We’ve all got friends who screw up from time to time. Sometimes they mess up so bad that the authorities get involved.

More than once, I’ve been asked to write a nice letter to a Judge indicating that the guy he’s about to sentence isn’t as evil as all that and somehow happenstance or a momentary lapse caused them to detour from their normally more appropriate behavior.

And while everybody, no matter their crime, is equally deserving of a second chance, many still need a little time on the shelf to get their heads straight and maybe deter others from taking their path.

In March of this year, Theatre impresario Garth Drabinsky and his partner, Myron Gottlieb, were both found guilty of two counts of fraud and one of forgery for activities which occurred during their ownership of Livent Inc. The loss to their investors is estimated to be $500 Million.

Theirs was not one of those momentary lapses, but an ongoing and complex criminal enterprise that operated for many years.

Superior Court Justice Mary Lou Benotto, in rendering her verdict stated that the two accused “satisfy all three of the ways a prohibited act can be conducted. They were deceitful, they perpetrated a falsehood and reasonable people would consider them dishonest.”

In other countries, white collar crimes of this magnitude can earn the perpetrators Bernie Madoff-like sentences of 150 years; an acknowledgement of the horrendous damage done to those who lose their life savings or entire pensions.

But in Canada, these sentences seldom get within 1/10th of the terms handed out by American courts. And if you are a respected member of the Canadian establishment, you can change 15 years to 15 months.

No matter what you’ve done in Canada, if you’re part of our elites you get preferential treatment.

As an example -- after the Livent verdict, the National Post reported “In an extraordinary move, a court clerk demanded the public leave the courtroom. Court security officers and a police officer arrived to usher the public outside so the convicted former theatre executives could be consoled privately”.

Canada’s “Just Society” is often just for the Rich.

During the time he was being investigated on charges of fraud and corruption at the NHL Players Association, Alan Eagleson was still a welcome guest in the private arena boxes and homes of many of Canada’s corporate and government elite. He even guest starred on CBC’s “Royal Canadian Air Farce”.

Upon conviction of those charges in a Massachusetts court, former Toronto Maple Leafs star, Carl Brewer, cried out, “God Bless the United States of America! This would have never happened in Canada!”.

Unfortunately, more than a decade later, the old hockey player’s lament is still true.

You can tune in Monday nights at 8:00 pm to see Garth Drabinsky on “Triple Sensation” as CBC continues its practise of propping up the reputations of our Establishment criminals, literally paying people who have plundered the savings of their own audience directly from the public purse.

And you will find many familiar Canadian Establishment names appended to the dozens of letters submitted to Justice Benotto’s court last week pleading leniency for the two convicted fraudsters.

Interestingly, in the way Canadian justice appears to be administered in white collar cases, there were no victim impact statements read into the record or at least none reported by the mainstream press.

Those of import here have a voice. Ordinary people who merely lost small fortunes do not.

Scotiabank CEO, Peter Godsoe, suggested that “Myron has suffered immensely” begging the judge to go easy on his old pal. I wonder how often Mr. Godsoe has made the same plea on behalf of somebody who stuck up one of his tellers for a few thousand bucks (less than 1/10,000 of what his friend took)?

Joseph L. Rotman, he who has the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Business named after him, suggested that Drabinsky and Gottlieb should be set free to lecture on business ethics at Canadian university.

As Drabinsky’s lawyer further outlined the plan, "“He would teach students the discipline of the craft, the enormous role that integrity and honesty play in the theatre, the importance of fulfilling contractual responsibilities [and] the avoidance of unethical conduct.”

An odd choice of lecture topics for men who have never admitted any wrongdoing or guilt or remorse for their victims and indeed continue to blame others for perpetrating their fraud.

Perhaps their lectures will be collectively published under the an OJ style “If I did it…” title.

Anna Porter could publish it. She also wrote a letter of support.

To their eternal discredit, so did several well known artists.

Canadian Actress Martha Henry argued that “We need the Garths of the world to give us challenges, hope, excitement, courage…”. I wonder if Ms. Henry had given any thought to the challenges now facing Garth’s victims, the courage and hope they will need to weather the “excitement” her hero has brought to their lives.

Actor Christopher Plummer described the two convicted fraudsters as men “who recognize worth when they see it.” Yes, Chris, and like all thieving Magpies, immediately conspired to make those worthy “sparklies” their own.

