Whatever they call it, let’s call it… The Oval
“Last minute of play in the second period,” the booming voice of the Metro Centre’s PA announcer would declare solemnly, then add brightly: “Brought you to by…”
I can’t remember now which name-dropping corporate sponsor claimed credit for the last minute of play in a period at Mooseheads’ home hockey games, or whether it still does. I do my best to ignore the most crass product placement. But I mean… Really? Does anyone seriously believe the teams would not play the last minute of a period if the sponsor suddenly decided to stop paying?
As a longtime fan of a hockey team named after a beer can (and boasting more than its share of placed products), I find it difficult to get my knickers knotted at the notion that some company—even, heavens forefend, a beer company—might pony up a couple of hundred thou’ of their sin-gotten gains to tack their corporate logo onto the grand civic idea of transforming the new and temporary Canada Games skating oval into a permanent winter fixture on the Halifax Commons.
I know, I know. I’m not keen either on the idea of affixing yet another clunky corporate title—can you say the Dunkin’ Donuts Center in Providence, Rhode Island, or the National Car Rental Center in Sunrise, Florida?—to the beautifully simple, simply un-commercial dream of a community skating rink.
But hey, Halifax named one of its harbour bridges after the no-name chairman of its bridge commission—which is why many of us still refer to it, 40 years later, as the “new” bridge rather than whatever its official name is—and saddled its industrial parks with streets memorializing the full Christian names of dead city councilors.
My friends, that horse is out of the barn.
City officials claim it will cost $250,000 a year to make the Oval permanent. That’s a lot for hard-pressed taxpayers, but a drop in the Zamboni to a multination corporation like Molson-Coors or those good-life-made-easy folks at GoodLife Fitness Clubs.
So let’s take their money.
And say thank you very much.
But then let’s make a pact to keep calling it The Oval.
Clear. Simple. And commercial free.
Copyright 2011 Stephen Kimber
The Senator, the Herald and the obituary
Senator Keith Davey died last week at 84.
Davey was a Liberal backroom wizard, famous for wresting electoral triumph from the jaws of political ignominy. In 1963, for example, he helped Lester Pearson become prime minister. In 1974, he helped transform Pierre Trudeau’s then-floundering minority government into a renewed majority. Most famously, in 1979, he helped engineer the stunning defeat of Joe Clarke’s barely elected Tory minority government and then convinced a despondent Trudeau—who’d already announced his retirement from politics—to run one last time. He won.
But Davey’s lengthy curriculum vitae also included heading up a seminal 1969 senate committee on the sorry state of Canada’s newspapers.
Its final report was scathing, particularly about Halifax’s Chronicle-Herald.
“There is probably no large Canadian city that is so badly served by its newspapers,” the report thundered, “[and] probably no news organization in the country that has managed to achieve such an intimate and uncritical relationship with the local power structure, or has grown so indifferent to the needs of its readers.”
At the time, the Herald reacted with predictable outrage and vitriol, inadvertently confirming much of Davey’s criticism.
So I was curious to see how today’s Herald—an unquestionably much better newspaper—would handle Davey’s obituary.
Its 246-word, wire service story—“Liberal ‘Rainmaker’ Davey Dies”—focused almost exclusively on Davey’s role as a political strategist. There was not one word about the senate committee or its stinging rebuke of the Herald.
Still curious, I tracked down the original obituary from which the Herald version had been carved. It was 594 words, more than twice as long, and included best-edited-out boilerplate tributes from Prime Minister Harper and Liberal leader Ignatieff.
But the story did include three paragraphs—85 words—on Davey’s senate committee report. The CP story didn’t mention the Herald directly, of course, and it’s possible—likely even—that the editor who sliced and diced the CP story was too young to recall the paper’s long ago connection to Senator Davey.
Still, it’s a shame the Herald didn’t take advantage of the occasion to recall its own, unhappy link to Davey—if only to show how much better a newspaper it has become.
Pity.
Copyright 2011 Stephen Kimber
Howard Epstein: the man who wasn’t added to the NDP cabinet
The most intriguing aspect of last week’s provincial cabinet shuffle was not the Cheshire-cat-like, photo-op grins on the faces of the two newly blessed members of Darrell Dexter’s inner circle.
