stigmatize mental illness.

Maybe City Hall's Drug Acknowledgement will help speed that change; I doubt it, though, because it lacks the crucial benefit of being true.

Meanwhile…

1. Who knew…? Children are like horses…marriage is so last year…snakes kill 1,000 people a year…Ben Franklin fled Montreal 250 years ago this month…this week a German YouTuber won the Gloucestershire cheese rolling race for the third year running. The cheese roll reached a speed of 70 mph…and yes, there's a Canadian Gap Year Association.

2. Gender bending. Are you a boy who sits like a girl? Plus what it's like to kiss a stranger for the first time. Plus Michael Jackson beats it two ways.…And finally, Noah Wylie isn't a nurse, though his mom was.

3. Regaining your rep. What better place for Kevin Spacey to fight his blacklisting on false sexual assault charges than the Oxford Union? Plus Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor who commissioned a report that showed what a fine job he was doing as Britain's trade envoy. Plus Russian conductor Valery threw his lot in with Vladimir Putin and hasn't performed in the West since 2020. His talent is undimmed.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy served time in prison for using Libyan money from Muammar Gaddafi to finance his campaign. As this BBC podcast shows and tells, he may be innocent.

Finally, who's very wise about where AI is leading us? The Catholic Church of England and Wales. And of course, The Pope himself, who spoke in depth about the dangers of AI. and who may have been targeting Peter Thiel in it.

4. Blue and white. There's the flag of Scotland. The Toronto Maple Leafs. The Blue Jays. Houses on Greek islands, UN Peacekeepers, and now, 500 pieces of blue and white porcelain going back to the 1600s and given by their collector, Rosalie Sharp, to the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art where it's now in their permanent collection.

5. I could look at these people for ages. August Sanders, the German photographer set out to document every type and profession in the fading epoch of prewar Germany. The New Yorker called it his "enormous attempt to capture a lost world," and you'll see why here. "People of the 20th Century" is on at the Yale University Art Gallery through June 28, and online forever.

6. Are you a newcomer? Canoo, the app from the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, opens all kinds of doors to your new country.

7. Can tech nerds be nice? There's a new club in New York, Maxwell Social, that's inviting young tech entrepreneurs to develop their unkempt social skills. As they say, it's not your third place, it's your second home, and it's attracting a new generation of talent and money.

Speaking of making it in America, Alfred Kazin wrote about it back in 1965 and it sounds just like today when just being an American can be your career.

8. Graphic answers to big questions. First, what do Albertans think about leaving Canada? Angus Reid thinks not much. Next, which countries have the most doctors? Not your home and native land. Next, how does the Gini Coefficient work in different countries? And how well do you remember colours? And can you spot the error? And finally, what will you die from? I ask because your body knows how to die.

9. Counterfactuals. It means 'what might have been", and once you think of one, it's hard to stop. Like, what if the Nazi's had invaded Britain (and what if Russia attacks Britain now)? Or, what if gravity were a bit weaker? Well, for one, birds would be gigantic. Your flight into fantasyland takes off here.

10. What I'm watching: Legends, on Netflix, the 6-part tale of how British Customs agents worked undercover during Margaret Thatcher's reign to stem the rising tide of heroin coming from Turkey into Liverpool and London. Like its cousin, The Gold, this cops-and-robbers procedural gripped me from the start, with scads of familiar faces in key roles. Vedy Bwitish.

What I'm anticipating: Tuner, directed by Toronto's Daniel Roher in his first narrative fiction film. It's a crime thriller about a peculiar piano tuner (Leo Woodall) and his surrogate father (Dustin Hoffman), and opens in theatres this weekend. Part of it was shot in Koerner Hall.

What I'm also anticipating: From June 5 - 7, TIFA presents MOTIVE: The crime and mystery festival where some of the leading masters of mystery discuss their thrillers and true-crime secrets.

What I'm inserting: What? An entire blog without a single mention of Donald Trump? Never!

The last time a province tried to leave the country was on October 30, 1995, when a referendum was held in Quebec.

The "Yes" or "Leave" side won 2,308,360 votes, or 49.42% of the vote, and the "No" or "Stay" side won 2,362,648 votes, or 50.58% of the vote. A record 93.52% of eligible voters cast their ballot.

Whew.

I remember in the months leading up to the vote that our view in English Canada shifted from "Quebec will never leave" and "They're just a small group of rabble-rousers", to "Once Quebeckers realize what's at stake, they'll come around", to "OMG, they're going to destroy the country!"

Let us not put our faith in the gods of luck twice.

Today, Alberta's threats to leave the country are at the "Alberta will never leave" stage. The Globe and Mail's Andrew Coyne wrote a prescient essay on this last week.

Said Coyne: "In a world that seems to grow more unstable by the week, [Canada] stands as a beacon of stability, safety and sanity. For all of its imperfections it remains one of the highest achievements of human statecraft, among one of the most successful societies in all of history…and in a few months it could all be blown apart."

Coyne went on to list the chancers pushing Alberta to leave and fend for its own which will very likely mean throwing in its future with America, thus doing for Donald Trump what he's so far failed to do on his own.

On October 19, Alberta is planning a province-wide referendum that will ask Alberta should remain part of Canada, along with other constitutional questions.

So Canada has five months to work to keep Alberta in Confederation in ways that are better than it did with Quebec in 1995.

Back then, Ottawa tried to weaken the Yes side's case by questioning the referendum's framing and pushing a pro-Canada message. Jean Chrétien and his Cabinet also visited Quebec often, promising reforms like recognizing Quebec as a distinct society. On October 27, three days before the vote, over 100,000 Canadians, including four Premiers, gathered at Place du Canada in Montreal, to urge Quebeckers to vote "No" to leaving.

Looking back, it's clear Canadians could have done much more to keep Quebeckers in the country.

So now, let's look at what we can do to help our Albertan compatriots.

We can do the usual things, like reaching out to Albertans we know or are related to and …listening. Those of us who live in The Imperial City should avoid Toronto-splaining. We should also donate to, amplify or volunteer with pro-Canada groups in Alberta, and elevate Indigenous viewpoints from Alberta. Remember, their treaty relationships are with Canada, not Alberta.

We should also call out misinformation on the "leave" side. In 1995, there was no social media. Today, the leak of private information belonging to millions of Alberta voters signals that this campaign is already dirty and threatens to remain nasty. Failing to scream and point fingers when cheating happens is one of the biggest threats of all.

We should also prod Ottawa to do more deals like the pipeline agreement Mark Carney signed last week with Danielle Smith last week to create high-profile wins for Alberta.

Certainly this summer we should also visit Alberta. After all, visits by Americans to Alberta are already up by 9% over last year. Maybe they see something we don't.

And finally, there are between half a million and a million people born in Alberta who are not living in Alberta. I'm one of them, born in Edmonton and left at age 12. We should raise our hands to join a sort of Alberta Foreign Legion of ex-pats who have a view of the province that those who have never left may lack.

Who knows what will happen if we strike up a face-to-face conversation with someone who calls it home?

Meanwhile…

1. We'll never replace ourselves via babies. Canada no longer has a low fertility rate; it has an ultra-low fertility rate of 1.25 children per woman. The replacement level needed to sustain a population from one generation to the next is 2.1 children per woman. In the year 2023, the world's total fertility rate fell below the replacement rate for the first time in 200,000 years. The fertility collapse is happening in places we likely don't think of: Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East. What's more, if Thailand continues at its current fertility rate for 200 years, its population will decline from 63 million to 2 million.

2. How to…turn a book into a best-seller…be a better panda…keep your brain from rotting… and get a free university education.

3. Hail and farewell. On Thursday, Stephen Colbert signed off as host of The Late Show, after 11 years and 1801 episodes. Here's the full version of the worst of his shows.

4. Risky business. What occupations have the highest divorce rates? And let's find out if Toronto's Police are antisemetic…and should you trust the U.S. Department of Justice the most, or the least? Plus, an idea I'd not heard of: gynofascism. It refers to the perceived dominance of institutional "safetyism" and risk-aversion. Proponents argue it stifles traditional risk-taking, free expression, and masculine problem-solving approaches. Here are three of them: Gag me.

5. Write on, and on. If your similes are obvious and shallow ("as dry as a...desert"), it's time to spice them up. Plus how one school is rebuilding education for an AI world.

6. Narrative gets its own museum. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens on September 22 in Los Angeles. Fabulous.

7. If summer hasn't found you yet, we may have. Join us at The Canada Summit, the glorious, four-day, heli-hiking trip from Aug. 30 to Sept. 3, where four leading Canadians (Steve Paikin, Dr. Heather Ross, Ron Deibert, and Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux) will discuss where we're headed around politics, healthcare, cyber and Indigenous relations. If you can walk around your kitchen table, you can heli-hike. Details here and register here.

Sir Simon Schama called the Kardamyli Festival "a nonstop glorious experience: brilliant talks; exhilarating company; glorious setting; nothing quite like it." Join us at The Kardamyli Festival this Fall in Greece.

8. A train, not a bicycle. That's what Tim Requarth thinks AI is, and that's not a good thing. Requarth is the new breed of neuroscientist-writer who tries to explain brain science via brilliant writing.

Speaking of whom, Craig Venter died last month. Back in 2000, he won the race to map the human genome against much better-funded scientists who had White House support. This week, the Globe and Mail revealed that two and a half years ago, Venter donated blood to Sick Kids Hospital in hopes of sparking another leap forward. "In a study posted online last week and submitted for peer review, researchers at the hospital's Centre for Applied Genomics revealed that they used DNA from blood donated by Dr. Venter for the newly developed method."

His first of many prizes was a Gairdner Award in 2002.

9. You like Nike commercials? Try Adidas! Speaking of New York, check out its bodega cats. Plus the Milky Way Photographer of the Year. Plus 19 cities (including Toronto) where locals and tourists take photos very differently. Plus why birds really murmurate. And why "genocide", a word we throw around too much, has a very precise meaning. Finally, her again,

10. Unmaking the grade. Last month I reported on the perilous rise of grades at universities. Harvard was the main culprit with 60% of its grades being "A's". This week, Harvard's faculty voted 70% to 30% to limit the number of "A's" it awards its students.

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?"

But over the next month, I would test my grip by holding a spoon of coffee above the cup to see if it was shaking. No shaking.

A month later, back at the same restaurant, I had the same opportunity. I even ordered the same soup. This time, the tremor was slightly more pronounced. I paused a flicker of a second, which I was sure my lunch-mate noticed. But I was trapped. I couldn't eat my soup with my right hand, nor could I pick up the bowl with both hands and slurp it down. It wasn't that kind of bowl, or occasion, or restaurant.

So I ploughed through. But the more I tried not to shake, the more it seemed my hand shook. Again, it was barely noticeable. But to me, I was now officially, medically, spastic.

I got to thinking about a colleague who had a tremor years ago, and then grew into a daily fight to get his sugar into his coffee. All of us at work noticed. You couldn't not. So I asked him: "Tell me about your tremor."

"My doctor says it's an essential tremor".

"An essential tremor? What makes it essential?"

"I don't know."

Over the years, his tremor has grown more pronounced but still only affects his hands and when they want to do something like hold a cup to their mouth or carve the Sunday roast beef.

I remembered this because of its odd name and got online.

I didn't have an essential tremor because I can hold that cup and cut that beef.

So I asked my physician wife, Jean, what was going on. I showed her how my left hand shakes a bit when I try to put something into my mouth by spoon, or now, by fork too. She said: "Oh, you have an intentional tremor."

