Along with a lot of other Canadians, I was saddened to hear that BlackBerry will no longer make smartphones. To be sure, the company has been irrelevant for some time. In February 2012, I was in Arizona, thumbing away on my BlackBerry when someone said to me, “You must be the last man in America with a BlackBerry.” Only two years before, when my book on BlackBerry came out, Research In Motion was flying high with 50 percent of the U.S. smartphone market. I remained loyal, and bought the Q10 in 2014, but most didn’t. Market share is now barely measurable. I...
I confess to being a little late learning about this bit of news but a National NewsMedia Press Council was established last year. Its two main purposes appear to be: respond to complaints and promote ethics in the media. Some good people are involved including John Fraser, former editor of Saturday Night; Joanne De Laurentiis, former CEO of the Investment Funds Institute of Canada; and Ken Whyte, my boss at National Post, now at Rogers. This national group replaces four press councils and represents most English-language media. This being Canada, Alberta and Québec are not aboard; they continue to have their own...
There were gawkers galore as I wandered through the new Nordstrom store in the Eaton Centre, part of the U.S. retailer’s push into Canada. This is the fourth location to open with two more to come. This latest is sizeable, 220,000 sq ft on three floors with a bar and lounge on the second floor called Habitant and a $14 signature drink called Dundas Streetcar. Those are two nice Canadian touches, except for the fact that the main ingredient in the drink is bourbon. I said gawkers because there were few shoppers. In Nordstrom’s signature department, ladies’ shoes, there must have...
I fear the cloud. I agree totally with the dialogue from Sex Tape, the romp starring Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel. They’ve made a sex tape that he was supposed to delete, but forgot. And somehow now it’s on the Internet. “It went up to the cloud,” Segel tells Diaz. “And you can’t get it down from the cloud?” she asks incredulously. “Nobody understands the cloud,” he says. “It’s a mystery.” In an attempt to unravel the mystery, I went looking for an explanation. The first one I read made it all sound so sensible. You want to plant some tomatoes but...
Someone asked me recently, “How do you think John Tory’s doing?” I realized I had no opinion. After becoming mayor of Toronto two years ago, John Tory’s become all but invisible. Oh, he marches at Pride parades and announces parks on top of railway tracks, but nothing comes of anything. I know Tory. He’s an admirable man. He has certainly shown his mettle in tough political campaigns. He ran Kim Campbell’s efforts in 1993 when the federal Progressive Conservatives almost disappeared. Tory ran for mayor of Toronto in 2003 and lost. As leader of the provincial PCs, he ran in a safe...
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