#WhatWeDidOnOurHoliday is movie perfection. Well done @BBCFilms

It’s tempting to say What We Did On Our Holiday is the perfect movie. In truth, though, it’s only perfect for certain segments of society.

If you’re a parent or a grandparent, if you’ve ever fallen in love or had your heart broken, if you’ve been married, or married and divorced, if you have complicated relationships with siblings, or if someone close to you has died, well then this movie is for you.

If not, you’ve led a spectacularly uninteresting life and this story is not for you.

Released last year in the U.K. and this summer in North America, What We Did On Our Holiday centres on the relationship of three young children and their cancer-stricken grandfather, played by Billy Connolly. Yes, that Billy Connolly, doing what Billy Connolly always does.

He is exactly the kind of wise old Scottish smartass that you’d expect. But in this setting, it’s perfect. He represents what grandfathers often are to their young grandchildren: fun-loving, rule-breaking founts of joy and irreverence. When he tells the three youngsters that he’s a descendent of Vikings and wants a proper Viking funeral, the kids soak up every word, including the fictional bits about how Vikings memorialized their dead.

When the kids follow his wishes, the reaction of their parents is, by turns, predictable, depressing and hilarious. The chaos that ensues shreds the veneer all the adults have been fighting so hard to maintain, a veneer covering infidelity, divorce, depression and the common neuroses every family faces at various times.

It falls to the children to teach the adults around them what really matters – lessons learned from their grandfather. That they miss the nuances of many situations and forge ahead with innocent determination only concentrates the point that much of what we spend our time worrying about is meaningless.

The children carry the movie and deliver most of its best lines. Let’s face it, little kids with British accents delivering non-sequiturs and unfiltered observations are very funny. Their parents, played by Rosamund Pike and David Tennant, represent flawed parents everywhere.

With potential clichés lurking at every turn, the film steers a refreshing course, dabbling, but never drowning, in sentimentality, and wrapping up in an uplifting but realistic conclusion, rather than a saccharine happy ending.

Perfect.

More on my @CityMatchLdn @BizLondon cover story #LdnOnt

            I’ve never been wooed. Professionally, that is. So I can only imagine the kinds of discussions that occur when a company desperately wants someone to pack up his or her family and come to London to fill a key role.

            (One thing we know from the magnificent new Pixar creation, Inside Out, is the kids will struggle mightily with their emotions when the family relocates, but that’s a topic for another blog entry. Suffice to say: Inside Out is terrific. Your kids should see it. You should see it. It will be nominated by the Oscar folks not just for best animated film, but for best film, period.)

            Back to being wooed. And again, I mean professionally.

            One of the challenges London companies face when bringing talent here is that no one outside shouting distance of Andy Oudman knows very much about London. What those companies need is someone connected to all parts of the city -- an unofficial ambassador of sorts, a community concierge if you will -- to introduce London to the Wooed and the Wooed to London.

            That’s where Jodi Simpson comes in. As you can read about in this month’s Business London magazine, Simpson recently launched CityMatch, a service designed to help the Wooed and their families integrate smoothly with the city and everything it has to offer, even if those offerings aren’t obvious or widely understood.

            For a flat rate of $4,800, paid by the recruiting company, she takes the incoming family under her wing, meeting them at the airport if appropriate, and introduces them to the city, in much the same way the best teachers you ever had opened your eyes to a new subject.

            Our own love or hatred of a given subject – history or Shakespeare perhaps – often can be traced directly to the first high school teacher who introduced us to the topic. That teacher either lit or doused our nascent interest, depending on her level of enthusiasm and creativity.

            In a similar way, Simpson will be the teacher who introduces professionals and their families to their new home of London, Ont. Her enthusiasm for the city is unparalleled. In fact, part of the reason she started the business was to contribute something to the city.

            Before she was director of marketing at Harrison Pensa, she was director of programs at TechAlliance. There she saw how difficult it can be for technology companies to attract and retain talent. It’s not just tech companies either. Lots of companies struggle to fill specific posts and lament the loss of key people whose abilities inevitably draw attention from companies around the world.