"An intentional tremor? What makes it intentional?"

"The fact that you're intending to put the spoon in your mouth and that intent causes your hand to shake."

I remembered my colleague's essential tremor and my own intentional one, and thought, wow, whoever ran the Name Bank that day clocked off early. These tremors are different for sure.

Mine only kicks in when I intend to eat something, and the closer I get to my intended target (my mouth), the worse the tremor becomes. So I've developed a "Don't think of elephants" strategy, not tightening my grip on my spoon the closer it gets to my mouth, but loosening it. That helps a bit.

When my tremor first appeared three years back, my first reaction was to hide in embarrassment, to try to cover for my disability. As I learned more, I got less self-conscious.

Then last week I learned that the Republican senator from Maine, Susan Collins, who's 73, revealed that she has long had a benign essential tremor.

Said Collins, who is running in the November mid-terms, "it is extremely common." And she has had it the entire 30 years of her Senate career. (Some 7 million Americans have an essential tremor, and 1.2 million Canadians have it. There are no figures for intentional tremors).

As The New York Times noted: "Her remarks came amid mounting online scrutiny — pushed in particular on the left — of the shakiness that is often detectable when Ms. Collins speaks, and questions about whether it has worsened with time.

Which brings up the big issue of embarrassment. Not just if someone thinks I'm unwell, but if they think I'm getting…are you ready?...they think I'm getting old.

Well, I'll soon be 77. My father died years ago at 69, and he was old. Which shows that "old" these days is a lot older than before. But I sense you can never really outrun being old. It just comes with the territory.

Meanwhile…

1. David Attenborough crests 100. Hear him and smile. See him and weep.

2. Algorithms Bad. For two reasons: one, they shrink our horizon of possibilities. "We can't pursue a career we've never heard of, read a book we don't know exists, or encounter a community that never reaches us. Algorithmic systems create what feels like abundance while the underlying diversity narrows." And two, they shrink our vocabulary and length of sentences. A recent University of Coruña study found that machine-generated language has a narrower range of sentence length, averaging 12-20 words, and a narrower vocabulary than human speech. Algorithms good, too. But just wanted to point out it's always both.

Speaking of bad, no one likes to have their texts made public. But if you're Sam Altman and Mira Murati, it gets cringeworthy.

3. The trouble with…narrative history is it creates meaning where there is none…And with dictators is they can't stand being laughed at. And with Keir Starmer isn't that he's a dead man walking, but why. And with informed citizens is, there are so few of them.

4. For the birds. First, their invisible highways. Next, you can learn their songs. And why half a million Swedes wake up early to hear this.

5. Good news openings…like the American LGBTQ+ Museum in New York. The premiere of the British podcast, False Flag, on how a Russian attack on Britain would play out. Plus this achingly Canadian tale about a moose and a trucker. Plus, how an international conflict negotiator takes on couples therapy. And finally, speaking of openings, commencement season is soon upon us. Stay tuned for advice like this.

6. Ted no longer Talks. The "bon vivant, TIME's Man of the Year 1991, and a public embarrassment", Ted Turner, changed our viewing habits forever. Jane Fonda called him "my favorite ex-husband."

7. Old scientists aren't like old architects. The former get less creative as they age; the latter, more. As for nurses, they just soldier on. And strippers? They change their job description.

8. THE Judy Collins plays Toronto for the last time. Later this month, one of the world's great folk artists – she's recorded 55 albums in her 50-year-plus career – performs at Hugh's Room. Get tickets here for May 26, and here for May 27.

9. Take in a show and live longer. The news that doctors can prescribe visiting a museum to reduce your depression is…old news. But this week, we learned from a British study that taking in the arts, let alone taking part in them, will help you live longer. And not just going to the museum or the concert half, but cracking open a book. Especially since there's evidence it's just as good as exercise. It's about time we had a big new argument to fund the arts.

10. Sir Simon Schama called the Kardamyli Festival "a nonstop glorious experience: brilliant talks; exhilarating company; glorious setting; nothing quite like it." Join us at The Kardamyli Festival this Fall in Greece. Just a few spots remain.

Peaks by day. Ideas by night. There's still a very few rooms available at The Canada Summit, the glorious, four-day, heli-hiking trip from Aug. 30 to Sept. 3, where four leading Canadians (Steve Paikin, Dr. Heather Ross, Ron Deibert, and Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux) will discuss where we're headed around politics, healthcare, cyber and Indigenous relations. If you can walk around your kitchen table, you can heli-hike. Details here. Register here.

11. What I'm watching. DTF St. Louis, a 7-part dark comedy on HBO/Crave. Crazy writing, twisted plotting and great acting from some old familiar faces.

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.

All those numbers are eye-spinning in their own right, and all the more compared to what Ottawa spends on the arts and culture. Because while defence and infrastructure are measured in the billions, the arts and culture are measured in the millions. And let's not forget that a billion is a thousand millions, and a trillion is a thousand billion.

One kind of funding (billions) builds the stage; another (millions) writes the script and puts on the show.

The budget does sprinkle money on culture – $769 million over five years across arts and culture programs, with $67.5 million for live presenters and festivals and $54 million to creators via the Canada Music Fund and the Canada Council. But compare that to the tens of billions for defence and the trillion‑dollar decade projection and you see it for what it is: housekeeping, not nation‑building. Even the headline cultural envelope at Canadian Heritage – $1.89 billion for 2024‑25, including about $363 million for the Canada Council, $199 million for Library and Archives Canada, and $1.38 billion for the CBC – is accompanied by a planned $205 million cut to the department through a government‑wide expenditure review.

The CBC is our canary in this coal mine. In 2024-25, its budget was nudged from about $1.28 billion to roughly $1.38 billion with a $42 million bump for programming. Yet that small rise is followed by a $192 million reduction to the CBC planned for 2026‑27.

In other words, in the Age of Elbows Up, at a time when Canadians are asserting our identity with each other and the world, when "O Canada" is sung with gusto before Toronto Symphony Orchestra concerts and by fans of the Buffalo Sabres playing against the Boston Bruins, for heaven's sake, when all kinds of people are finding new funds to promote Canada's identity and sovereignty, and when books by Canadians made up just 14% of all print book sales in Canada in 2025.

I say it's time to give our arts and culture organizations the kind of quantum grant increases that our defence and tech sectors are getting.

So why does this matter if we have AI labs, quantum hubs, drone test beds and skills academies sprouting like condos? Because all those systems need operating software, and for a country, that software is its stories.

We are investing billions so Canadians can build the tools of the future but asking them to tell our future stories on a shoestring.

We're racing to weaponize algorithms while defunding the people who can help us understand what those algorithms should and should not do. Books, films, plays, exhibitions – these are not frills; they are the social code that lets 44 million strangers imagine themselves as "us" when the weather, or the world, turns rough.

If we are serious about sovereignty, that sovereignty has to be cultural as well as territorial. Otherwise, we will own the infrastructure of tomorrow and rent the meaning from somewhere else.

Meanwhile…

1. Buffalo needs us and as they start the series against Les Canadiens, we need them.

2. Democracy: Some conditions may apply. Lesson one: the tyrant story always ends the same. Plus, Tory fund-raising appeals grow hystericaler and hystericaler. And Orbán is out in Hungary; now comes the hard part. Plus the global economy in one giant map.

3. Job-hoppers. Join the U.S. Foreign Service. And the merit society. (i.e. Yuppies). And people with the most savings and most powerful passports. And why this plane can't fly. And why this flight attendant can. And who says women can't run ultramarathons and have babies at the same time?

4. The new bad behaviour. Start with the merits of theft at The New York Times, and on the opposite pole, microlooting. Now move along to shocking legal waivers for big dieters. And "look, honey, we got invited to Prince Andrew's wedding." Plus, what we wish The Queen had said about her treatment by Trump, but didn't (it's fake AI). Plus how to accept rejection gracefully, and being a woke at the wheel.

5. The end is here. Where are the best death cafes on earth? Plus how DEI beat out science to get into med school. Plus, Toronto is luring Americans across the border and the Saudis cancel their $200 million gift to the Met, while the Royal Conservatory responds to abuse claims. Plus, what Jane thought of Ted. Finally, some sumptuous Smithsonian photos and even more in The Guardian.

6. A woman. A horse. A win. Of course. The thrilling victory of Golden Tempo in the 152nd Kentucky Derby, whose odds were 23 to 1, took off from the back of the pack and passed 17 other horses to win. It's the first Derby where the winner was trained by a woman, Cherie deVaux, who seems delighted. And bonus!…a primer on The Kentucky Derby.

7. Where do hereditary peers walk the plank? In Britain, of course. Where do stars hide away in LA? Plus, how did they make this very special bag for women? Plus, why are airlines always going broke? And who is the worst counterfeiter ever?

8. Health beat. How much of our lifespan do we control? And what exactly is broken heart syndrome? And why nobody accidentally feels great at 70. And when you can't do gold-standard work, do aluminum-standard instead.

9. Is Jeff Bezos Amazon? Some of its 1.57 million workers think so and they took employee activism to new levels at the Met Gala which Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, co-chaired. Meanwhile, over at the Amazon AGM, here's what CEO Andy Jassy wrote to the shareholders.

10. Attention-fracking is a thing. It means you can't focus on anything, so you can't remember anything, so you can't value anything. This explains why. Speaking of…there's the law and then there's Jude. Plus, how to give up on doom-scrolling. Finally, Route 66 is turning 100. And don't do this at home, kids.

11. Mapping happy. Let's start with feelings. Then on to the true size of…Next, the true size of nations. Then five perfect homes that prove you don't need more space, and one great tiny "over the falls" retreat. Plus Morioka Shoten is a bookstore in Tokyo that only sells one title per week. When they showcased a book about ceramics, the shelves were full of handmade pottery. And in Malmo, Sweden, the Dawitt Isaak Library is the first public library devoted entirely to forbidden books. Finally, the best 100-year-old colour blocker of all.

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.

So the news that Sabastian Sawe, a 31-year-old Kenyan, ran the first sub 2-hour marathon in history last week at the London Marathon tugged at not only the world's 75 million marathoners, but the 400 million more who have run a 5K and 10K. Sawe won in a staggering time of 1:59:30, which is 26.2 consecutive miles at 4 minutes, 33 seconds per mile. Not only that, he ran a negative split, that is to say, he ran faster in the second half of the race than in the first. Not only that, he wasn't the only one to break the 'impossible' barrier. Finishing second was Yomif Kejelcha of Ethiopia in 1:59:41.

For those of us middle-of-the-packers, whose finish time is often 4 hours plus, it is an honour to even compete in the same event with the best runners in the world, and humbling to know that by the time we are halfway, they are crossing the finish line.

It's instructive to learn how Sawe did it and how yesterday's 'impossible' can turn into tomorrow's 'probable'.

First, there was a sense of inevitability. The record time had been falling for a decade. Ten years ago it was 2:02:57. Five years ago, 2:01:39, and last year 2:00:35. In 2016, Nike created Breaking 2, a controlled unofficial try at the world's first sub-2-hour marathon. It didn't work.

But there were all kinds of innovations in training, nutrition and especially footwear.

In 2023 Adidas introduced the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 whose ultra light weight of 97 grams took two to three minutes off runners' times. (You can buy a pair like the ones Sawe ran in for $4,690.) Said Nick Thompson), CEO of The Atlantic and a world-record distance runner himself: "Companies created new kinds of foam, new kinds of plates…and new ways you build up the back of the shoe to change a person's stride."

