Five Reasons That "Every Man for Himself" Doesn't Work

1. Not every person is capable of being a CEO or executive.

We are not all born with equal opportunities in this life. Anyone who tells you that is either lying or trying to sell you something (probably a right-wing philosophy). It may sound cruel, but in reality, it's true. Every mother may think that her child is a genius, but in the end, we all have differing levels of intelligence. Not everyone is smart enough to run a company, or operate on another person's brain. For some people, running a deep fryer, or working in some other low-paying job is the best that they are capable of. Are you one of the ones who is extremely intelligent? Fantastic. Guess what? It's as much of a fluke of nature as it is that you were born in a first world country, rather than a dictator-run, third world country constantly hit by natural disasters. Consider yourself lucky and have some compassion for those who weren't born with your gifts.

2. If everyone was a CEO/doctor/lawyer, who would serve them their fancy lunches or drive their airport limo?

The world is simply not set up for everyone to be in a position of power and influence. SOMEONE needs to be on the base of the pyramid. They may not be the ones who run things, but they are the ones who keep things running. You can't have a successful factory without the people on the shop floor, running the machines.

3. Working hard doesn't necessarily equal monetary rewards.

"You have no idea how hard a CEO works." Yeah, I've heard that one before. I have worked for senior executives for years. I know the insane hours that they put in. But what about the parent working two minimum wage jobs, 60-80hrs per week, just to pay rent & buy food? What about labourers working outdoors in freezing cold temperatures in winter, and broiling hot in summer? Don't they deserve seven-figure salaries, too?

4. No one NEEDS millions of dollars.

This is admittedly a bit of hyperbole on my part: there are, in fact, people who need, for whatever reason (I'm thinking of medical care, but I'm sure there are other reasons) millions of dollars to survive. These people are not the ones about whom I'm speaking. The average person - or even the average family - does not need millions of dollars to survive. I actually sat down and thought about it once, and if I were to win $5,000,000, taken care of properly, my family could probably survive on that for the rest of our lives, easily, with a comfortable house, food to eat, and a nice vacation every year. I get that people have different priorities, and if you work hard, you should be able to have a new sports car, or a boat, or an emu farm, if that's what you really want. I also know that someone making millions of dollars per year can have all of that, and still afford to pay a "high" tax rate - you know, more than 10-15% - without suffering. Suffering is choosing which meals you're going to eat this week, because you haven't got enough to buy groceries for three meals a day. Suffering is NOT only having one live-in nanny for your two kids.

5. It's just not nice.

Yeah, this isn't a logical argument. I get that. But the truth is, I will just never understand the idea that it's okay to say, "my family and I are okay, so screw everyone else."  I hate hearing people make the assumption that everyone who is struggling is a "welfare bum" or is too lazy to help themselves. God forbid that those people ever go through a hard time beyond their control.

Sometimes, a bit of human compassion can go a long way.

30th Anniversary of the Marathon of Hope

30 years ago today, Terry Fox started what has become more than a journey of a lifetime.

Terry was always an athlete, making it all the more devastating for him to lose his leg to osteosarcoma in 1977. However, he continued as an athlete, running with an artificial leg, and playing wheelchair basketball, in which he won 3 national championships.

At the end of 1979, angry at his experience in hospital, and with how little research money went to cancer, he decided to attempt a run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. He sent letters to the Canadian Cancer Society and to various businesses asking for donations of a vehicle, gas and food. He also applied for grants for a running "leg." Although many were skeptical he got a van from Ford, gas from Imperial Oil, and running shoes from Adidas.

With little publicity he began his run on April 12, 1980. He was running an entire marathon every day. As he continued across the country, often forced off the road by drivers, running in bad weather, and attempting to cross Quebec with a group that didn't speak French, word began to grow about his efforts. The Cancer Society asked him to delay his arrival in Ottawa so that he would be there for Canada Day. He only agreed when they convinced him it would be beneficial to his fundraising efforts. In Ottawa, he was greeted by 16,000 people, including Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

When he arrived in Toronto over 10,000 people were there to greet him. What had started out as a solitary journey now had the entire country watching.

He continued on, refusing to take a day off, suffering from shin splints, an inflamed knee, cysts on the stump of his leg and dizzy spells. He refused to take a day off, even for his birthday.

On September 1st, 1980, he was forced to ask his traveling companions, his brother Daryl and friend Doug Alward, to take him to hospital after a severe coughing fit. He'd been finding himself exhausted each morning before he even began his run.

The next day he announced that he had to suspend his run: the cancer had returned, and spread to his lungs. He had been running for 143 days, and run 5,280 km. Although he had every intention of finishing the run, on June 28, 1981 he passed away after developing pneumonia and falling into a coma.

By the time Terry stopped his run he had raised $1.7 million for cancer research. After his death, The Terry Fox Foundation started the annual Terry Fox Run. Since its inception in 1981 it has raised over $500 million dollars. Runs are now held around the world.

On a personal note, one of my best memories of high school each year was doing The Terry Fox Run as a school. It's never been a competitive run: there are no winners or losers, just as Terry wanted. Each year the high schools in my area all met at a park where we would do the walk in our school groups, singing school songs and just generally having a big pep rally. Each year the schools raise thousands of dollars.

I don't know anyone whose life hasn't been touched by cancer in some way. Those of us whose cancer stories have happy endings owe so much to Terry. Today, just take a moment and be thankful.

The 30 Days of Ben Mulroney - Day 19!

Is there any Canadian personality more maligned than Benedict Mulroney? I think perhaps, of late, only Chad Kroeger of Nickelback. So here's a picture of Ben interviewing Chad Kroeger of Nickelback!

