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We Were Much Smarter 50 Years Ago
This is my draft submission to the public consultation on the future of Billy Bishop Airport. I am posting it to elicit reaction from readers before I submit it for the deadline of July 24. As you’ll see, it is based on my unique knowledge of the situation. If you are considering making a submission,…
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Joyously Back to the Classroom
A few months ago, I was asked to teach my Management and Narrative course to first year undergrads in Victoria College’s elite Vic One program this fall. After a bit of thought I accepted. It was always my favourite course and was well received by students. Teaching it again would be a chance to test…
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Lloyd Blankfein: Changing the Narrative?
Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs during the financial crisis of 2008, was one of the corporate leaders Senator Carl Levin mercilessly interrogated at Senate committee hearings. My 2019 book Negotiating Business Narratives, coauthored with my estimable spouse Beth Herst, has a chapter on financial sector narratives titled “A Good Dose of Outrage” that pays…
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Present at the Destruction of USAID
While the Trump Administration was destroying the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in February 2025, there was an outbreak of Ebola in Uganda. One consequence was that USAID’s supply of 27000 sets of personal protective equipment languished in a warehouse in Kenya and was never shipped to Uganda. We are now facing a much…
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With Pearson’s LIFT, Why Expand Billy Bishop?
The Ford Government justified its legislation to expand Billy Bishop Airport (Bill 110) as “reducing pressure at Toronto Pearson International Airport.” I wonder if any of Ford’s minions were at the Empire Club earlier this week when Pearson CEO Deborah Flint gave a presentation entitled “Positioned to Grow — Toronto Pearson Enters a New Era.”…
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What Nieuport Won’t Say and Ford Won’t Do
Since the Ford Government’s tabling of Bill 110, the Building Billy Bishop Airport Act, its opponents have focused on the issues of air and noise pollution that would be caused by expanding the airport, the incompatibility of an expanded airport with residential and recreational uses of the waterfront, and the attack on local democracy from…
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Public Representations is Now Online
My co-author Beth Herst and I are pleased to post that our new book, Public Representations: Screen Stories, Narrative, and the Public Sphere, is now online. It is available to anyone on the University of Toronto Press website at this link. You can download it as an e-Publication for your reader, or as a pdf,…
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It’s Not “Just a Movie”
When young children are frightened by a story they’re watching on screen, we comfort them by reminding “It’s just a movie.” An expanding body of research is telling us that’s not actually true. Like our kids, we know that screen stories affect our emotions. Scholars are demonstrating that they work powerfully on our public memories…
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A Bureaucratic War to Save Lives
The Swedish Connection is a recent Swedish docudrama, now available on Netflix, about the efforts of a team of Swedish public servants – the Legal Department of the Foreign Affairs Ministry – to save European Jews from the Holocaust. The title of the film signals the bureaucrats’ strategy, which was to allow European Jews who…
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Getting the Book Club Scam
A few days ago, I received an invitation from one Jim Held, the organizer of the Union Square Reading Group (USRG), who wanted the group to discuss my 1997 book Innovating with Integrity. Held said he was “drawn to its exploration of ethics in public service” and that “the themes and ideas at the heart…
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Fame and Recognition at the AGO
I went to the Art Gallery of Ontario last weekend to see two exhibits. One captures a young artist encountering sudden global fame. The other makes the case for recognition of an artist whose work has been neglected for decades. I’m referring to the two recently opened exhibits at the Art Gallery of Ontario about…
- I am Professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Toronto, having retired in July 2020 after a 45-year academic career.
- My latest book, Public Representations: Screen Stories, Narrative, and the Public Sphere, co-authored with Beth Herst, was published in April 2026 by University of Toronto Press (open access).
- On this website I post blogs about politics, narrative, and my life experiences.
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