Sawe's second advantage was a new gut-bypassing hydrogel that helped him fuel more while by-passing gastro issues. So he could take on bicarbonate sodium (baking soda) which enhances performance by buffering hydrogen ions. Said one commentator: "Not only is Sawe an extraordinary athlete, he's also one of the best fuellers the marathon has ever seen."

Sawe's third unbeatable advantage is family values. He attended weekly services at the Catholic Church in Cheukta. His grandmother instilled discipline and gratitude; his competitive spirit came via a teacher, Julius Kemei. He then entered a spartan training camp in the Rift Valley with 30 other runners where they learned the repeatable routines that are the foundation for any great runner. In the months before London, Sawe was running between 200 and 240 km a week.

After Roger Bannister ran the world's first sub-4-minute mile, what was once thought impossible began to happen all the time. Today, the world record for the mile run by a man is 3:43:13, and by a woman 4:07:64. Odds are, the psychological breakthrough of the Bannister Effect will hold true in marathons as well, not just in a slew of men running sub-2 hours, but in a woman breaking that 2-hour mark within a decade.

So what records are left to conquer?

Here are three of them: The first Pacific swim, the 9-metre long jump, and the 30-minute breath hold. Last year, Croatian freediver Vito Maričić held his breath underwater for 29 minutes and 3 seconds, which is longer than an episode of The Simpsons. I'm not sure I could hold mine for the 57 seconds Maričić needs to beat those 30 minutes.

What I do know is that last week Sabastian Sawe did the impossible, the way Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay did in 1953 by conquering Everest, and Jim Hines did in 1968 when he ran the first ever 100 metre race in under 10 seconds.

Meanwhile…

1. On Everest, twice as many are climbing. So why are only half as many dying?Could it be that common sense and safety are infecting climbers? Two Canadians, Kent Moore and Dr. John Semple, helped write a study on deaths on Everest. As they note: "Most climbers who die do so on Summit Day, but mortality rates during descent from the summit decreased from 3.0% to 0.8%." Also, last summer a Polish climber skied down Everest from its peak – after climbing for 16 hours through The Death Zone.

2. His day in court. A Court document…from The Browser. "It contains more twists than most thrillers. Two men — Matthew Keirans and William Woods — met in the 1980s working at a hotdog cart. Keirans then executed an extraordinary identity theft. As Woods, he took out loans, got a six-figure job, got married and had a child, who received the victim's surname. In 2019, the real Woods tried to fight back — and was imprisoned for his trouble."

3. Bent coppers. Can AI root out corrupt police? It is in London. So how about Toronto? Speaking of…Toronto's cops are bulking up. Plus, the tough-guy book club. Plus, why do French Fries stolen from someone else's plate taste better?

4. The gorilla my dreams. There's a new documentary on Netflix with a 99-year-old man reading from journals he kept half a century ago, watching footage of mountain gorillas he once sat with in a Rwandan forest. Yes, it's David Attenborough and A Gorilla Story. Plus winning news pix.

5. Neat feats. First, training planes. Plus Fred again gives a Tiny Desk concert on NPR. Plus AI tips and tricks. Plus how Finland wiped out homelessness. And who knew this about the U of T?

6. What's coming for you? Surveillance pricing. And rich rare books. And two Michelin-starred diners in Toronto: Ricky + Olivia, and "156". Plus the must-see AI Doc You can also download Artemis wallpaper. and find out if your family were Nazis. And discover the meaningful math of middle powers.

7. Carter Johnson plays Hughes Room. Last year, Nanaimo's Carter Johnson became the first Canadian finalist in the Van Cliburn International Competition. The same year he was named silver laureate of the Honens International Competition and the first prize winner of the 2025 Dublin International Competition. He performs at Hugh's Room on Wednesday, May 13. Tickets here.

8. Peaks by day. Provocation by night. There's still room to join us at The Canada Summit, the four-day heli-hiking trip from Aug. 30 to Sept. 3, where four leading Canadians (Steve Paikin, Dr. Heather Ross, Ron Deibert, and Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux) will discuss where we're headed around politics, healthcare, cyber and AI, and Indigenous relations. If you can walk around your kitchen table, you can heli-hike. Details here.

Join us also on a Turkish gulet along Turkey's "Turquoise coast", and at The Kardamyli Festival in Greece this Fall with the entire front page of British non-fiction writers.

9. Rule changes… come to the World Cup. And a new weight-loss drug "better than Ozempic" is coming. Plus a 10-letter word for self-loathing. Plus Queen Elizabeth's strange afterlife. And how two years of research takes just two weeks today.

10. World's biggest… banks by assets… gas prices (Hong Kong at $15.65 a gallon)… army (Bangladesh by a country mile)… self-sufficient food countries (there's just one)… Deadliest viruses (Rabies? really?) And most in debt to the IMF.

11. The frenzy over… Jackie O's possessions… The Loo of the Year Award… letting go… naval failures… nobody accidentally feels great at 70… the Toronto Zoo's one million dollar donation. And how the Metropolitan Opera lost $200 million in revenues.

12. What I'm reading. Two new reports by the U of T's Citizen Lab, one of the world's great unveilers of cybercrime. Last week on telecom surveillance, and this week on targeting journalists.

You have to be smart (or nepo-ed) to get into Harvard.

54,008 students applied for this year’s Freshman class and just 1,937 (or 3.58%) were admitted. But once you’re in, you’re in. This year, 66% of Harvard grades are A’s, up from 25% twenty years ago.

Such careening grade inflation has caused Harvard’s faculty to vote this week on a proposal to limit the number of “A”s to 20% of students taking the course. Needless to say, the students think this is a terrible idea.

But Harvard is not alone. By 2021–22, over half of McGill undergrad courses had average grades of A or A‑, and percentages only slightly less exist at Queen’s, Western and the University of Toronto.

Indeed, if allowed to spread unchecked, 100% of students will get A’s, thereby violating one of the laws of human behaviour: we will always work to create differences among us, especially when none exist.

The same holds for high school grades. Back then, only the rarest of birds got a 90% or above average. Today 90% will get you into U of T, but you’ll need at least an 85% average to be considered. It’s not that IQs have risen sharply in the nearly 60 years since I graduated from high school. It’s grade inflation.

Now grade inflation, like price inflation, is a bad thing. Gas in Toronto last year cost $1.63 to $1.79 a litre. Today it’s $1.79 to $1.89. Steak in 2020 cost $22.51/kg compared to today’s $35/kg.

But what if we could link grade inflation and price inflation and use both to reduce the bad effects of the other?

Under my model, high school marks would also be indexed to inflation: when too many 17‑year‑olds have averages that would have put them in the Order of Canada a generation ago, a province’s transfer payments to school boards will automatically shrink. Suddenly, every principal will have the same conversation: “We can give everyone 95s, or we can keep the lights on.”

Doug Ford, are you listening? Because, over time, governments will pay less for the downstream consequences of inflated credentials. They won’t have to fund as many fifth‑year degrees, “transition programs,” and internship mills built to re‑introduce failure to young people who thought a B+ was a hate crime.

Those savings can be channelled into grants for institutions that keep their “A”‑rates under control. In return, those universities will commit to lowering tuition for students who are currently paying champagne prices for tap‑water distinctions.

Think of it as a central bank for grades. When the “A”‑money supply gets too loose, the “Grade Bank of Canada” raises the Academic Rigor Rate. When the supply tightens and students are genuinely struggling, it loosens again.

Soon, Harvard will be begging to get back to a mere 35% A’s, not just because it creates higher standards, but because that’s how it qualifies for the federal “Too Smart To Fail” bailout. Until then, we’ll go on pretending that 84% of Harvard work is in the A range, Ontario teenagers are all budding Einsteins, and employers can somehow tell them apart with psychometric tests and unpaid internships. Or we could do something truly radical: let a C be a C again — and make it cheaper.

What’s the true sad cost of grade inflation? Remember the Varsity Blues scandal in 2019? 53 people were charged in a USD $25 million bribery scheme to secure places for their kids at top U.S. universities like Stanford and Yale. This simply confirmed that for some parents, giving your child a leg up via a top university is worth the risk of jail and loss of your reputation.

But last week, 14 people were jailed for paying bribes to get their kids into a Hong Kong kindergarten.

A kindergarten. Do you remember your best friend from kindergarten? You do not. Have they opened big career doors for you? They have not.

Now, how about your best college friend? Different league entirely.

If grade inflation keeps growing, families will go to jail for bribing their way into daycare.

In fact, back in 2008 in Winnipeg, they already did.

Meanwhile…

1. Camino de Biblioteca. This year, 800,000 people will walk its 800 kilometres on apersonal pilgrimage.

This month, Toronto writer Marci Stepak will walk to all 100 branches of the Toronto Public Library to honour her late mother and raise funds for the TPL.

While you can also hike the 89 km. from Toronto to the Martyr’s Shrine at Ste. Marie-Among-the-Hurons, why not create your own urban pilgrimage linking a chain of 25 to 30 library branches ending at the Toronto Reference Library as a kind of cathedral of books? Each day of this long-weekend pilgrimage could focus on a theme – childhood reading, learning through hardship, community and justice – where you can pause and read a short text at each branch and maybe even stamp your “readers’ passport” like the Spanish pilgrim passport.

2. Odd bedfellows. First, marriage and dementia. Then mistakes that improve the song.Then Donald Trump and writing. Finally, Gwyneth’s plastic surgeon...and Queen Elizabeth’s closets.

3. Better versions of...apps we use now: for weather, for flights, for calories...

Plus better clam chowder donuts...American Presidents...aging clocks, the ones that calculate how old your body is...and people and scary flags.

4. Rethinking crime and the police. My March 6 blog argued that violent crime isdown, so let’s all take a breath and not give in to the fearmongers. I’d like to modify my enthusiasm for a crime-freer Canada via two new stories that argue the contrary. First, from the Globe and Mail, how Rosedale homeowners have hired private security firms to protect themselves and their property. Second, why the Toronto Police Service budget just keeps going up and up.

5. Far-off. Way out. First, the Alphorn, which you will never play. Next, the busiest place you’ve never seen. Next, the best seat in all of Paris. Plus the matchbook covers as flash points igniting new worlds. And chokepoints as the true crossroads of history; how Japan is cracking down on wayward cyclists; and finally, where spreading rumours is a crime.

6. Big thinkers; strong views. How Stephen Lewis “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” Plus, Larry Fink is the Chair of Blackrock which manages $US 14 trillion in assets. Here’s his letter to investors. Plus historian Tim Snyder on 5 scenarios for a coup before the U.S. midterms. Plus day and life.

7. Big thinkers; bigger trip. There’s still room to join us at The Canada Summit, the four-day heli-hiking trip from Aug. 30 to Sept. 3, where four leading Canadians will discuss where we’re headed around politics, healthcare, cyber and AI, and Indigenous relations. If you can walk around your kitchen table, you can heli-hike. Details here.

Speaking of really big thinkers, there are just a few tickets left for the RamsayTalk with New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe on June 15. The early praise for London Falling is delirious. Tickets here.

8. The week in Tech. Maclean’s has an investigative piece on a Markham pharmacist who became the secret king of fraudulent internet porn. Plus why blaming anyone forcreating AI slop is pointless. And on Apple’s 50^th anniversary, the mystery of Steve Jobs. And how Russia spies on Ukraine from outer space. And speaking of outer space, here’s the many dimensions of Artemis II. Plus, what exactly is Space X?

