obituary

Thursday April 7, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 7, 2022

A lament for Hamilton’s maestro

With the tragic death Tuesday of Boris Brott, 78, Canada has lost one of its outstanding orchestral and operatic conductors.

Maestro Brott

Born in Montreal to violinist-composer-conductor Alexander Brott and cellist Lotte Brott in 1944, Brott debuted as a violin soloist with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra at age five. Seven years later, he studied conducting with Pierre Monteux at his academy in Maine. It was Monteux who gave Brott his first conducting job as his assistant with the London Symphony Orchestra and on his European tours.

After studies with Igor Markevitch, Brott won top prize at the 1958 Pan-American Conducting Competition in Mexico. One year later, Brott, then a 15-year-old student at Montreal’s West Hill High School, founded the Philharmonic Youth Orchestra of Montreal.

After winning third prize at the 1962 Liverpool Competition, he served as Walter Susskind’s assistant at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra from 1963 to 1965. Brott then became active in England, conducting the Northern Sinfonia at Newcastle upon Tyne from 1964 to 1968, and was principal conductor of the Royal Ballet Covent Garden’s touring company from 1964 to 1967.

In 1968, he was awarded first prize at the prestigious Dimitri Mitropoulos International Music Competition in New York and later that year was consequently named assistant to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra’s charismatic and flashy music director, Leonard Bernstein.

Brott came to Hamilton in 1969 as artistic director and conductor of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra (HPO). Over the years, he led the HPO from an amateur ensemble to a professional orchestra that at its peak had a 42-week season and some 16,000 subscribers.

Fantasy Classic 2020

Together with members of the community, Brott also spearheaded the construction of the 2,200 seat Hamilton Place, now FirstOntario Concert Hall.

After having made his opera conducting debut with “La fille du régiment” at the Canadian Opera Company in 1977, Brott was one of the movers and shakers who helped to found Opera Hamilton, conducting performances of “La traviata” in 1980 and “Tosca” in 1981.

During the late 1970s and 1980s, Brott was one of Canada’s busiest conductors. In addition to his duties in Hamilton, he held positions with the CBC Winnipeg Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia and the Ontario Place Pops Orchestra, among others.

Unfortunately, things turned sour for Brott at the HPO and the two parted ways around 1990. In 1989, Brott founded the Hamilton-based professional training orchestra, the National Academy Orchestra (NAO) of Canada, which served as the orchestra-in-residence for his eponymous music festival, Canada’s largest orchestral festival. Today, many of the NAO’s over 1,000 alumni hold positions in orchestras across North America and beyond. He also established BrottOpera, which staged operatic productions in the Hamilton area.

From the book, “You Might Be From Hamilton If…”

In the 2000s, Brott also took over the McGill Chamber Orchestra, which had been founded in 1939 by his parents. Renamed the Orchestre Classique de Montréal, Brott was to have co-conducted a “Forever Handel” concert with this ensemble on April 28.

Internationally, Brott was the first music director of the New West Symphony in Thousand Oaks, California, in 1995 and also guest conducted throughout Italy. A career highlight came in 2000 when he conducted Bernstein’s “Mass” in Vatican City before an audience which included Pope John Paul II.

Brott’s many awards include an Officer of the Order of Canada (1986), Order of Ontario (2006), and City of Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Arts Award (2007).

Dorothy the Dinosaur – Illustration by Graeme MacKay

Though Brott had conducted countless works over his career, to many the most essential of these was Handel’s “Messiah,” which he performed in Israel and led annually for many years in Hamilton and Montreal.

For Brott, it was always go big or go home. His chutzpah, his ability to make things happen and to figuratively move heaven and earth if necessary, are irreplaceable. Canada will not see anyone like him and we are all the poorer for his loss.

Brott is survived by his brother, Denis, of Montreal, his wife, Ardyth, of Hamilton, two sons and a daughter and their families.

May his memory be a blessing. (Hamilton Spectator) 

 

Sunday August 8, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay – Sunday August 8, 2021

Bill Davis, Former Premier of Ontario Dies (1929-2021)

William Greville Davis (born July 30, 1929) was the 18th Premier of Ontario, Canada, from 1971 to 1985. Davis was first elected as the MPP for Peel in the 1959 provincial election where he was a backbencher in Leslie Frost’s government. Under John Robarts, he was a cabinet minister overseeing the education portfolio. He succeeded Robarts as Premier of Ontario and held the position until resigning in 1985.

