The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Conrad Black's abiding problem is that he is a bully. Five years ago, Dr. Murray Frum, who had been married to the late Barbara Frum, gave this scribbler as a wedding gift 10 shares of Hollinger stock. It was a joke. And so, every spring, the scribbler would turn up at the Hollinger annual meeting on Bay Street bearing his credentials and sit down among the shareholders. Lord Black, in his magnificent imperious manner, as chairman would move that the peasants below him approve the same board of directors as last year and call for "Aye" or "Nay." At the call for "Nay" this lone scribbler would raise his hand. Lord Black would then move that the accounting firm of last year be reaffirmed. "Aye" or "Nay." At the sound of "Nay" the scribbler would raise his hand. Conrad would look down, puzzled. Why wasn't the scribbler sitting off with the rest of the riff-raff in the press seats? What was he doing sitting among the shareholders? Dr. Frum's sense of humour paid off for five years. The scribbler's sort-of friendship with his-soon-to-be Lordship started to go downhill when he married Barbara Amiel. And the scribbler (unwisely) wrote about Ms. Amiel. Not a good career move. In 1999, the scribbler arrived home from a trip to find the bride excited about a phone call from the Canadian News Hall of Fame. They wanted to induct (indict?) the scribbler at their annual meeting. The scribbler, dismissive, announced his long-time faith in the Groucho Marx maxim that he would never agree to join a country club that would invite someone such as he. The scribbler rehearsed the proud refusal he would pronounce to the Hall of Fame chap when he phoned back. The phone rang. The Hall of Fame president gushed before the scribbler could say hello. We're so proud, he enthused, that the scribbler will be the only inductee this year along with one Conrad Black. The scribbler choked, coughed Ñ and swallowed his refusal. The chance to exchange insults with the only man in the world with a larger vocabulary than William F. Buckley of Jr. could not be resisted. See 'A' P.# Con't from P.# My kids, the Fothlets, flew in all the way from Vancouver to witness the bloodfest. On arriving at the Bay Street tower for the showdown, the Hall of Fame host apologized. It seemed my billionaire opponent had a plane to catch. He could only stay for the cocktail reception and could not make the dinner. (Conrad with two executive jetsÑhis wife boasting in Vogue that she flies from London to New York to get her hair doneÑ"having a plane to catch"?) The scribbler saw the face of the bully. As it happened, he tarried over the cocktails for a good hour. And the scribbler, his insults all prepared, had to stand up at the head tableÑthe full house expecting a delightful after-dinner hosanna of verbal joustingÑdelivering his shafts to an empty chair beside him. It was like punching a pillow. Pillorying a guy who wasn't there. The absence of one star guest who wasn't there ruined the whole evening. Conrad is like the schoolyard bully, who really doesn't like to fight. X x x AND ANOTHER THING Life is full of irony. Too much of it. Students of this inevitability will have noticed Remembrance Day when we honoured our dead soldiers. Including the Canadian sacrificial lambs sent to Hong KongÑon British military ordersÑto defend Hong Kong against the arriving Japanese forces after Pearl Harbour. The Brits knowing it couldn't be defended. With 290 dead Canadians (some of them, it turns out, had never been taught how to fire a rifle), 1,700 taken prisoners, more than 200 more beaten and starved to the grave in death camps, eating cockroaches and rice filled with live worms. And now we turn to 1997, with the British lease on Hong Kong running out. With Beijing about to take over, nervous Hong Kong money wants out. Chief among these is Li Ka-Shing, richest billionaire in the city's real estate boys. He moves as much money as possible to Vancouver and buys up as much as possible of downtown. Where he became known, in local town-talk, as "Li Cash In." And the day before Remembrance Day, his son bought 31 per cent of Air Canada, the people's airline, to rescue it from bankruptcy. That's major irony. X x x QUOTE OF THE WEEK Hugh Segal, veteran Tory sage, on Joe Clark's efforts to kill Unite-the-Right: "Joe never misses a chance to miss a chance."
