The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 181. Baron Black of Crossharbour

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and

00:00:05.560 important. Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those

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00:00:51.060 Hey guys, just so you know, we've moved the podcast to once a week to give my dad some more

00:00:59.380 time. He's not feeling well. It'll be released every Monday for the foreseeable future. Welcome

00:01:05.520 to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. This is season four, episode 35. In this episode, dad is joined by

00:01:12.420 Lord Conrad Black. Conrad Black is a Canadian-born British peer and former publisher of the London

00:01:19.300 Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Jerusalem Post, and founder of Canada's

00:01:26.060 National Post. He's a columnist and regular contributor to several publications, including

00:01:31.740 The National Review Online, The New Criterion, The National Interest, American Greatness, The New York

00:01:37.920 Sun, and The National Post. Lord Conrad Black and my dad discuss his very interesting life, how he got into

00:01:45.800 history, education, the newspaper business, living in Britain, his experience with Margaret Thatcher

00:01:51.520 and Ronald Reagan, incarceration, becoming a tutor, and more. This episode is brought to you by Helix

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00:03:14.020 Hello, everyone. Conrad Moffat Black, Baron Black of Cross Harbour, KCSG, born 25th of August, 1944.

00:03:43.100 He's a Canadian-born newspaper publisher, financier, and writer. He is the author of 10 books,

00:03:51.560 mostly dealing with Canadian and American history, including biographies of Quebec Premier Maurice

00:03:56.840 Duplessis and U.S. Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump, as well as two

00:04:04.020 memoirs. He's currently writing a political history of the ancient world, concentrating primarily

00:04:09.060 on the Romans and the Greeks. His father was businessman George Montague Black II, who had

00:04:16.740 significant holdings in Canadian manufacturing, retail, and media businesses through part ownership

00:04:22.320 of the holding company Ravelston Corporation. In 1978, two years after their father's death,

00:04:29.320 Conrad and his older brother Montague took majority control of Ravelston. Over the next seven years,

00:04:35.600 they sold off most of their non-media holdings to focus on newspaper publishing.

00:04:41.860 Black controlled Hollinger International, once the world's third largest English-language

00:04:47.560 newspaper empire, which published the Daily Telegraph in the U.K., the Chicago Sun-Times,

00:04:53.460 the Jerusalem Post, the National Post in Canada, and hundreds of community newspapers across North America,

00:04:59.540 before controversy erupted over the sale of some of the company's assets. He is one of Canada's most

00:05:05.740 recognizable and influential figures, and has known many of the great political actors and cultural

00:05:11.300 figures of the last half century. It's my great pleasure to have him as a guest today.

00:05:16.700 Thank you very much for agreeing to talk with me today.

00:05:21.760 Not at all, Jordan. Always a pleasure to speak with you.

00:05:24.560 Yeah, well, it's very nice to see you again. It's been a couple of years since we've had the

00:05:27.920 pleasure of speaking, and so I'm glad we have this opportunity, even though it's mediated by

00:05:32.660 electronics.

00:05:34.360 Well, I've missed you.

00:05:36.660 So, I want to talk to you biographically, essentially. I'd like to walk through your life,

00:05:41.220 and so let's start as far back as we can. Tell me about your childhood, if you would,

00:05:47.000 and what stands out for you in relationship to your parents?

00:05:54.060 Well, I was born in Montreal. My parents moved here to Toronto when I was very young,

00:06:01.300 not even a year old, and just at the end of World War II, and we lived in what was then just the edge

00:06:11.200 of metropolitan Toronto. Beyond us were farms, and that was up, for those of your viewers who know

00:06:19.880 Toronto, right after the Bayview Avenue passes York University, Glendon Campus, and the Granite Club,

00:06:31.400 and Crescent School. Just beyond that was where we lived, and that was the outer limit of the city

00:06:36.840 in terms of the built-up area, and so there weren't many young people around, you know, to visit with in the

00:06:45.880 neighborhood, so the result was that I spent more time, I think, it was the beginning of the television era.

00:06:52.520 Everyone had a television set, but they just got it in the last few years, and there were only a few channels

00:06:57.260 on the air, and for the most part, you had either those funny antennas sitting on top of the receiver

00:07:02.840 or an antenna on the roof of your house, and so I spent a lot of time reading, and that was how I

00:07:11.700 developed my interest in history, and I started reading about interesting historical personalities,

00:07:16.420 and my father, although he was a successful businessman, had been a very accomplished academic

00:07:24.300 as far as he went, but that was in the 30s, and his father came under great financial pressure,

00:07:31.640 so my father became a chartered accountant, and the theory that there was, as he put it,

00:07:36.740 no such thing as an unemployed chartered accountant, and in those days, people really had to think in

00:07:42.700 terms of how could they do things that made it as likely as possible that they would be able to make

00:07:49.740 an income and afford to get married and provide for families, and it was a much more

00:07:58.100 financially pressurized era than it is now, and he graduated in 1937, and we were starting as a

00:08:08.000 society to recover from the Depression by then, but there were still huge numbers of unemployed,

00:08:12.940 and he had to set aside his academic interests, but with that said, he was a particularly,

00:08:18.060 I was particularly fortunate in having him, apart from anything else, as a parent who encouraged that

00:08:25.600 historical interest, and knew rather a lot about many of the things that I, you know, that I took an

00:08:32.260 interest in early on, and then as a really a remarkable gesture, my parents took my brothers, just the two of

00:08:38.800 us in the family, took my brother and myself to Britain in 1953 at the time of the coronation, and, and we,

00:08:46.620 you know, we toured around all these monuments, and it was still, the war damage in London was still

00:08:52.220 very evident then, so we, we saw what the war was like from much closer than anyone experienced it in

00:08:58.740 North America, and, and, and, you know, I, I remember it as, as very young people do remember, you know,

00:09:06.660 visiting the Duke of Wellington's house, and St. Paul's Cathedral, and things like this, and so I always had

00:09:13.780 an interest in history, and it was encouraged by my parents, my father in particular, and, and that was,

00:09:21.980 that was a, I think that was the only thing that was pretty clean, if not exactly noteworthy, a bit

00:09:28.240 different from most of the people I went to school with, because they lived closer into town, and had more

00:09:34.600 social time than I did. So, you speak of your father fondly by the sounds of it, it sounds to me like

00:09:43.140 he was an encouraging figure in your life from a very young age, is that a reasonable presumption?

00:09:48.180 Yes, no, I, I remember both my parents very fondly. My father, and in this scenario, I wouldn't want to,

00:09:54.800 for obvious reasons, get into too much, but later on, he became, at times, a slightly depressive

00:10:01.520 personality, and, and his career was something of an anti-climax. He, he did very well, and, and made a

00:10:09.380 significant amount of money, and he had, he, he was working with, I mean, with slash for a very famous

00:10:18.560 Canadian industrialist, E.P. Taylor, and in the brewing business, and he was the chief executive of what

00:10:25.700 was then the largest, well, one of the largest brewing companies in the world, but certainly the largest in

00:10:31.280 Canada, it was called Canadian breweries limited in those days, and he had a disagreement on policy

00:10:40.580 with Mr. Taylor, and he said, look, instead of, instead of having an argument about this, I, I, I've done

00:10:47.720 this job now for 10 years, and I, and I, I don't need the salary, I'm, you know, I don't need it to

00:10:54.420 live in the way I've become accustomed to, so I will retire now, it's probably time for change after

00:11:01.340 10 years, you do whatever you want with the company, and we remain friends and don't strain

00:11:06.320 our relations, and that's what happened, and they remain friends to the, to the end of his life,

00:11:10.440 and, but so he, he, he, he retired at the age of 47, and he was a well-to-do man, he, he didn't lack

00:11:20.880 for anything in a material way, but the balance of his life, nearly 20 years, was an anti-climax, he just

00:11:27.620 sat in his house and read and saw a steadily, slowly, but steadily declining number of people, and, and he just

00:11:35.780 never did anything particularly after that, I don't mean that he should have charged up and got

00:11:40.680 a job, but that's not for me to say, and wouldn't, wouldn't have served any purpose anyway, unless he

00:11:45.900 was particularly enthused about it, but someone like, it's a, I, I've found it's a perfectly good

00:11:51.740 thing, and often a very renovating thing to change careers, but, but, and I'm sure you would, in your

00:12:01.340 experience, know this, and believe the same thing, it, it is a bad thing to simply do nothing, just sit

00:12:06.720 in a rocking chair, that, that leads to a, a steady and accelerated level of decline, and that,

00:12:15.860 unfortunately, is what happened to my father, I mean, he, he was 65 when he died, but, but, but, which,

00:12:21.720 which is not really a good lottery ticket nowadays, but, but it was an anti-climax, but, but he, he always

00:12:28.540 was, was an interesting man, I would, even, even after, you know, I, I left, I moved out of the

00:12:35.160 house to go to university when I was, uh, uh, gee, I was only 18, and apart from that, apart from one

00:12:42.300 year, I, I didn't live with my parents again, but I was in Toronto much of the time, and, and I always

00:12:51.280 saw them a lot, um, and, and, and it was always interesting, always had a good relationship, I had a

00:12:57.060 somewhat turbulent period in my teens, and looking back on it, uh, I can see that my parents treated

00:13:03.540 me with, uh, greater patience, and, and probably I would if I were in their position, and, uh, but I,

00:13:10.400 I, I, I believe that, uh, you know, that was just a phase in our last, uh, the last five years, they,

00:13:16.140 my parents died only, only 10 days apart, and, um, uh, the, our last 10 years or so, we couldn't have

00:13:24.700 been more cordial.

00:13:27.060 Yeah, well, I was curious about your father, because I'm, I'm, I'm curious psychologically

00:13:31.480 about the role that fathers in particular play in relationship to encouraging their children,

00:13:37.080 which seems to me a primary paternal role, and so when, when I see someone who's successful,

00:13:42.340 and, and, and, and who, who I, I suspect in some sense isn't intrinsically rebellious in their

00:13:50.840 central spirit, maybe that's wrong, I'm always curious about their relationship with their father,

00:13:55.180 I mean, you started to read early, you were reading history, he obviously, did he, did he push

00:13:59.740 books your way, did he guide your reading, how did that all happen?

00:14:02.080 Yes, sometimes, uh, he, he, I'm, in particular, he gave me, when I was 13, he, he handed me a book,

00:14:11.480 and he said, obviously, it's not for me to tell you what to read, uh, but I do recommend this,

00:14:19.400 and if you just read a few pages in it, I, I think you will want to continue, and it was A.G.

00:14:24.340 Macdonald's book, Napoleon and his Marshals, to people interested in Napoleon, it's a very famous

00:14:30.800 book, and for example, one of the great tomes on Napoleon, David Chandler's The Campaigns of

00:14:36.980 Napoleon, a book of 1300 pages of tremendous work of scholarship, and very well written,

00:14:43.580 in the, in the forward credits, A.G. Macdonald, and, and people who write about Napoleon often do,

00:14:49.240 it's a tremendously readable book, and, and, and, and, and it, it gave me a, a, a huge interest in

00:14:58.620 Napoleon that I, that I've kept up, you know, I mean, after a while, you, you feel you know enough

00:15:03.860 about somebody, but, but, uh, but it, it, it was a great, um, uh, it was a great, uh, encouragement

00:15:11.260 and incitement and, and confirmation of the intrinsic interest in studying these very interesting

00:15:18.360 personalities of, of the past, and, and he did a number of things like that, and in slightly

00:15:23.320 different fields. Another one, some years later, uh, two or three years later, he, he gave me a copy of,

00:15:31.600 um, uh, Nancy Mitford's Pursuit of Love. Now, it's a novel, but, about real people, but the names

00:15:39.960 changed, and, um, and it, it was a particular satisfaction to me in, in later years when I was

00:15:47.260 living in Britain and was the chairman of the Daily Telegraph, and I met a lot of these people.

00:15:51.520 My, Nancy Mitford, unfortunately, had died, but, uh, her sisters, the Duchess of Devonshire, I knew,

00:15:58.100 and the, um, uh, Lady Mosley, the widow, Sir Oswald Mosley, the fascist leader, I, I met her,

00:16:06.560 and Jessica Mitford, who was married to a communist, who was very eccentric British family,

00:16:10.600 and, uh, uh, so a wide gap in their political views, and, um, uh, Nancy Mitford herself had a

00:16:18.220 tremendous, uh, torrid romance with one of the most prominent figures in the entourage of General

00:16:24.480 de Gaulle, and, uh, when he was the president of the Fifth Republic, and, and, uh, and prior to that,

00:16:30.380 and, um, uh, so, so these books, I just cite those two in particular, but they were tremendously

00:16:36.460 readable, interesting books, and, and they did launch my interest in different fields. He, he did

00:16:41.840 that a number of times, but he was never oppressive or, or, or, uh, dogmatic about it, and actually

00:16:48.260 quite subtle. I remember, um, my parents took us on Easter holiday in 1955, so I was 10 years old,

00:16:56.020 my brother's four years older, out to the West Coast by train and back, but, but we got around a bit

00:17:02.040 on the West Coast, and, um, on the train, my father gave us a reward if we would memorize Lincoln's

00:17:10.260 address at Gettysburg. Now, it's only 10 sentences, you know, but it's not that hard to memorize it,

00:17:15.440 and we did, but, but it did incite my interest in Mr. Lincoln, and, of course, he's one of the

00:17:21.680 great and arresting figures of modern history as well, so yes, he did that. I, I, there, you,

00:17:28.920 you put me in mind of these, and I, no doubt if, if this was the chief focal point of our discussion,

00:17:33.600 I could identify a good many other things, but I, I, I cite, I cite those ones. And by the way,

00:17:39.560 on the Nancy Mitford piece, I, I, a house that is referred to in, um, a pursuit of love is one that

00:17:48.500 they love to go to, because unlike their own house, it wasn't drafty, it wasn't that eccentric

00:17:54.300 British rural nobility's terribly uncomfortable house without real hot water, and, and, and, and

00:18:02.500 that kind of thing. It was just a very comfortable house with central heating and so on, and it turned

00:18:07.860 out that a friend of mine rented it, and we went out there to lunch a few times, and it, it was, I mean,

00:18:13.800 I, I couldn't explain it in a way that would be of any interest to anyone that was there other than

00:18:19.260 my wife, but it was, it was as if I'd been there before from having read of it. It was just a very

00:18:24.260 interesting connection with my past. How old were you when you started to read seriously?

00:18:32.580 I, I started when I was nine or ten. I, I remember reading, um, I remember reading the first volume of

00:18:42.380 General de Gaulle's war memoirs when they were first published in English. They're the ones that begin all

00:18:47.600 my life I've thought of France in a certain way, and, uh, it's beautifully written, by the way. I

00:18:52.940 mean, de Gaulle was a wonderful writer. He's not always historically reliable, but political memoirists

00:18:57.520 rarely are. I mean, the same could be said of Mr. Churchill, but he, he, he is a lovely writer, and, uh,

00:19:03.820 um, uh, and so from then on, I, I was, I wasn't writing, I mean, for a while I read the boys' book of the

00:19:11.620 Navy, and I, I think, I think we went through the Hardy Boys and that kind of thing for, you know,

00:19:16.320 approximately one month when I was seven or eight, but I moved on to the history of the Navy or some

00:19:22.880 sports figures, you know, like Ted Williams or something like that, and then I got into, I got

00:19:27.440 into the history thing when I was nine and stayed at it after that.

00:19:32.300 So how much, how much were you reading when you were a kid, say, nine to fifteen?