May 5, 1999

Shortly after taking office as premier, Davis announced that his government would not permit continuing construction of the rest of the Spadina Expressway into downtown Toronto (an initiative that had been unpopular with many of the area’s residents). The “Davis ditch”, the section of Allen Road south of Lawrence Avenue was nicknamed in his honour. He also rejected a proposal to grant full funding to Ontario’s Catholic high schools, which some regarded as an appeal to the Progressive Conservative Party’s rural Protestant base. Davis’s team ran a professional campaign in the 1971 provincial election, and was rewarded with an increased majority government.

Davis’s first full term as premier was by most accounts his least successful, with public confidence in his government weakened by a series of scandals. There were allegations that the Fidinam company had received special consideration for a Toronto development program in return for donations to the Progressive Conservative Party. In 1973, it was revealed that Davis’ friend Gerhard Moog had received a valuable untendered contract for the construction of Ontario Hydro’s new head office and related projects. Attorney General Dalton Bales, Solicitor General John Yaremko and Treasurer McKeough were all accused of conflicts-of-interest relating to government approval for developments on properties they owned. The government was cleared of impropriety in all cases, but its popular support nonetheless declined. The Conservatives lost four key by-elections in 1973 and 1974.

On the policy front, the Davis administration introduced regional governments for Durham, Hamilton-Wentworth, Haldimand-Norfolk, and Waterloo but shelved further plans in response to popular protests. The government was also forced to cancel a planned 7% energy tax in 1973 following protests from the Progressive Conservative backbench. In the buildup to the 1975 provincial election, Davis imposed a ninety-day freeze on energy prices, temporarily reduced the provincial sales tax from 7% to 5%, and announced rent controls for the province.

September 21, 2002

The 1975 campaign was far more bitter than that of 1971, with Davis and Liberal leader Robert Nixon repeatedly hurling personal insults at one another. Polls taken shortly before the election had the Liberals in the lead. The Progressive Conservatives won only 51 seats out of 125, but were able to remain in power with a minority government. The New Democratic Party (NDP) won 38 seats under the leadership of Stephen Lewis, while Nixon’s Liberals finished third with 36. Soon after the election, Davis hired Hugh Segal as his legislative secretary.

Davis appointed right-wingers Frank Miller and James Taylor to key cabinet portfolios after the election, but withdrew from a proposed austerity program following a negative public response. In 1977, he introduced a policy statement written by Segal which became known as the “Bramalea Charter”, promising extensive new housing construction for the next decade. Davis called a snap election in 1977, but was again returned with only a minority. The Progressive Conservatives increased their standing to 58 seats, against 34 for the Liberals and 33 for the NDP.

The Conservatives remained the dominant party after the 1975 and 1977 elections due to the inability of either the New Democrats and the Liberals to become the clear alternative. The Conservatives were able to stay in power due to the competition between both opposition parties. As there was no serious consideration of a Liberal-NDP alliance after both campaigns, Davis was able to avoid defeat in the legislature by appealing to other parties for support on particular initiatives. His government often moved to the left of the rural-based Liberals on policy issues. The opposition parties had also undergone leadership changes; Nixon and Lewis, who had posed a strong challenge to Davis, resigned after the 1975 and 1977 elections, respectively. Nixon’s successor Stuart Lyon Smith proved unable to increase Liberal support, while new NDP leader Michael Cassidy lacked the support of the party establishment and could not measure up to Lewis’s charismatic and dynamic figure.

June 7, 2003

This period of the Davis government was one of expansion for the province’s public health and education systems, and Davis held a particular interest in ensuring that the province’s community colleges remained productive. The government also expanded the provisions of the Ontario Human Rights Code, and expanded bilingual services without introducing official bilingualism to the province.

The Progressive Conservatives were returned with a majority government in the 1981 provincial election, mostly at the expense of the NDP. Soon after the election, Davis announced that John Tory (who would become leader of the PCs 23 years later) had been hired to succeed Hugh Segal as his principal secretary. He also announced that Ontario would purchase a 25% share in the energy corporation Suncor, despite opposition from within his own caucus.

