#JoeSwan advice thru history @FanshaweCollege #LdnOnt @Munici_politics @Downtown_London

Joe's signs were up in July, before he had even registered as a candidate.

Imagine you’re running for mayor of a medium-sized Canadian city.

You’ve been on city council for several years, but you haven’t done anything in particular to distinguish yourself. In fact, the thing you’re best known for is having an ongoing conflict of interest on the question of whether the city will build a performing arts centre. That’s because you’re the executive director of that city’s orchestra, which would not only play there but has advanced a rather sketchy plan to build the facility itself.

When the voters in your city think about you at all, it’s as a big backer of the disgraced former mayor. He’s at home now, serving a four-month house arrest sentence after being convicted of fraud and breach of trust. But that’s another story.

As an unintended homage to the former mayor, you violate election rules the moment you kick off your campaign by spending lots of money for signs, brochures and a spiffy website before bothering to actually register as a candidate. Details, details.

To divert attention from your fumbled campaign launch, you lash out at one of your principal rivals, saying 41 is too young to be mayor. Nevermind, the 41-year-old in question has been on council the last four years. Only curmudgeons with conflicts of interest need apply for the mayor’s job.

When that comment lands with a thud on the electorate’s doorstep, you find another distraction – sorry, issue – and pounce on that. You bravely vote against spending city dollars to subsidize the redevelopment of a downtown landmark building. By pure coincidence, your two primary opponents support the expenditure. You are the only viable candidate opposed to the plan.

Welcome to the world of Joe Swan, in which the candidate running for mayor of London, Ontario didn’t just vote against the expenditure. Oh no. Candidate Swan held a news conference last week to give some advice to the organization hoping to buy said downtown landmark building. That would be Fanshawe College, bursting at its main campus seams, a college that’s already operating its Centre for Digital and Performing Arts right across the street from the building in question, the former Kingsmill’s department store.

Candidate Swan told Fanshawe College to buy another downtown property. Without knowing the details of Fanshawe’s business plan or specific requirements, Candidate Swan constructively chastised the college for its “wasteful” plan, standing in front of a phalanx of election signs – a sure indication he was earnestly trying to help the college do what’s best, not latching on to a wedge issue and riding it wherever it takes him.

The college’s new president, Peter Devlin, thanked Candidate Swan for his business advice but said Fanshawe will continue plotting its future without his help.

That’s a shame, because looking back in history, it’s clear Candidate Swan has a keen sense of how organizations and businesses should operate, when they should and shouldn’t spend money. And thankfully, he’s not shy about imparting his knowledge publicly so everyone can benefit.

It was Joe Swan who told Henry Ford not to bother with his Model T. “What’s wrong with horses and buggies?”

It was Joe Swan who told Google the Internet was just a fad and wouldn’t catch on. “No one knows what a search engine is, and you should change your company name too. What does Google mean?”

It was Joe Swan who told McDonald’s the world was going vegan. “Concentrate on salads and hummus. You’ll never sell billions and billions of burgers. Trust me.”

It was Joe Swan who told Kodak not to bother investing in digital photography. “You’ve got the film market to yourself. Stick with it.”

It was Joe Swan who told General Electric the light bulb was too finicky to manufacture and distribute.

It was Joe Swan who told Wal-Mart shoppers wanted less selection and higher prices.

It was Joe Swan who mocked the Wright brothers and Alexander Graham Bell.

It was Joe Swan who told Starbucks no one would pay $4.00 for a latte when Folgers instant coffee was available in every grocery store.

It was Joe Swan who looked askance at the guy who fashioned the first wheel. “No practical applications.”

It was Joe Swan who said to Jesus, “No one will remember you when you die.”

Clearly, Joe Swan has an innate sense of right and wrong, good and bad, success and failure. He’s prescient, clairvoyant and eager to help.

Fanshawe College would be crazy to ignore his advice. Just as voters in London, Ontario would be crazy to choose anyone else for mayor this October.