00:19:36.380 Well, I wasn't a fast reader, but I was, I was a retentive reader, so when I read something,

00:19:40.560 I tended to remember it well, and, uh, you know, a couple of hours a day, every day,

00:19:46.020 and then a little more on the weekends.

00:19:48.520 When would you do that? Before you went to bed? Did you have a routine?

00:19:52.100 Yeah, pretty much, yeah. I'd have, you know, I was supposed to do my homework, and there were

00:19:55.420 some television programs I watched that I liked, but, uh, yeah, I wasn't one of these

00:20:00.280 young people who was, who was just stuck, glued in front of a screen every,

00:20:06.040 every, every free moment, the way a lot of youngsters nowadays are with the video games

00:20:10.420 and things. I, I wasn't like that. I mean, it is possible, and I look, Jordan, as you

00:20:15.540 and I know, there are hundreds of millions of people in the world who do sit staring at

00:20:20.480 a television set all day, but I, I, and, and they're always, you know, as long as we've

00:20:25.080 had television, there have been people who've been thoroughly captivated by it, but I was

00:20:29.040 always rather more choosy in programming. I, I mean, I liked, uh, uh, inter, things like

00:20:35.680 war, uh, victory at sea, you know, it's a drama, but the U S Navy, uh, that was a great

00:20:41.080 series. I know that series. It's, it's great. And with Richard Rogers music, which really

00:20:45.060 taken from Wagner, powerful beginning of showing the, uh, the, you know, the aerial shots of

00:20:51.840 the Pacific fleet, these, this colossal, maybe moving forward, but, um, uh, and some of the

00:20:57.900 humorous programs like the honeymooners with Jackie Gleason, I like, but, but I, I would,

00:21:03.600 I would know a program to watch and go and watch it for half an hour and then go back and read

00:21:07.600 something. I wouldn't just sit there waiting for whatever came next. And were you up all night with,

00:21:12.900 with flashlight under the covers reading? Not all night, uh, but often a little bit. And it has to be

00:21:19.120 sad that my parents were not overly, um, authoritarian. It was a relatively large house.

00:21:24.940 I could, my mother would come up once in the course of the night and make sure everything was

00:21:29.800 fine. But I, I, I, uh, I, I normally hear coming, but in any case, they didn't get particularly excited

00:21:36.380 about, about my reading with a flashlight because they correctly assumed the nine or 10 or 11 year

00:21:41.980 old would fall asleep anyway. So, you know, when he felt like it. So any idea what it is about

00:21:47.400 history in particular that attracted you? Because obviously you, you have an intrinsic interest in

00:21:51.880 it. You didn't even gravitate towards fiction when you were a child, you, you gravitated towards

00:21:55.960 nonfiction and history pretty fast. So what is it? I must say I went on a binge of fiction

00:22:02.400 in university. Uh, and, uh, when I started as one does, you know, I mean, I find, I found that with my own,

00:22:11.120 uh, uh, uh, sons and daughter and, and, uh, you know, you, you, you, you, you, you suddenly become

00:22:18.180 interested in writing and you read a lot that he wrote and you're onto a next one, you know? So in

00:22:23.220 that way, uh, you know, I, I read a huge number of novels by famous novelists.

00:22:30.000 And is that, is that what you did? You'd find a novelist you really liked and then read everything

00:22:33.740 and then move on to, to someone else? Basically. Yeah. And I, especially the Americans, you know,

00:22:38.060 Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck and so on. Uh, and, uh, and the latter

00:22:43.880 two were, were alive. I was reading about them or reading their words and, um, uh, but, but, but,

00:22:50.780 but I got into others, but not as comprehensively. I mean, I think I read four or five of the books of,

00:22:57.340 uh, uh, uh, George Elliot and, uh, uh, uh, most well, you know, a number of, uh, Thackeray and, um, uh,

00:23:11.400 you know, the obvious ones. And so what, what was it about history, do you think that, that attracted

00:23:17.680 you so much and so young? Um, because many, I mean, the personalities I was reading about were

00:23:26.800 terribly interesting. They had extraordinary careers and, and it, it, it started to give me,

00:23:35.260 and this sounds ludicrous. You're, you're, you're, you may, you and your viewers may conclude that I'm

00:23:40.560 a psychiatric case or something, but it's not as if I identified at all with say a man like Napoleon.

00:23:47.220 It's just that in his career, you could see points where absolutely everything was at risk

00:23:53.980 and he persevered successfully and points where he, he, he, he was, you know, fortune had not smiled

00:24:02.420 upon him and, and it, things looked terribly bleak and then suddenly things opened up. Now it was a

00:24:07.680 revolutionary time, unlike Canada in the fifties and sixties. I mean, you could scarcely think of

00:24:13.240 a less revolutionary place. And, and, um, uh, it, but the, the, the pattern of events where people's

00:24:21.520 fortunes changed so quickly and in both directions, I mean, of course, Napoleon ended up in St. Helena,

00:24:28.120 but, but, um, he, he actually attempted to commit suicide after he came back from Russia. And, um,

00:24:36.000 and, and, and we were referring earlier to Abraham Lincoln and there were, there were moments where

00:24:41.860 everything appeared to be terribly gloomy appeared to be a failure was, was widely mocked for a variety

00:24:51.560 of reasons, including his physical appearance, which, which in photographs is actually rather

00:24:56.180 impressive, but, um, uh, but it, it appeared to be hopeless and that he was consigned to being a,

00:25:04.560 a failure who had, who had tried to prevent the breakup of this country unsuccessfully and had

00:25:11.480 propagated a war that was not successful. And, and of course it all turned and, and, and you, you,

00:25:20.280 you, you end up appreciating the qualities of these people, both those to emulate and those to try to

00:25:26.320 avoid. Now, in Mr. Lincoln's case, it's a particularly striking example because it is almost impossible to

00:25:34.440 find something negative to say about him. He was a self-made man, but with none of that chippiness

00:25:40.180 that self-made people haven't had. He was a genuine intellectual, but an autodidact and, and, uh, but

00:25:48.520 never with any of the pomposity or dogmatism of some intellectuals. And, and he, he, he, he was always

00:25:57.380 saddened rather than angry at the many betrayals and disappointments he suffered. And while he,

00:26:04.260 he was a rather morose man in some ways, he had a splendid sense of humor, he had a terribly

00:26:09.840 difficult life and had two sons die as boys. And, and, and this tragedy did not, these tragedies and

00:26:18.880 afflictions didn't, didn't compromise his ultimate sense of optimism. And, uh, uh, he, he was, uh, he was

00:26:29.160 really a remarkably admirable character as well as the extremely effective statesman. And of course he,

00:26:37.000 he, he was a wonderful wordsmith. Uh, I mean, you, we were talking about the Gettysburg address. I

00:26:42.840 noticed when I first read it under the incitement to memorize it, that for example, where he said,

00:26:50.840 uh, um, um, fondly, well, I, I, you know, he said, um, uh, for those who here, here gave their lives

00:27:01.140 that that nation might live. I mean, just to use the same word as a noun and the verb in the same

00:27:07.120 sentence is slightly artistic, you know? And in the second inaugural, when he said, uh, fondly,

00:27:12.920 do we hope fervently, do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away? I mean,

00:27:19.940 that is in fact, a line of poetry. He, he, he was a remarkable wordsmith.

00:27:27.660 And you were, you were noticing that the way that words were crafted as well, when you were reading

00:27:32.620 history? Uh, not, not as well as one does after a bit of practice, but you know, you, I started to

00:27:41.480 notice and then started to look for it, you know? So, and all right, so you were reading

00:27:45.980 well in advance, well in advance of your years. What was it like for you going to school when you

00:27:51.100 were, let's, let's go when you were a child again, before you went to university? Well, I, I was,

00:27:56.440 you know, you always did the necessary to, to be, um, on the same wavelength, if you will,

00:28:04.440 as your friends. You know, I didn't want to be thought of as a, as a, I didn't mind being thought of

00:28:08.920 slightly eccentric. I didn't want to be thought of as an odd person. And in fairness,

00:28:14.260 a lot of, a lot of the other students were interested in a lot of things. I, I went to

00:28:20.660 relatively, I guess, relatively, um, good schools. I mean, I didn't like them very much, but, uh,

00:28:27.840 but I loved university, but I didn't like school very much. But, um, uh, it is, and, and I remember,

00:28:34.120 uh, in 1958, I was 13, and because it was well known that, that I was interested in France, when

00:28:42.040 the disturbances came in the spring of that year, at the end of the Fourth Republic, the, uh, our class

00:28:50.760 teacher asked me if I would, because this was, this was in the front pages of the newspapers and

00:28:55.740 led the news every night, you know, the return of de Gaulle from Colombais in 58, um, and the threat

00:29:02.480 of the revolt by the army in Algeria. And the teacher asked me if I would give a five minute

00:29:09.740 comment on it the following day. So I did. And, and I'm, I'm, you know, I was careful to try and

00:29:14.860 not be pompous or, and, and not get into obscure things. And, and I don't mean to put on the airs

00:29:21.420 of somebody who was any, in fact, great authority in these matters, but, um, uh, I, I, I was, I was

00:29:29.140 flattered that he asked, and I, and I made an effort to try and make it interesting. And, and it

00:29:34.380 was appreciated. And I, I, it was, it was one of those little experiences in life that was very

00:29:38.780 positive and reassuring to me that these, that my classmates didn't think I was just a kook, you know,

00:29:45.000 because they were reading about it too. And they were, in a way, saying, well, you know, what's going

00:29:48.320 on in France? I mean, in, in, in Canada and Britain and the United States, you know, you

00:29:56.140 didn't have the army threatening to return to the Capitol by parachute and take over the country

00:30:02.720 and everybody going out into the country, uh, 120 miles to talk to a retired general, but whether he

00:30:09.480 wanted to take over the government or not, I mean, the, the, this, you know, we, we didn't have that

00:30:13.140 in the speaking country. So it was a bit different.

00:30:14.920 Do you remember anything of your ambitions at that time?

00:30:20.840 Well, here, I must say, I was somewhat influenced by my father's milieu. Toronto in those days was,

00:30:28.320 if I may say it without, I hope, sounding like an old dowager or something, a terribly plain,

00:30:36.620 austere place. There wasn't any flair to it. It had nice residential areas, but, but it wasn't a

00:30:43.020 good looking city at all. You know, there, uh, until the first subway was opened in the mid fifties,

00:30:49.160 uh, all the wires were above grounds. You had these creosote soaked, um, blackened, uh, telephone poles

00:30:58.880 everywhere. We had done thick clusters of wires and, uh, an inordinate amount of that old sort of

00:31:06.800 Victorian reddish, but not red brick or the color of Queens Park, but with, you know, with the dust

00:31:13.520 of years on it. Apart from a few individual buildings, like the, um, old bank of commerce,

00:31:21.620 for example, and Osgood Hall, uh, and some others, that there weren't many nice looking buildings

00:31:26.800 downtown. It was not a nice looking city the way Montreal was, or let alone New York or something.

00:31:31.440 And, um, uh, and, and, and there, there, you know, it was a virtuous place, but it was a terribly sober

00:31:39.480 place. You know, you couldn't go to the cinema on Sundays. There wasn't a Sunday newspaper. Now, I,

00:31:45.840 of course, was just a boy and I didn't drink or anything, but if older people, um, I mean,

00:31:52.780 cousins of mine who were older for Sunday, they wanted to go out with a date.

00:31:55.900 They had to go to a, to a hotel to find a restaurant that was licensed. I mean, it was

00:32:05.280 that only changed with John Roberts in the sixties. And, um, uh, so my father's friends,

00:32:12.900 businessmen, as far as I could see, were, were the only people that had any sort of style, you know,

00:32:20.200 uh, Mr. Taylor and Mr. McDougald and Colonel Phillips, who was the chancellor of the university,

00:32:27.220 uh, that he was associated with them and others who were friends of his like John Bass and so on,

00:32:32.700 they, they had some style and had some flair and they were wealthy, but, but in a tasteful way.

00:32:37.860 And that, you know, it, it, it was kind of an attractive thing to aspire to be wealthy and,

00:32:46.200 and, and, and, and enjoy it, but in a tasteful way, you see, I mean, Mr. Taylor built the jockey

00:32:53.580 club was just a bunch of milk wagon horses and fixed races until he took it, took it over and fixed it up

00:32:59.560 and, you know, made it a great horse racing operation. And, um, so I, so I was sort of attracted

00:33:07.000 to the idea of getting into business in a way that I could, uh, I could raise my, uh, you know,

00:33:13.840 raise my net worth and standard of living, but, but all, all was, uh, I had, uh, if not exactly an

00:33:20.800 academic interest, certainly, uh, an interest to study history and potentially to write some,

00:33:27.680 although, although it took me a long time to summon the courage to write any.

00:33:31.340 Yeah. So you've covered your interest in history and now we've delved into a little bit into the

00:33:35.720 origins of your interest in business. So that does leave that third issue hanging to some degree.

00:33:41.100 So let's go to the, to the time when you went to university, you, you, you said you read a

00:33:45.380 tremendous amount of fiction in university. What did you major in and what was it like for you?

00:33:49.780 How do you remember your university experience?

00:33:52.560 Uh, very fondly, uh, I went first to Ottawa, pardon me, to the, to Carleton University. And, um,

00:34:00.300 I had a, a somewhat, um, rumbustious career in high school and changed schools a number of times.

00:34:08.620 And finally, I came, if, if I may just back up slightly, so if, if, if anyone is interested in

00:34:15.700 my story, this is an interesting part of it. I, I, it's not for me to say whether it is in the

00:34:20.480 abstract, interesting or not, but, um, uh, uh, in grade 13, I finally concluded that these schools

00:34:29.280 were so incompetent and most of the teachers in them were so incompetent. And in addition,

00:34:34.520 malicious, some of them that I discovered that you could in fact, write your matriculation

00:34:41.360 examinations on your own. You didn't have to do it in a school. So I informed my father that this is

00:34:49.700 what I was going to do in, in, in February of my last year in high school, except that in those

00:34:54.380 days you had nine examinations and you had to pass them all or you didn't matriculate. So,

00:35:00.300 you know, it, it, I was really taking a, a leap here, but, uh, and the, the examinations were

00:35:08.940 written in the old armory on university Avenue where the, where just immediately to the west of

00:35:16.260 Osbitt Hall, it's now Supreme court building, but there was an armory there and several hundred

00:35:25.580 of us of all ages, mainly older people came in each day, put down $5 and we could write the

00:35:32.100 examination. And I, I worked like a beaver to prepare for those examinations and I passed them

00:35:39.680 all. And if you'll pardon me of quite a personal recollection, uh, the way my father's house worked,

00:35:47.980 he stayed up late as a habit I got from him. He stayed up late and he slept in. I mean, he got a lot

00:35:54.540 done in a day, but he's, he was operating on a slightly different clock than most people. Well, in those

00:36:01.300 days, the post office delivered the mail to the house at about eight 30 in the morning. And on one

00:36:07.480 particular day in the spring of 1962, my mother got it. And she saw this letter from the ministry of

00:36:12.760 education addressed to me. So she surmised might be my results. So she brought it to me. I opened

00:36:18.780 up and I said, well, it was a scrape. I had a 50 and a 51, but I passed everything and I've

00:36:24.680 matriculated and I'm eligible for the university though. I won't get into McGill or Toronto, which

00:36:28.940 is what I wanted, but I'll get into one of them. So she disappeared. And something that was unheard

00:36:36.060 of on the rise at about 10 minutes to nine in the morning, I heard the unmistakable footfall

00:36:44.280 of my father in his dressing gowns, it turned out. He said, I congratulate you. Extended his

00:36:50.040 hand. I shook hands on him and he went back to bed. Now it sounds absurd, but it was a very

00:36:54.560 moving experience. When he congratulated me, I said, well, you know, you've been more than

00:37:01.980 intelligent and I thank you for that. He said, it's fine. You know, congratulations.