Or the nameplate-shuffling and amoeba-like subdividing of ministerial responsibilities the government predictably insisted will help it do its job even better and eventually save taxpayers money it is about to spend to add new ministers and their staffs to the public payroll.
Or even the equally predictable bleating from the opposition that now is no time to add to the cost of government, even though they will almost certainly do the same if they some how, some way, some day get the chance.
No, the most intriguing aspect of last week’s shuffle was the name that went unmentioned: Howard Epstein.
Intriguing. Disappointing. But hardly surprising.
Epstein, a lawyer, veteran MLA and former Halifax city councilor, remains one of his party’s best, brightest and worst used backbenchers.
He’s a former head of the Ecology Action Centre, an acknowledged expert on matters environmental. Given the Dexter government isn’t winning awards for environmental stewardship—can you say mercury emissions?—appointing Epstein would signal the party is serious about sustainability and help woo Green-leaning voters.
But Epstein—a finance critic during the NDP’s opposition-wandering years and a wise-in-the-ways provincial-municipal affairs expert—would have been a good fit in other portfolios too.
Why is he still on the outside?
There are obvious answers, of course.
Epstein is ideologically to the left of many of his colleagues, not to forget an independent thinker who speaks his mind and a smart guy who doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
For much of his time in opposition and during Dexter’s first year in office, Epstein played—in public at least—the ideal team player.
When he finally went off the reservation this summer—publicly opposing plans for a convention centre—it seemed an acknowledgement he would never inside.
Ultimately, that may not be a bad thing.
Given its own tendencies and the rightward lurch of both opposition parties, Dexter’s government could use an articulate critic from the left.
Epstein is certainly that. So his absence is a disappointment. But not completely.
Copyright 2011 Stephen Kimber
Today’s lesson from the gospel of Peter Munk
In its traditional year-end orgy of page-filling lists of accomplished Canadians—young, old, corporate, literary—the Globe and Mail this year named Peter Munk, 83-year-old chair of “multinational mining giant” Barrick Gold Corp., a finalist in its nation-builder category.
Though born into a well-to-do Budapest Jewish family in 1927, the Nazi occupation wiped out the Munk fortune. Refugee Peter eventually ended up at the University of Toronto where he studied electrical engineering and launched his business career in the 1950s.
The Globe said it chose Munk for using his personal fortune “to support Canada’s role on the world stage by focusing his philanthropy on education and health care.”
“It is your obligation to give back as much as you have taken from a country,” Munk said—though not, it should be said, from the Canada he’d helped to build, or even about that part of Canada from which he had taken much.
Speaking from his winter home in Switzerland, Munk explained: “I've made some money and I wish to give it back.”
He has.
Last year, he gave $35 million—the U of T’s largest ever individual donation—to expand its Munk School of Global Affairs, which an earlier Munk gift helped establish. His name—and generosity—also graces the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre at Toronto’s University Health Network.
Intriguingly, the Globe’s gushing profile makes only glancing reference to one of Munk’s formative business experiences, Clairtone Sound Corp.—an experience for which Nova Scotia taxpayers paid dearly.
In 1958—with $6,000—Munk started a small, innovative Toronto-based hi-fi manufacturer called Clairtone. Its success prompted Nova Scotia’s industry-parched Stanfield government to lure the company here with grants and incentives. The dream—to sell to the world.
The dream fizzled. By the time the nightmare ended, Clairtone had saddled Nova Scotia taxpayers with $20 million in debt.
Peter Munk? Well, we know he learned some lessons, which he clearly applied elsewhere. While he’s never forgotten Toronto's contribution to his success, Munk appears to have long since wiped Nova Scotia from his memory—and philanthropy—map.
Pity.
Pity too that Nova Scotia has never learned its Clairtone lesson. We’re still a sucker for someone else’s big dream.
***
Related: Peter Munk profile
Copyright 2011 Stephen Kimber
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About
STEPHEN KIMBER, a Professor of Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of one novel -- Reparations -- and seven non-fiction books.