9. The play’s still the thing. June is the 100^th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s birth. So it’s very apropos that Crow’s Theatre is world-premiering American Devotion, Franca Miraglia’s fictional account in a Connecticut farmhouse in 1957 when Norman Mailer has wangled a coveted invitation for cocktails with the reclusive couple. Runs June 3 to 21. Tickets here.

10. Same old coffee. Fresh new grounds. A U.S. federal judge this week ordered the White House to cease construction on the President’s brobdingnagian ballroom. The White House, of course, appealed, not for design reasons or anything soft like that. But because not letting construction go ahead means ”threatening grave national security harms to the White House, the President and his family, and White House staff.” Here’s the official text of their objections.

11. What I’m reading. Stumbling across a compelling new author with lots of books is infinitely better than stumbling across just a new author. Suddenly, like clicking on the first minute of Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones, you know that rarest of thrills that only such anticipatory addiction can satisfy: the certainty that you will have days, weeks, even months you can spend, often alone, with your new drug. Such is my keenness that you try the British-Belgium spy novelist, Kevin Wignall. I’ve read To Die in Vienna and A Death in Sweden. They’re espionage-noir, very smart, tidy, quick and oddly funny. One step up from airport reading, one down from le Carré.

Canada’s Governor General Mary Simon is bilingual. Her first language is Inuktitut and her second is English. She’s not fluent in French. But this is an exceptional circumstance. And when she speaks to groups of Canadians, which is pretty much every day, she tries to say a little in French, like her 2025 New Year’s message.

Simon is the symbolic head of Canada.

On the other hand, the actual head of Air Canada is its Chief Executive Officer. But the minute that fire truck drove out onto Runway 4 at LaGuardia two weeks ago, Michael Rousseau became the company’s symbolic head as well.

Air Canada’s circumstances are also exceptional. It isn’t just any multi-billion dollar public company. Until 1988, it was a federal crown corporation owned by Ottawa. After Air Canada was privatized, its language obligations were grandfathered. In other words, Air Canada must provide services to the travelling public in both official languages and respect employees’ language‑of‑work rights just like a federal department or Crown corporation.

Air Canada is uniquely Canadian, in the same way Michael Rousseau’s fall from grace is uniquely Canadian: not for corruption or incompetence, but craven indifference to an unspoken rule of running any major Canadian institution:

You. Must. Speak. French…

Or. At. Least. Try.

I say craven indifference because Rousseau’s English-only message of condolence to the families of the pilots who died in the LaGuardia crash is the second time he has been tone-deaf to what every other CEO and senior official can hear as clear as a bell.

The first time was in 2021 when he spoke to the Montreal Chamber of Commerce. Following the speech, a reporter asked Rousseau how he could have lived in Montreal for 14 years without speaking French. We pick up Rousseau’s reply here.

“Can you re-do that in English?”

“I’m too busy to learn French.”

“That’s a testament to the City of Montreal.”

You could hear francophone Canada exhale the same thought: He didn’t even try.

After 2021, he did try. Indeed, Rousseau’s taken 300 hours of French-language instruction. But 14 years in Montreal, his wife is Francophone, and all he can muster is “Bonjour” and “Merci”?

We forgive people for being tone-deaf, awkward, halting. We forgive the “Bonjour-hi” hybrids, the strangled verb tenses, the Anglophones who can’t remember their genders but who keep valiantly stumbling through conversations anyway. What we don’t forgive, especially here, is disdain. The refusal to cross even halfway.

It’s not about language so much as effort — the willingness to be uncomfortable. Mary Simon doesn’t sound comfortable speaking in French. Still, she musters through. But in a country that defines itself by compromise, “not even trying” equals arrogance. Especially when you’re running an airline literally called Air Canada, whose very identity rests on bilingual service, bilingual pilots, bilingual everything. There is no “Air Canada, but unilingual.” It’s baked into the brand.

Rousseau’s defenders argue that you don’t need to conjugate être to run an airline. Fair enough. But the CEO’s job isn’t just to manage; it’s to embody something. It’s theatre as much as leadership. If the head of Air Canada can’t muster even a few phrases en français, what message does that send to the flight attendants trying to greet passengers in both languages? Or to the ground crew in Montreal whose entire workplace runs on bilingual teamwork?

So Rousseau’s out. Whoever comes next must be perfectly bilingual.

Like many Anglophones, I freeze up when asked to speak French. But I’m also mindful of what the tour guides say when you land in a country where French or Spanish or another ‘foreign language’ is the lingua franca. They always say: “Just learn a dozen words in that language and it will take you far. People appreciate that you’re reaching out to them…”

It reminds me of something that happens often in relationships, both personal and national: people will forgive you for failing if they believe you’re making an effort. They’ll walk the road with you, even if you trip. But give them the sense you couldn’t be bothered and the door closes.

Michael Rousseau never learned the first rule of leadership: there are times when symbolism doesn’t just count, it counts more than anything.

Meanwhile…

1. The Sunshine List. Last week Queen’s Park released the names of everyone in the public sector who makes over $100,000 a year. Today, over 400,000 people are on The Sunshine List, so it lacks the titillating FOMO of its first year in 1988 when just 4,501 names made it. Still, it’s fun to find out what your doctor’s earning or your nearby cop on the beat (this year, 7,083 members of the Toronto Police Service are on the list). Maybe time to up that $100,000 to a new level of “comfortably off.” Here’s what it takes in America.

2. Odd men out and in. First, the man who knew infinity. Next, rethinking gender. Plus the mayor who leads the world in social media. (Compare to Toronto’s Mayor and potholes.) Speaking of social media, no one is safe from its finding you. No one.

3. Why did you fire the most successful conductor in America? I wrote last week on the growing scandal of how the Boston Symphony Orchestra has ‘fired’ its conductorAndris Nelsons. This week, we learned why.

4. Sorry for your loss. Why daylight savings deserves to die. Plus a new kind of Russian death squad. And why Facebook shut down its Metaverse project last week, after investing $80 billion.

5. New views. Wikipedia’s global garden, plus the top 10,000 Wikipedia articles, and anold word with a new bite. Plus a Yosemite landscape. And how to lie flat in economy. And why everyone is on speakerphones in public. And how the Club Med Theory of Hospitalityis based on removing all your decisions. It works elsewhere too.

Finally, some good old-fashioned optical illusions.

6. Wretched excess. Let’s start with private jets. Then on to ultra-fine dining. Then, thebillionaire class. Finally, skiing in Saudi Arabia.

7. The Japanese Cultural Centre…is honouring Toronto architect Bruce Kuwabara with the Sakura Award at a gala on May 9. Past recipients include David Suzuki, Raymond Moriyama, and Joy Kogawa. The first recipient, in 2009, was Brian Mulroney who apologized to and negotiated the redress settlement with the survivors of the 22,000 Japanese Canadians who were interned during the Second World War. Tickets.

The Club Med Theory. of hospitality based on removing all your decisions. And why everyone is on speakerphones in public.

8. Toronto has one of the streets you must walk in your lifetime. This week, Britain’s daily The Telegraph published a list of the 20 streets you must walk in your lifetime. Oddity #1: Toronto is on that list. Oddity # 2: The street in question.

Speaking of Toronto…today’s crossing guards are no longer volunteer elders. They’re poorly paid contract workers employed by private companies.

9. Floating landscapes. These aren’t photoshopped; they’re better. Plus tech leaders’private emails exposed in public. Plus the rise of ‘shrubification’. Plus a new Instagram account reminds us what’s great about life. We’ll feature one of them each week. Which leads to how to get love less wrong.

10. Four views on the LaGuardia crash – The first officer’s. A survivor’s. Piers Morgan’s. And Air Canada’s pilots and flight attendants.

Sarah Palin used them in 2009 to fight Obamacare reforms by scaring U.S. voters into thinking that groups of doctors would decide which patients would live and which would die. Back then, one in three healthcare dollars went to treat Americans 65 and older. Today it’s 37%. Still no death panels, nor are there in Canada.

But Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is pushing Bill 18, The Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act that will act much like Death Panels, except they will constrain Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) instead of encouraging it.

This week, the Globe and Mail’s Robyn Urback wrote why this is a terrible idea made worse by Smith invoking the “notwithstanding clause” which lets any province veto any Charter right or Supreme Court decision, such as the one in 2015 when the Court voted 9-0 to allow MAiD because not to allow it constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

Back then, you qualified for MAiD if you were enduring irremediable suffering and your death was foreseeable. Back then, as now, 27% of Canadians die of cancer and 15% from heart disease.

Many Canadians (and many American and British media) are alarmed to learn that this year for the first time, over 100,000 Canadians are projected to die via MAiD. Indeed, MAiD is up by 64% across the country between 2021 and 2024. But I look at these figures and ask a different question: why are they not higher?

I mean, 87,400 of us will die from cancer this year, and 56,000 from heart disease, for a total of 143,000. And yet the number of those people who chose to die using MAiD is only 11.3% of all Canadians who will die from cancer or heart disease. We all know someone, likely someone close to us, who has endured death by cancer or heart disease, and when it’s all over, we likely whispered: “Just don’t let me die that way.” And yet, clearly we do. My wife, who is a MAiD doctor, says this is because people have an inexhaustible will to live.

But Danielle Smith’s Notwithstanding fight isn’t about Track 1 MAiD, which is about irremediable suffering and foreseeable death. It’s about Track 2, the reasons for MAiD that are much more complex and contentious and where death isn’t reasonably foreseeable. These include mental illness being the sole underlying condition, or being under the age of 18, or having a chronic debilitating condition like cerebral palsy or post-polio disability.

Bill C-18 also requires that:

• A family member must witness the provision of MAiD.

• Doctors must not mention, let alone discuss MAiD with their patients, unless those patients mention it first.

• Hospitals can not only refuse MAiD on their premises, they must establish a 150-metre exclusion zone around the hospital where discussions and assessments for MAiD are forbidden.

• A patient’s natural death must now be not just foreseeable, but likely within one year.

• It disallows the use of Advance Requests. Today, no Canadian outside of Quebec qualifies for MAiD if they have Alzheimer’s because their death is not foreseeable. By the time it is, they likely won’t have the mental capacity to consent. Today, 750,000 Canadians are living with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. In an effort to allow Alzheimer’s patients a less tortured death, Ottawa is proposing the use of Advance Requests. Alberta will disallow this.

• Clinics and long-term care homes cannot publicly display information on MAiD.

Of course, while Bill C-18 is about MAiD, it’s really about much more: like sticking it to Ottawa, and appealing to your base, and saying we protect families and stand up for their rights against Big Government.

It’s not that MAiD is perfect by any means. Track 1 saw Veterans being “offered death instead of counselling, where a woman suffering with obesity was accepted for MAiD and where a woman with dementia was helped to die after a family member twice referred her for MAiD.”

And Track 2 is nowhere as clear-cut around who qualifies, thus creating the potential for more abuse, not less.

But Robyn Urback’s solution is not to fight the Notwithstanding Clause or the many new strictures of Bill C-18 – especially the 150-metres cordon sanitaire for even breathing the word “MAiD”.

She offers a surprising solution: “The risk for everyone is that MAiD becomes so out of control, so unchecked, that someone comes along and scraps the entire thing, notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s decision in 2015. That’s why restoring some sanity to MAiD laws in Canada is so important now. And proponents of MAiD for the terminally ill should be the loudest supporters.”