00:37:07.420 It was, it, that means a lot.

00:37:09.320 And what do you, what do you, what do you think motivated him to congratulate you at

00:37:12.840 that point? And why do you think it meant so much to you?

00:37:16.500 I had great, we had our differences nowadays, not, not in later years, but, you know, as one

00:37:24.400 does, you know, one does have differences with parents sometimes. And, um, but I, I, he was

00:37:31.300 a very, very intelligent man and a, and a, and a good man. And I had great respect and admiration

00:37:36.240 for him and for him to congratulate me in a way that wasn't perfunctory. It wasn't, you

00:37:41.540 know, well done if you, you know, want to hand it cards or something. It, it, it, the, the

00:37:46.800 way he said it, he imparted a seriousness to it that made it clear to me that he thought

00:37:53.260 that what I had done was a major achievement. And the fact that he thought it was not only

00:37:58.100 confirmed my view that it was in fact something of achievement, but the fact that he thought

00:38:02.200 it was a major achievement coming from a very successful and intelligent man, which he was

00:38:06.840 and who was after all the principal male figure in my life. Uh, it, it, it was, it was a milestone.

00:38:15.440 And what do you think made that accomplishment particularly worthy of both memory and note?

00:38:20.360 What did it do for you? Now you have alluded to the fact that you were causing some trouble

00:38:24.600 in, in high school. Yeah. Yeah. Look in a way it legitimized the comparative hell raising

00:38:30.980 of my late high school years. It sort of wiped the slate clean. The score at the end of the game

00:38:36.840 is you win. You graduated. So you weren't just a rebel without a cause. Yeah. Well, I maybe didn't

00:38:43.560 have a cause, but at least the rebellion ended with me still in one piece and, and, and in

00:38:48.320 defensible shape morally, if you will. I mean, in terms of the, uh, the, my ability to defend

00:38:55.500 my conduct as a whole, not every part of it. Right. Right. Yeah. So you, you, I mean, for all

00:39:00.460 the nonsense and, and, uh, you know, foolishness that, and I, I had my full share of it for people

00:39:06.260 that age, it ended well. And it was, look, it, I, it's, I, it embarrasses me to say this and

00:39:13.840 particularly at this remove in time, but it actually was simply an achievement for somebody

00:39:18.560 who hadn't been in the habit of really concentrating that much on schoolwork to buckle down, study

00:39:24.340 all of these things. And, and, and, and I had some, I had some good scores. I mean, my overall

00:39:29.500 average was, was not bad. And, and to, to do it all and pass it all the way I did was, uh,

00:39:36.300 it was an achievement. Right. Well, it sounds like that's when you learn to actually do some

00:39:40.800 academic work. That's right. I think, I think that is, I think that is absolutely correct.

00:39:45.740 Right. And that's a good, good preparation for university because you do a lot better

00:39:49.580 at university if you can work on your own. I mean, when I went to, especially when you,

00:39:53.640 when you're getting close to the exams and you have to really swat it up, you know?

00:39:57.920 Yes. Yes. I mean, I didn't work in high school and I learned to work in university and there was

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00:42:50.900 Okay, so you went off to university and you have, I have specific reasons to ask you about

00:42:58.000 university. I've had discussions with a number of people recently about their university

00:43:01.860 memories. Some young people, including Yeonmi Park, who is a refugee or an escapee from North

00:43:08.660 Korea, who just spent four years at Columbia in New York, which was a dream of hers, and described

00:43:13.520 it to me as a complete waste of time and money. And when I pushed her on that, insisted that she

00:43:18.480 didn't have one course or one professor worthy of note, which was terribly shocking to me.

00:43:23.520 And then I followed that up with Rex Murphy, who went to Memorial University in the 1950s and

00:43:29.160 late 1950s and had nothing but positive things to say about his experience. So, and for me,

00:43:35.240 when I went to, I went to a small college to begin with, but I had excellent professors there.

00:43:40.240 They taught me. They were admirable people. They paid a lot of attention to me and to my friends.

00:43:44.580 I learned to write. I learned to work. I learned, well, I learned, I learned how to buckle down

00:43:49.860 and, and, and be serious about my academic pursuits. So for me, all the memories, almost all the

00:43:55.640 memories of certainly my early university education and my graduate education for that matter were

00:44:00.500 positive. So, but things may have changed since then, but your experience. Yeah. I imagine that young

00:44:07.020 lady, I, from all I hear, most of these well-known American universities has just gone to pieces,

00:44:12.880 but I, but I, maybe the, maybe the graduate departments are better. I don't know, but

00:44:16.360 I imagine she at least enjoyed living in New York city. She'd learned something from that. Anyway,

00:44:20.980 it's such a vital city. But the, you, you actually set this up for me very nicely and put me in mind

00:44:30.060 of a couple of things. Uh, as an undergraduate, uh, the, uh, I did encounter a professor who, who,

00:44:38.940 who did have a very profound impact on my ability to focus on things and, uh, and my, and my interest

00:44:47.120 in certain subjects. Uh, you may even know her for all. I know Naomi Griffiths, she would now be in

00:44:53.500 her early eighties, I think, but, uh, um, she, she's a specialist in Acadian studies. She was very

00:44:59.580 friendly with the late governor general, Romeo LeBlanc, but, um, she was a very fine lecturer and,

00:45:07.580 and also a very kindly and sociable person. And, and I got to know her a little bit, uh, and, and,

00:45:16.580 uh, and she, she, she did help focus me in certain, uh, historic areas. But what, what happened,

00:45:22.520 uh, after I graduated from Carleton was we were, I was in 1965 and we were, we were getting into,

00:45:32.420 um, they sort of run up to the centennial and the, uh, especially in Ottawa, there was a great emphasis

00:45:40.940 on, uh, uh, uh, on, um, you know, biculturalism and, and the, it, it was clear that things were starting

00:45:49.880 to really, uh, simmer in unpredictable ways in Quebec, unpredictable politically. And, uh, it was in the

00:45:58.780 autumn of that year that in, in the guise of seeking a majority, um, Mr. Pearson and his advisors, some of whom I

00:46:08.640 got to know quite well subsequently, uh, called an election and their real motive was to bring in

00:46:15.620 some strong federalists from Quebec. Uh, they had never really replaced Mr. Saint Laurent as the federal

00:46:22.840 leader in Quebec. And, um, and that was when Pierre Trudeau and Jean Marchand, Gérard Peltier and others

00:46:30.660 came in and, and, uh, they were starting to sort of pivot to meet the, this challenge to federalism from

00:46:38.120 Quebec. And, uh, one thing led to another and, um, because I was unsure what I wanted to do, I, for a

00:46:48.100 year I operated, I bought for practically nothing because it wasn't worth anything from a good friend

00:46:55.360 of mine, uh, who, uh, who, who, Peter White, who, uh, had lived as my sub tenant in my place in Ottawa

00:47:04.120 in my last year when he was working with Maurice Sauvé, but subsequently the concept of the governor

00:47:09.920 general, but he was then a junior minister in Mr. Pearson's government. Um, but the first of that

00:47:15.620 avant-garde from the sort of new Quebec to say, um, and he owned a little newspaper in the eastern

00:47:21.200 townships about 60 miles east of Montreal and, um, in Nolten, Quebec. And I bought a half interest

00:47:29.120 than that for $500, which is $499 more than it was worth commercially. But, uh, that's what I did for

00:47:36.700 a while. And, and, and it, it, it. And that was while you were, why, while you were a student?

00:47:42.460 Yeah. No, it was, it was after I finished as an undergraduate and before I went on to, uh, to my

00:47:48.300 next university. And, and so what happened was that infected me with interest in the newspaper

00:47:54.340 business. I'd always had some, because I was interested in the, again, the style of some of

00:47:59.720 these famous newspaper owners, you know, uh, like William Randolph Hearst, for example, most obvious

00:48:05.360 example, Colonel McCormick on the Chicago Tribune, uh, uh, and, and, uh, up to a point, some of the

00:48:11.820 British press owners, Lord Beaver Burr, who was alive then, and, uh, uh, Lord Northcliffe and some

00:48:18.660 others. And, um, uh, but obviously sitting out in Eastern townships, producing an eight page

00:48:24.100 half tabloid was a long way from living in San Clemente, you know, Mr. Hearst famous house in

00:48:30.180 California. But, uh, the, um, it also infected me with the, an interest in, in Quebec and French

00:48:40.640 Quebec. And, um, even though it was an English paper, you know, we, there were, you know, obviously

00:48:46.660 one was in a largely French milieu. So the upshot of that was that the next year I became a law

00:48:56.780 student at Laval university, French university in Quebec city. And, um, and that was a terribly

00:49:03.000 interesting and positive experience. I have to say, even though we were, I think only 15, uh,

00:49:09.420 English speaking law, I mean, primarily English speaking law students in a faculty of, uh,

00:49:15.540 I don't know, 500 or so. Um, and in the graduate arts building where we were tall building, we

00:49:22.760 were there, there were thousands of students coming and going and there couldn't have been

00:49:27.720 more than 50 of us who weren't basically French speaking and in many cases, exclusively French

00:49:33.100 speaking. And, um, and, and it was an entirely positive experience. Uh, there, there was no,

00:49:41.540 absolutely no ethnic antagonism. I mean, people got on well, or they didn't, but not for ethnic

00:49:48.200 reasons. And I have to say those people, all of them could not have been more welcoming and pleasant

00:49:55.080 as a group. And I've always had a bias in favor. Yes. Questions to come out of that is, um, what did

00:50:03.120 your undergraduate career do for you? Why were you motivated to buy this newspaper? And why did you go

00:50:09.700 to a French speaking university for law school? Ah, well, they, they, my undergraduate career

00:50:17.080 was the point at which I turned from being largely a social, uh, operative effectively studying as

00:50:27.020 frankly, Jordan, I think most young men do as undergraduates studying chiefly, uh, female anatomy and

00:50:36.600 the contents of, uh, uh, uh, the containers of alcoholic beverages. And, and I was more successful

00:50:45.020 at the second than the first, but, but, but one got on, you know, and then you did, you studied as

00:50:50.180 much as you needed to. Well, Naomi Griffiths helped motivate me to treat it as a little more than

00:50:55.400 something where you've just passed the years and check the box of going from first to second to

00:51:00.800 graduating year. What did she do to do that? She, she gave me the vision of actually becoming an

00:51:08.840 authority on some part of history and also writing about history. Then, then, um, so that would be my

00:51:17.760 main answer to your first question. Now, your, your, your last one was, was why a French university,

00:51:23.380 but your second one was why I bought the newspaper, right? Yes. I was at loose ends, you say, so I, and, and so

00:51:28.720 frankly, my friend, Peter White said, look here, uh, I need an editor of this paper. I mean, I'm here

00:51:34.760 in Ottawa. And, and, uh, and then at the end of it, the government changed in Quebec and the union

00:51:42.500 national one, Duplessis old party one, but Mr. Johnson, Daniel Johnson senior. And he hired Peter

00:51:48.780 White as his chief English language assistant. He was head of the English language section of the

00:51:53.920 premier of Quebec's office, which is a serious position in the, in the English community of

00:51:58.920 Quebec. That is a, that is an important position. And, and he conducted it extremely well. And Mr.

00:52:04.620 Johnson was, it was a, was a very impressive man, I thought, and still think, but, um, he said, I look,

00:52:11.500 I got to have an editor for this paper. I'm going to have to close the paper. Why don't you buy a half

00:52:17.160 interest for nominal sum and be the resident editor for a while until you decide what to do. And then one

00:52:23.500 thing led to another. And he was an alumnus of the law faculty of Laval. And, and a number of

00:52:28.760 famous English Canadians were most famously Brian Mulroney. He was, he was in Peter's class. I mean,

00:52:34.200 they're older than I am there, but five or six years older than that. And, um, Michael Mayen's

00:52:39.620 another, he's a Senator. He's now, I think the chancellor of McGill University's grandfather was

00:52:43.920 the prime minister and, um, and others. And, and so once I got into that milieu, I, because of who I

00:52:53.060 knew, I, I, I got a little bit into the edges of Quebec politics and I met Premier Johnson and,

00:52:59.380 and our paper served the English residents of the vice premier of Quebec and the subsequent

00:53:05.560 premier Jean-Jacques Bertrand. So I, I got the, I don't mean no in the sense that it was any other

00:53:10.380 than, you know, bonjour or something, but, uh, but I got to sort of into the, to the edge of that.

00:53:15.160 And that period coming up to 1967 with the fermentation in Quebec, which was very active

00:53:24.480 politically, but not nothing violent about it at that point. Um, uh, it, it, it was an exciting

00:53:31.220 atmosphere. And, uh, and then you also said that you had become aware of newspaper owners

00:53:36.740 approximately at this point. And, and so, well, it just the way they lived, it was, I mean,

00:53:41.560 I never have aspired to live in the, in the oriental monarchical faction, fashion of William

00:53:48.540 Randolph Hearst made most famous and caricatured in, uh, Citizen Kane, uh, you know, which Orson

00:53:57.520 Welles officially denied it had nothing to do with Hearst, but as Time Magazine put it, lawyers

00:54:03.960 for Mr. William Randolph Hearst have determined otherwise and have prosecuted accordingly. But the,

00:54:10.260 um, uh, the, uh, uh, it, it, it, it developed along that way. So I, I, I, I became motivated

00:54:19.120 academically, then had a reason to move to Quebec and get involved in this most modest scale. You can

00:54:26.860 be short of just being a newspaper delivery boy, but in a position where I did everything, I was the

00:54:32.960 publisher and the editor. I hadn't an assistant who did the actual clerical work, but, you know, I sold

00:54:38.540 the ads. I produced the circulation campaigns such as they were, and I wrote most of the content.

00:54:44.460 So as you know, that's how much were you writing to do it all. And then, and then, and then I thought

00:54:52.100 it would be a good idea to pursue my studies in Quebec, in a French university and, and, uh, Peter White

00:55:00.920 held men. And, uh, indeed, um, the premier allowed his name to stand as, as, as a recommendation. Now

00:55:09.100 in Quebec city in 1966, if someone appeals for it or applies for entry to the law faculty and, and one

00:55:17.660 of the sponsors is the prime minister of Quebec, I mean, unless it's a joke and this guy has never

00:55:22.620 got past grade seven, he's going to be admitted. And, and, and, um, uh, and, and it was a, an entirely

00:55:30.320 positive experience, but it, you must understand it was a double and ultimately a triple experience

00:55:35.880 if I may elaborate. I really had to learn the language. I knew it kind of basic French, a high

00:55:42.100 school graduate Ontario knows where I would know a few words, but I didn't really know how to put a

00:55:46.580 serious sentence together or speak fluently. And at that age, my early twenties, you know, I wanted

00:55:52.180 you know, I wanted to socialize, but I didn't want to live like a monk, you know? And, and, and so I,

00:55:56.740 you know, you, you really have to pick it up. And, and so I was learning the language and also

00:56:02.000 it came up that in 1969, when I was into my final year in the law school, uh, the Sherbrooke daily

00:56:10.280 record, and we're into a daily newspaper here, albeit as a small, an eight or 9,000 circulation came up for

00:56:16.200 sale on a distressed basis because they, they, they, they overcommitted to buying a

00:56:22.180 press thinking they could sell enough business on the press to pay for it. And they didn't. So

00:56:26.820 they were, they were strained. So Peter White and a third friend of ours and I bought that paper. So

00:56:34.020 in that space of time, I became, you know, I, I made a major advance in my academic career, qualified

00:56:42.600 myself, uh, as a law graduate, uh, picked up a bit, if I may say the pretty good, solid competence in

00:56:52.240 French and became a newspaper co-owner. I believe I was the only publisher of a daily newspaper.