In 1983 Davis considered moving to federal politics by running to lead the federal Progressive Conservatives when Joe Clark only received lukewarm support during a leadership review. Davis decided not to do so when he realized that he would not receive endorsements from western Canada because of his support for the Constitution patriation and the National Energy Program. His candidacy had been strongly opposed by Peter Lougheed, the Premier of Alberta.

January 12, 2019

He retired a few months before the 1985 election, with him and his government still well ahead in polls against David Peterson’s Liberals and Bob Rae’s NDP. One of his last major acts as premier was to reverse his 1971 decision against the full funding of Catholic schools, and announce that such funding would be provided to the end of Grade Thirteen. Although the policy was supported by all parties in the legislature, it was unpopular with some in the Conservatives’ traditional rural Protestant base, and many would stay home in the upcoming election because of this issue. (Source: Wikipedia) 

 

Sunday September 20, 2020

RIP John N. Turner

When John turner became the new Liberal Leader there was a very strong sense of change in the air in Canada. It wasn’t just the Liberal party that was looking to renew itself, the Progressive Conservatives had done that very thing by electing a promising, charismatic newcomer to the political scene, Brian Mulroney.

It wasn’t until I neared the age of 16 that I witnessed my first major changing of the guard in Ottawa. With the exception a brief interregnum when Joe Clark seized control the same machine that guided Liberal governments in the 1970’s was there into the mid 80’s.

The election leaders, 1984

Pierre Trudeau had essentially been Prime Minister since before I was born. 

People forget that by 1984 Canadians had grown quite tired of Pierre Trudeau. While his legacy now shines for repatriating the constitution and putting the nation on a progressive path, thanks in part to inspiring activist movements of the 60s and 70s, there were big dark clouds that hung over Trudeau and his government. Relations with the western provinces were horrible thanks to the National Energy Program, and Quebeckers were in full on separation mode thanks to work left undone in signing on the province to the Charter of Rights. The arrogance of the elder Trudeau had highlighted by growing deficits, crony patronage appointments, and a lavish farewell world ego tour (minus cultural costumes his son would later show up in) to promote peace in the waning days of the cold war.

A walk in a snow storm convinced Pierre Trudeau to retire from his position, a whiteout, perhaps, that was a metaphor for an empty slate of ideas left to run on. 

The last John Turner cartoon – May 26, 2016

John Turner, the Prince in waiting, had all the qualities to become a long reigning Canadian Prime Minister: Rich, smart and well-educated, athletic, handsome, bilingual, connected, and well experienced in powerful cabinet positions. 

Timing was Turner’s worst enemy, however. 

He couldn’t brush off the reek of arrogance left from 16 years of Liberal rule, and faced formidable opponents not just in Brian Mulroney, but also Jean Chretien, who, when running for the leadership against Turner in 1984, used the slogan, “call for a man from Main Street, not Bay Street.” The Turner vs. Chretien struggle was a carry over from the Trudeau vs. Turner fight that had brewed since the latter’s resignation from cabinet several years prior. This inner party challenge would play out among future Liberal leaders and wannabe leaders.

Patting the bum of Liberal Party President Iona Campagnolo during the 1984 election might be regarded as Canada’s first #MeToo moment that may not have sunk him were he a 1960’s cabinet minister. It did him no favours in the mid 80’s and will remain part of his ugly legacy, and among one of the many reasons which resulted in a rump of 40 or so Liberal MPs in the House of Commons.

by Graeme MacKay, 1988

The Free Trade debate and the passions it unleashed in John Turner may be his most enduring legacy of his leadership. But again, timing was his biggest enemy when he fought hard against Mulroney while at the same time having knives stuck in his back from the dissent in his own party.

Turner was able to oversee a doubling of the Liberal caucus following the 1988 convention he might have been able to carry on were it not for the ongoing sniping and sideline maneuvers from power hungry Jean Chretien. It became too much for Turner and he resigned from politics in 1990. Eight years of Chretien rule would send Turner deep into private life and declining health. While the testimonials are full of praise for a gentleman who devoted much to the importance of public life, he as much a victim of political skullduggery and dirty politics from within his own party.