More on @BizLondon August cover story, @EWSNetwork, #EmployeeWellness, golfing @EdgewaterGC #LdnOnt

The beautiful 15th hole at Edgewater Golf Club in Lancaster, S.C. Lots of steps recorded...even with a cart.

When I visited my brother and his family near Charlotte, NC, this spring, he was wearing a pedometer everywhere he went, including Edgewater Golf Club with me on a beautiful Good Friday. It recorded the thousands of steps he took, many in the woods looking for my Titleist.

            He wasn’t doing it simply for curiosity’s sake. It was part of an incentive program offered by his employer, Bank of America. Groups of employees and their family members formed teams of 8 to 11 people and were eligible to win Amazon gift cards, Fitbit Zips or donations to Habitat for Humanity. To win, they had to clock 56,000 steps in at least four of eight weeks or do 140 minutes of exercise in at least four of eight weeks.

            So far in 2014, bank employees have walked more than 21 billion steps, lost more than 66,000 lbs. and done more than 1.5-million hours of exercise. Granted, Bank of America has a lot of employees – known as associates in bank-ese – but those are still some impressive numbers.

            It’s not just large American financial institutions, however, that are interested in the health of their employees. As I wrote about in the August issue of Business London magazine, lots of London organizations have adopted employee wellness programs, many of them with the help of EWSN, the Employee Wellness Solutions Network. Owned by husband and wife Garth and Meaghan Jansen, it sets up all kinds of programs, activities and challenges for its clients’ employees.

            Whether it’s personal fitness programs, support to help quit smoking or lunchtime talks about healthy cooking, EWSN consultants try to provide whatever information and assistance people want.

            Of course, not everyone at any given organization is interested in having management force-feed them fitness information and activities. At London Hydro, for example, the participation rate hovers around 30 per cent of the 300 employees. But London Hydro manager of health and safety Jeff Harrison is encouraged by that number and has seen noticeable benefits since the program began as a pilot project in 2008.

            Not everything can be measured, so proponents of such programs rely on anecdotal evidence and common sense to make the case that a healthier work force is more productive and creative. One thing that can be measured is health claims. Across the board, it seems organizations that engage in a well-designed, well-implemented wellness program reduce the medical claims of their workforce.

            In the U.S., where private health care costs are a significant cost for employers, that’s a big deal. Bank of America told its employees that health benefit costs in 2015 will not increase, breaking a trend of the last few years, largely because of the fitness challenge.

            London Hydro has also seen a drop in health claims from a healthier workforce since it began its program.

            As Garth Jansen told me, skeptics can always poke holes in any evidence supporters of such programs offer. There are simply too many variables that could account for changes in performance in a company. But years of evidence at numerous organizations has convinced him it makes a real difference in the lives of employees. It certainly is popular with many of those who participate.

            The gym at law firm Harrison Pensa is used every single day, weekends included. And Harrison says he can’t imagine Hydro ever walking away from the program. It’s simply too popular among employees.

#AliensAttackedMyCar: the latest from #MrLube and my lawsuit after #BotchedOilChange #LdnOnt

Did aliens attack my car, fiddle with the oil pan plug and cause the oil to start gushing out this winter? That appears to be the working theory of the legal minds representing Matt Rowswell, owner of the Mr. Lube that botched my oil change in January, leading to a $600 repair bill.

            As you can read in earlier postings, I sued Matt – known in legal documents as Donald – for the cost of the repair, a refund of the original oil change, the cost of the rental car I needed while my car was out of commission and legal costs. When he failed to respond by the court-imposed deadline, a judge ruled in my favour and awarded me $932.46 – everything but the cost of the rental car.

            That’s when Matt/Donald and his paralegal sidekick Ronald Trachy of St. Thomas swung into action. First they asked the court for a mulligan. Blaming his employees and the general chaos within his Mr. Lube empire, he said he needed more time to craft a defence. That hearing, originally scheduled for June 20, took place July 4 and granted him the right to file a defence.