00:57:00.800 It's certainly the only one I've ever heard of any who was at the same time a lost you. Now,

00:57:05.820 there may have been others, but I hadn't heard of anything like that. And, and so that, that it was

00:57:10.000 really out of that brief period, the rest of, or at least much of the balance of my career was

00:57:16.760 launched. I know that, you know, that, that happens to everybody, I suppose, but it was a

00:57:20.480 slightly different pattern for me than most. Why law?

00:57:25.880 Yeah, I look, it's, uh, it's the neutral place. It was not that I ever particularly desired to be a

00:57:32.420 lawyer, but you never go wrong with it. You know, it always helps you as a qualification for whatever

00:57:37.780 you're going to do. And parts of it are an interesting subject. Now I focused on, uh,

00:57:43.540 constitutional and international, uh, and, um, you know, heaven help anyone relying on my

00:57:50.280 recollections of a Quebec civil code to get them through a, you know, a median wall case or some,

00:57:56.420 one of these funny minor bits of litigation you get, but, but, uh, but, you know, the law's a broad

00:58:02.640 field and there's lots of stuff that's interesting, you know, I, I never particularly desired to

00:58:08.260 practice. I never did practice. I had a couple of minimum wage cases where our company was the

00:58:12.680 defendant and I got, I got Brian Mulroney. It was a labor lawyer to coach me a bit. And I did exactly

00:58:18.860 what he told me to him. He won the two cases about, that was the only practice I've ever had. I will say

00:58:23.900 that it's been very useful to me. I mean, uh, unfortunately I, uh, uh, you know, I've had a

00:58:30.320 great deal of legal experience as a, uh, as a, uh, uh, client of lawyers, including some very famous

00:58:36.780 lawyers in the United States and Britain and Canada. But, but, uh, and, and that, that, that does help

00:58:42.500 you. If you, if you know something about it, the basis of the law, it does help you in dealing with

00:58:47.460 lawyers. So how did you manage your, your career as a publisher and your studies at that point?

00:58:54.120 Well, I was a pretty much of an absentee publisher. Uh, I, I would come there when I could and do

00:59:00.300 certain things. I called upon certain advertisers in Montreal and Toronto when I, when I was able

00:59:06.140 to, uh, uh, but, but, uh, you know, I, that was in, uh, that was, uh, uh, uh, what, nine months

00:59:13.360 before I graduated after that, I was a resident publisher. And then we started to build the business

00:59:17.520 and branched out and bought more papers and it grew and grew. So the first paper that you bought,

00:59:23.240 you did, you did, you said the bulk of the writing. And so how much time were you spending writing

00:59:27.480 in a week at that point?

00:59:30.300 Oh, when, when I was the resident publisher of a weekly paper?

00:59:34.160 Yep.

00:59:35.240 Uh, it, it took probably eight or 10 hours to write the main contents of the paper. So

00:59:41.480 for each week, I mean, you know, yeah, it's not, it's not absolutely the, uh, uh, you know,

00:59:48.140 the chronicles of, uh, you know, it's not, it's not the best collected editorials of the London

00:59:54.040 Times.

00:59:54.760 No, but you have to commit to producing.

00:59:56.500 Yeah. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta get it to paper. Yes.

00:59:58.940 I mean, when people are often curious about what it takes to be a writer and I mean, one

01:00:02.640 of the things that it takes to be a writer is to write and, and to produce constantly

01:00:07.080 and on a schedule, at least that's how it seems to me. And it, it appears that that you

01:00:12.240 had a, you had a deadline that was continually renewing itself and you had to produce content

01:00:17.180 come hell or high water fundamentally.

01:00:19.520 Yeah. And what you've said is very perceptive is now, uh, I mean, you've, there's no reason

01:00:25.740 why you would know this, but I have millions of readers in the United States. I write these

01:00:30.520 columns and not four of them every week in the U S and it's just what you said. It's a

01:00:35.380 deadline that comes up all of that. Now, yeah, it's only, uh, 1200 words. So it's not, you

01:00:41.980 know, it's not that much writing, but on the other hand, you know, it's a highly competitive

01:00:47.420 field and you don't, no one's going to pay you if no one reads you. So you have to put

01:00:51.320 down something.

01:00:52.180 Yeah. Well, and that's still 365,000 words. No, not a year. You said weekly.

01:00:57.320 Yeah.

01:00:58.120 Right. So it's a hundred thousand words a year. It's a book a year.

01:01:00.920 It's a hundred thousand words a year.

01:01:02.380 Yeah.

01:01:02.400 Right.

01:01:03.260 Yeah. No, this is true. And, uh, no, no, you know, the news cycle is what it is. And there's

01:01:07.780 always plenty to write about, but, um, uh, but that got me into that habit. You're absolutely

01:01:12.780 right where you're writing to a deadline and you can't balk at the deadline. If I, if I

01:01:17.080 could make a detour here, but a relevant one, uh, uh, as, as, as you know, and many of your

01:01:23.640 viewers would, uh, I was for a time, a guest of the people of the United States and the Bureau

01:01:29.400 of Prisons. Now I ultimately won that battle and I won it entirely. And in addition, ultimately

01:01:35.400 the charge charges were retroactively withdrawn, but, and it was, it was an outrage from A

01:01:40.640 to Z, but, but my, what I did while I was there was I was a tutor to students who did

01:01:49.580 not succeed in the program, the U S Bureau of Prisons has of requiring everyone who has

01:01:54.400 not graduated from secondary school to do so. And so they have teachers and examinations

01:02:01.900 every month. And those who were unsuccessful, they would send to me. And I recruited other

01:02:06.340 tutors. I recruited a, a former, um, head of the torpedo room of a nuclear submarines, my

01:02:13.700 sciences tutor, cause I'm not qualified to do that. And for mathematics, the head of mathematics,

01:02:20.180 former head of mathematics of a large high school in little rock, Arkansas was also a successful

01:02:25.180 commodities trader.

01:02:26.120 And these were people that were imprisoned at the same time.

01:02:29.560 Yes. Yeah. I, uh, but you know, the nonviolent things, I think one was tax case and the other

01:02:36.240 was a alleged fraudulent use of a credit card or something, but they, but they're highly qualified

01:02:41.900 people. So the three of us were, were tutoring these people and, and, um, and the, these people

01:02:48.660 would be sent to us and they would arrive very kind of sullen and suspicious, which the conduct

01:02:55.800 of the American criminal legal system invites and incites and largely justifies. Um, and I would

01:03:05.960 give them a little speech that they didn't have to do a thing if they didn't want to, but if they

01:03:11.380 wanted to leave there with their foot on the up escalator and a, and a excellent chance to make

01:03:18.720 a good living in a way that didn't lead straight back to a place like this, I could help them.

01:03:23.740 If they didn't want that, that was fine. I didn't care, but I was there if they wanted.

01:03:28.120 But the one thing I didn't want was for them to imagine that I was part of this awful system.

01:03:32.720 I was a bigger victim of it than they probably were because I didn't commit any of this.

01:03:36.820 With that, the whole thing turned and they became fully cooperative.

01:03:40.780 And why did that speak? Okay. Why did you formulate that speech? Why did you think it was justifiable?

01:03:45.800 And why did it have a positive effect on, on the people that you were discussing?

01:03:51.940 Because they had, in that great rich country of the United States, and I'm not a socialist,

01:03:58.420 but they had not had a fair deal. I mean, most of them scarcely had any idea who their father was.

01:04:06.940 And, and, and, and, and from early times, their mother or somebody was saying, somebody's got to

01:04:13.240 get some money here. We're going to be out in the street. And, and they were just cannon fodder in

01:04:18.620 the drug war. I mean, they were at the last edge. They were the last edge of transfer. So some

01:04:23.640 druggie was picked up. They say, where did you get that from? And they'd finger that person. And,

01:04:28.000 you know, and, and, and, and, you know, they, they were, they were cooked. So off they went to prison

01:04:33.820 terribly over census. I, one of my students got 25 years for driving a truck loaded with marijuana.

01:04:40.840 He wasn't even a user himself. Anyway, you know, a lad of 23 or something, by the way, I am one thing I

01:04:47.700 am proud of in, in, in that same sense as the, my initial graduation from high school myself was that

01:04:56.180 all of my lads passed, 206. Now, some of them had to take exams more than once, but they all graduated.

01:05:02.480 How long were you, how long were you in prison and doing this?

01:05:06.440 Three years and two weeks.

01:05:08.120 How long did it take after you were in prison before you started doing this tutoring? And why

01:05:12.320 did you do it?

01:05:13.840 No, I, I, oh, you mean it once, how, how long after I arrived in prison, did it start?

01:05:18.120 Yes.

01:05:18.300 Only about a month, because one of my books was in the library and the head of education said,

01:05:22.320 look here, we've got to do something with these guys who just keep failing. I mean, there's nothing

01:05:27.840 wrong with their IQ, but let's try something different instead of our teachers. Would you do

01:05:32.620 it? And, and then, then I would answer your question, but why I gave them a little speech

01:05:37.460 so-called, it was hardly a speech, but it was, I pretty much said to you, what I said to them

01:05:43.800 was because I, I, I knew that they initially would think I was part of this evil system

01:05:51.720 that they hated. And I had to make them understand that I was one of them and not one of the others,

01:05:58.360 you see? And that wasn't a pretense. It wasn't a, a falsehood. I was, I mean, I, my heart was with

01:06:04.280 the prisoners and not with the...

01:06:05.640 But you were also selling them something. You were selling them literacy as an escape from their

01:06:09.860 current condition. That's it. I was selling them self-interest. And as you know, that, that,

01:06:14.480 that's, that's, that's, that's the Australians say, it's a trier. Yeah. I mean, that's one that'll

01:06:19.280 go, you know, and, and, um, uh, but what I was going to say about them was, and this is going back

01:06:26.360 to what you were saying about meeting deadlines, the American, or at least the Florida matriculation

01:06:32.480 system, that's, that's where it was, um, required an essay. And so I said, all right, uh, you know,

01:06:42.340 write an essay. And they had various topics that were usually used. So I said, take your pick of

01:06:47.620 these. And some of, some of these fellows literally couldn't write a word. They had a mental block.

01:06:54.740 They couldn't write a word. And the way I got around that was, I said, look, we'll change the subject

01:07:00.340 term. You write on the sexiest woman you've ever seen. And you can use your imagination. There doesn't

01:07:09.740 have to be such a woman. You can just make her up and you, and only I will read this. So if it'll

01:07:16.160 help you be as coarse and vulgar as you want, use any sexual word you want, any way you want, anything,

01:07:25.220 just write what comes to mind. And, uh, and that got them all going. None of them had a, had a, had a,

01:07:32.340 a mental block after that.

01:07:34.660 Why in the world did you take that tack and what made them, why in the world did they trust you?

01:07:39.540 And then I have another question too, which is why did they pass? Why were you successful when the,

01:07:44.840 when the other teachers, let's say, or the system that was hypothetically designed to educate them

01:07:48.800 failed?

01:07:49.120 Well, because they wouldn't put out for them. They thought it was another trick of the, you know,

01:07:55.680 the establishment to, to use them. And they, in, in their minds, they were obliged to provide them

01:08:04.100 food and shelter. Uh, and, uh, and as long as they would just sort of sullenly went along with things,

01:08:12.280 they didn't harass them too much. And that, so that was minimum compliance, but it was a survival

01:08:17.440 regime for them. And that was really where their lives were reduced to at that point.

01:08:22.100 And so I produced a sort of spark of light that they could actually better their lot,

01:08:29.140 raise their higher ability, and therefore their legitimate, by which I mean legal, uh,

01:08:35.440 income aspiration, because if they matriculated from high school, they were more hireable than

01:08:40.540 if they hadn't been. And indeed, in the case of a number of them, uh, I assisted them in becoming

01:08:46.540 correspondence students in universities. And, and indeed, I had a couple of them who started

01:08:54.540 there, then were released and continued physically at the university and graduated. Uh, I had one a

01:09:01.000 couple of years ago wrote me when he graduated from the university of Alabama, it was more than a

01:09:04.720 couple of years ago now, it was about six years ago, but he graduated from the university of Alabama.

01:09:08.740 And, and, and, uh, uh, to the extent I'm in touch with these people are all doing fine. They're all

01:09:13.260 well launched doing fine. Hmm. Well, this is, this is, you obviously take pleasure in this

01:09:18.560 particular accomplishment. You see, it was ironic, uh, Jordan, because I didn't, I mean, you know,

01:09:24.200 I had a few teachers I liked, we all remember the teachers we liked, but there weren't that many of

01:09:27.940 them in my case. And most of them, I didn't like, I bought into the, into the view that really,

01:09:34.080 they were teachers because they couldn't make it in the world of adults. So they sought success in a

01:09:40.680 place where they could assert their authority over smaller people. And I mean, this was my concept of

01:09:46.800 the motivation of some of the teachers I had, but, um, and you know, Shaw's famous comment, he who can

01:09:52.920 does, and he who cannot teaches. I sort of believed that I thought they were, you know, I, I, there were

01:09:59.740 exceptions, but in general, I thought these teachers were people who couldn't make it in a more

01:10:04.420 substantial occupation. Now that was an unfair judgment, but, but, but on the other hand, when I

01:10:10.320 see what, uh, what level of education, those, uh, who depart our schools, uh, achieve nowadays, I'm not

01:10:18.220 so sure it was an unjust judgment, but any case, that's what I thought. But I saw the other side of it

01:10:24.160 when I was tutoring these guys in, in the prison system, I saw the satisfaction of it. And I will

01:10:31.300 give the Bureau of Prisons this, they devised this graduation ceremony and all the families would come

01:10:37.640 and they were emotional occasions. And I, I, I'm not a particularly emotional person, but, but

01:10:43.500 one of the few seriously emotional, positive emotional moments I've had was when my two colleagues and I

01:10:51.480 were introduced and, and this whole pack room stood up and cheered for about five minutes.