Canadian Idol did their own version of Idol Gives Back one year, and Ben and one of the judges, Farley Flex, went to Malawi. Ben is also a National Ambassador for UNICEF Canada. Here's the video clip of Ben and Farley's trip:

Awesome Job, Brian Linehan!

There are probably a lot of people now who don't remember Brian Linehan, which is a pity, because he was a real advocate for the arts, just as much as he was a Hollywood A-list interviewer. I'm thrilled to hear that his legacy (he died of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in 2004 - the same disease that killed my grandfather in 1995, coincidentally) is supporting TRUE undiscovered talent in Canada (not in a televised talent competition, either! What a concept!)

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/television/article/778684--somewhere-brian-linehan-is-chuckling

Somewhere, Brian Linehan is chuckling

Late talk-show icon left surprise financial legacy that's helping Canadian talent like Allan Hawco

This is the kind of thing Brian Linehan lived for.

The first part of the tale is all too familiar: An unknown young stage actor from Bell Island, Nfld., a graduate of the National Theatre School, is propelled by his ambition and initiative to Toronto to start up a small, struggling theatre company, maintained by small episodic roles and bit parts in the occasional film ... for all intents and purposes, doomed to the typically anonymous existence of the average unknown Canadian actor.
Except that there was nothing average about Allan Hawco, as anyone who saw him on stage can attest, with a talent that outshone even his rugged good looks – bearing, as he does, and as you can see from the photos, a rather startling resemblance to Colin Farrell.

And now, thanks in large part to Linehan's legacy, Hawco is the creator, co-producer, co-writer and star of the hit CBC series Republic of Doyle, a show that managed to pull more than a half-million Canadian viewers up against CSI and American Idol, and slightly less than half a million opposite Canada/Russia Olympic hockey.

Somewhere, Brian Linehan is laughing. The late interview icon, Canadian television's premiere celebrity schmoozer, was, for all his noted facility for stroking the A-list rich and famous, a passionate advocate for homegrown talent at a time when that was a fairly revolutionary concept.

It was – and is – a sentiment shared by the country's most respected and connected industry deal-maker, and Linehan's long-time advocate, adviser and friend, Toronto lawyer Michael Levine.

"Three weeks before Brian died," Levine recalls, "we're sitting in Morton's restaurant, and I finally said to him, "All right Brian, what do you want?'

"And he said, generously, "I would like to help artists. (I'd like) the best of the best of the best to have an opportunity to come forth, because I've always believed our talent is as good as any in the world, and all they need is training, good work and promotion.'

"And I said, 'Who do you want to do this?' And he said, `You.' "

When Linehan died, in 2004 from non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, he left behind an estate, to be administrated by Levine, totalling $4.5 million – much to the surprise of even those of us who knew him well, and generally assumed he was broke.

"Even I had no idea what Brian was worth," Levine confesses, "because Brian was the world's most private individual. And then I wake up one morning, and when the bank tells me I literally started to laugh. I mean, I didn't know if I had enough money to pay for his funeral.

"I remember, shortly after Brian died, Norman Jewison yelling to me from the stage of the Elgin Theatre, 'Levine! You know the money he left? It's ours!' "

And indeed, Levine did funnel some of the funds into the Jewison-founded Canadian Film Centre, toward establishing the new Actor's Conservatory.

"We put in 20 per cent of the money, got a network to put in money, got the government to put in half the money ... and now we have about a $5 million fund sitting there, and we just graduated the first class a couple of days ago."

There have been other endowments, to the likes of TIFF, Soulpepper and the Stratford Festival. "Everything we do has to be not-for-profit," stresses Levine. "And I am very careful as to how it is used.

"I have said to recipients, 'I am not a rich philanthropist. I have a duty to a beloved friend and to a concept ... and if we can't bring that added value to the project, I am not interested in giving you money."

So he was skeptical when Seamus O'Regan, co-host of CTV's Canada AM, started badgering him to come out to see his best pal, Hawco, on stage in his Company Theatre's inaugural production, Whistle in the Dark.
But saw him he did, and was immediately impressed.

"Blown away" is how he puts it.

"So I sit the kid down and ask that same fatal question, `What do you want?' And he said, `Well, I've got this little theatre company ... do you think you might give us a little sponsorship?' "

Levine did more than that. "I give the kid a small grant, I tell him to apply to BravoFact, I give him a Heritage Minute, which is a program I ran. And I take him by the hand to the CBC, and I get a little bit of money for a treatment, a little more money for a script, and literally put together a $20 million package.

"That is a perfect illustration of how we're trying to, in a very quantifiable way, use Brian's money."
It does not, of course, stop with Hawco.

"I went with my wife last year to see West Side Story at Stratford," says Levine, who is on the festival's council. "And I see this incredibly talented kid, and I'm asking, you know, `Who is that?' And they say, `Paul Nolan.' And I say, `Who's he?' `Well, he's this talented song-and-dance guy.' And I ask, `How old is he?' And they say, `30.'

"I went, `You're telling me that this kid has been professionally in this country, doing this quality of work, for a decade, and nobody knows who he is?'

"I mean, he's a former professional hockey player, for crying out loud."

It strikes Levine as typically Canadian that we so readily celebrate our athletic achievements – particularly, most recently, at the Olympics – and yet still somehow manage to overlook our actors.

"Oh, we take great pride in anybody who makes it abroad ... but we have got to create a standard of excellence for what we create, not just export the raw material so it's created elsewhere. Don't export all of the wood and build the furniture in Minnesota. Cut down the wood, build the furniture in Ontario and export the furniture, because you get more money for it. Let's become stars at home, and let's export ourselves.
"I'm saying we're as good as anybody in the world. And that exactly was Brian's philosophy."