            If CityMatch pans out the way she hopes, Simpson will be a valuable resource for those companies in their ongoing struggle to find and retain the very best employees -- those who know what it’s like to be wooed. Professionally, that is. 

I don't care what you think about the weather #LdnOnt

            I was standing in line today at my favourite small grocer, @Remark_London, and overheard a conversation about the weather. That’s hardly surprising, given how much time Canadians spend talking about the topic.

            The gist of the conversation was that person A felt the spring and early summer have been too wet, while person B enjoys rain and spent some time this very morning walking in said rainfall.

            OK, good to know. Thanks.

            As Derek Smalls asks in This is Spinal Tap, “Can I raise a practical question at this point?”

            Who cares? Who honestly cares whether Person A or Person B is happy or unhappy with the general state of the weather today, this week, this month or ever?

            Let’s stipulate that everyone has a weather zone he or she considers perfect. Some like heat; others don’t. Some crave humidity; others don’t. Some enjoy a crisp winter’s day while others would rather stay inside from December to March.

            There are more than seven billion people on earth and more than seven billion opinions on what the perfect weather conditions are. Who damn well cares?

            As climate change is demonstrating every day, we humans cannot dictate what type of weather we want. We simply react to what comes, sometimes very well and sometimes so inadequately that people suffer and die. Until there comes a time when we can tap an app on our smart phones and dial up the weather conditions we want for a particular day, there’s no point in discussing whether we are happy or sad about the weather around us that day.

            There’s general agreement that hurricanes, blizzards and tornadoes are lousy weather conditions. Besides that, there will always be someone happy with the weather and someone else, standing three feet away, who is unhappy with the very same weather.

            Go ahead and talk about the forecast -- about frost that might kill the tomatoes or snow that’s going to close the highway. That’s good to know.

            What isn’t good to know or hear is the categorization of the weather as good or bad, filtered through your prism of weather perfection. Please shut up. No one cares and it just doesn’t matter. 

Thanks for everything Dave @Letterman @ByeLetterman #ThanksDave

It’s been more than a year since David Letterman announced he would retire sometime in 2015. We’ve known today, May 20, would be the last day since December. Either way you cut it, that’s a long time to prepare for something, but nevertheless, as I wait for tonight’s final show, it seems like it all happened in a few short weeks.

            My DVR is jammed with dozens of recent shows. I’ve read everything I can find from smart critics and observers about Letterman’s legacy. I’ve spent more time on YouTube than the proud owners of a piano-playing cat. In short, I’m trying to soak in as much as I can before Letterman leaves my TV screen forever.

            There’s no shortage of articles and reminiscences about what Letterman has meant to his fans. Like millions of others, I started watching Late Night in high school, rarely lasting until the show ended at 1:30, but reveling in the first 30 minutes when most of the absurdist jokes, stunts and inventions came pouring out of the show at a breathtaking rate.

            If it seemed the pace of brilliance was unsustainable, well, it turned out to be exactly that. In recent years, the Late Show has been less irreverent, less absurd. And yet, as I watch the endless compilations of highlights, I’m reminded that much of what made NBC’s Late Night great transferred very nicely to CBS’s Late Show. Bits came and went, the Jimmys started playing beer pong and charades with their celebrity guests, and Jay Leno plodded along, winning the ratings race. But Letterman’s brilliance never faded.

            Yes, he mellowed after his heart surgery and the birth of his son. The man is 68, so it’s hardly surprising that his sensibilities and interests might have changed from the early days when he was in his mid-30s. What never changed, however, was the deep well of quips and reactions he delivered in any situation. Sure, his writers prepared some great lines for him, but his ability to say something funny in any circumstance, with pitch-perfect timing was and is unrivalled.

            The great Tom Shales, a Pulitzer-prize winning TV critic at the Washington Post for roughly as many years as Letterman was on the air, said exactly what I’ve been thinking for years. From time to time, I would record one of the Jimmys, or Seth, or Craig or, now, James. But that decision was based on what guests were scheduled to appear, what musician was playing to close the show.

            With Dave, it was different. He was his own best guest, Shales noted. It didn’t matter who was coming on with him, I wanted to see Dave every night and that’s why I watched. It’s why I watched for 33 years, and it’s why I’m going to miss him so very much. 