01:10:56.820 And, you know, the, the, the girlfriends or wives or parents or whatever, uh, uh, of, of my students

01:11:05.120 would meet my wife in the, in the visiting center and say, Oh, your husband is, you know, my guy's a

01:11:12.200 teacher. And we're so grateful to him and all this stuff. It was, it was very touching. And incidentally,

01:11:16.720 um, Jordan, the prison isn't the place for those people. I was in a low security place, sir. None

01:11:22.440 of these guys were violent and they, they weren't habitual offenders. It wasn't the right place for

01:11:26.700 them. Uh, that's not the way we should treat these people. Well, they're not bad people and

01:11:32.660 they're not unintelligent. And as I say, every one of mine passed. The problem was they just got a

01:11:37.420 wrong turning early on. So let's return to the, to the newspaper business. So now you're out of

01:11:45.300 law school and you've, you have a second newspaper and you you're, you've graduated. Now you've taken

01:11:50.480 on the role as a publisher. Your empire starts to expand at that point. It does. But I, I had one

01:11:56.780 more, uh, one more lap to run on the educational side. I became a master's candidate and, uh, and did

01:12:08.020 receive the degree from McGill in French Canada studies. Now this, this came from, um, I mean,

01:12:15.060 not that you've asked me that I'm volunteering it, that, um, I went, I, I, because I knew

01:12:21.140 Premier Johnson a bit, if I, I don't know how conversant you are with modern Quebec history,

01:12:25.980 but he was often referred to as the son Duplessis never had. Uh, Maurice Duplessis, as you probably

01:12:32.200 know, was the, he was the only person in history to serve five terms as Premier of Quebec and

01:12:37.480 he died in office. And, and Jean Lossage told me that if he'd lived, he would have been

01:12:42.480 reelected. He, he was, he really knew how to, uh, you know, how to organize that province

01:12:48.600 politically. Uh, and, um, uh, but he was a bachelor and, but he, he, he advanced Johnson

01:12:56.560 quite quickly and Johnson was kind of his protege and, and, uh, he had same speaking style, very

01:13:03.680 witty way of talking. And, um, uh, he, uh, I, he inspired my interest in Duplessis because

01:13:13.600 up until then I had the, I was the conventional English Canadian view that Duplessis was really

01:13:18.080 a, a, a, a retrograde political character and a scoundrel, uh, and a colorful man and a clever

01:13:25.300 man, no doubt, but a cynic and essentially much too authoritarian. Um, I mean, there's some

01:13:32.860 truth in that, but the fact is he produced the modernization of Quebec. He built the

01:13:38.100 auto routes, he built the schools, he built every university except McGill. I mean, he

01:13:42.480 was reelected because he delivered for the province and, um, uh, but his technique was

01:13:48.960 to get the nationalists and the conservatives to vote together, which is very difficult

01:13:53.220 to do. Either you're too nationalistic and frightened the conservatives, which happened

01:13:57.400 to him in 1939, or, or, or you're not nationalistic enough and, and, and, and they get impatient

01:14:04.140 with you, which is what happened to Jean-Jacques Bertrand in 1970. Uh, I mean, Duplessis had it

01:14:09.880 all organized for Paul Sovey to follow him and Daniel Johnson to follow him, but Duplessis

01:14:15.140 was a strong man. It was almost 70 when he died in office. Those two died in office in

01:14:19.640 the early fifties. So, and then the whole thing broke up. But my point was that, um, uh,

01:14:25.240 Johnson stirred my curiosity about Duplessis because there clearly was a story to this

01:14:31.920 man that wasn't being told. He was reviled as the author of The Great Darkness and all

01:14:36.540 this sort of thing. So I went to a colloquy, uh, happened to get an invitation and it came

01:14:43.620 from Miss Griffiths, who I mentioned. It was my old professor at Carleton who said, you might

01:14:49.180 be interested in this. I went to it in Three Rivers and it was a discussion of Duplessis and

01:14:53.880 it, and, and there was a panel and there was one pro Duplessis panelist and two anti Duplessis

01:14:58.180 ones. And I went up to the pro Duplessis one and at the end of it, it was the somewhat well-known

01:15:03.680 historian Robert Rumi, a Frenchman originally, who, who was a member of Action Francaise, you

01:15:09.940 know, Charles Maurras. And he was at a demonstration in the Place de la République in 1926. And the

01:15:15.980 person next to him was shot dead. And with that, he left France and never returned, emigrated

01:15:20.880 to Quebec. Anyway, he, um, I congratulated him on upholding Duplessis and we conversed

01:15:27.580 for a while. And, and then I gave him a ride back to Montreal. And, uh, and I, and it turned

01:15:36.160 out that he had been commissioned by an outfit called in French, the Society of Friends of the

01:15:42.460 Honorable Maurice Duplessis to write a book about Duplessis. And, and they had all Duplessis'

01:15:48.680 papers. And so I, I, the idea is it came to my mind, well, look, you're writing in French,

01:15:55.800 would they have any interest in allowing an English speaking person to look at them and,

01:16:00.260 and, and write about that? And he said, well, it's worth a try. Sure. Well, I'll recommend

01:16:04.320 you, you say. And, and, and then it happened, the head of this outfit was the former minister

01:16:08.960 of cultural affairs in Johnson and Bertrand's government, Jean-Noel Tremblay, you may remember.

01:16:14.120 And he's still alive. He's very elderly. Uh, and, and, and, and so he said, yeah, well,

01:16:19.360 that's fine. Sure. You can, but you know, you've got to keep them to yourself and stuff,

01:16:23.340 but all of which I, the rules I respected. And so I had all this stuff. And then when I

01:16:28.560 saw what I had, I realized I had to do something about it. And this is what takes me back to having

01:16:35.560 developed at least the ambition to write some history. So I calculated that if I enrolled at

01:16:41.040 McGill citing this as my proposed thesis topic, that would get me halfway through. And if I got

01:16:48.500 halfway through, I'd, I'd have the momentum to finish it. And that's where my first book came

01:16:53.240 from, which, uh, which is called, uh, render unto Caesar, the life of Maurice Duplessis. And, uh,

01:17:01.100 and, um, so, so I, I got that side of things going at the same time as we built our newspaper

01:17:06.740 company. And we, and we bought within a few months, a daily newspaper in Prince Edward Island

01:17:11.260 and one in Prince Rupert, British Columbia. So I could say with a semi straight face,

01:17:16.720 we have a newspaper chain that spans the country from ocean to ocean.

01:17:21.180 But I said, you know, the links are rather, rather wide and not many of them.

01:17:29.120 So you're writing, you're done your law degree, you're writing now as well, and you've got

01:17:33.720 three newspapers at this point. Well, and there were some weeklies we were up to probably as many

01:17:38.360 as 10, but then we, we had some weeklies around Quebec. And then we got, we see that there were

01:17:43.680 some available ones in British Columbia, dailies and weeklies. So we, we, we built it up.

01:17:50.520 It was still a small company compared to, you know, the ones that own the big newspapers in the

01:17:54.700 country, but we built it up to something, a bit of scale and stature fairly quickly. But,

01:17:59.580 but it was a, it's a, it was a very profitable business. And normally we would, um, we, we,

01:18:06.400 we make a, make a bid based on the profitability of the present owner. And, and very rarely were

01:18:15.600 these people who owned the papers running them as profitably as they could. They were taking a nice

01:18:21.400 salary for themselves and they weren't that concerned with what the profit was. Well, we had an idea of

01:18:26.960 what we could do with the profit. And, and then, and then in those days you could go to the local

01:18:32.940 bank and say, uh, look, we, we, you know, we want to buy this paper and, uh, we want, we were asking you

01:18:40.680 to loan us half the money. We'll take care of the rest. And what we do is we give the vendor a balance of

01:18:45.360 sale and the rest. So we didn't put up anything, not a cent. And, but, but we always did raise the profit.

01:18:51.140 We always raised the quality of the product too. And our position always was that the best way

01:18:56.900 to raise the profit was to raise the, the quality of the product. And even then people who bought and

01:19:04.420 read a newspaper were what is called ABC, ABC one readers, either high income or high education,

01:19:11.260 relatively speaking. I mean, ignorant people didn't buy newspapers and, and, and, and for the most part,

01:19:19.000 poor people didn't buy newspapers and people, advertisers wouldn't be interested in, wouldn't

01:19:24.760 buy a newspaper, but anyone who bought a newspaper is someone, an advertiser wants to get to because

01:19:29.520 he has disposable income. How much was your ability to make these newspapers that you purchased

01:19:33.920 profitable and also to see an opportunity there, a consequence of you having done everything when

01:19:40.780 you bought your first newspaper? Uh, a considerable, because I knew how much manpower you needed.

01:19:47.020 And, and, and almost all of us, these places had more manpower than they needed. Now, you know,

01:19:54.060 we handled gently, you know, we moved them out, you know, basically a lot of them were elderly.

01:20:00.240 So we just gave them early retirement, topped up their pensions a bit and things like that.

01:20:03.960 But, but, um, and they're small, so you're not talking about a lot of people, but if you,

01:20:09.120 if you've got a newspaper of 50 employees and you get eight of them to take early retirement,

01:20:15.900 you've got the payroll by almost 20% and, and, um, and it's not that early retirement,

01:20:21.560 you know, and in addition to that, there are all kinds of things to do to enhance revenue.

01:20:26.860 I mean, very few of them at any notion of how you, you know, how you can, um, hype the circulation

01:20:33.780 relatively easily with contests and things like that. I was astounded at the people where we really

01:20:40.060 saw this was in England or the daily telegraph, the daily circulation over a million broadsheet

01:20:45.560 papers, the biggest broadsheet paper in Europe. Um, the British love these, as far as I'm concerned,

01:20:54.060 utterly ridiculous contests, but if you give them a contest, even to get a, you know, a free subscription

01:21:00.680 of a spectator, which we also own, uh, they'll plunge into it. It's a circulation bill. So that's

01:21:08.960 the sort of thing that, uh, you know, an individual sitting in for argument's sake, Nelson, British

01:21:13.360 Columbia, having owned this newspaper for 30 years, he wouldn't know that it wouldn't matter.

01:21:17.880 He lived well. He was an influential person in his community, made a profit every year, having taken a

01:21:23.180 nice salary for himself. There's three or four relatives in the payroll. Uh, the, the, the company owns

01:21:28.860 his car and owns his speed boat and the lake and all this kind of stuff. I mean, Tim, that's all he

01:21:34.680 needs, which is fine. But the fact is you can double the profits quite quickly. So now do you have a

01:21:41.340 plan at this point? You're, you're being successful in purchasing newspapers and increasing their

01:21:45.540 profitability. So you're building up more capital. Are you, are you planning? Do you have an aim at this

01:21:51.700 point just to continue expanding and do you have an end in mind? Yeah, this was our plan. And we, and we

01:21:55.580 brought it a long way forward. The biggest, uh, the biggest paper we had when things changed

01:22:04.320 because of that shakeup in the Ravenson-Argus thing that you mentioned in your intro, uh, whereupon

01:22:09.980 I started to focus on finance, um, was Le Soleil in Quebec City, which Sir Wilfrid Laurier was

01:22:17.820 once the chairman. And that was a newspaper about 120,000 circulation a day. It's not big for Toronto,

01:22:24.720 but it's, uh, that's, that's, what is it? It's, uh, you know, I'm trying to say, I don't know

01:22:31.920 the newspaper circulations now. I've been out of the business for a long time, but you know,

01:22:35.280 that's 120,000 papers today. It's a respectable size paper. It's not a huge newspaper, but it's not,

01:22:40.720 it's not like the Nolan Eastern Townships advertiser either. And there was some history to Le Soleil as well.

01:22:46.460 It's a well-known paper in Quebec. So you, by the way, the, the, the history part that I best knew

01:22:54.560 was from my studies of Duplessis, where the, you know, it was, as I said, Sir Wilfrid was the chairman

01:23:00.540 at one time. It was an absolute dyed-in-the-wool liberal newspaper, but, um, the, the owner, Jacob

01:23:08.380 Nicole, and he owned the newspapers in Three Rivers and Sherbrooke, uh, also, um, he, he was,

01:23:17.740 he was one of the few people who was a senator and a legislative counselor at the Opera House of Quebec

01:23:22.300 in those days. He was both at the same time. And, uh, and he was the liberal party chairman

01:23:28.540 for 20 years provincially while they were in office just before Duplessis and for nearly 20 years after

01:23:34.140 when they were in office in Ottawa. He was a very powerful man in Quebec. And in the early days of

01:23:39.580 television, he, he got the license, uh, Doug was through his political contacts for Eastern Quebec,

01:23:47.260 southeastern Quebec, around Sherbrooke. And the best place to put his transmitter was at the top of Mount

01:23:54.220 Orford, which was a provincial park. So he asked Duplessis if he could put his, as, you know, his

01:24:02.140 transmitter there. And Duplessis said, uh, you know, Jacob, you can, you can put it there and you don't have

01:24:07.980 to pay me more than $1 rent for it, me being the province of Quebec, but not as long as right under the

01:24:16.380 words Le Soleil on your leading newspaper or the words, the liberal orga. He said, right. At that

01:24:23.260 point, Le Soleil, never mind that Mr. Nicole was a liberal senator and legislative chancellor, became

01:24:29.260 a union national newspaper. He just switched like that and he got his license. Anyway, that, that, that,

01:24:37.100 that's a, in a way a red airing, but I thought, I thought it might amuse your viewers a bit.

01:24:41.820 Right. So you're building up a newspaper empire. Is it, it's, it's in Canada, it's limited to Canada

01:24:48.620 at this point, but you start to expand. Is it first in the U S or first in the UK? And how does that

01:24:53.660 We started to move in the U S in, um, let me think now we got going there in about, uh, 70,

01:25:04.300 75, we bought a paper just over the border in Vermont. And then, and then, and then it grew.

01:25:12.060 We, I mean, of course, in a market that size, we, we, we fairly rapidly bought a huge number

01:25:17.420 of these small papers. We had a formula to operate them and you could bundle them together by region.

01:25:23.500 And then when you, when you combine their circulation, it became quite substantial in

01:25:28.540 circulation. We had enough of them. And, and as you said, in your intro, we had hundreds of these papers.

01:25:34.300 And were you run, were you running writers across the papers or were you, these all in,

01:25:38.780 in, in independent fiefdoms?

01:25:40.780 There were a few that we, that we could, we could run or, or, or buy from the outside at a discount

01:25:46.860 for ourselves, rather than with the unit costs that obtained, if we were only buying for one little

01:25:52.540 paper, 10,000 sale or something like that. So we got economies to scale to a degree, but in the papers

01:25:58.860 like that, you, you absolutely have to serve the local public. And, and you're relatively speaking,

01:26:05.660 not under threat from television, let alone once it came to the internet, as much in those local

01:26:11.500 papers, because, you know, CBS or the CBC or everyone are not going to carry the, you know, the, the

01:26:20.860 strawberry festival of the town your papers published in, you know, they, they just don't

01:26:27.100 have the room for it. So you're giving people what they can't get anywhere else.

01:26:32.060 And is that still the case? Are, are the smaller community?

01:26:34.780 Well, I think the internet has become so pervasive now. I think it's a threat even to those papers,

01:26:41.340 but, but not as, not as much as it is to a metropolitan.

01:26:46.060 So how are you managing your time at this point? You have, you have an increasingly large

01:26:50.620 media empire. You're also still writing.

01:26:52.940 I divided it into, into regions and I had the East and associates had the West. And then, then the,

01:27:01.820 big turn came in the matter you referred to when the, you know, when the, what was called at the

01:27:08.220 time, the Argus group of companies, the control of it became available. And that was quite an

01:27:13.900 intricate business because the number of voting shares involved is quite small. So you, you, I, because

01:27:20.780 my father had had his position, he died in 1976. So my brother and I, we technically, we didn't

01:27:27.420 inherit the stock. We bought it from his estate, but, but in effect we inherited it. And, and then

01:27:35.660 there was a shareholders agreement and the, the principal associate died and there was some jockeying

01:27:43.820 around. And in any case we, in accordance with the shareholders agreement, we bought the other stock.

01:27:49.900 So we had, we had control of the voting chairs, which had, of this company, which had influential

01:27:59.260 blocks of stock and historically controlling blocks of stock. Although for, in most cases,

01:28:04.300 they weren't a majority of shares of a number of famous companies. Massey Ferguson was one of the

01:28:09.260 farm equipment maker, Dominion stores, the grocery stores, Domtar, the forestry products company.

01:28:18.300 And, um, uh, the most interesting in a way, it was the old, the old Hollinger mining company. It didn't do

01:28:25.820 much mining, but it owned 60% of a, of an outfit that, that owned big iron ore positions in,

01:28:34.940 in Labrador and Northern Quebec and long-term contracts to ship the ore that produced about

01:28:40.140 $40 million of royalties every year, basically no cost. The, the steel companies and their affiliates

01:28:49.740 in the United States took the ore out and paid us the royalties. So we had that cash to work with.