            Having missed his original opportunity to file a defence, Matt/Donald has taken full advantage this time, blaming everyone except O.J. Simpson for his technician’s original error.

            The most creative – and frankly alarming to the general public – theory is that, “there was tampering of the oil pan drain plug by a person or persons unknown.”

            That’s right. A roving band of thugs targeted my vehicle sometime this winter and tampered with the oil pan plug. They didn’t pull it right out; they just jiggled it enough to cause a leak over the following days and weeks. Could this be the work of rival Jiffy Lube? Did they hire some out-of-work mechanics to follow Mr. Lube customers and tamper with their oil pan plugs?

Did E.T. tamper with my vehicle's oil pan plug?

            Or could it have been aliens, seeking to understand earth’s internal combustion technology, who inadvertently replaced the oil pan plug incorrectly? You can’t blame an alien for not understanding the finer points of inserting a Volkswagen oil pan plug. One of Matt/Donald’s own employees told me this spring how difficult that is.

            In his defence, Matt/Donald promises to produce evidence that an incorrectly inserted oil pan plug will begin leaking within four days. Yes, the defence is: When we have botched this procedure in the past, the leak has started much sooner. Since we didn’t botch it as badly this time and it took longer for the oil to start leaking, well, it must have been aliens.

            I don’t know a lot about Ronald Trachy, the Clarence Darrow behind this entertaining defence. But I have to assume he owns a thesaurus. In his long list of claims, he refers to my rental car claim as “unecessary, frivolous, vexatious and erroneous.” In addition to misspelling unnecessary, he seems to be doing his best impression of Kramer’s lawyer, Jackie Chiles.

            I have no idea if Jackie Chiles could spell or construct proper written sentences. That talent has eluded Mr. Trachy, whose carefully crafted defence is full of errors.

            Now I wait for the court to set a date for a settlement conference. That is supposed to take place within 90 days, at which time I can ask Matt/Donald or Ronald Trachy what they know about the aliens who attacked my car. I hope they have photos.

More on @BizLondon July cover story, Moffatt and Powell #LdnOnt

            It’s often said umpires or referees have done an excellent job officiating a game if no one notices them during the game or remembers them after. If, on the other hand, they perform like baseball’s C.B. Bucknor and blow calls, forget the ball-strike count and toss managers from the game when they ask for explanations, they are hardly invisible.

C.B. Bucknor in action

            The same goes for generational transitions within family-owned companies. When they go right, we never hear about them. But when they go wrong, whoa, do we hear about them. Sometimes it ends up in court. Sometimes the company is sold to outside interests. However they end, Thanksgiving is never the same for the extended family.

            Here in London, the first example many people think of is Cuddy International, which was sold to Cargill Ltd. in 2001 after a decade of jockeying by members of the family to run, buy or sue the company patriarch Mac Cuddy had built. The battle was the C.B. Bucknor of family squabbles. But it was hardly alone. Family succession planning can take many forms, including no planning at all. Nothing happens until the person running the business gets sick or dies. Panic ensues and the business tanks.

            This month’s Business London magazine cover story is about Moffatt and Powell, the Southwestern Ontario lumberyard and building centre. It is a prime example of family succession done well.

            Four years ago, Nancy Powell-Quinn and her husband D’Arcy Quinn bought the business from her father, Dave Powell, and his business partner, Keith Moffatt. Dave continues to play an informal role with the company, but it is clearly being run by the next generation. Since taking over, the thirtysomething couple has modernized and expanded, fighting for market share in a segment dominated in North America by Home Depot and Lowe’s. They forged a buying alliance with Rona and are in the process of broadening the range of products and services offered at their six locations.

Moffatt and Powell HQ, Hyde Park in London

            But it was never their goal to do any of that. In fact, they were happily living in Winnipeg, both with thriving careers, when her father – visiting for Christmas in 2006 – broached the idea of their coming back to London and getting involved with the company.