Oh, and there’s one more provision in Bill C-18 I haven’t mentioned. That is the provincial government will be the single source of referral for MAiD. Back in 2016 provinces like Alberta and Manitoba implemented this system because they had large geographies and few MAiD doctors.

Back then, Alberta’s Premier was Rachel Notley. Today, if you’re a doctor, a nurse practitioner, a patient, a family member or even a friend, the request goes through the province’s care coordinators.

But what if a less benign Premier were to say: “Let’s downsize or defund this provincial agency.”

Then there would be no MAiD at all, no Track 1 and no Track 2.

Once you accept that logic for MAiD, the template is portable: reproductive health, gender-affirming care, even controversial drugs become candidates for the same legislative cone of silence.

The most chilling part of Alberta’s bill is not the 12‑month threshold, or the compliance paperwork, or even the professional penalties. It is the idea that, in the most intimate conversation many of us will ever have – the one about how and when we die – the loudest voice in the room will not be our loved ones, or our doctor, or even ourselves, but a legislature that insists on standing 150 metres away and still running the show.

If Alberta wants to narrow MAiD, it should make its case in open court, not behind the blast wall of the Notwithstanding clause and the fiction that information itself is a form of harm. Whatever your view on assisted dying, the right to an honest, unhurried, fully informed conversation with your doctor should not depend on whether you are standing inside, or just outside, an invisible line on the pavement.

Meanwhile…

1. Gillian Anderson…on why women over 50 are disappearing.

Plus famous restaurants by women, including Yawékon near Brantford. And meet the feminist resistance fighter who created the modern kitchen.

2. The Ryanair of railways. Dutch startup GoVolta is offering cheap train tickets to Hamburg and Berlin for €19 with plans to reach Paris next year. Plus…when Instagram meets Overtourism meets Drones....Plus air travel will more than double by 2050…plus how the Iran conflict is costing tourism $600 million a day…and how Mt. Everest is limiting overtourism.

And are points programs ruining luxury hotels? Finally, a New Yorker documentary on thebad news around taking the perfect photo.

3. Tech tips that aren’t AI. Remember the Internet? It was created in 1983. Yet there are still new tips to make it (and you) operate better. From strengthening your hippocampus, to the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon,to taking free courses at MIT.

Back to AI…will it cure all disease or is that just AI slop?

4. The cost of citizenship. Forget becoming an Italian citizen (and hence an EU citizen) just because your great-grandfather came from Italy. A new Italian court ruling has ended unlimited generational citizenship. On the other hand, the price of American citizenship is falling in line with its value. In mid-April, the Trump administration will lower the fee for formally renouncing your American citizenship from $2,350 to $450. It affects mostly people who live abroad and don’t want to pay U.S. taxes or embrace its values.

5. Should opera singers sell used cars? This one does. Speaking of opera singers, the Canadian phenom Emily D’Angelo who was chosen by Glenn Gould Prize-winner Elton John to receive the Glenn Gould Protégé Prize (along with $25,000), will sing at the gala honouring Sir Elton in Toronto on May 9.

Plus, what’s the AGO’s Mona Lisa? And who’s the real Banksy? Plus, a portrait of “Lou D” who’s opening the Kodak vault after 25 years in the dark.

As for all the arts, here are Rosie Millard’s 10 tips to fill every concert hall.

6. Accentuate the positive. Is it true your accent could get you fired? Speaking of fired, what if Prince Andrew had become king? And it looks like AI has already come for the sommeliers.

7. Things are looking up. Especially if you’re Finnish. You live in the world’s happiest country for the 9^th year in a row. The U.S. placed 23^rd and Canada 25^th. That’s okay because the world is getting happier: Since 2006-2010, 79 countries have shown significant gains in happiness, while 41 show significant losses.

Speaking of happiness, does culture still follow capital? And guess who’s drowning in debt– since 1882?

8. Some conspiracies aren’t theories. Like how ICE agents turned up everywhere(from the unimpeachable Bellingcat). Plus why some bettors are issuing death threats.Plus, the perils of perpetual politics. And the deadliest types of extreme weather. “A Tsunami of Transnational Repression” is set to hit Canada, Ron Deibert, head of The Citizen Lab, told a House of Commons committee this week. And this anti-Trumper isn’t going to “No Kings” this weekend.

9. Round they go. How to watch thousands of satellites circle the earth. And how to watch our same Home Planet 750 million years ago. Plus not a good reason to die, nor a good way to, either. Plus, how organizations lose their minds.

10. The BS at the BSO. The Boston Symphony Orchestra is one of the world’s best. Last week, they announced they were ending their contract with their music director, Andris Nelsons. One problem: everyone loves him. Even competing orchestras. Another? They forgot to tell the musicians. Given this note to a casual enquirer, maybe the BSO Board are the ones who need to go in a different direction.

11. What I’m watching: The Madison (on Prime), Taylor Sheridan’s latest love story, one of 10 of his series streaming in big sky country. Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russellprovide the sparks, but this is more a love-and-loss story. As my mother used to say, it’s a weeper.

Alex Bozikovic is the architecture critic of the Globe and Mail. Last weekend, he wrote a column titled “Doug Ford’s obsession to expand downtown Toronto Airport would be economic vandalism.”

I asked myself why an Ontario Premier would want to vandalize the economy of the city responsible for half the province’s wealth creation.

So I took my pencil and marked everything in Bozikovic’s piece that’s vague, sloppy, partisan or just plain wrong. I’ll begin at the beginning.

“Doug Ford’s push for jets at Billy Bishop Airport wouldn’t just wreck Toronto’s waterfront. It would be economic vandalism.”

How exactly would it wreck Toronto’s waterfront?

Noise pollution?

Actually, the new regional jets are quieter than older jets. They’re louder than prop planes, like the Bombardier Q400s that Porter uses, but not that much.

So how about wrecking the Harbour with a longer runway that jets require?

The current runway is 3,988 feet. A new runway to accommodate jets would be 5,440 feet. That 1,500 foot difference is no small number. But it wouldn’t prevent boats from operating in the Toronto Harbour. I keep my kayak on the islands and I have to steer clear of the airstrip when I go out for a paddle. But I don’t view that as an inconvenience. I’m a recreational boater; surely the more time I spend on the water, the better. And if I’m on the Toronto Island Ferry, the extra time it takes me to get to the Island and back is negligible.

So how about polluting the air and water?

Well, adding jets causes a small increase in local air pollutants, but nothing compared to having an airport there at all and certainly compared to downtown traffic. Next…

“[Billy Bishop…moves….] less than 5 per cent of Toronto air passengers. Yet Billy Bishop claims $2.1 billion in ‘economic output’ each year. They expect Canadians to believe that, if the airport closed tomorrow, none of its flights would move to Pearson, all its jobs would disappear and its visitors would choose not to come to Toronto. Which is absurd.”

What’s absurd is to think that none of these flights would move to Pearson. I assume that all of them would try to get landing slots at Pearson, that the 2,000 people who work at Billy Bishop would try to find jobs at Pearson, Hamilton, Waterloo or Oshawa, and that visitors would choose to fly to Toronto and land at Pearson International that handles millions more passengers and is 30 minutes away.

The fact is, Billy Bishop is one of Canada’s 10 busiest airports and one of the world’s top 10 best airports (fewer than 5 million passengers a year). Since 2006 when Porter first launched, passenger loads have risen from less than 25,000 to 2 million annually. And even with the opening of the Pearson UP Express in 2015, over a million Canadians drive the 170 kilometres to Buffalo to catch a flight – a two-hour drive not counting delays at the border.

Okay, so what about Billy Bishop contributing to declining real estate values on the waterfront? Not true. Condo prices near Billy Bishop are 10 per cent higher than those east of Yonge Street.

Bozikovic interviewed urbanist Greg Lindsay for his column. Lindsay is the co-author of Aerotropolis, which was published in 2011. He says: “I can point to any number of papers that show concentrating your traffic in a single hub is better than dividing it into two.” And since Toronto’s Pearson Airport is that hub, “anything that dilutes Pearson’s hub function risks real economic harm.”

Tell that to New York (7 airports), London (6), Los Angeles (5), Melbourne, Paris, Dusseldorf and Moscow, Tokyo, Stockholm, Dubai, San Francisco and Boston (4), plus dozens more with 3 airports.

Next…

“Billy Bishop is used by many members of downtown Toronto’s business and political elites. The few people who use the airport, including local Liberal MPs and their staff, benefit from its tiny scale and small crowds.”

Are you an elite? I am. Or rather, I’m not. Or I am sometimes, and I’m not other times. Very much like everyone I know and like many of the 2.75 million citizens of Toronto. And are we elite by income? By education? By job category? Restaurant choice? Political power? Fashion sense? Home ownership? Bozikovic uses “elite” as an all-purpose insult, even though he belongs to a very elite group of full-time architecture critics.

As for “the few people who use the airport,” a minute spent on Perplexity would tell him 2.8 million passengers used Billy Bishop in 2019. That fell by 75 per cent during COVID, then bounced back up to 1.7 million in 2022, 2 million in 2023 and 2.1 million in 2024. It fell again when Canadians went “Elbows Up” and stopped flying as much to the U.S. But the opening on March 10 of U.S. pre-clearance will likely have it return to 2.8 million in the next couple of years.

Next…“I like flying Billy Bishop,” says Mr. Lindsay who is based in Montreal. “It is convenient. It is nice and this is a mistake that we make. People are mistaking their personal preferences for what is the best policy choice.”

I’m not sure that selecting something because it’s convenient is a mistake. Uber is more convenient than taxis, Airbnb can be more convenient than a hotel; and my iPhone is more convenient, at times addictively so, than a landline/camera/calendar/writing pad/calculator. And of course airplanes are more convenient than railways. I certainly don’t view them as policy mistakes. Such mistakes have created trillion-dollar companies.

Next…“The bulk of new flights would also be to the U.S. I would think an expansion runs counter to the stated goals of the Carney government to increase its trading partnerships overseas versus the United States.”

The Carney government is not in favour of no trade at all with the United States. It wants to lower its current level of 76 per cent of its exports going to America. Canada has all sorts of other ways to divert its overdependence on those exports. And when the market for flights is literally just across the pond, why not expand there rather than to Mexico or Great Britain or India?

Finally…

“So, what would be best? For that we need to determine the real negatives of a jet expansion: filling of the harbour, pollution and noise. Not to mention the continuing multibillion-dollar development of the port lands led by Waterfront Toronto. Airport flight paths are already limiting development potential there, and jets could add to that burden. The city has spent 50 years trying to clean up its lakefront. Mr. Ford’s whims could prove ruinously expensive.”

Yes, there is some filling of the harbour by lengthening the runways, but not enough to cause anyone real inconvenience. Pollution and noise would be much the same as there is today. As for flight paths limiting development, by ‘development’ is he talking about more condos on the waterfront? Surely we’ve learned they won’t make the waterfront more beautiful or human. As for Mr. Ford’s whims, the author has failed to make the case for how they could prove ruinously expensive.

To be clear, I have issues with jets flying from Billy Bishop. For example, I share Taras Grescoe’s view that we need railways, not runways. My complaint is how weakly the Globe and Mail’s architecture critic made his case against Doug Ford.

In fact, the sense I get from reading Alex Bozikovic’s piece is that he called it in. He assumed the reader accepts his premise of “Ford + Waterfront = Destruction” when a basic check could have revealed how paper-thin it is around the facts.

In a word, it is lazy. While I don’t expect more from the author, I do from the Globe and Mail.