More on @BizLondon May cover @EllipsisDigital #LondonRoundhouse #LdnOnt

            Early in 2013, my daughter Emily was applying to universities and had to submit a series of photos in support of her application to the fine arts program at Ryerson in Toronto. The photos had to represent a theme, and she chose urban decay.

            I had just bought a new camera, so we set out together, cameras in hand, to see what we could find in downtown London. We spent most of a January Saturday tooling around exploring.

            Late in the afternoon, we stumbled across the former Great West Steak House on Horton Street. It was one ugly building -- exactly what we were looking for to demonstrate urban decay. Boarded up since 2007, it offered no clues to its fascinating past and certainly not to the renaissance it would enjoy in the spring of 2015, when hundreds of people would flock to an open house to celebrate the building’s restoration.

             As you can read about in this month’s Business London cover story, beautifully illustrated by Steve Martin’s photos, the building had been a railroad roundhouse, an architectural wonder constructed in 1887 by Michigan Central Rail to service and store hulking steam locomotives that were nearly impossible to move in reverse. The roundhouse was built around a giant turntable, allowing up to six locomotives to be turned and shunted off into service bays as required.

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            When it was no longer used for its intended purpose, the roundhouse went through a number of owners and uses, culminating with the Great West Steak House, which hid the glories of the building not so much under a bushel basket but under tons of wood panels, drywall and other detritus. 

            Underneath, however, the building always had good bones. That’s what interested the co-owners of Creative Property Development when they bought the property, along with 23 other properties in the SoHo (South of Horton) area. Patrick John Ambrogio and Slavko Prtenjaca met while attending Central high school, and slowly created their company without relying on any equity partners. They have a bunch of rental space on Richmond Row, but their SoHo developments take most of their time and energy.

            They love the area and are committed to restoring it, using Toronto’s high-tech Liberty Village as a template. Already SoHo has attracted a variety of creative and tech firms, most in buildings Creative Property has renovated. The London Roundhouse is the largest project of all, however. The multi-stage project will cost the partners something north of $10-million. And they’ve proposed a commercial and residential tower as the final phase at a cost of $45-million.

            The key to developing the 5,500 square feet in the Roundhouse itself was finding the right tenant. Ellipsis Digital and its sister company, Engine SevenFour, were the ideal match. Operating as rtraction when they toured the building in 2013, the three partners signed up eagerly. It might have helped that they didn’t know the extent of what they were getting into, but now that it’s complete, they are thrilled with their decision.

            Sure, the project can be called a renovation. But that word suggests some new paint here, crown molding there, maybe a new countertop and appliances. The Roundhouse project is better described as a rebuild: Besides the majestic beams holding the place up, virtually everything else is new. It took a year longer than planned, but it looks fantastic.

            The larger project will continue for several years, initially adding more office space in a circle around the Roundhouse itself. Among the new tenants scheduled for 2016 is Royal LePage Triland Real Estate, led by two of the most pleasant men in real estate: Peter Hoffman and Peter Meyer.

            The final phase might be more of a dream than reality at the moment. Given the timetable for phase one, it’s tough to believe a 15-25 storey tower will be up by 2020. If it’s even approved by then, it will be impressive.

            In the meantime, the Roundhouse stands as testament to what passion and determination can deliver. Congratulations to everyone involved. 

The finished product: London's most beautiful office space

More on @BizLondon #FortuneMinerals February cover story #LdnOnt

It takes some gumption to start a mining company in your London, Ont. basement and name it Fortune Minerals.

            Presumably, the name refers to the fortune such a company some day would deliver to its employees and shareholders. Or perhaps Robin Goad chose the name because he knew he would need a serious dose of good fortune to make his fledgling venture a success. Either way, Goad created Fortune Minerals in 1988 and took it public the following year, peddling over-the-counter penny stocks and working part-time as a mining consultant to cover some of the costs of his new business.

            In 1996, Fortune discovered deposits of gold, copper, cobalt and bismuth not far from Yellowknife in the NWT. As you can read in this month’s Business London cover story, the company has been working to mine the area ever since. There’s reason to believe it could start extracting minerals by 2016, two decades after making the original find. Mining is not a industry for the impatient.