It is interesting to see that in the recollections of the life lead by John Turner the strongest voice comes from his biggest foe, Brian Mulroney. 

Often said was the line that Robert Stanfield was the greatest Prime Minister Canada never had. Perhaps that’s true of an older generation, but from my vantage point John Turner was the greatest Prime Minister who never really got the chance.

August 25, 2015

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Thursday, May 8, 2014By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday, May 8, 2014

Death of an Original Hipster

Farley Mowat, one of Canada’s best-known authors and a noted environmentalist, has died at age 92.

Mary Shaw-Rimmington, the author’s assistant, confirmed his passing to CBC News on Wednesday afternoon. Mowat died at his home in Port Hope, Ont.

Mowat, author of dozens of works including Lost in the Barrens and Never Cry Wolf, introduced Canada to readers around the world and shared everything from his time abroad during the Second World War, to his travels in the North and his concern for the deteriorating environment.

Pierre Berton 1920-2004

More than 17 million copies of his books, which have been translated into dozens of languages, have been sold worldwide. The gregarious writer was a consummate storyteller, whose works spanned non-fiction, children’s titles and memoirs.

Describing Mowat as “a passionate Canadian,” Prime Minster Stephen Harper touted the writer as “a natural storyteller with a real gift for sharing personal anecdotes in a witty and endearing way.” (Source: CBC News)

Meanwhile, we may have reached “peak beard frequency,” according to research published in the journal Biology Letters recently.

Men’s facial hair trends may be guided by Darwinian selection, researchers hypothesized. So they asked women and men to rate different faces with “four standard levels of beardedness.” The faces that were rarer were rated as more appealing. It’s an evolutionary phenomenon known as “negative frequency-dependent sexual selection.”

“The idea is that perhaps people start copying the George Clooneys and the Joaquin Phoenixs and start wearing those beards, but then when more and more people get onto the bandwagon the value of being on the bandwagon diminishes, so that might be why we’ve hit ‘peak beard’,” study author Prof Rob Brooks told the BBC.

“Peak beard” is reached when the most men in professions not usually associated with facial hear sport beards. The BBC suggests that may have happened in January when a Newsnight

Some say the Rubicon was crossed in January when Jeremy Paxman, the BBC Newsnight presenter, shaved his beard off, saying “beards are SO 2013.”

When “peak beard” frequency is reached, the pendulum swings back toward lesser-bristled chins — a trend we may be witnessing now, the scientists say. (Source: Discovery.com)

SOCIAL MEDIA

Friday, April 11, 2014

Friday, April 11, 2014By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, April 11, 2014

Jim Flaherty’s personal touch was a rarity on Parliament Hill: Greg Weston

Jim Flaherty was promising improvements to a federal disability savings plan that helps parents of special needs children when the tears started welling behind his glasses, a few drops at first, then more and more until the nation’s finance minister was openly sobbing on live television.

“The politician lost to the parent on that one,” he later told a friend.

Thursday, it was his critics’ turn to cry.

One after another, opposition MPs who have made a career of publicly savaging Flaherty across the floor of the Commons were dissolving in tearful grief over the sudden death of a man they now call a friend.

It was an extraordinary sight rarely seen in Canadian politics, MPs of all political stripes clearly mourning more than the loss of a fellow parliamentarian.

In Jim Flaherty, their loss seemed deeply personal.

Jim FlahertyNDP leader Tom Mulcair completely choked up when he got to the words: “He was a good person.”

NDP MP Charlie Angus, a well-known Commons scrapper, started to tell a story about Flaherty, but fell apart in tears before he could finish.

Liberal finance critic Ralph Goodale said Flaherty had the extraordinary ability to get into a no-holds-barred donnybrook in Parliament “but somehow managed to leave you more chuckling than angry.”

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said tearfully: “I disagreed with his policies, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t very, very fond of him.”

One of Flaherty’s long-time loyal aides, Chisholm Pothier, says in many ways the affable former finance minister was “an old-style politician,” a throwback to the days when MPs could be foes in the Commons and still be friends at the bar.

Pothier says Flaherty wouldn’t hesitate to invite one of the opposition finance critics out for a drink. He liked most of them. And they liked him. (Source: CBC News)