29-July-2007: Black and Brown
Lord Black of Crossharbour has been found guilty of criminal charges in the United States. For those who don't know
about this character, here's a brief résumé. Conrad Black, aged 63? as of this writing, was born a Canadian in a wealthy
family. Starting out as an entrepreneur Conrad bought and managed a small newspaper in rural Quebec. Over
the course of his career he bought other newspapers and chains until he became one of the largest newspaper owners in
North America, including major newspapers in the United States and in Great Britain.
He had little to do with the actual running of the newspapers, except to hire senior staff who shared
his neo-conservative viewpoint. His talent is that he was a killer shark in a ruthlessly competitive market.
Nothing wrong in that, in and of itself. If you're going to play in the big leagues, which Conrad so very much wanted to do,
you have to have the instincts of a stealth fighter.
About a decade ago, the Queen, acting on her advisors' recommendations, offered Conrad Black a peerage. She has
done this before with other newspaper barons. The catch was (and is) that Canadians cannot accept foreign titles, unlike
Americans. Conrad prevailed upon the Prime Minister of the time, Jean Chrétien,
to overlook this law and allow Black to receive his honour and title. Chrétien refused. So Black renounced his
Canadian citizenship and became a Brit. He was then free to become Lord Black of Crossharbour and take his seat in the
British House of Lords.
Soon, Lord Black's empire started to crumble. Shareholders revolted over suspicions that he was using company funds for
personal expenses. Lord Black, never one to tolerate any hint of criticism, fought back. He was fired
(...er, asked to resign) from the boards of various holding companies. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the USA
had taken an interest in Mr. Black's business activities before, but, since the collapse of Enron, were more forceful in
investigating suspicious activity. He was charged with 17 counts of mail fraud, money laundering, racketeering, and obstruction of justice
in Chicago. The trial was a spectacle, closely followed in Canada. Two weeks ago he was found guilty on four of the charges, with a total
penalty of about 35 years in prison. He has yet to be sentenced and will, undoubtedly appeal his convictions.
Now many in Canada have been watching the accumulating misfortunes of Mr Black with some relish. Especially galling to many
Canadians was that soon after he was charged in the United States, Mr Black sought to regain his Canadian citizenship. Also, Conrad's wife,
Barbara Ameil, a columnist with views somewhere to the far right of Ayn Rand, had been irritating Canadians for years. Not to mention
the obvious status-seeking ambitions of the pair, which is never something that goes over well with the Canadian public.
This is a country where everyday folks have given prime ministers dressing downs in public; where prime ministers could go
camping in the wilds with their families; where you could see prime ministers and senior cabinet members walking to work or
to meetings in downtown
Ottawa; where one prime minister, a long time ago, use to "chat" with the prostitutes in the red light district between his office
on Parliament Hill and his residence (he also use to get advice from his dead mother). As you can tell, Canadians have been pretty casual
in their relationships with the powerful. (I once shared an elevator with Joe Clark when he was acting Prime Minister. Just him and me
alone; no security or aids about. He said, "Hello!" and I answered, "G'Day!" in my best Ottawa valley accent.) That is, we were casual with
our prime ministers until our own mini-George W. Bush took power (also with less than a majority of the votes cast).
Now it's all black limos and dozens of security personnel.
I digress, but wanted to make a point about Canadians in general. We have nothing against the rich and powerful, as long as they
remember that we are members of the same species and they respect the same laws, and bear the same punishments, as the rest of us.
Conrad Black failed miserably
on both counts.
Okay, back to the title of this entry. Conrad Black once spent some time at Upper Canada College. UCC was, and is, the most prestigious private
school for boys in Canada. When I was 17, the Province of Ontario, not knowing what else to do with such an unusual young man,
offered to pay tuition and costs for me to attend Upper Canada College. I turned them down because I did not like the
idea of being a pauper among Canada's richest kids. Instead, I accepted welfare payments so that I could attend a regular
secondary school. (Remember, this was long before the mass exodus of children from their families to the streets of our cities.
Toronto, and hence Ontario, was run by benevolent elderly white men, some of whom became enthralled by my situation and story.
I never knew the names of these men who played a role in the background of my early teen years, but I did see a gaggle of them
once gathering for a meeting about me and I was impressed that they wore fur coats—something that only women and extremely
rich men wore at the time.)
I used to tell my children the story as an object lesson and to impart something of what their old man went through. But,
then I read about Conrad Black being at Upper Canada College, and the object lesson was drawn into sharper focus. You see, Conrad
is about a year older than me. So, I figured, we might have met if I had accepted that scholarship. I then joked I should
write a book titled: Black and Brown, throwing our respective stories into contrast. I was a kid with nothing
while he had everything. I never went to jail, but there seems a good chance that Conrad will. I feel a bond with the man.
Even though it turns out that Conrad's stay at UCC was a few years earlier than my non-sojourn there, we are not really all
that different—just shades of different degrees, like the difference between the colours of our names.
The enormity of what he must now be suffering seems nicely offset by the suffering I've endured because of conditions
affecting the workings of my brain. He flew around in private jets; while I drove a beat up Ford Pinto across the United States.
He married the love of his life, I assume, and I married the love of my life. I hope he was as thrilled by the births
of his children as I was by mine. And, what, really, does it all matter
when you get down to the final questions?
As Shakespeare so brilliantly put it in The Merchant of Venice, in the words of Shylock: [are we not] fed with the
same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled
by the same winter and summer...? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us,
do we not die?