Meanwhile…

1. “To be a woman right now…especially a woman who loves men, is to try to reconcile the love and respect that you have for the men that you trust, with the utter loathing, disgust and sense of betrayal you feel toward men in general…” And here’s how the founder of Noma, René Redzepi, resigned, and how the Cesar Chavez story came out.…andHarvey Weinstein: The Rikers Interview…and have you come a long way, baby?...Finally, can your favourite movie pass The Bechdel Test?

Speaking of…hooked on baguettes. And…of the Top 250 women in the world of sustainability, Toronto’s Kathleen McLaughlin is Number 1.

2. Circumcision rates…In different countries. 31.9% in Canada and 80.5% in America?

3. Keep the meter running. A guy waves down a taxi in New York City, jumps in and says “take me to your favourite place and keep the meter running.” The cabbie is then interviewed on their way to their favourite place, usually a very local ethnic restaurant. Without fail, each cabbie turns out to have a remarkable life.

Speaking of…happiness in every language… and of other New York delights: 3-D scans come to the Met, and Mozart at the Morgan.

4. New Canadian media mogul. We’ve had Lord Beaverbrook, Ken Thomson and Conrad Black. To that list add Toronto billionaire Stephen Smith who just bought 26.9% of The Economist from Lynn Forester de Rothschild. Smith’s purchase is only the third major ownership change in the magazine’s 183-year history.

5. Delightful takedowns of dreadful wankers. First, Andrew O’Hagan on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Then, Michael Ignatieff on predatory hegemons. Then Margaret Atwood shows off to a seductive and possibly psychopathic AI bot. Dan Gardner wonders why Donald Trump keeps saying “We don’t need anybody.” Finally, the Secret Police Playbook. You don’t join ICE or the secret police because you’re a fascist or a sadist or a monster. You join because you didn’t do as well as your peers at the police academy, or your career is stalled.

6. Elton John and Glenn Gould, in the same breath, in the same city. The Glenn Gould Prize is one of the most coveted awards in the world of music. As it should be. This year’s winner is Elton John who lives in Toronto (and Beverly Hills, England and France), and on Saturday, May 9, Elton John will be honoured at an evening with performances by Diana Krall, The Beaches, Jeremy Dutcher, LOONY, Ron Sexsmith, Emily D’Angelo, and Ryan Wang. Tickets here.

7. The good old days…how they handled bad PR in Hollywood…plus playing realhardball…plus Peanut-Butter-cup Toothpaste…plus the first airplane fatality…And finally, the non-death of reading.

8. Not Hamlet the play, or Hamnet the movie…But Hamlet the dance. April 24, 25, 26 at the Elgin Wintergarden Theatre Directed by Robert Lepage, danced by Guillaume Coté. 10% off to readers of this blog (PROMO CODE: RAMSAY10). Tickets here.

9. Different strokes…for showing off your wardrobe…for cats in art books…for figuring out Spotify…for human speedbumps…and why we can’t hear movies any more. And finally, Joe Rogan’s podcast with Pierre Poilievre. Rogan has 21 million subscribers.

10. Feel good, see great…As it says in Desiderata, and timelier than ever: “With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy…like this…and this…..and, oh wow, this.

In the span of a few days, three Toronto-area synagogues were hit last week by gunfire. Temple Emanu‑El in North York was struck during Purim, with 20 shots fired into a building where the rabbi was still inside. Days later, Shaarei Shomayim near Bathurst and Glencairn, and Beth Avraham Yosef of Toronto in Thornhill, were both shot at in the middle of the night, their doors left pocked with bullet holes but, by good luck or bad aim, no bodies.

Police aren’t yet sure if the incidents are linked, but they’re clear about one thing: they’re hate‑motivated. They’re also being lived as hate‑motivated; every Jewish parent now drives past their synagogue’s doors and quietly re‑calculates how many seconds it would take to get their kids out if the bullets came at 11 a.m. instead of 11 p.m.

If these were “just” three attacks, that would be horrific enough. But they’re part of a long, rising line. In 2024, Toronto Police logged 443 hate‑motivated incidents, a record high and a 19 per cent jump over 2023. Forty per cent of those incidents—177 cases—targeted Jews, who make up under four percent of the city’s population. Since 2014, hate crimes have risen by more than 300%.

The escalation after October 7, 2023, has been brutal. Toronto Police say antisemitism now accounts for more hate crimes than any other bias category, with over half of confirmed incidents aimed at Jews. Calls related to hate crimes rose 93 per cent in the months following October 7 compared with the same period a year earlier, and there have been nearly a thousand such calls since then. Community advocates calculate a 144 per cent rise in anti‑Jewish hate crimes since 2021 alone.

That is what “we’re scared” looks like when you turn it into a spreadsheet.

Toronto sells itself as the city where everyone belongs: 250 ethnicities, 170 languages, more residents born outside Canada than in. Yet in our same city, year after year Jews remain the single most targeted group for hate crimes. The posters at Pearson say “Diversity is our strength”; the plywood on synagogue windows says, “But not everywhere.”

In Ottawa, successive Liberal governments have tried to frame antisemitism and Islamophobia as twin evils, equal and opposite, joined at the podium and in the press release. Of course, both are real, both vile, and both demand serious action; Muslims in this country have been murdered while walking with their families or praying in mosques. But “both” does not mean “the same,” and pretending it does erases what is specific and acute about the Jewish experience right now.

When more than half of reported hate crimes in Toronto are aimed at Jews, year after year, that’s not a rounding error. When bullets are hitting synagogues three times in a week, the message being heard in Jewish homes is not “the government cares about all communities equally,” it’s “no one wants to say out loud that our community is under extraordinary, particular pressure.” Solidarity can hold two truths at once: Muslims are at risk, and Jews are uniquely and statistically at the top of the hate‑crime ledger in this city.

I’ve never viewed my Jewish friends as victims. If anything, they play an outsized role in so many vital aspects of the city. They’re leaders, not victims. But starting after Oct. 7 and peaking last week, they have repeatedly said: “I feel alone.” “Where is everyone?”

Like many of my Jewish friends, I think Benjamin Netanyahu is a terrible leader and Israel’s actions in Palestine (and now Iran) are less invasions and more slaughters of the innocent.

But please don’t tell me that because of this, a Jew living in Toronto deserves to be shot.

So if you’re not Jewish, here are a few things you can do to help.

• Say something. “I saw what happened at the synagogues and I’ve been thinking about you” lands differently than a “how are you?”

• Show up where it counts. Attend an open house, a vigil, a public event at a synagogue or the JCC.

• Challenge the lazy takes. When friends or colleagues reduce Jews to a proxy for Middle East politics, gently push back and remind them that local Jews are your neighbours, not a foreign policy file.

• Learn the basics. Take 30 minutes to read a short primer on antisemitism in Canada so you understand why this feels historic, not episodic, to your Jewish friends.

• Be visibly allied. If your kids’ school has had antisemitic graffiti or incidents, email the principal, not to rage, but to insist on a clear, public response.

• Keep checking in after the news cycle moves on. Fear doesn’t track the headlines; it tracks the sound the building makes at 3 a.m. when you think you heard a car slow down.

None of these will stop a bullet. But all of them tell a small, embattled minority that they are seen, not just counted.

Finally, a very practical question: why on earth can’t every one of Toronto’s 129 synagogues have a dedicated, monitored camera pointed at the street? If police can flood downtown with surveillance before a parade or a protest, surely they can manage license‑plate‑catching cameras around the buildings that keep getting shot. We live in the age of surveillance; surely drive-by shootings are child’s play for facial-recognition software. If someone fired shots in the night at St. James Anglican Cathedral or St. Michael’s Catholic Basilica, the hue and cry would be long and loud.

Civil libertarians will warn about the risks of a more watched city. But Jewish Torontonians are already living in a more watched city—they are the ones being watched through rifle sights.

Meanwhile…

1. As others see us. Pew Research asked people in 25 countries to rate

the morality and ethics of others in their country. In 24 of those countries, people said: “Yes, we’re great and good.” In fact, Canadians scored at the top of the heap; 92% of us think the rest of us are honest and moral. The one country whose citizens think ill of each other is the United States. . Say no more.

2. Preparing your…garden for spring. For old age…for the next James Bond…for staying in an Airbnb…and finally, preparing for the Overton Window…your sea lanes for oil tankers.

3. The rise of…Japanese Italian restaurants…of new flight tracking software…of tech companies more powerful than many countries…of earning a living standing in line…and of goats as firefighters.

4. Don’t you just hate it when they bomb your hotel? What to do when you’re staying in the Fairmont Palm Hotel in Dubai and Iran bombs it? Complain online.

5. Trips to the edge of your world. We still have room at The Canada Summit atop the Rocky Mountains Aug. 30 - Sept. 3 with speakers Steve Paikin, Dr. Heather Ross, Ron Deibert and Cynthia Wesley- Esquimaux.

Join us also on a Turkish gulet and at The Kardamyli Festival in Greece this Fall with the entire front page of British public intellectuals.

6. AI beats your condo board. A friend of ours wrote her resignation letter from her condo board. Then she asked AI to write a funnier version.

While AI can now do lots of things better than humans, so can chimpanzees.

7. What is Trump’s reason for bombing Iran? Historian Tim Snyder says it’s simple: personal corruption. But historian Robert Pape thinks it’s the “smart-bomb’ trap.

8. Toronto’s new convention centre is five times bigger than its current one.At least if Premier Doug Ford has his way. He wants to fill in parts of Lake Ontario to make sure we get a 2 million square foot facility, slightly smaller than Chicago’s McCormick Place, the largest in North America.

9. A rich retirement plan. This 7-minute animated short from The New Yorker is nominated for a 2026 Oscar.

Speaking of animated, Judi Dench was born to play Queen Victoria. And speaking of rich, it seems the Breaking Bad Effect is alive and well: if you have a cancer diagnosis, chances are 14% higher you’ll commit a crime.

10. The best of world music comes to Koerner Hall. Belize’s Garifuna Collectivewith special guest Mis Blandine perform on April 2. Tickets 25% off. (Promo Code: RAMSAY25).

11. Let’s never forget…what a monster Ayatollah Khamenei was…that some species come back from the dead…that suicide lurks always…that some people take things that are perfectly fine and make them worse…and that parenthood means a tangle of things.

12. What I’m liking: This post of life’s great moments. Plus Dark Winds, on Prime. Now in Season 5, starring Zahn McClarnon as a Navajo Nation Police Chief and executive produced by both Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin.

Last year I joined all three of Canada’s major political parties. Not because I can’t make up my mind, but I love getting their fundraising pitches in my inbox and comparing them. My interest is professional.

One kind of writing I love is asking people for money, especially when all they get in return is a tax receipt. It’s also very hard to do well. If I ask you for $50 and give you two Swiss Chalet dinners in return, that’s a lot easier than giving you a tax receipt for your $50 and a warm feeling that you’re supporting the Canadian Cancer Society.

When it comes to political fundraising, reading the parties’ different pitches reveals not only who they are, but who they think you are. The Liberals’ writing style is what I call ‘big tent.’ They’re not only looking to shore up their support among long-time Liberals, but pick off Tories from the right who don’t like Pierre Poilievre, and NDPers from the left who don’t like…well, there’s the problem right there. The NDP doesn’t have a leader and won’t until March 29. Avi Lewis (the son of Stephen Lewis and grandson of David Lewis) has 90.5% of the party’s support and here’s where he stands.

Back to my inbox. Here’s a typical Liberal message: “At this turning point for our country, we need to work together as one team Canada. Because we can’t control what other nations do, but we can control how we respond.”