            In the mid-90s, the copper and gold might have been the headline from the discovery. But since then, the world has changed. Lead is now a four-letter word, drummed out of paint, pipes and water supplies, by law and moral suasion, around the world. And it just so happens bismuth is an ideal substitute for lead in a variety of industrial applications -- without any of the health concerns. Bingo. Fortune’s NWT mine has 12 per cent of the world’s known bismuth reserves.

            How about cobalt? Would you believe it’s a primary ingredient in the ultra-sophisticated lithium-ion and nickel-metal hydride batteries that power so much of the developed world every day? Cordless appliances and tools; smart phones, laptops and tablets; electric cars and so much more.

            Even though a barrel of oil costs about the same as a barrel of monkeys right now, Tesla is going ahead with a $5-billion lithium-ion battery plant in Nevada. It won’t take a Keystone pipeline to get the cobalt – which will be processed at a Fortune facility near Saskatoon – to the Nevada desert facility.

            When Fortune made its original find, no one had heard of Elon Musk and his quixotic Tesla Motors, the company leading the world toward a future of electric cars that people actually want to drive.

            Fortune appears to be well situated. But it’s still waiting to sell its first ounce of bismuth or cobalt to anyone. So last year, it made a huge strategic move and purchased an operating silver mine in Colorado. More than tripling its workforce, it instantly became a producing mine, rather than simply a speculative one. Only trouble is the price of silver, like all commodities, has plummeted in the last four months. Oh, and the mine turned out to be a bit of a fixer-upper. So it hasn’t provided any net revenue as yet. “But it will within the next month or so,” says Goad.

            If it does, and if the bismuth and cobalt start flowing in the next 24 months, the name of Goad’s company might well suit it. If not? Well, the company has another mine site in B.C., where it has rare anthracite coal. But that is going to take even longer to develop.

            And so goes the mining industry. Years of hope and despair, punctuated by stunning success and crushing defeats. Fortune is poised for one of the former. And in mining terms, it could happen any day now.

When reviews start arriving #ldnont #amreading #kindle #thriller

Having published my first novel last month, I can tell you there’s only one thing better than a positive review from someone you know who took the time to read your book: A positive review from someone you don’t know!

            As you may have noticed from my website and various media, social and otherwise, I published Pulling Strings last month. It’s available for all tablets and e-readers and also as a paperback from Amazon.com. As I’ve blurbed many times, it’s a thriller/murder mystery about politics, baseball and sex – not necessarily in that order.

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            The response so far has been very encouraging. I’ve heard from a bunch of people who have enjoyed it and are looking forward to my next book – working title: Tangled Strings. (I know, I have a thing about strings.)

            Selling a book takes as much time and effort as writing it, as I’m learning, and it’s easy to get discouraged when you see your novel listed somewhere around No. 250,000 on the Amazon.com sales ranking. I got up into the 400s on Amazon.ca the first week the book was available, but there are millions of indie books out there, so the challenge is to lead potential readers to your book.

            And that’s where reviews come in. Let’s be honest, if you see something, anything, listed online and 100 people have given it four or five stars, you are more likely to buy it. But let’s be honest, leaving reviews is a chore, and the motivation is greater to review something we hate than something we love.

            So when this review popped up today, it was very encouraging:

5.0 out of 5 stars

AWESOME Read Jan. 9 2015

By Lori Gaudette - Published on Amazon.com

 What an awesome read! I love baseball and knew very little about American Politics - I learned a lot while being highly entertained through the flow of this story. I could not put the book down - from page 1 until the end, I was caught up in a story that showed great characters with personalities and lives intermingling with a surprise ending! Loved the book and hope to read more from this author.

Just like when this one arrived a couple of weeks ago:

5.0 out of 5 stars

When will Christopher Clark release his next thriller? Dec 26 2014

By Mike King

Format:Kindle Edition

Should one read a book on Christmas day? There are many subjects covered with skill and knowledge which kept me at the book until finished, in one sitting. I believe this story has something for everyone and two family members are anxious to get it. Christopher has the correct set of skills to keep any reader anxious to get to the next chapter and hopefully future books with some of the same characters. Can't imagine a much better first book. Well done Mr. Clark.