            It seems many a successful in-family transition includes new owners who have spent some time out in the workforce, learning about the world, rather than occupying a corner office in the family business and waiting impatiently to take over.

            Another key to success is for the next generation to start somewhere other than the top. When Nancy and D’Arcy moved to London and got involved with the business, they started at mid-level, reporting not to her father but to a general manager.

            “That was key, that they reported to someone other than me,” Dave told me when I was writing the story.

            Family businesses can take all the right steps and still fail, of course. Moffatt and Powell is in a tough industry, dependent on housing starts that ebb and flow with the performance of the economy. As the business battles behemoths like Home Depot, it is not encumbered by family or management strife, however. And that’s a key element to get right, if a company is going to survive and be passed from one generation to another in perpetuity. 

#Cincinnati road trip to see @BlueJays play @Reds, visit @NewportAquarium

Cincinnati…who knew?

           The novelty of interleague play in baseball has long since passed. What started in 1997 as a rare spectacle has become commonplace, with at least one interleague game every day now that the American and National Leagues each have 15 teams. When the split was 16 National and 14 American, there was no need for interleague matchups.

            Whatever the larger implications of continued interleague play are, this past weekend it delivered the Blue Jays to Cincinnati for a rare series there. The two teams had only ever played 12 times.

            Spencer and I headed out Friday morning for what we expected would be a 7-8 hour drive from London, crossing the border at Detroit and heading straight down I-75 to the Queen City (a nickname Charlotte, NC, also uses btw). Torrential rain, traffic jams and a search for chewable, children’s Advil in Monroe, Michigan, added some time to the journey. We arrived in Cincinnati around 6:30 Friday night.

            We had tickets to Saturday’s ballgame, so we planned to spend the evening checking out some of the sights of the city. Having never been to Cincinnati or given it much thought, I didn’t realize it sits right on the Ohio-Kentucky border, essentially sharing its metropolitan area with Covington, Kentucky. Maybe they could borrow another nickname and become the Twin Cities.

            We stayed in Covington, and were only a 10-15 minute walk away from Great American Ballpark, a terrific venue that holds about 45,000 people and features all kinds of attractions, food and fun. It’s a throw or two from Paul Brown Stadium, where the Bengals play. Both sit on the river and look great from a vantage point on the other side.

Cincinnati, across Ohio River as seen from Covington, Kentucky

            After checking in, we grabbed a cab and headed to Newport on the Levee, a collection of restaurants and shops, anchored by the Newport Aquarium, which was worth the trip all by itself. The Levee sits on the Kentucky side of the river. The cabbie was listening to the Jays-Reds game, and as we headed out for the evening, the score was 8-0 Reds…in the second inning. Ouch. Wearing our Blue Jays hats, we were among a handful of Jays fans roaming around the area, none too happy with the way the first game of the weekend series had started.

            We stumbled across GameWorks, a cool place for all ages, with video and active games, some retro and some designed to spit out tickets so kids can spend $50 to take home a $5 prize purchased with their winnings. We played everything, including old-school pinball, a first for Spence.

            By the time we had burned through our tokens and Spence had spent his tickets in the prize zone, it was the 7th inning of the game. We sat down at the adjoining bar to watch. Whoa, it was now 9-8 Reds. The Jays had come almost all the way back. We watched for a while, and then hopped in another cab back to the hotel. We got there in time to watch the 9th inning in the bar, jammed with Reds fans. We watched the Jays tie the score at 9, then pull ahead 10-9, 11-9, then boom, 14-9, thanks to a 3-run home run from Edwin Encarnacion, his second 3-run bomb of the game.

            Sure it would have been fun to be at that game, but watching it from across the river, among all those Reds fans, was a blast. It also inoculated us somewhat for what was to follow the next day, when we walked across the purple bridge, a 15-minute stroll from our hotel to the ball game.