01:28:54.460 And then, and then what I did was over a period, I reoriented that flow of cash and that business

01:29:01.500 into the newspaper business. And we really, really took off when, uh, when, uh, I, I bought control of

01:29:11.660 the London daily telegraph, which was in a distressed financial state for $30 million, which we ultimately

01:29:17.900 sold for $1.327 billion. How much, how, how long a period of time elapsed between the purchase and the

01:29:25.980 sale? From, uh, 1986 to, uh, 2004.

01:29:34.780 So, uh, 18 years, 18 years. Yeah. Well, that's quite the return on investment. So are you in

01:29:41.180 England that you, you buy the telegraph? Are you spending much of your time in Britain at that point?

01:29:45.180 Uh, well, after we bought it, I, I, I went there for two years in the summers only. And then I made,

01:29:51.500 and then I made it my chief residence after that for, uh, about 15 years.

01:29:55.980 Yeah. So what was it like moving from Toronto to Britain?

01:30:00.620 Well, I, I, I kept my home and my office here, but, uh, in the sense you mean it, I mean it. Yes.

01:30:05.100 I moved my main residence. Well, look, it, it, it, moving into Britain as an owner of a big newspaper

01:30:12.620 is not like just, you know, getting off the plane at Heathrow and going through the want ads to find

01:30:18.540 a job for yourself, you know? So I, I was rather well received because of the position I had.

01:30:22.860 Uh, but it was very interesting. It's a, it's a, I was fortunate to get

01:30:28.220 the very tail end of that era when the newspaper owners were very influential people. Uh, I mean,

01:30:34.780 I, I don't think they are particularly influential now, but, and it's not a, it's not a good business now,

01:30:39.500 but, um, uh, it, it, it, it, you know, London is one of the world's greatest cities. And if, if you're

01:30:49.180 well situated in London, you meet a tremendous variety of interesting people who are, who either

01:30:55.580 live there or come through there, virtually everybody you can think of comes through London

01:31:00.300 at some point in a year. And, and, and there, you know, there's normally some sort of occasion

01:31:06.860 for them. So my wife and I were constantly receiving these formidable sort of stiff,

01:31:13.820 gold edged invitations to come to have dinner with so-and-so or lunch with so-and-so or something.

01:31:19.900 And, and, uh, it, it, you know, it was a sumptuous life, but, but, um, but I mean, my interest

01:31:26.460 in it was really in, in the socializing with people as well as at that time, I was a supporter

01:31:33.500 of Mrs. Thatcher and, and, and it was a very interesting and active time politically in Britain

01:31:40.540 as she effectively de-socialized the country.

01:31:43.740 How well did you know her?

01:31:45.260 I got to know her very well. She was my sponsor in the House of Lords and, and, and she and Dennis

01:31:53.740 came to our wedding party and they often came to dinner with us.

01:31:57.100 So you, you went, you went to, you lived in Britain after you were in Canada. How,

01:32:04.300 it'd be interesting for me to hear how you would contrast the cultures. What was it like being in

01:32:10.060 Britain? I mean, I know you were in a, in a very fortunate position when you moved there. And so you,

01:32:14.460 you, you entered in the upper echelons of society, but you had a chance to see Britain from the

01:32:19.740 inside and to contrast it with Canada and with the U S to some degree. So, so what did you observe

01:32:25.020 and what did you conclude?

01:32:27.980 Uh, well, it, it, it was a country being renewed, you know, I mean, Britain, uh, at the time that

01:32:35.580 Thatcher was elected very narrowly elected in 1979 was a country with tight currency controls,

01:32:42.940 uh, top personal tax rate of 98%. So there's a lot of tax cheating going on and the British

01:32:48.140 don't like that. You know what I mean? The real problem with Britain and Europe was not immigration.

01:32:55.180 It was, it, it, it was the authoritarianism of directives from Brussels. Uh, and, and, you know,

01:33:01.900 the, the, the French and the Italians essentially ignore the government as much as they can anyway,

01:33:09.420 and they don't care what these directives are. They're not going to pay much attention to them

01:33:12.460 unless they absolutely have to. And the French in particular are not going to take seriously

01:33:16.540 anything that comes from the Belgians and, or at least from within Belgium. And, uh, and the

01:33:21.420 Germans are the leading power in Europe and they're accustomed to regimentation. So it doesn't bother

01:33:25.980 them, but the British like to be law abiding. They like to obey the law, but, but they have to be

01:33:32.140 sensible laws and they have to be, uh, uh, imposed by people that are accountable. So if you don't like

01:33:38.860 what they're doing, you can throw them out at the, you know, the voting place. And, and that was the

01:33:43.900 problem. Well, that in addition to the economic stagnation, finally, finally, oh, you know,

01:33:51.260 of boiled over when Thatcher and her friends, Keith Joseph and others pushed out Ted Heath,

01:34:00.460 Sir Edward Heath and, and took the conservative party of Great Britain, conservative and unionist

01:34:06.460 party to, to the right, not the extreme right, but to a level of conservatism that, um, conservative

01:34:14.300 fiscal policy and tax policy in particular, uh, and attitude to, to labor unions that, that the

01:34:20.860 conservative party had not occupied really since, uh, the early days of Stanley Baldwin.

01:34:27.660 And, uh, and, and, and, and it wasn't back to them, but it was ideologically a similar position,

01:34:32.300 but obviously refined to reflect changes in society, uh, over that period of more than 50 years.

01:34:39.580 And so it was very interesting to see, and she was successful. I mean, I, I was there, uh, for her,

01:34:46.140 uh, third election victory. She was the first prime minister since before the first reform act

01:34:54.540 in the early 1830s to win three consecutive full terms, majority terms as prime minister. And, uh,

01:35:02.700 and she did it on the basis of radical change to the country. And it was quite exciting. Now at that time,

01:35:09.500 I was, uh, that was in the late eighties, uh, uh, um, now Brian Mulroney was an old friend of mine. Uh,

01:35:17.020 he, he, he was, he was, I mean, your question didn't deal with politics only, but that given my position

01:35:24.940 as a news in newspaper business, politics have a lot to do with it. Um, and Brian was doing something

01:35:31.020 about, but Canada as old was operated, you know, much closer to the middle of the field. Uh, you know,

01:35:37.500 you know, it had never got that far left and, and, and, and he didn't move it as far as Thatcher

01:35:42.860 moved Britain. And in any case that, you know, it's not a unitary state like Britain. It's a much

01:35:47.820 different system, but they, the, um, uh, it, it, it, it, you, you didn't have, I mean, I thought Brian

01:35:55.820 was a good prime minister, but you didn't have that sense of profound change and radical change and

01:36:02.380 exciting policy formulation. I mean, it was one of the few periods in my life where I

01:36:08.460 sort of transmogrified into a, into a sort of semi-policy want, you see, because we had the

01:36:14.220 positions and all this stuff. And the other aspect of it was the, the Cold War was still going on.

01:36:20.300 And there was still some controversy in Britain in that there, there was always in the left wing of

01:36:25.180 the Labour Party, especially in the, and the far out old imperialist wing of the Tories as well.

01:36:31.980 Uh, this, this antagonism to the United States. And, um, uh, when I moved there, it was in the

01:36:39.100 latter Reagan years. And of course he was an important president and, and had an eventful

01:36:45.100 period as president. And, uh, and, and I, it happened, I knew him too, and I'd known him before he was

01:36:51.020 president. And, um, uh, so I, I, I, you know, I wasn't under the illusion that I was at the center

01:36:57.740 of things. I wasn't, but I was, I was actually pretty close to the center in Britain because, um,

01:37:05.900 my first trip there as the chief shareholder of, of the telegraph company, the prime minister invited

01:37:12.140 me to lunch on Saturday at checkers. And, uh, she said, look here, you know, we need you.

01:37:21.100 We can't win without you. Are you, are you with us? And I said, oh yeah, I'm with you all.

01:37:25.740 And, and I said, but let me ask you something. And this was right after Mr. Murdoch had, uh,

01:37:31.820 had, had made his big changeover and moved to a new plant and D certified and basically dismissed the old,

01:37:40.860 uh, you know, the, the, the, the old pre print and printing unions that used to shut the papers

01:37:48.540 down all the time, arbitrarily. And the shop foreman would have a, you know, lose a game of

01:37:53.020 darts at his pub or something and come in and call all the workers out. It was almost as bad as that.

01:37:57.500 And, and, and she, since Murdoch was acting within the law, she ensured that his titles could be

01:38:04.700 produced. I said, look, I don't think we're going to get to the point that Rupert's at or,

01:38:09.180 uh, but we, you know, we're putting through, uh, voluntary retirements, but you don't know.

01:38:16.620 And if we need to import people from other countries to help get our papers out, she

01:38:23.260 interrupted me and said, I'll sign the work permits myself. And, uh, that, that was it as Charles

01:38:30.060 Powell, her long serving chief secretary, very distinguished public servant in Britain wrote,

01:38:36.780 uh, politically speaking, it was love at first sight. I mean, he was there at that luncheon and

01:38:43.580 we just got on like smoke and did right to the day she died. Well, she was a little non-con,

01:38:48.620 but non-compass men to slatterly, but, uh, you know, she was, I knew her well. I knew her very well.

01:38:54.060 And as I said at our, at our barbers and my wedding, Barney, I thanked her and said, if it,

01:39:00.540 you know, I, I, I never would have come to this country or wish to do business in this country,

01:39:05.500 if it wasn't for you. And that was true.

01:39:08.400 So what, what made her able to do what she did? I mean, she was a woman in a sea of men. She was,

01:39:14.960 uh, a radical leader in many ways, obviously on the conservative front. She had apparently had

01:39:21.880 tremendous strength of character. Like what did you see in her that made her able to do what she did?

01:39:26.280 Um, she was an extremely courageous person and she was that type of person who focused exclusively

01:39:39.320 on relevant sequential facts in analyzing a problem. And, and she, you know, she had been a,

01:39:46.600 I believe the education secretary in the Heath government 70 to 74 and, and, and was the co-founder

01:39:55.560 of the center for policy studies. She came to the conclusion along with a number of others,

01:39:59.560 some of them were intellectually more frankly, sophisticated than she was like Keith Joseph,

01:40:06.360 uh, that, that Britain simply had to change that, that what was called the aptly settlement,

01:40:12.760 where, where it, it, it, it was colloquially in Britain called butskillism after Rab Butler,

01:40:19.640 uh, uh, and Hugh Gatescoe, who was Gatescoe was the leader of the Labour Party between

01:40:24.840 Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson. And, and Rab Butler was the deputy prime minister for, and, and all

01:40:33.640 was the runner up to leader all through the Churchill, Eden, Macmillan years into, into the

01:40:39.640 into the Heath period. And, and, and and, and, uh, uh, uh, a sterile that was seen and also, and

01:40:46.520 it was, it was, it was kind of a lookalike government show where they agreed in most things.

01:40:49.640 And Margaret concluded this isn't working. Britain is, is falling behind.

01:40:57.000 Our standard of living is, is not keeping pace with the Germans or the French or the Americans.

01:41:02.280 And, um, and, and this is why, and we've got to change. And she was absolutely right, but, you know,

01:41:08.360 Sometimes just stating home truths in simple ways is so far from what people are used to.

01:41:15.900 It sounds more radical than it is.

01:41:17.460 What she was saying wasn't, in fact, all that radical.

01:41:20.760 She was saying things like, we can't have just completely irresponsible work stoppages.

01:41:25.340 We can't have capricious middle-level union officials just calling everybody out for the fun of it whenever they've had a bad night or something.

01:41:34.220 And we can't take 98% of people's income.

01:41:38.000 I mean, it's nonsense.

01:41:38.940 I mean, it's just nonsense.

01:41:40.520 It'll cost 99 cents to collect the 98 cents.

01:41:44.440 I mean, your collection costs get too high.

01:41:46.760 Cheating becomes outrageous.

01:41:48.120 Rich people move away.

01:41:50.100 It's just nonsense.

01:41:51.200 And she had a way of putting it very clearly and very persuasively.

01:41:59.320 And that group was an ideal team for that time.

01:42:04.980 She had some people.

01:42:07.500 Nigel Lawson, for example, was a former editor of The Spectator, senior writer for the Financial Times, academic economist, but a fine debater.

01:42:19.980 And he put through absolutely radical budgets where they cut the top tax rate between Jeffrey Howe and Nigel.

01:42:32.780 They cut it from 98% to 40%.

01:42:35.920 And, you know, she had a group that could argue it in parliament and in the country.

01:42:44.300 She had an academic group led by Keith Joseph and her Center for Policy Studies group, Kenneth Minogue.

01:42:53.420 I don't know if you know these people.

01:42:54.460 Well-known academic economists and specialists in other areas who could put it forward in a way that was where they could defend it against, you know, the best debaters of the left.

01:43:05.840 And she was a powerful leader who kept the whip on the backs of the Tory party and said, this is what must be done.

01:43:12.940 And this is why we have to do it.

01:43:14.800 And, you know, when she said the lady's not for turning and sacked after government and so forth, she showed, I mean, she was right.

01:43:24.980 But there's no doubt that at times traditional opinion within that party and the Tory grandees didn't approve of her and they never liked her and they stabbed her in the back in the end.

01:43:37.680 But even those who were involved in that had to admit that she made a tremendous difference.

01:43:43.040 And the best of them, for example, Michael Heseltine, very able man, a very good defense secretary and then came back in other roles.

01:43:52.040 But he agreed with her policy.

01:43:57.080 He couldn't stand her person and she couldn't stand him.

01:44:00.060 But he was no slacker when it came to the policy.

01:44:07.040 She was the right person for the right time.

01:44:09.500 Now, unfortunately, as so often happens when people in democratic countries have held an elected office for a while,

01:44:21.040 she started to lose her sense of political self-preservation.

01:44:25.720 And I, you know, I became, because we had a big parliamentary contingent in the press gallery and did a lot of political reporting.

01:44:36.740 And Neil Kinnick, the leader of the opposition, Labour leader, told me one day that the first parliamentary report he read every morning was ours,

01:44:44.480 because even though we were a rabidly pro-Thatcher paper, the reporting was always fair and always perceptive.

01:44:50.900 And that was our standard.

01:44:51.960 And that was what I always tried to enforce everywhere in every country in all our papers was to separate reporting and comment, which you rarely get nowadays.

01:44:59.340 And as the agitation with Thatcher's authoritarianism within the Conservative Parliamentary Party increased, we would hear it naturally, and the editors would tell me these things.

01:45:12.240 So I said, all right, look, put 10 more people into the press gallery.

01:45:17.480 I mean, you know, they give a press pass to anyone that the Telegraph asked for, given our position.

01:45:22.540 And, I mean, you know, we were the backbone of the nation.

01:45:27.500 You know, we had over a million sale, and 98% of them were conservative voters.

01:45:32.220 And I said, for once, I will ignore your expense accounts, which were outrageous.

01:45:42.140 They always are from journalists.

01:45:43.440 And I almost sacked the editor when he expected me to pay for chartering a helicopter to take him to a drinks party in Brighton.

01:45:51.980 But I said, look, you know, I'll ignore all of that.

01:45:56.840 Tell these guys, divide it up.

01:45:58.440 Take the entire Conservative Parliamentary Party, every MP, divide them up into groups.

01:46:04.500 And over the next few months, have your guys take them all out and ply them a drink and find out what is really going on there.

01:46:10.920 And when I had all this, I asked for an appointment.

01:46:16.320 The Prime Minister's office said to come over later that day.

01:46:19.480 And I said, look, this is what I've done.

01:46:22.440 Obviously, I didn't name anyone.

01:46:23.800 That would be dishonorable.

01:46:24.800 I did not give one name.