 

Of course, it’s self-serving to write a blog and quote people who love my book, but guess what? If you want to sell the book you’ve spent a year or more writing, designing and editing, you’ve got to be a little self-serving. So bear with me while I mention one more review that was very encouraging:

5.0 out of 5 stars

Pulling Strings captured my attention from the first pages until ... Dec 20 2014

 By Chris Constantine - Published on Amazon.com

Format:Kindle Edition

Pulling Strings captured my attention from the first pages until its riveting conclusion. For fans of political intrigue, Clark deftly weaves a story of 'curveballs' that had me flipping pages eagerly. Each character overcomes multiple obstacles to ensure a brighter future, whether it be in the high stakes game of American politics or the climb up the proverbial ladder for an up and coming Major League Baseball prospect. Clark offered a glimpse into both worlds that was refreshing for even the most seasoned political or baseball follower. Give this book every opportunity to capture your fascination. For a first time novel writer, Clark will want to pursue this avenue in the future because his future is a bright one.

There you have it, a few reviews of my novel. I’ll close with two points.

You can read the first several chapters of Pulling Strings right here on my website to see if it appeals to you.

And if you read a book, any book, you like, you can be sure the author would love to receive a review, posted wherever you bought the book. 

The year my daughter asked about #Santa #Christmas #LdnOnt

I wrote this a decade ago, the year my daughter started to wonder if Santa was real…

            I suspected the jig was up when she asked flat out: Is there really a tooth fairy?

            Since that day several months ago, I knew this Christmas was going to be different for my daughter Emily and for me.

            It’s a very short trip from pondering the tooth fairy to questioning the Easter bunny to doubting Santa Claus, and this is the year she started that journey.

            As surely as parents delight in the wonder on their children’s faces when Santa fulfils their wishes, we squirm when they start to wonder exactly how he gets to so many houses – and more perplexing, how he gets into them.

            “Who wants to go down a chimney anyway?” Emily asked recently, her mind in full flight as she considered all the obstacles Santa must face on Christmas Eve.

            But doubt as she might, she was not willing to give up completely on the man who had been so faithful on her seven previous Christmas Days.

            “It would be too hard for him to go to every house, so I think maybe there are teams of people who do certain areas,” she surmised. “I still don’t know how they get into the houses though.”

            After a weekend of conversations like this, she finally pleaded: “Tell me, please. I have to know. Is Santa real?”

            I imagine the feeling of that moment will return the day she decides it’s time to buy her first bra, but I’m willing to wait and see.

            Faced with such an emotional plea, I did what any 21st-Century parent would do – I ran out of the room, straight for my computer.

            In less than a minute, I had found Francis Church’s famous editorial, printed in New York in 1897, ‘Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus’.

            I dashed upstairs to Emily’s room, where she was sitting, waiting for an answer. The editorial would solve everything, so I began to read aloud.

            With no Santa, “there would be no child-like faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in the sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.”

            Huh? As my daughter’s eyes rolled to the back of her head, I considered two possibilities.

            Either children in the 1890s were a lot more literate than their counterparts today, or perhaps the editorial was written for adults and not children at all.

            Either way, this wasn’t going to sate Emily’s curiosity or get me off the hook. In the end, I did more listening than explaining. I let her talk herself into a world in which love and kindness produce a kind of magic at Christmastime that no one can fully understand.

            We are all Santa’s helpers, but we never know what the outcome of everyone’s efforts will be.

            I sidestepped the chimney question entirely, and that seemed OK with Emily. She was more than happy to embrace a world in which there are miracles and not everything can be explained.

            And come to think of it, so am I.

I come not to bury #Bell customer service but to praise it #LdnOnt

            Yesterday, when I noticed my Sympatico home Wi-Fi was down, I had the same two thoughts everyone in that situation has: When will it be fixed and how many hours will I spend on the phone Monday fighting with someone to make it happen?