            Like the night before, the Jays fell behind 8-0. Unlike the night before, there was no miracle comeback. They fell 11-1 in front of a sell-out crowd, announced as the 100th sell-out in the short history of Great American Ballpark. There were lots of Jays fans, decked out like we were in Jays shirts and hats. Despite the scorching heat and lopsided result, it was a fun afternoon.

            We missed the rubber match Sunday afternoon because we were driving home, this time in better conditions, making it an 8-hour trip. I came home raving about Cincinnati, but the truth is I saw very little of the city. Most of our time was spent in much smaller and cozier Covington, Kentucky.

            Wherever we were, it was a great weekend. On the way home, with lots of time to talk and make plans, we decided we would have to hit the road again next year to see the Jays play somewhere else. We’ll have to wait for the schedule to come out before deciding where to go. It will be difficult to top this past weekend, however. It was a blast.

We saw dozens of amazing creatures at the Newport Aquarium, including sharks, jellyfish and a 90-year-old Galapagos turtle. We also enjoyed an up-close visit with some African black-foot penguins.

Empire strikes back... #MrLube files motion to avoid paying #BotchedOilChange judgment #LdnOnt #LameExcuses #ThrowingEmployeesUnderBus

Think back to when you were in school and how many excuses you heard or used for not getting your homework done on time.

Dogs seem to figure into the story more often than they should, but there’s also the spilled coffee routine and – most common in the classes I teach at Western – a printer that’s out of ink or just won’t print. Having wrestled with printers that wouldn’t speak to my computer or wouldn’t accept shiny new ink cartridges, I am sympathetic to the printer excuse. Maybe that’s why I hear it so often from my students.

In any case, my legal arch nemesis, Matt Rowswell, owner of the Mr. Lube franchise that botched my oil change in January, has filed a legal document essentially blaming everyone but himself for failing to respond to my lawsuit and having a judgment rendered against him.

As you can read about more fully in earlier postings below, Matt’s employee stripped my oil pan plug in January, rendering the pan useless. A new one was $600.

Last week, a judge ruled in my favour, awarding me a total of $932.46. That represents a refund of the original botched oil change, the cost of repairing my car and $215 in court costs. I promptly emailed Matt’s right-hand man, Mike Morrow, and asked for payment within seven days. That seems to have concentrated Matt’s mind because for the first time in this process, he responded to me – albeit indirectly.

Matt -- or Donald as he is now referred to in his motion -- had his paralegal flunky, Ronald Trachy of St. Thomas, come by my house Saturday. He dropped off a copy of his Notice to Set Aside Judgment and Permission to File a Defence.

That’s right. Nearly a month after I filed my claim and delivered it to the head office of his company, Cardoc Enterprise, Mighty Matt has sprung into action… and asked for a mulligan. He’s really sorry and all, but three weeks wasn’t enough time to respond to my lawsuit. So now that he’s been found guilty, he would really appreciate it if the court would bend the rules and let him file a defence. You can call him Matt. Or you can call him Donald. Just don’t call him late for court.

Of course, he actually had far more time to think about responding because on April 14, I spoke with his second-in-command, Mike Morrow, and indicated I would sue if they didn’t pay for the repair to my car. As unlikely as it seems, it might just be that Matt/Donald didn’t take any of this seriously until there was a judgment against him.

He has asked the court for a second chance because a “lack of communication within Caradoc Enterprise Inc.” meant the lawsuit “was not brought to my attention in a diligent manner, and that through no fault of my own I was unable to respond in a timely fashion.”

In other words, Matt/Donald is blaming his employees for not letting him know he was being sued. I find that amusing because on May 5 when I delivered the claim to his office, the store manager, Jerry DeLyzer, made a phone call before accepting it from me. He called either Matt/Donald or Matt/Donald’s second-in-command Mike. So it seems reasonable to assume he knew about the lawsuit that day.

Maybe the office isn’t run with the precision of a Fortune 500 organization. After all, the business itself is known as Cardoc Enterprise on its business cards and the business license displayed at its Oxford Street store, but it’s known as Caradoc Enterprise in the motion it just filed.