That kind of language won’t get millions of us to rip open our wallets and send money Mark Carney’s way. But it’s a whole lot better than the Conservative’s pitches.

First, the Tories talk to me as if I’m a child. Their emails are one step up from “See Dick Run. See Jane Run.” Really? Try this. But the Tories’ pitches are also degraded by half-truths and straight out lies. Whenever I see them, one word comes to mind – Trump! – and I run from their message.

A number of Tory e-mails refer to “communities…being terrorized…and families no longer feel safe in their own neighbourhoods.”

Let’s dig into that via the murder rate for Toronto. In 2023, 73 people were murdered here. The next year it rose to 85, and last year it fell by more than half, to 38. This year so far, two people have been murdered in Toronto.

Last year, a Tory e-mail said this: “Violent crime is up 50%. Hate crimes are up 250%. Gang-related homicides are up 78%. And violent gun crime is up 116%. So I asked AI if these numbers were correct, and it replied they are “not accurate…they appear to mix or exaggerate figures drawn from narrower context and different time periods.”

Here again are the Tories’ claims vs. the facts.

“Violent crime up 50%.”

Nationally, violent crime has increased, but nowhere near by 50%. From 2009-2023, Statistics Canada claims violent crime rose by 9%.

“Hate crimes up 250%.”

From 2019 to 2023, hate crime more than doubled, rising by 130% nationally. It rose by 32% in a single year, 3,612 incidents in 2022 compared to 4,777 in 2023.

“Gang-related homicides up 78%.

In 2024, gang-related homicides fell from 174 the year before to 152. This rate dropped below 0.40 per 100,000 for the first time since 2016.

“Violent gun crime up 116%.”

From 2009 to 2019 criminal use of firearms rose by 81%. In 2020 violent gun-crime rose by 15%.

It’s clear that the Tories’ strategy of frightening Canadians into voting for them isn’t working. As of last week “… 45 per cent say they would vote for the Liberals in a future federal election, compared to 32 per cent who prefer the Conservative Party.”

Meanwhile…

1. Epstein Files. The U.S. Department of Justice has six million pages of evidence, but has only released 3.5 millions of pages, including 180,000 images and 2,000 videos. It is so vast that the New York Times has two dozen reporters working full-time to find and reveal what’s in the files. Here’s how you can access them.

2. Book and other clubs. The Hay Festivals have a free online book club. This month’s book is Jan Morris’ novel, Sultan in Oman. In 1955, Morris accompanied the Sultan of Oman on the first crossing of the Omani desert by motorcar as a professional observer, and was inspired by the experience to write her major work of imperial history, the Pax Britannica trilogy.

3. Moving bodies…Hands up…Hands clap…plus Dottie’s Dying (and half-price heroin)...and waving goodbye…and smooth moves…And a baby giraffe was born at the Toronto Zoo last week…and speaking of other pretty pictures, check out these. Plus, he lives like a monk and dines like a king.

4. Trips to the edge of your world. We still have space at The Canada Summit atop the Rocky Mountains Aug. 30-Sept. 3 with speakers Steve Paikin, Dr. Heather Ross, Ron Deibert and Cynthia Wesley- Esquimaux.

5. Stop…panicking about the death of reading. This university librarian says we’rereading it all wrong. Plus how Paul McCartney carved out a happy family…and Scotland fans can now wear their sporrans (“an essential purse worn in front of a Scotsman’s groin”) to World Cup matches.

6. Patrick Radden Keefe is one of the hottest reporters in the world. He wrote about an IRA killing in Say Nothing, the Sackler Family in Empire of Pain (which won the Baillie Gifford Prize for the best non-fiction book in the English language.) He’ll be speaking at a RamsayTalk on June 15 on his new book London Falling. Tickets here.

…if you’re looking for a great discussion by authors who matter, take in Remembrance as Resistance: Why Canada’s World War II Stories Matter Now on March 25 from 7:00 to 8:45 p.m. at the Leah Posluns Theatre with four bestselling Canadian writers: Maureen Jennings, Robert Rotenberg, Joanne Kormylo and Ellin Bessner. (15% discount for blog readers. Promo Code: BOB15).

7. Losers. First, the U.S. Men’s hockey team. Plus Doctor Foster is a wolf tonight…plusfrat house hazing on the run. Winners? This hockey fan, and a retired American couple.

8. Winners. Since 1972, the Council for Canadian American Relations has promoted the arts and artists in and between our two countries. On May 11 in New York, their bi-annual gala celebrates Yannick Nézet-Séguin, music director of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain, as well as the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Philadelphia Orchestra; artist Cindy Sherman; Glenn Lowry, director emeritus of the Museum of Modern Art; and Matthew Teitelbaum director emeritus of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston.

9. On the road again…with the best road rations of all…plus, for the past four years, the city of Chicago has run a “Name the Snowplow” contest. Of the six winners this year (I guess they buy six new snowplows every year there), #1 was “Abolish ICE”, followed by “Stephen Coldbert”...plus, a new Canadian hiking trail opens: the Rocky to Nordegg Rail Trail in central Alberta. It takes 6 days to hike its 109 km.

10. American health care…can’t answer the simplest question. At least Dr. Casey Means, Donald Trump’s candidate for U.S. Surgeon General, won’t. Dr. Means, who graduated from med school, but isn’t licensed to practice medicine, ducked every questionduring her nomination hearing to be “America’s Doctor”…The Lancet is one of the most respected medical journals in the world. Its editorial last week on Robert F. Kennedy Jr: 1 year of failure, is revealing, if not surprising…and…there are almost as many medical spas in America as there are McDonald’s.

Meanwhile, until now the FDA insisted on two full and successful clinical trials for all new drug candidates. Then this past February, it reduced that to one successful trial plus ‘confirmatory evidence’. Drug developers are ecstatic; they’ll save millions of dollars and years in waiting for approvals. And patients may be happy to get new lifesaving drugs. Time will tell if they work.

11. Annals of travel…should they ban autos from the Las Vegas Strip? Plus…private jets are so last year…but private trains? And a reminder that the first self-driving cars hit the road in 1904…And here’s oil trade through the Strait of Hormuz by country. Finally, if those luxury hotel newsletters you signed up for produce only envy and regret, read this from the Fogo Island Inn.

The only time Canada won no gold medals in the 102-year history of the Winter Olympics was in 1988 when it hosted the games in Calgary.

In the next five games, it won more and more gold: 2 in Albertville in 1992; 3 in Lillehammer in 1994; 6 in Nagano in 1998; and 7 each in Salt Lake City in 2002 and Turin in 2006.

Then came Vancouver in 2010 when Canada won 14 golds, the most won by any country at a single Winter Olympics. We then won 11 golds four years later in PyeongChang. That fell to 4 golds in Beijing and 5 in Milano-Cortina last week.

Our overall medal count is also in steep decline: from 29 in 2018, to 26 in 2022, to 21 in Milano-Cortina. Worse still was to lose both men’s and women’s hockey, both games to the USA, and both by a score of 2-1. Ouch.

I’ve often said that Canada isn’t in the excellence business; we’re in the ‘pretty good’ business. We don’t need to finish first to feel good about ourselves. We just need to finish in the medals, proud to share the podium.

But the world is no longer friendly to such a view. In a winner-take-all culture, every nation but one loses. Being pretty good hobbles our future and leaves us easy prey to places who know the difference between gold and silver may be a hundredth of a second, but that’s a difference worth fighting for. Because in today’s dog-eat-dog world, unless you’re the lead dog, the view never changes.

The very good news from this corner of the bedroom where I’m sucking my thumb is that we can change. Canada can Own the Podium because we’ve done it before. In 2005, fearing that Vancouver 2010 would jinx us as the host nation with no golds like we won in Calgary, Ottawa joined with corporate supporters and winter sport federations to raise $110 million over five years to make our best Olympians even better.

It turns out that lack of gold is a problem money can solve.

Last week, Globe and Mail columnist Cathal Kelly used the example of Norway, which topped the medal standings in Milano-Cortina with 41 medals (18-12-11), despite being a country with barely more than half the population of Quebec.

Norway has set up a state lottery where part of the proceeds are redistributed to Olympic sports.

Today, many of our Olympic athletes don’t even get to the training camps. When they travel, they sleep on friends’ couches instead of in hotel rooms. I know we take perverse pride in punching above our weight. But we’re a rich country for Heaven’s sake.

Canada’s Chef de Mission and former gold medalist, Jennifer Heil, “ listed some of the things she got when she competed back in the literal salad days – regular training camps, specialized training camps, ski waxing experts on staff, medical and physiological services, bio-neuro-

feedback.”

These days Ottawa is funding all kinds of patriotic programs to remind us that our sovereignty is threatened in the north, and our nationhood is threatened by Alberta and Quebec whose governments seem to want us all to go our own way.

Whatever we’re spending on amping up our military, surely we can allocate a tiny thimbleful of that to our Olympic programs so that every two years we can turn on CBC and remind ourselves that we, too, can be worldbeaters.

Meanwhile…

1. You go right ahead. Next weekend, Rosemary Thompson will throw her body into the icy waters of Meech Lake, where she covered the collapse of the Meech Lake Accord for CBC in 1990. The Can Geo Polar Plunge is the annual fundraiser for The Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Rosemary promised she’d carry a sign with my name on it, so I upped my donation. You can too.

2. Extreme facts: “Ukraine’s intense counter-attacks have pushed Russia’s death toll to more than 1.25 million – more than the total sustained by the United States during the Second World War.” Plus…extreme ways to combat over-tourism. And how muchCanadians hate the United States right now.

3. Luxury is drowning in ubiquity risk. In other words, when it’s everywhere, it loses its value and allure. Besides, wealth-porn long ceased being a good look.

Speaking of…cooking on a yacht for the rich is hard.

4. What caused the market to tank 800 points this week? Trump’s tariffs, of course. But also this Wall Street research report that predicts AI will run the economy not in some distant future, but “…Two years. That’s all it took to get from “contained” and “sector-specific” to an economy that no longer resembles the one any of us grew up in.”

Speaking of AI, are you mimetic or agentic? And can AI teach you to master yourself?

Speaking of why the U.S. Supreme Court decision is bigger than just tariffs, Robert Reichwrites: “It stops Trump from deciding not to spend money Congress appropriated, and from going to war without Congress’s approval.

5. “I need 8 hours sleep a night.” A junior New York banker insisted on that, which Centerview Partners first agreed to, then turned around and let her go. So she sued them, and they settled this week on the courthouse steps.

6. Own a cottage in Muskoka? Binged on Heated Rivalry? You’re in double luck. The BBC reports that Muskoka rentals this summer have more than doubled. Here’s the real lakefront cottage where Shane and Ilya snuggle up.

7. Guess what the new head of the ROM is? A Canadian! Nicholas Bell, from the Glenbow Museum in Calgary where he led their move to free admission for all. The ROM is Canada’s largest museum, with 18 million artworks, cultural objects and natural history specimens in 40 galleries, and over one million visitors each year.

And speaking of proud Canadians on the world stage, Toronto General Hospital used to be one of the top three in the world. This week, it became one of the Top Two – behind the Mayo Clinic and ahead of the Cleveland Clinic.

8. How…Jeffrey Epstein became a public intellectual…plus how brick walls snare pedophiles. And how to fall short of the CIA’s high standards of objectivity. And how far back in time can you understand English?

