White Male Police Unions

Debate over police powers missing key voices: women and minorities. The biggest story in America this year is that racism isn’t dead. Just ask any young black man who’s been ‘carded’ by the police. Or the families of those who were…

Fight back against politicians’ boring speeches

Audiences Shouldn't Have to Put Up With Politicians 'Bringing Greetings' I recently paid $50 to attend a preview screening of the movie, Still Alice, about the decline and fall of a woman struck with Alzheimer's at age 50. Most of my money…

Non-White women missing from Toronto’s power corridors

The group with the largest numbers in Toronto still has the least power.​ God is not on the side of the big battalions — at least in Toronto. In fact, here in the world’s most diverse city, the group with the biggest numbers has the…

In Toronto, walking is the new driving

Walking never got any respect: it was slow, unsexy and boring. Only losers walked. But today, walking is what the cool kids do, whether they're staving off Alzheimers and depression, losing weight or gaining creativity. In fact, over 4.5 million…

The misplaced optimism of gender diversity targets

So how’s the Ontario Security Commission’s new “comply or explain” policy doing in nudging our public companies to put more women on their boards? Well, if the first six months offer any clue, it will take 68 more years before boards…

Why do women still earn so much less than men?

 Not only is the gap between men's and women's pay in Canada not closing, it's actually widening. Can you believe there are still some places in North America where women earn much less than men for the same kind of job? Sadly, Toronto is…

Heart Surgery Can Increase Depression Risk

No one knows what led Robin Williams to kill himself. It wasn’t just one thing, but likely a fatal stew of lingering alcohol and drug addiction, depression, being middle-aged and male, and the prospect of facing Parkinson’s disease. Rarely…

Mis-Stepping With the Samis of Arctic Sweden

Eight of us from Toronto were huddled around a fire inside a Lavu, a giant teepee that served as our dinner tent. We were in Arctic Sweden "reindeer trekking" with a group of young Sami men. The Sami are the indigenous people of the very north…

Women deserve better representation on Canada’s boards

Since only 12 per cent of board members in Canada are women and most executives don't care, it's time to impose gender quotas. The news that “most Canadian executives don’t care” that only 12 per cent of board members are women is all…

Fogo Futures

A room at the Fogo Island Inn will set you back $875 to $2,475 a night, which might seem like a lot for accommodation in Joe Batt’s Arm, a town on the northeast shore of Newfoundland. If you’re staying there, odds are you’re a high-performance…

Where multiculturalism fears to tread

The boards of Toronto’s biggest arts organizations are the last bastions of white maleness. Very soon, Toronto will “tip” from being a city where the vast majority of its citizens are white (in 1957, 93 per cent of us were) to one where…

Measuring the time left in your life

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A ticking time bomb

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Confession’s good for the corporate soul

Disaster lurks everywhere. Buildings collapse. Helicopters crash. Mines explode. It’s only afterward that we realize the role organizational cultures can play in a disaster. Central to many of these cultures is an inability to admit failure.…

Lingering prejudice amid the city’s Pride

On a hot Sunday morning five summers ago, my wife and I were bicycling through Riverdale on our way to church. Heading west along Simpson Avenue, we saw what looked like half a dozen horses with policemen astride. Odd, I thought. As we pedalled…