Having asked for his mulligan, he gets a hearing June 20 to plead his case. I will be on my way to Cincinnati to watch the Blue Jays play that weekend, so I can’t attend. I will, however, submit a motion suggesting his claim is hooey (sorry for the fancy legal terms) and asking the judge to tell Matt/Donald to quit stalling and pay me.

I hope he isn’t counting on his employees to remind him of the court date. They appear to be wholly unreliable. 

More on #BizLondon June cover story, Bela Booteek, #LdnOnt

The street is akin to the eye of a hurricane – at least as I understand it, having never been in a hurricane, eye or otherwise.

            Reportedly, when a hurricane makes land, the eye is eerily calm, sometimes prompting people to come out from shelter, assuming the worst is over. However, all around the eye, the storm continues to rage and damage everything in its path.

            Tiny Covent Market Place in downtown London is a little bit like that. All around it, the business of downtown goes on every day: Crowds flock to Budweiser Gardens, shoppers wander through Covent Garden Market and people come and go to offices, restaurants and bars.

            Yet many people miss this little street, a 200-metre elbow that wraps around the north end of Covent Garden Market connecting King and Talbot streets. There hasn’t always been much to see there. In fact, if you look at Google’s Street View of the north section of the street, last updated five years ago, it’s rather bleak.

            Today, however, that section of road has been revived, with the arrival of Hotel Metro, the restaurant Blu Duby (originally Braise) and the Market Lane walk-through to Dundas Street.

Two years ago Izabela Maloney arrived on the street and opened Bela Booteek, a women’s clothing and shoe store, modeled after two successful stores she operates in Aylmer of all places. Ask most people in London about Aylmer – 40 minutes southeast of here – and the first comment is likely to be about the Ontario Police College just outside town. There might be some vague notion the area is home to a large concentration of Mennonites and Amish, but that’s about it.

            No one thinks of Aylmer and fashion, but Maloney, a 43-year-old dynamo who came to Canada from Poland 13 years ago, has made her two Bela Booteek locations in Aylmer a destination shopping experience for women across Southwestern Ontario.

            Two years ago, she expanded to London and opened on Covent Market Lane. You can read all about her in this month’s Business London magazine.

            It took me a couple of weeks to track her down for an interview. She was willing but very busy. Evidently, she wears out the pavement between London and Aylmer, going back and forth to her stores every week. We eventually met at the Covent Market store, where I walked in to find four friendly staff members and an even more friendly Bichon Frise dog named Coco.

            The store has been successful, but can’t touch the volume of its Aylmer counterpart. After two years, it’s fair to say most women in London have never noticed the store, sitting as it does in the eye of the downtown hurricane.

            That might change in the coming months because in April, Maloney opened a second location in the former Ross Mayer store on Richmond Row, giving her about 100x more visibility. It’s a smaller store, but it most certainly will introduce the name Bela Booteek to more shoppers, many of whom will be shocked to discover there is a larger version of the store across from Covent Garden Market.

covent garden market

            Sometime in the next year or so, she would like to buy a building and consolidate her two London outlets into one, large and fabulous store. It will take some doing. She’s not going to move into a strip mall, just to find the space she needs.

            As you will understand if you read this month’s BL cover story, Maloney achieves the goals she sets for herself. So look for an amalgamated Bela Booteek somewhere downtown in the not too distant future. And if you’re ever in Aylmer…

Part four on suing #MrLube for #BotchedOilChange. While #JoeFontana awaits verdict, victory is mine! #LdnOnt

While London mayor Joe Fontana waits for a judge to render a verdict June 13 in his case, I got great news today about my equally weighty, but lower profile, legal battle with the elusive Matt Rowswell, owner of two London Mr. Lube franchises.

The mayor is charged with breach of trust by a public official, fraud and uttering forged documents. I was at the court house twice last week, the first time during Mayor Joe’s trial, when the place was abuzz with what passes for excitement there.