9. Winter just means more in Canada. Even when we lose gold in men’s hockey.

And our cold makes it easier to work in Antarctica. And our memes are prettier.

10. Few, if any, existed five years ago. Here are 26 ideas you should know before venturing full-bore into 2026…Plus, how does $100 grow, by asset class?

And how to slur your words on air – and keep your job.

11. What I’m liking. Instagram for unpacking why women mourn how the U.S. men’s hockey team behaved after their gold medal win over Canada last Sunday. Unpacking?...like this….and this…and this.

I’ve held off writing about the Epstein scandal because it’s growing faster than any cancer, and like the worst cancers it changes direction at will. It’s a moving, metastasizing target.

It began as a sex scandal, then morphed into a sexual trafficking scandal, grew to be abanking scandal, a business scandal, then a political scandal, a philanthropy scandal, afemale enabler scandal, a Royal Families scandal (Britain and Norway), a Prime Minister’s scandal, a global network scandal, a possible spy scandal and, lest we forget, aDonald Trump scandal…and a Melania scandal.

In a restrained understatement, the New York Times labelled Jeffrey Epstein “this century’s most horrifically-accomplished social climber.”

I think he’s also the creator of the world’s largest, slowest-burning and most explosive atomic device. This is because we’re only now starting to feel the time-bombs going off in the 3.5 million pages of documents, hundreds of thousands of images, and 2,000 videos released this month. What’s more, the U.S. Justice Department is still sitting on 2.5 million more documents whose release may be spasmodic right now, but will likely come to see the light of day. By their nature, secrets leak, and 2.5 million of them can’t stay sealed up forever.

Indeed, the sheer size of the Epstein scandal dwarfs other notorious document dumps such as the Panama Papers, the massive leak of confidential tax files from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca in 2016. That leak exposed 11.5 million documents. Three years earlier, a systems administrator at the U.S. National Security Agency, Edward Snowden, downloaded 1.5 million Top Secret files, and leaked tens of thousands to journalists, exposing to the world the many U.S. government surveillance programs on Americans.

But with Epstein, we’re not talking about spy stuff, or how to evade paying your taxes. Nor are we talking about massive data leaks.

We are talking about an absolutely barbaric pedophile scandal.

We are also talking about the American government, in protecting its President from being impeached by the Epstein revelations, executing a strategy that has few precedents in human history.

Rather than suffocating a scandal by depriving it of oxygen, which every other holder of power from Julius Caesar to Doug Ford has done in order to stay in power, Washington has decided to drown us in evidence, hoping we’ll turn away because the scandal is so big and complex. Or we won’t stop to figure it out because it’s so fast-moving. Or we’ll move on, numb from the daily assault on our belief that money and power don’t always corrupt absolutely.

Or, and this is a relatively new point in the calculus of denial, we’re so disgusted by endless tales of people at the centre of power, influence and trust having sex with underage girls whom Epstein procured for them, that the mere mention of the word “Epstein” causes us to turn away.

So I urge us all to pay heed, to drill down into the abhorrent and not flee from it.

A good way to get started is to listen to this week’s Ezra Klein Podcast,

The Infrastructure of Jeffrey Epstein’s Power, on Apple Podcasts. As Klein notes: “We are still far from the end of the story…But what has come into clear view is the incredible breadth of Epstein’s network, the huge range of people who relied on him, communicated with him, traded with him, and the role he played in this network as a broker of information, connection, wealth and, ultimately, human beings.”

Who knows, this could even be the end of Donald Trump, a long-held desire of mine that painful experience has taught me not to dare dream of in the past 14 months.

Meanwhile…

1. Wanna be in pictures? Now you can make the entire picture show, thanks to AI. Two examples, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt duke it out on a rooftop. This 15-second clip was created by Irish director Ruairi Robinson using Seedance 2.0 and scaring the hell out of Hollywood. Also, just to show that anyone can make a movie these days, here is The Road That Can’t Be Fixed, about potholes.

In other AI news, it’s making top-tier predictions available to all of us. What will happen to all those pundits?

2. Urgent news on curling. To understand why Canada is the bad-boy of Olympic curling, we first need to know the rules of the game. Here they are.

3. The Grifters. It was a 1990 Stephen Frears’ film-noir about fixing horse races which starred John Cusack, Anjelica Huston, and Annette Bening, Here, American historian Heather Cox Richardson reports on today’s grifters.

4. What kind of person…joins a cult? Every kind…murdered Van Gogh?...tells the truth about our kids?... Uses poison from dart frogs to kill their political opponents? Andbuys a Toyota because it’s reliable?...and hides in plain sight as ordinary?

5. Does conservation mean leaving nature alone? It seems not. Many species, forests and wetlands now need active human intervention to survive. Shawn Regan reports on the pitfalls of letting nature care for itself.

6. Shame has to change sides. Gisèle Pelicot’s book, A Hymn to Life, on how she survived her husband’s horrific abuse, is out this week. Published in 22 languages, Emma Thompson reads the English audio version.

7. Not just to the mountains; or even in the mountains; but on the mountains. If you’re looking for a short, intense brain squeeze and soul refresh at summer’s end, joinSteve Paikin, Dr. Heather Ross, Ron Deibert and Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux for The Canada Summit, Aug. 30 - Sept. 3 in the Canadian Rockies. Details here.

8. Strange sports. Like mountain uni-cycling…and resistance dancing…Andsynchronized figure-skating…and figure-skating tiger moms.

9. In America’s trenches. Dan O’Connor is the Chief Security Officer at FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Because the U.S. government is on strike, he’s once again, along with hundreds of his colleagues, working for no pay. Every Friday, he sends them (and me) an e-mail to help them feel better about their work and themselves. Like this.

10. Tourism is growing…and not in the usual places. The world’s largest industrygrew by 4% in 2025 over the year before. Biggest gainer? Brazil by a whopping 37%. And of course, Greenland also enjoyed its “best year ever” because of Donald Trump.

11. What I’m liking. The Netflix movie, Queen of Chess, about Hungarian Judit Polgár, who became the world’s top female chess player and who beat Gary Kasparov at his own game. Her oft-slagged father, who turned his three daughters into a social engineering project by making them practice chess eight hours a day from age 5, doesn’t seem to have turned them into twisted asocial adults. If anything, the opposite.

Trump Tower, Trump Hotel, Trump (and Kennedy) Center, Trump Institute, Trump Park, Trump Highway, Trump Boulevard and, as of last week, Trump Station (replacing Penn Station in New York), and Trump International Airport (replacing Dulles International in Virginia).

These last two are just possibilities for now. They’re the quo in the quid pro quo of Trump unfreezing billions of dollars in funding for a major New York infrastructure project. If Senate Democrats say yes to Trump’s offer, the taps will open. They’ve said no so far, though this is only the opening round of negotiations.

But they illustrate just how insatiable Donald Trump is in his need to have his name on everything. Insatiable as in ‘addictively beyond control’, where one is too many and a thousand is never enough.

This got me thinking last week as we waited for our flight from Oaxaca, Mexico, to Houston and Toronto, with everyone clutching their passports for inspection by various border agents, that there’s one government property Trump hasn’t got his mitts on yet with an eye to renaming it.

America’s Passports.

There are 183.2 million of them in circulation, representing 54% of Americans. What a perfect marketing vehicle this little handheld device can become. Not just for President Trump, but for “the greatest nation in all of human history.”

Today, the cover of the American passport says: “Passport”...then below, “United States of America.” Tomorrow, that cover, so official, so dignified, so appropriate and almost regal, could become a billboard for the President and his boundless bad taste. But the cover is just one of its 26 pages of largely blank billboard space, most highly suitable for words and images hailing America’s broad stripes and bright stars.

But here’s the thing. The U.S. passport is outdone by the new Canadian passport in terms of fancy new security features. Indeed, Canada’s passport was unveiled in 2023, and is among the most secure in the world. The most secure is Belgium’s with 43 separate security features. The point is, Canada’s is fancier than America’s, making it suitable for appropriation by Mr. Trump for its show business potential alone.

Like what?

According to Canada’s Passport website: “We added a Kinegram that changes colours and appears to move when you look at it from different angles.”

Just like Donald Trump.

“The same page also has a photo of you and your date of birth under a special lens. Each will appear and disappear depending on how you look at it.”

Just like Donald Trump.

“The visa pages now have seasonal art. These designs make your passport very difficult to counterfeit. They also change when you look at them under ultraviolet light.”

Just like Donald Trump.

When I told an American friend I was going to mention this idea in today’s blog, he said: “Don’t! It will only encourage him!!”

Well, aside from the unimpeachable fact that Donald Trump and his minions don’t read my blog, I’m sure they are already working on this project.

Meanwhile…

1. “Are you talkin’ to me?” – Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver turns 50 this week. It made the careers of Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Albert Brooks, Harvey Keitel, Peter Boyle and Cybill Shepherd, plus writer Paul Schrader and, of course, Scorsese.

And speaking of daring work on camera, is this TMI? Still on the Winter Olympics, this backgrounder will make them all clear.

2. Is Toronto anxious and depressed? Toronto’s first report card on mental wellness came out this week. “The percentage of Torontonians who say they have good mental health declined substantially between 2015 and 2022 – from 73% to 52%.” Report here.

Plus, here’s how to understand the Eglinton Crosstown LRT in 7 illustrations (link free, but sign in).

3. Resist and Unsubscribe. This is what Scott Galloway suggests all of us do to change things in America. And if you really want to fight fascism, host a potluck dinner with the neighbours.

Plus, how to identify ICE’s “Less Lethal Weapons.” And the best gas masks to use at demonstrations, and the difference between Life and LinkedIn.

4. AI is the cheetah; we are the gazelle. AI is already editing the photos on your phone.

But in two other parts of our lives, AI is sprinting past regulation and even perception. First, it’s created a new social network that AI bots use to connect with other AI bots.Second, there’s a good chance we will soon be doing most of our writing not for other humans, but for AI.

Speaking of existential risks, here are the top global risks today vs. 10 years from now. And…don’t navigate New York City without this app.

5. How to…(men’s division): Dress like Steve McQueen…Walk and play music at the same time. Both really well…Plan for lunch with Jeffrey Epstein…And watch Heated Rivalry, “the small Canadian” streaming series about two gay pro hockey players, written and directed by Montrealer Jacob Tierney. It went both viral and global last month and is now one of the most talked-about series in the world.

And speaking of daring new TV series, have you seen RFK Hospital?

6. Bezos appoints Melania Trump editor of Washington Post. Kidding!

7. There’s no such thing as…a Grand Strategy. All government is day-to-day…Life Without Struggle; it’s what gives it meaning…Substack without Nazis newsletters…R&D being over 5%, except, of course, in Israel where it’s 6.3% (it’s 1.8% of our GDP).

8. How to evaluate phone policies in schools. This guide is from the U.S., but it speaks to the universal need for ways to reduce phone use by kids and teens during the school day. Already, 40 U.S. states and one quarter of countries in the world have policies to restrict use in schools. But it’s generic enough that Canadian school boards (including Toronto’s) could adapt it as a de facto evaluation toolkit, layering on local outcomes likeEQAO scores or Ontario‑specific well‑being indicators.

9. The end is near. The end is here. Two items on death: the experience of near-death is finally getting serious scientific enquiry at a conference in April. Plus, couples who choose medical assistance in dying. They’re small in number and huge in ethical landmines.

10. Not welcome…First, American refugees in Canada. Next, Jeff Bezos as a publisher. And of course, the idea that space and time are separate things.