01:46:27.100 But, for example, the chief whip, Renton, his name was, couldn't wait to see the back of Thatcher.

01:46:33.040 And I don't think, she hadn't a clue of this.

01:46:35.340 So I didn't mention him.

01:46:36.360 I didn't mention anybody.

01:46:37.160 I said, John, I'm telling you, Prime Minister, your parliamentary party is seething with discontent.

01:46:44.940 There's an absolute rancid element there.

01:46:48.220 And it's very, it's gone a long way into that group.

01:46:51.360 And you've got to, if you'll pardon my being so imperious here, you've got to, I'm not saying you should accommodate or appease them, but make a few course corrections that, you know, that attract more of them and break the momentum of this.

01:47:08.980 And she said, oh, rubbish.

01:47:10.940 Absolutely rubbish.

01:47:11.740 She said, they're all slackers.

01:47:12.920 They're cowards.

01:47:13.820 I said, of course they're cowards.

01:47:15.300 That's what makes them dangerous.

01:47:16.460 And, you know, and it was only a few weeks later that, you know, she pushed poor old Jeffrey Howe out and the 1922 Society, the group of non-cabinet MPs in the governing party, essentially gave her the high jump.

01:47:33.740 And it was very unfortunate.

01:47:38.280 And we ran an editorial on the front page, it was very rare, the day before, in which I contributed the last sentence.

01:47:51.300 The editor, Max Hastings, was not a pro-Thatcher person.

01:47:55.620 But the last sentence was that Margaret Thatcher is one of the great leaders who has arisen in a thousand years of British history.

01:48:03.760 And as long as she wishes to remain as prime minister, she may count on the support of this newspaper.

01:48:09.120 And she wrote me a handwritten personal letter thanking her.

01:48:12.880 But she went.

01:48:14.380 And I told the editor to put a black border around the story.

01:48:21.760 And he said, please, you're not serious, are you?

01:48:24.220 So I spared him that.

01:48:25.900 But that's how I felt.

01:48:27.380 It was a tragedy.

01:48:30.920 Not a tragedy, but a sadness.

01:48:32.260 She was a great leader.

01:48:33.320 But, you know, Jordan, I don't believe in term limits.

01:48:36.580 I mean, basically, the voters will decide.

01:48:38.540 And if they've got a good person in the office, let them keep the person there.

01:48:42.140 And in the United States, the only time in the history of that country where anyone saw the third term, the entire future of our civilization depended on his being elected.

01:48:51.380 And that was Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940.

01:48:54.100 Because the Republicans would never have come up with wind lease.

01:48:58.080 And Britain and Canada could not have continued in the war.

01:49:02.320 And they wouldn't have got a war leader as good as that anyway.

01:49:04.920 And Wendell Wilkie was a good man, but he was no FDR.

01:49:07.200 But if we look back at it in the last, what, 50 or 60 years, the only leaders in important countries who've left office in good physical health and good political health were the term limited Americans, Eisenhower and Reagan.

01:49:29.060 And maybe Clinton, but more Eisenhower and Reagan.

01:49:33.860 I mean, if they'd been allowed to and had chosen to do it, either of them would have won a third term easily.

01:49:39.840 They were very popular.

01:49:41.280 But, you know, as Roosevelt said, you've got to have a new, even though it's you running for re-election, it has to be for a new reason.

01:49:50.700 You have to give the people a new reason to vote for it, which he did do.

01:49:54.640 I mean, he was, you know, beat the Depression, you know, accelerate prosperity, stay out of war, win the war.

01:50:07.600 You know, he had a different thing each time.

01:50:10.060 But I digress.

01:50:12.840 Now, Margaret Thatcher was, she was very courageous and very admirable.

01:50:18.700 I have to, and also a wonderful person in small ways.

01:50:23.880 I mean, the staff at Downing Street and Checkers loved her.

01:50:27.800 She was terribly polite to these people in a way that, you know, and some of the Labour prime ministers like Callaghan weren't particularly.

01:50:36.780 And certainly a man like Ted Heath had no manners anyway, so he wasn't polite to anyone.

01:50:40.840 I mean, I'd rather liked him as a person than he was an interesting man in a way.

01:50:45.520 I didn't particularly like him politically, but he wasn't very polite.

01:50:50.100 But Margaret Thatcher was very polite to those people.

01:50:52.740 No matter how rough she was on her own ministers, she felt they could defend themselves.

01:50:56.860 But, you know, someone serving tea at Downing Street couldn't, and so you had to be polite to these people.

01:51:01.800 And she was never condescending about it.

01:51:03.480 I mean, she was from Grantham.

01:51:04.800 Her father was a grocer.

01:51:05.920 Now, he was ultimately the mayor of Grantham, so he was a well-known man in Grantham.

01:51:09.720 But in the world of Westminster and Belgravia and the great and the good and the dukes and the rich and everything, they looked upon her as a ludicrous figure.

01:51:23.720 I mean, some, you know, some jumped up battle axe from the Midlands.

01:51:29.740 And she was never particularly self-conscious about that.

01:51:35.400 But it must be said, she was always a little awkward.

01:51:38.920 And in that way, I had a kind of a past because I wasn't part of the awful class system in Britain.

01:51:46.340 I wasn't anything.

01:51:47.060 I was sort of like from another planet.

01:51:48.840 But I have to say this about her.

01:51:50.160 She did not have a good sense of humor.

01:51:53.680 She occasionally said funny things, but she wasn't a naturally humorous person, which is not the end of the world.

01:52:04.560 But it's nice if you've got a better sense of humor than she did.

01:52:07.760 And she was a little oversimplified in the view sometimes.

01:52:11.580 I mean, the fact is, when you get right down to it, she didn't like Europe because she didn't like the main European nationalities.

01:52:24.060 I mean, the Germans and the French.

01:52:25.180 She didn't mind the Italians, but she couldn't take the Italians seriously.

01:52:28.960 But she'd rather like them.

01:52:30.520 But she never forgave the Germans for the war.

01:52:34.780 And she thought the French were sharpers and sly, cunning, and devious people.

01:52:44.780 And she sort of worked in stereotypes.

01:52:48.060 Now, if she met an individual person from Germany or France, obviously perfectly polite to them.

01:52:53.480 But fundamentally, she didn't trust either of those countries.

01:52:56.800 And she didn't feel it was really Europe's job to lead the Danes and the Dutch and all these smaller countries that wanted Britain in to help them.

01:53:07.380 And she rather liked the Americans.

01:53:11.280 And she never forgot.

01:53:13.640 And she told me this many times.

01:53:14.920 She never forgot what the United States did in World War II, how desperate Britain's condition was.

01:53:20.300 And how overwhelmingly helpful the Americans were.

01:53:28.480 She had great admiration for Roosevelt.

01:53:30.360 And she said, and each year from 1942, we'd see more and more of the Americans in Britain.

01:53:39.000 And I know there were frictions here and there and things.

01:53:43.320 But to us, it was just wonderfully reassuring.

01:53:45.620 More and more, these big, tall, strong American boys would arrive ready to invade Europe.

01:53:53.360 And her family were practicing Methodists.

01:53:59.260 And every Sunday, they would invite an American serviceman that they would see in the church service to come back with them to have lunch.

01:54:08.380 So they thought it was a nice thing to do to young men overseas who are missing their families and so on to show some hospitality.

01:54:14.780 I mean, she was a very genuine, traditional, low church Protestant, but tolerant.

01:54:23.560 No religious animosities of any kind.

01:54:26.520 Most of her constituents were Jewish.

01:54:28.140 And just straight, what you saw was what you got, you know, but a very strong, good, well-rounded leader.

01:54:41.420 But if what you need, which is what they did need, was someone to make radical change and say, the lady is not for turning, and this is what we have a mandate to do, and we're going to do it.

01:54:54.220 She was the perfect leader.

01:54:55.620 Once you got into a suppler situation, that would not be her forte.

01:55:03.200 I mean, you wouldn't confuse her with Disraeli or something.

01:55:05.960 I mean, if she'd gone to the Congress of Berlin instead of Disraeli, they would have ended up in war with Bismarck.

01:55:12.920 You know, I mean, she probably started as soon as her train left, but, you know, it was horses for courses, and she was a wonderful leader for the time.

01:55:22.320 As a person, she was an outstanding person, absolutely loyal.

01:55:27.480 I have great admiration for her, great admiration, and for Dennis, too.

01:55:31.700 You knew Reagan as well.

01:55:33.640 I did.

01:55:34.400 Not as well, but I knew him, yeah.

01:55:35.760 I knew him before he was president, when he was president, and after he was president.

01:55:39.260 And what were your impressions of him?

01:55:44.160 Extremely formidable man.

01:55:45.520 And he was, to start with, one of the most charming men I've ever met.

01:55:49.360 I mean, practically all politicians are reasonably charming when they put their minds to it.

01:55:54.160 Otherwise, they're in the wrong business.

01:55:55.320 But he was disarmingly pleasant without being saccharine or over-ingenuous.

01:56:04.820 He was just a charming guy, good raconteur, terrific raconteur, very good conversationalist.

01:56:11.340 And I think he was a great leader.

01:56:14.200 I don't think there's any doubt about that.

01:56:15.980 He was a wonderful speaker.

01:56:18.000 He kept it to a few basic points.

01:56:19.860 He vulgarized them, as the French say, made these complicated issues simple.

01:56:25.240 And it was almost impossible.

01:56:27.340 Is that something he shared with Thatcher, that capability?

01:56:31.140 Yes, but in a slightly different way.

01:56:34.560 He would throw in a humorous aspect that was disarming.

01:56:39.980 And he would also, he'd make it a little more anecdotal in folks' view.

01:56:47.420 But not where his argument deteriorated.

01:56:51.500 He was a very skillful debater.

01:56:53.780 If you're interested in this, you can find it on the internet.

01:56:57.100 The debate he had with Robert Kennedy over that business about the left-wing academic in New Jersey, Genovese,

01:57:04.940 where he was a far left and there was a dispute about his ability to remain at a state university because he was a communist.

01:57:12.220 And at the end of it, Robert Kennedy said, don't ever put me into a debate with that guy again.

01:57:17.420 I mean, Reagan, I had some conversations with him where I was astounded, even well after he was president and was supposedly in decline,

01:57:27.620 where he had an astounding recall of the detail of things.

01:57:30.300 He was a much more comprehensively intelligent person than was widely known because he sometimes seemed flat-footed when a direct question was put to him.

01:57:41.800 I mean, you know, the American tradition is not one of debating like it is in the parliamentary tradition.

01:57:47.160 I mean, he was a governor and then the president, and he never debated with anybody other than when he chose to,

01:57:51.380 less with Kennedy or when he actually was in the elections.

01:57:53.980 But this idea that he was, you know, what did Clark Clifford call him, an amiable dunce or something?

01:58:04.400 I knew Clifford, too, and Reagan was the smartest Clifford, a different type of intelligence.

01:58:09.120 But he was a very intelligent man.

01:58:10.880 He was, in a way, an inspirational figure because in his life, he only had six jobs.

01:58:19.420 He was a life, you know, a guardian for people swimming, whatever, you know.

01:58:27.860 Lifeguard.

01:58:28.240 Yeah, lifeguard at Tampico, Illinois, and then he was a baseball announcer in Des Moines, Iowa, California, bound in the Great Depression,

01:58:38.040 and then a screen actor, including, I think, six terms as head of the Screen Actors Guild, but his job as an actor.

01:58:44.860 And then he was the vice president for public and personnel relations for General Electric Corp.,

01:58:51.140 and then governor of California and president of the United States.

01:58:54.120 And he only, I believe, only had four elections.

01:58:56.960 He beat Edmund G. Brown, who defeated Richard Nixon four years before, by over a million votes.

01:59:03.100 And he defeated Jesse Unruh by over a million votes, running for re-election as governor.

01:59:07.960 And he beat President Jimmy Carter by, I think, nine million votes.

01:59:12.360 And then Walter Mondale, who just died the other day, by over 15 million votes.

01:59:17.540 I mean, it was just a very modest career.

01:59:21.320 He was a graduate of Eureka College, and then he just went all the way up to the top of the country and stayed there.

01:59:31.240 And he undoubtedly was a very good president.

01:59:34.140 No, from this...

01:59:35.540 I've got to say this, Ruben, Jordan, he wasn't Mr. Nice Guy.

01:59:41.840 He came across brilliantly as Mr. Nice Guy.

01:59:44.140 In that sense, he was a little like FDR.

01:59:46.040 He came across as a very charming, nice guy.

01:59:48.080 But, you know, Ronald Reagan didn't go to the funerals of the people who launched his career, like Alfred Bloomingdale and Justin Dart and Henry Salvatore.

02:00:00.960 You know, Nancy Reagan, for all her peculiarities, was a very human person.

02:00:08.220 Reagan had wonderful human qualities.

02:00:10.280 I mean, I don't know if you or I, if we had a, as General Al Haig said, a round in the chest and a collapsed lung, would walk into the emergency room and say, I hope you people are all Republicans, the way he did.

02:00:22.280 I mean, he wasn't recording a film there.

02:00:27.400 I mean, he really did have a bullet in his chest.

02:00:29.040 But he was fixated on certain targets.

02:00:34.600 And while he was always, he was always sort of pleasant to everybody, I never got the impression he was awash with human sentiment, where, in a way, Nancy was, you know.

02:00:46.760 And that way, she was kind of his ambassador to, you know, let your hair down, be spontaneous.

02:00:54.000 Yeah, it sounded like you were fond of her, too.

02:00:57.220 Yeah, I didn't know her as well.

02:00:58.440 I thought she was admirably devoted to him.

02:01:01.820 I mean, look, there's something about that California thing that spooks me a bit, you know, where she'd consult these astrologers, seers, and all of that.

02:01:13.860 Look, whatever works for you.

02:01:16.120 But that kind of thing makes me a bit uneasy.

02:01:18.880 But, yeah, she was very nice to you.

02:01:20.640 I have to say, whenever I met her, she was very, very nice.

02:01:23.040 Look, I have to say, whenever I met her, Hillary Clinton was nice, though.

02:01:25.600 I don't like her politically, but.

02:01:28.440 All right, so you're back in Britain.

02:01:30.360 You're running the Telegraph.

02:01:32.940 And you're also moving up through the ranks of British society.

02:01:36.740 You're made a lord.

02:01:38.340 How did that come about?

02:01:39.860 Well, you know, if you own a big newspaper, you don't have to do very much for that.

02:01:43.960 You just have to have your party in office.

02:01:45.520 Or, indeed, now you don't even have to have that.

02:01:48.020 I was installed by Blair, but I was put up by the Conservative leader at the time, William Hague.

02:01:54.420 That's basically an ex officio thing.

02:01:56.520 My predecessor had had, his predecessor was, you know, that was Lord Hartwell, immediately had a man prior to that, Lord Cameras.

02:02:05.500 And what did it mean to you, and what were the responsibilities that are associated with it?

02:02:11.140 Well, it's what you want to make out of it.

02:02:12.660 I mean, if I hadn't had my career interrupted as it was, you know, I came in as an active peer, and I gave a number of speeches in my arrangement, but the Conservative Whip's Office was that I would not presume to advise the British on their pensions or even their schools, but I'd speak on foreign policy and alliance matters.

02:02:34.900 And that's what I did, and that was at the time of the Iraq War, when, incidentally, Blair needed us, because, you know, while there are whips in the House of Commons who can normally control the votes, it's a life appointment in the Lords, so you can do anything you want.

02:02:52.920 Peers can get stuff.

02:02:54.140 There's nothing they can do about it.

02:02:55.780 And Blair needed the Conservative peers to support his policy.