A judge is now deciding whether to believe Joe’s explanation for making numerous changes to an expense report and then submitting it for payment for something entirely unrelated to its original purpose. Not to jump the gun, but if that doesn’t constitute fraud, I’m not sure what the word means.

In my case, a judge – and I wish I knew which one but I can’t decipher his signature on the Endorsement Record I received in the mail today – ruled in my favour against Mystery Matt.

For those just catching up, the fine folks at Mr. Lube on Oxford at Wonderland botched my oil change in late January, stripping the oil pan plug and causing a gushing oil leak about eight weeks later. I needed a new oil pan. Not having one on hand, I had to pay Leavens VW about $600 to install one. Mystery Matt’s second banana, Mike Morrow, offered to pay half the cost of the repair but declined to refund the cost of the original oil change, a whopping $126. So I sued. For more details, read earlier posts, below.

The winning judgment

The judgment is for the cost of the repair, the cost of the oil change and $215 in court costs, just under $1,000 in total. The judge did not allow my claim for the cost of a rental car I had for four days whilst my car was being repaired. Fair enough. I also was awarded interest on all of these costs, which isn’t all that important unless Mystery Matt continues his strategy of avoiding me at every turn.  

I won the case because he didn’t respond to the suit within the allotted three weeks. Now that I have a judgment, it’s up to me to wrest the money from Matt and his high-road company, Cardoc Enterprise. I’ll start this week by contacting Mike Morrow and asking for a cheque next week. On the off chance Matt can’t find his cheque book or is out of town taking an ethics course, I would have to follow up with the court and ask for assets to be seized and so on.

That, of course, is a worst case scenario. I’m confident old Matt will happily pay up. There might even be a cheque in my mailbox right now. I’m going to see…

Part three on suing #MrLube #BotchedOilChange #LdnOnt and #JoeFontana

For a minute yesterday, I thought maybe everyone suddenly was interested in my ongoing legal dispute with Mr. Lube franchise owner Matt Rowswell.

I went to the London court house to file a default motion against old Matt because he had failed to respond to the claim I filed three weeks ago in Small Claims Court.

Matt Rowswell?

The background of this story is available below in earlier blog postings, but suffice to say one of his Mr. Lube technicians (loosely defined) wrecked my oil pan in late January in the midst of a $125 oil change. Eight weeks later, that led to a gushing oil leak that cost about $600 to repair, required me to rent a car for several days and got me thinking perhaps I should get a refund of my original $125.

Matt’s right hand man, Mike Morrow, offered to pay half the cost of the repair, which I thought missed the mark by a significant amount. So I sued Matt’s company, Cardoc Enterprise Inc., for $2,000, which is a rather conservative estimate of all my costs, including the time I’ve spent chasing around after the elusive Matt and Mike duo. With their aversion to contact of any kind, they make Howard Hughes and J.D. Salinger look like Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. (Matt, I’ll explain that reference if I ever have the pleasure of meeting you.)

I got to court just after 10 yesterday morning, and the place was abuzz. Of course, I soon realized that wasn’t because of my motion but because our fair city’s mayor, Joe Fontana, was in the second day of his trial, charged with breach of trust by a public official, fraud and uttering forged documents. The actions are alleged to have taken place when Fontana was serving his country as a Liberal MP and cabinet minister in 2005.

Mayor Joe Fontana

One wonders how many backbench Liberals decided to get out of politics the day Joe Fontana was chosen ahead of them to be Minister of Labour in the Paul Martin cabinet. Yikes Martha, if I can’t nose out this guy, what am I doing here?

Several floors below Joe’s trial, it was a good news-bad news day in Small Claims Court. I managed to file my default motion against Matt, which allows me to proceed and try to collect $2,000 from him.

However, because I am claiming damages – as in, his company damaged my car – I have to ask a judge to determine if my damage claim is reasonable. Which means I have to file more paperwork, this time around a Notice of Motion and Supporting Affidavit. I’ll do that in the next few days and swing by the court house a fourth time.