And while both these talented thespians will continue working in the theatre, it’s interesting that neither gave any thought to the reality that the Livent fraud means many of their profession will not because Garth and Myron convinced many to never again invest in a play.

Hal Prince, Drabinsky’s favorite director and fellow judge on “Triple Sensation” (Don’t forget -- CBC Monday at 8:00) stated that Drabinsky “clearly loved and respected what he was doing and did it well.”

It’s not clear if Mr. Prince is describing Mr. Drabinsky’s love of theatre or skill at pulling a fast one. And one has to wonder if Mr. Prince feels obligated to support one of the few guys who’s been hiring him lately – a list that’s likely to become much shorter now that its been revealed that all the Broadway “Hits” he directed for Livent were actually massive turkeys.

And then there’s novelist E. L. Doctorow, whose missive of support was tepid at best. “That he has, after years of visionary theatrical entrepreneurship come to this, I cannot view as anything less than a personal tragedy.”

It must be tough for a man of Doctorow’s stature to consider that virtually every penny he was paid for the run of “Ragtime” was money stolen from others.

There are other luminaries on the letters list. Painter Alex Colville. Dancer Karen Kain. Former Toronto mayor David Crombie. All members of Canada’s gentry. All enormously talented. And all willing to overlook the harm done to the audiences they have served for a crook who pandered to their egos with invitations to glittering opening nights and celebrity studded parties.

I’m hoping that Justice Benotto has heard the old adage “Trust the Art, not the Artist” and sees these letters for the self-serving instruments that they are. Votes of support intended to place their writers as champions of these two convicted Establishment darlings, ensuring their own continued acceptance by that Establishment.

Perhaps the best assessment of Mr. Drabinsky comes not from a Canadian, but from Jeremy Gerard, an editor at Bloomberg.com who reported for Variety in the early '90s and was the first to raise doubts about Livent's finances.

"He was a con artist. His con was culture, because that gave him some cachet."

We’re big on cachet here. Keeping up appearances is so important. It just doesn’t do if people discover your great men just don’t have that much character. If it were – what might it say about you?

Read more »

I’ve literally been wandering the wilderness for the last two weeks, lost in the Badlands of Alberta and Great Sandhills of Saskatchewan, emerging yesterday to learn that I’d lost an old friend.

Others will remember Jan Rubes as the proudly protective Amish grandfather, Eli Lapp, in “Witness”, as the terrifyingly deranged psychiatrist in “Dead of Winter” (his own favorite role) or the singing coroner of “Due South”.

But my enduring image of Jan is of him standing in the wet pre-dawn, wearing only a slouch cap, underwear and cowboy boots, listening to his lush and infectious laughter as we both got into wardrobe for another day of work on “Lions For Breakfast”.

“Lions” was a Canadian film shot long before local actors could demand or local producers could afford trailers and motor homes for the stars of their films. So there we were in our skivvies, dressing off the tailgate of a station wagon.

The film we were making was about a misfit gypsy and two orphan brothers who form an unlikely family as they search for a better life. In many ways, its theme embodied Jan’s life.

Jan was born in Czechoslovakia, initially gaining notoriety as a featured singer with the Prague Opera. After winning his division of the International Music Festival in Geneva in 1948, however, he emigrated to Canada and Toronto, discovering to his horror that there wasn’t an opera house in his new home town.

So, like any gifted artist, Jan set out to find ways to share his gift in any way he could.

By the time I met him on the set of a low budget kid film, he had helped form the Canadian Opera Company, appearing in more than 1000 performances there as well as starring in or directing countless other pieces of theatre, films and television dramas and hosting his own radio and TV shows.

He had introduced thousands to music they had never heard before and never thought they’d like if they did hear it.

He had sung in drawing rooms and on internationally renowned stages.

He had taken roles in American Cold War potboilers, episodes of “Lassie” and countless forgotten plays.

He had brought his love of music into every living room in the country and given kids watching television the grandfather they never had.

He had done everything he possibly could to share the gifts he had been given with as many people as possible.

For Jan Rubes, there was no such thing as charting a career path, playing to a particular audience or feeding the needs of a cultural elite. There were simply people who needed to be entertained (whether they realized it or not) and all of those people were of equal value to him.