            Like anyone who ever bought a Dell computer – that was a thing, kids, in the 90s – I have less than fond memories of lying on the floor of my office with the speakerphone on, trying to read some 4-point-type serial number to a guy half way around the world who was just getting started on a 35-point checklist to diagnose my problem, the first question on which was: Is your computer plugged in?

Don't ever say this blog isn't rich with images. Here's a picture of a modem. A modem, people.

            So I was far from optimistic when I called Bell this morning to report my frozen modem. My mood brightened somewhat when I waited only 15 seconds for someone to answer my call. Not only that, the person was the right person to help, not a person to find a person who would ask a person if that person could help.

            This person was friendly and within two minutes had diagnosed the issue – a faulty power supply. She could send a new one or I could go to a Bell store and pick one up, right away. She listed the Bell stores nearby with the right plug in stock. I chose the nearest – Masonville Place for those scoring at home – and she contacted them so they’d be expecting me.

            Don’t get me wrong. I was still skeptical. I fully expected to bring home the new plug and still have no Internet service.

            When I got to the Bell store, there was no line. Huh? And the guy behind the counter had my plug ready and waiting. I was out of there in three minutes. No charge. I was still skeptical.

            When I got home I plugged in the modem with the new power supply and waited. Green lights flashed, and flashed, and then, voila! It sprang back to life.

            So I come not to bury Bell customer service but to praise it. A complicated system of people and technology came together this morning to make one customer in London, Ontario very happy.

            Amazing.

Cutting the cell phone contract cord @virginmobilecan #LdnOnt

I’m about to go untethered. Unattached. Uncommitted. Free.

            Call it what you will, but at the end of this month, my cell phone contract ends and I’m not signing another one. I’m a free agent baby.

            So what am I going to do? Well, let me tell you. I’m staying right where I am. That’s correct --  same carrier, same data plan, same service. My monthly bill will drop 10 per cent, but nothing else will change. (Or at least that’s what the fine folks in the Virgin Mobile kiosk assured me recently when I inquired about my options.)

            As it is in the NBA – and I usually turn to the NBA for analogies in my life – it makes more financial sense for my free agent self to stick with my current team than to sign elsewhere. A new team can’t offer me what I’m getting now for the same price. Actually, Virgin won’t either if I sign another traditional contract with them. The only way to keep what I have and not pay about 50 per cent more, is to snip the contract cord and go month-to-month.

            Right now I pay $65/month. For that I get more calling time than I use, unlimited texts, and a sweet 6 gigs of data. If I sign a new contract with Virgin, it will cost about $90/month to get the same stuff. And I don’t want to give up those 6 gigs. I use most of them every month, tethering my Surface tablet to the mighty Virgin/Bell network to get Internet where Wi-Fi is iffy or unavailable. The kids can watch Netflix on a two-hour drive to Toronto using those 6 gigs. I’m not giving them up.

My new Nexus 5 phone from Google. It's white on the back! And it says Nexus!

            We sign contracts to get the new phone we want for a heavily subsidized price. When contracts in Canada were three years, the pricing reflected that time period. We paid off our phones over three years, then usually upgraded our phone and signed another contract. When noted consumer advocate Stephen Harper banned three-year contracts, reducing them to two years, you won’t believe what happened. Cell phone companies had the gall to adjust their pricing, recouping the sunk cost of the phone in the shorter period of time. Who saw that coming?

            When my contract ends, I could very well continue with the phone I’ve had for three years – a Samsung Galaxy Nexus – but what’s the fun in that? Instead, I’ve already purchased a 32 GB, Nexus 5 directly from the Google Play store, where it was $399, much less than anywhere else. In a few weeks, I’ll take it to the Virgin kiosk and make the official switch from old Nexus to new Nexus. Being something of a computer genius – ahem – I’ve already transferred all my pictures, songs and other detritus to my new phone. It’s ready to go.

            Of course, in the time between buying the phone and getting it up and running with Virgin, Google has released the Nexus 6. You might not have heard about that because Apple had nothing to do with it and doesn’t sell it at their stores. But I’m happy with my Nexus 5. The 6 is just too big and too expensive. At least until the next time I get the itch to upgrade. Once I’m untethered, I guess I’ll be able to upgrade any time I want. Oh, that could be dangerous.