By then, we may know the fate of our second-rate mayor, and the courthouse should be far less crowded.

On @LondonMusicHall and the #deadmau5 turning point

In October, 2010, many of the journalism students I teach at Western University were beside themselves with excitement. They were looking forward to a concert in downtown London by an artist whose name crashed my spell checker: deadmau5.

 In one of my classes, students write a review of some kind – movie, book, restaurant or whatever interests them. That year, roughly half wrote about the concert. So I read numerous accounts of the performance and eventually came to understand a few basic facts.

Deadmau5 live at iTunes festival London Roundhouse, Camden, 2012. 

For starters, deadmau5 is pronounced ‘Dead Mouse’. That is something closer to common knowledge today, after Mr. Maus appeared on the Grammys in 2012 among other high-profile venues. I also discovered what exactly he does on stage that excites so many fans. He’s a DJ and one of the pioneers of progressive house music, aka electronic dance music.

Like another music pioneer also named Zimmerman a couple of generations earlier, Niagara Falls native Joel Zimmerman chose a catchier name with which to launch his career.

Early in 2010, London promoter Derek Hsiung started talking to London Music Hall owner Mike Manuel about bringing deadmau5 to London and staging an event unlike anything the city had ever seen. “They had been doing this in Europe for years, but it hadn’t been done here,” Hsiung recalls.

I talked to Hsiung when I was writing about Manuel and the Music Hall for this month’s Business London magazine cover story.

London Music Hall has become one of the country’s best and most popular live music venues, gaining the respect and admiration of artists, agents and promoters across Canada. It will host 275 events this year, entertaining about 200,000 people in the process. A renovation last fall transformed an already popular venue into something worthy of its recent nomination for Top Club Venue at the Canadian Music and Broadcast Industry Awards in Toronto.

Four years ago, Manuel and Hsiung envisioned a huge downtown tent party, headlined by deadmau5. As Hsiung says in this month’s story, “It was crazy. Half the people buying tickets for $40 or $50 had no idea what they were buying.” They sold 6,000 tickets and threw a party that impressed not just the crowd under the tent that night, but plenty of influential people in the Canadian music scene.

Reading student accounts of the concert, I quickly realized how popular and innovative deadmau5 was and is. What I didn’t understand was how the event had burnished the reputation of the London Music Hall, putting it in the big leagues from that day forward. As Manuel says, it took years to build a reputation for excellence among agents and promoters. “They need more than just the space. They need perfection. They’re booking 500-1,000 shows a year and don’t have time for mistakes.”

The deadmau5 show was the biggest and best demonstration of the Music Hall’s ability to achieve perfection. Of course, it also raised expectations, something Manual and Hsiung realized immediately.

“We looked at each other that night and asked, ‘What now?’ What would people expect after that,” Hsiung recalls. What followed was an ongoing collaboration that stages an annual Block Party the first week of September and an annual Tent Party that coincides with Western’s Homecoming weekend, both of which continue to be popular among students at Western and Fanshawe College.

The original deadmau5 concert demonstrates precisely how and why the London Music Hall has achieved everything it has in the last nine years. From the beginning, when he opened the smaller venue Rum Runners next to his laser tag business, Mike Manuel has dreamed big and remained steadfastly focused on achieving those dreams. When Rum Runners was sitting empty for weeks at a time, he resisted the temptation to simply open up as a night club. “We were a venue, booking events. We stayed true to that philosophy, even when we were empty for a whole weekend.”

When he converted the larger laser tag operation into the London Music Hall, continuing Rum Runners alongside, he ran the operation with a level of professionalism that impressed everyone he dealt with. Word started to spread throughout the music community: This was a venue worth playing. Last year, Manuel spent about $1-million to renovate the venue into something rather spectacular. Check out Steve Martin’s excellent photos in Business London to see for yourself.

Or get down to the venue itself. It’s the heart of London’s music scene, and less of a secret every day.