And so, despite those incredible achievements and the option to be appearing before the crowned heads of Europe and preparing for his work in the gilded dressing rooms of immaculate opera houses, there he was in the wilds of Ontario, waist deep in mud, working long into the night, enduring the BBQ lunches prepared by the producer and his kids to save a few bucks, in order to make a film he believed would reach even more audiences as yet untouched.

During one of those nights, we shot a sequence with an entire pride of lions. Across the compound, the crew, safely ensconced in heavy trucks, shot Jan and I in dialogue inside a rickety school bus as those Lions swarmed the vehicle, shredding the tires, cracking windows and trashing the horse trailer the bus was towing.

It was one of those moments when you realized you weren’t going to get a second take and everything had to be perfect – while also somewhat aware it might be the last scene you ever shot.

Jan never missed a beat, working as calmly and staying as focused as if he were in the cozy confines of a rehearsal studio. He was completely committed to sharing his gift, knowing the scene would thrill kid audiences all over the world and making sure it went without a hitch.

Around the same time, I appeared in a musical version of “Winnie the Pooh” produced by Jan’s wife Susan as she established The Young People’s Theatre Company.

Susan had compiled an amazing cast. Jazz and Broadway legend Don Franks as Pooh, Mark Connors (later of “The Nylons”) as Eeyore, soon to be a famous writer, Suzette Couture, as Kanga and Andrea Martin and I as Rabbits.

We did the whole show in life sized furry outfits, making the singing and dancing so difficult there were Oxygen tanks stashed in the wings for between number pick-me-ups. Jan turned up regularly to help those of us who weren’t great singers (or maybe just me) get better.

He instinctively knew that Susan’s brainchild would introduce theatre to countless numbers who could be infected with a lifelong love of the Arts and threw himself headlong into helping it succeed.

On opening night there was a fund-raising after-party where we all turned up in costume to meet the excited kids who’d been in the audience. Jan approached with a child clinging to each hand.

On one side was a shy inner city girl who’d never been in a theatre before. On the other was a six year old in a blue suit who boldly stuck out his hand and said, “Hi, I’m John Labatt Jr.”

Jan beamed as they tugged my long ears and blackened nose. Who they were, where they came from or what they would become meant nothing to him. What was important was that for the last two hours they had laughed and cheered and sat in wrapt amazement as a story played out in front of them.

He knew they would both be back. And I think in that moment, watching his eyes dance as he watched them, I did too. His gift had been shared once more -– as it was meant to be.

Jan lived to a ripe old age, vibrant to the end. But a life is not measured by the amount of breath we take, but by all the moments that take our breath away.

By that measure, Jan Rubes, lived a thousand lifetimes, leaving everyone he met richer than they had been before. His is a legacy for which any artist would be proud.

Read more »

I've become convinced that people go on vacations for one of two reasons. They either want to relive a fond moment from their past or create a fond moment for the future.

And moments are more easily recalled if they are recorded -- therefore the recording of the past fondness or newfound ones is primary when vacationing.

This morning, in the midst of a quiet clearing in the Rockies, my dog and I ran into a busload of Japanese tourists digitally recording the grandeur of the nearby peaks.

All of a sudden we were the center of their attention. or rather, she was. I was just the guy on the other end of the leash who had walked this piece of exotic local wildlife into their field of vision.

After having the pooch sit nicely for a flurry of shutter clicks, I hit on a much better use of all of our time and had them each pose with the dog while I used their cameras (and my own) to take individual portraits.

And just for the record, I didn't just play a photographer on television...

So while the King of Japan was in Calgary being photographed with every forked tongued politician in town to flip pancakes, several of his countrymen were emailing home pictures of them with their arms around a more trustworthy local whose tongue merely lolls.

There's no doubt which set of photos will be more valued.

It made me decide to have the dog pose with everybody I meet on this trip, suddenly giving a focus and shape to what's been mostly a "Where the fuck are we now?" tour of places Canadian that never get seen on Canadian television -- meaning we're a loooooong way from Queen Street West.

And that made me think that sitting through a print-flip or digital scan of almost anybody's vacation pix would be so much more enjoyable if some thought had gone into what they were really trying to accomplish or recreate on said vacation.

The following is one of the best "How To's" I can find on giving your pictures a theme, a shape and a purpose.

If the link is broken, you can find it here.

Give it a look, grab your camera and Enjoy your Sunday.

Arigato Gozaimasu.

Read more »