02:03:00.440 So, yeah, he phoned a number of us, including me, and we did support him.

02:03:04.900 But if it's a serious subject, it is the best debating forum in the world.

02:03:16.860 And, you know, it has this image of being a bunch of, you know, down at the heel, probably drink-sodden descendants of people who did brilliantly in 100 Years' War or something.

02:03:28.820 That isn't what it is.

02:03:31.280 The numbers fluctuate.

02:03:33.000 It's around 800 members now.

02:03:34.900 There are a fixed number of about 100 that are hereditaries, but apart from a few specific officeholders, like the Duke of Norfolk as Earl Marshall and Premier Duke and the Marcus of Salisbury and a couple of others.

02:03:48.460 The elected, I'm sorry, the hereditary peers are elected by other hereditaries.

02:03:56.840 So they have a runoff, too.

02:03:58.480 I mean, my friend, Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail, he didn't win.

02:04:05.100 He was defeated by his fellow hereditaries.

02:04:08.380 Lord Rothschild, Jacob Rothschild.

02:04:10.440 He didn't run, but he didn't run because he knew that he wouldn't win.

02:04:13.580 And by the way, they should, those are two people who should be there.

02:04:17.460 They're very good people.

02:04:19.220 But the, and then obviously influential people.

02:04:22.280 But the, in a serious debate, you know, you remember you have the previous chiefs of the defense staff.

02:04:33.500 You have the heads of the main universities.

02:04:35.560 You have leading academics, Asa Briggs, for example.

02:04:39.100 You have cultural figures like Andrew Lloyd Webber, Yehudi Menyum, when I began.

02:04:50.860 And, and you have leaders of great corporations, the main trade unions, trade union Congress and so on.

02:04:59.220 And senior cabinet officials.

02:05:03.520 I mean, when, when, when I spoke in the Iraq war debate, it was right after the, the last previous defense secretary.

02:05:15.900 And, and prior to him, the last previous chief of the defense staff, Field Marshal Brammer.

02:05:24.160 And, and, and the, the way it works is, it's very fair.

02:05:30.700 The, the leaders of the parties and the House of Lords determine an issue to be debated.

02:05:37.200 And if people in their groups want an issue debated for support for it, they do that.

02:05:41.920 So they meet and they agree, I will give this, make it a, say, a 12-hour debate over several days.

02:05:48.740 And then whoever, whoever leads and closes for each party, they're fixed and they, within reason, can speak for as long as they want.

02:05:59.520 The rest of the time is divided up equally between all of those who signed their desire to speak, which isn't put in public place.

02:06:08.680 I mean, public to the people who have any business being in the, in the Palace of Westminster, not out in the street, but, you know, anyone who wants, you know, any peer going by, right?

02:06:20.080 I'll, I'll speak of that.

02:06:21.380 He puts his name up.

02:06:22.580 And, and then it's divided up equal allocation of time.

02:06:26.840 There's a clock on all of the four walls.

02:06:29.480 The Lord Chancellor presides.

02:06:31.080 And you can see your time and, and, and you don't go over your time.

02:06:35.660 There are no rude interruptions.

02:06:37.080 None of that awful name calling and barnyard invitations.

02:06:40.340 You get nice comments and things.

02:06:41.760 Very polite.

02:06:42.960 And, and, and, and you sit down when you're finished.

02:06:46.300 And, and, and if you don't, the, the, the, the, there's a sort of a clerk of Lord Chancellor stands up.

02:06:55.820 And at that point, you, you really have to sit.

02:06:58.640 And, and, and everyone does.

02:07:00.020 And, and, and then when the debate ends, everyone goes to the peers bar and it continues.

02:07:04.940 But, but on a serious subject, you get absolutely brilliant speakers.

02:07:09.760 And, and, and, and, and it's, it's just extremely well done.

02:07:14.620 What's the net effect on, on British policy?

02:07:18.060 It varies.

02:07:18.920 I mean, sometimes the government needs it.

02:07:21.740 And there are always some members of the government who sit nights at the Lord, frequently the Attorney

02:07:26.360 General, for example, because they always want an extremely respected barrister as the Attorney

02:07:33.780 General of the country.

02:07:35.020 And, and that person is likely not an MP.

02:07:38.540 So, you put them in the eyes of the Lords and that's where you search for.

02:07:43.800 But, as a matter of fact, as the business of the country unfolds, generally speaking, the

02:07:51.280 influence isn't great.

02:07:52.540 I mean, they may add an amendment here or there, but these are technical matters.

02:07:56.080 But times arise when, because there are no whips and there is no discipline, I mean, people

02:08:02.600 vote how they want to vote.

02:08:06.080 The, the, the, the, the, the position of the lives of Lords can be very important.

02:08:10.020 Then all of a sudden, all of a, you know, when I was there, and I expect to get back to

02:08:14.740 this one of these days, you know, all of a sudden your phone's ringing and you're from,

02:08:17.880 you know, some prominent figure in the government you haven't heard from for the last five years,

02:08:23.040 you know, they need your vote.

02:08:24.000 And how, are the debates made available to the public in any form other than print?

02:08:30.860 Yes.

02:08:31.340 No, no, they're on television as the Commons ones are.

02:08:33.840 I should know that.

02:08:34.320 And of course, they're, they're also recorded and available to anyone who wants them, you

02:08:39.160 know, in written form.

02:08:41.900 So, all right.

02:08:42.980 So, does your, your empire, your media empire at this point, is it, does it reach its peak

02:08:48.540 with your acquisition of the Telegraph?

02:08:50.220 Are you growing past that?

02:08:50.920 No, no, we went on after that.

02:08:51.960 We bought the Chicago Sun-Times.

02:08:54.960 We bought the Fairfax papers in Australia, very distinguished papers.

02:08:59.540 And then we bought the Southam papers in Canada in 1996.

02:09:03.620 And founded the National Post a little after that.

02:09:08.380 And so, at that point, it was right in there was when it was at its height.

02:09:13.020 I mean, and it was a big company.

02:09:15.120 I mean, in that industry, it wasn't a big company compared to Microsoft or something,

02:09:20.340 but it was a big company in that industry.

02:09:21.960 So, what's happened to your relationship with Canada while you're in, while you're in Britain?

02:09:29.180 Well, I came back often, and I kept my house and office here.

02:09:33.220 So, I kept it up well, you know.

02:09:35.660 I mean, I come back a lot and spend practically the whole summer here.

02:09:40.400 So, you know, it wasn't as if I was absent altogether, by any means.

02:09:46.540 And, you know, when we had all the papers here, and I'd see the papers,

02:09:49.640 I'd be talking to my associates in one business and another here all the time.

02:09:55.260 I was in the United States a lot.

02:09:57.080 You know, our headquarters was in New York.

02:09:59.200 So, I was moving around a lot, you know.

02:10:02.560 And I had homes in different cities.

02:10:03.960 And are you pleased with the way things are going at this point in your life?

02:10:08.880 Yeah, I am now.

02:10:10.180 It was a very difficult patch, and it was very difficult.

02:10:15.500 But, yes, now I am pleased with how things are going.

02:10:18.600 I have been for some years.

02:10:20.640 Well, sorry, I wasn't clear.

02:10:23.300 When you're in the stage of expansion that you just described.

02:10:28.740 Yes, yes.

02:10:30.180 Although, I started to have real misgivings about the future of the newspaper business.

02:10:36.500 And they were well-founded misgivings.

02:10:39.000 But we had an exit strategy that was being conducted very successfully until, as you said in your intro, those problems arose.

02:10:49.060 Shall we talk about that a little bit?

02:10:51.320 Okay.

02:10:52.540 So, what happened?

02:10:55.240 You hit a peak.

02:10:56.400 You were running this incredibly influential company.

02:11:00.660 And trouble started to brew.

02:11:02.500 Why?

02:11:03.260 And what do you see when you look back?

02:11:06.160 Well, I took a good look at the internet.

02:11:09.060 I just did not see how newspapers could continue as a growth industry.

02:11:14.940 And so, although it was painful.

02:11:17.620 And this was when?

02:11:18.440 Starting in the early 90s, around 93.

02:11:30.580 And so, we sold Australia at a very handsome profit.

02:11:34.840 And had it arranged in a way where it came through with no capital gain assessment on it.

02:11:39.700 That was a company we bought basically out of bankruptcy.

02:11:42.360 Not because it wasn't a good company.

02:11:44.080 It had just been over-levered financially.

02:11:46.120 So, it was a financial problem rather than an operational one.

02:11:49.900 And then, where it really turned was with when I sold most of the Canadian newspapers to Issy Asper, Israel Asper, who owned the Global Television Network.

02:12:11.340 And we were continuing to do that.

02:12:17.400 We were rolling these papers out.

02:12:18.740 And the idea is we keep the telegraph.

02:12:21.100 And basically, and some of the smaller ones in the U.S. that were particularly profitable.

02:12:26.220 If you've seen the movie Groundhog Day, Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, we owned that paper.

02:12:32.380 50% of its total revenues were pre-tax profit.

02:12:37.020 It was a very rich paper.

02:12:38.740 Not a big paper, but very profitable.

02:12:41.460 And that's where we were proceeding when the legal problems arose.

02:12:48.100 I mean, we were going to distribute the money, not as dividends, but buying in and canceling shares.

02:12:55.040 But in a way that was voluntary, people wouldn't be, you know, they would tender their shares to us because our offer would be good.

02:13:04.520 And so, we would compact the company and keep some cash and reposition it in different businesses.

02:13:10.460 But before we got into the implementation of the expensive part of that, these legal problems arose.

02:13:19.460 And then the whole thing moved sideways and downwards after that.

02:13:23.540 What did you see on the horizon for newspapers that made you nervous about the continued viability of the business?

02:13:29.440 I just didn't see how we could hold the readers against the Internet.

02:13:35.320 That the incursions of the Internet would be...

02:13:39.140 Irresistible.

02:13:40.700 Yeah.

02:13:41.440 We just didn't ultimately have a defense against it.

02:13:45.140 And we tried various things.

02:13:47.160 You know, we ran, we, you know, we put up Internet sites, but they were really just enticements to come into the physical paper.

02:13:56.400 And essentially, that was the problem with the newspaper industry's response.

02:14:00.520 It put things on the Internet.

02:14:03.360 But unless you just give your content away free, in which case you're eventually going to go bankrupt,

02:14:07.740 you're really in trying to entice people to buy your product and pay for the huge physical plants that print the papers and the vast networks that distribute them.

02:14:21.100 And that was the problem.

02:14:22.600 The Internet had no cost of newsprint and no cost of delivery.

02:14:26.700 Yeah.

02:14:26.860 Well, it's also an incredibly effective place to advertise.

02:14:29.700 And so, you know, I mean, my prognosis was right and my remedy was right.

02:14:38.180 There were problems, but there weren't problems created by me.

02:14:43.280 And what caused the legal problems?

02:14:46.480 Well, we're getting into a real jungle here.

02:14:48.960 But essentially what happened was that some activist shareholders who were essentially in the green mail business,

02:14:58.440 they would buy into a company where they saw that ultimately the value of it could be greater and then agitate for sale.

02:15:05.480 So they would start stirring up shareholders and creating scenes at the shareholders' meetings and things like this.

02:15:12.400 Well, I never had any problem at the shareholders' meetings.

02:15:14.840 And right to the end, I never had the slightest problem winning any vote at those meetings.

02:15:19.300 But what they did was they exploited an American provision of the Securities and Exchange Act as amended that enabled them to set up a special committee to review what they were complaining about,

02:15:39.380 which was that some of these people, which was that some of these people, when they bought assets from us, paid a non-compete fee to my associates and myself personally.

02:15:50.900 And this is done in that business.

02:15:53.500 And, for example, in Canada, when we sold to Izzy Asper, at the same time, the Sun papers were for sale because I believe McLean Hunter had a cross-media problem

02:16:06.120 where they couldn't own the television, the cable, and the newspaper in the same setting.

02:16:12.040 So you had papers coming up for sale in Calgary and Edmonton and Ottawa where we had papers.

02:16:19.840 So Asper wanted a non-compete from us, you say.

02:16:22.240 We wouldn't then take his money and go and buy another paper, hire everyone away from the place we just left, and compete with them.

02:16:28.920 So that was a reasonable thing to do.

02:16:31.660 But anyway, we had people who complained and said it shouldn't go to us.

02:16:37.100 Now, in the case of Asper, that didn't go anywhere because he wrote me a letter saying that he wanted this and he wanted it from us,

02:16:44.100 and there was no ambiguity about that.

02:16:45.580 But some of the cases in the U.S. were more ambiguous.

02:16:49.380 But we could have managed all of that.

02:16:51.640 But once it got going, the special committee and its council discovered that an associate of mine had done some naughty things.

02:17:03.400 And in the American manner, having done the naughty things, he said, all right, look, I will give evidence against Mr. Black.

02:17:11.380 Never mind that Mr. Black had not done any naughty things.

02:17:15.760 I'll give evidence against him if you will give me this deal.

02:17:19.680 He said, and this was done through council.

02:17:21.300 You know, the plea bargain system has completely undermined the entire functioning of the criminal justice system.

02:17:28.120 So this was done.

02:17:29.980 And so the next thing I knew, we were all being charged with things we didn't do and have ultimately been found not to have done.

02:17:37.080 But meanwhile, it took 15 years of my life to get rid of it all, and the asset was destroyed.

02:17:43.540 Everything we'd all worked 30 years to build was reduced to nothing, to bankruptcy, you know,

02:17:49.300 which incidentally meant that more than $1.5 billion of shareholder value in the hands of people other than ourselves just evaporated.

02:18:00.280 That was the singular and supreme triumph of the, you know, the shareholder governance movement.

02:18:10.120 It was a complete fraud.

02:18:11.660 It was just a bunch of self-righteous hypocrites taking fees for themselves and ruining companies.

02:18:16.300 How did you survive it?

02:18:19.920 What enabled you to stay?

02:18:22.100 Well, I knew that I...

02:18:23.440 Well, to stay functional enough to serve as a tutor, for example.

02:18:25.840 Well, no, I knew that I had not, in fact, broken the law, so I was fighting the good fight of the wrongfully accused.

02:18:34.420 I was...

02:18:34.800 And I'm not innocent as a person, but in terms of the criminal statutes of the United States, I was certainly innocent.

02:18:41.800 So I had the moral righteousness to fight, and I had the historic knowledge that the alternative to fighting was to be just absolutely eliminated in every respect,

02:18:53.560 except physically, and conceivably in that way, too.

02:18:56.660 If I just lost her altogether, I'd lose the will to live.

02:18:59.920 So you have to fight.

02:19:00.800 You just have no...

02:19:01.660 You know, it's the cornered...

02:19:02.700 It's the cornered animal.

02:19:04.000 You have to fight, or you're going to be, you know, wiped out.

02:19:07.940 And then, in the area I think you're getting at, maintenance of morale, you know, it was very difficult at times,

02:19:20.560 but I'm of that view that believes that essentially life is a privilege, and that you make the most of it, however bad it is.

02:19:32.880 And unless you're terminally ill and a death's door, you can always derive some satisfaction from the privilege of life,

02:19:41.040 even if it's just going outside, breathing the fresh air, and looking at a blue sky and seeing, you know, leafy trees moving around in the breeze.

02:19:49.760 It's still...

02:19:50.580 It's wonderful when you compare it to nothing, which is the alternative.

02:19:53.900 And so there is a duty to carry on, and both my experience, individually and as an observer,

02:20:03.080 and such acquaintances I have with history shows that fortunes change.

02:20:08.440 And if you, you know, if you can persevere long enough, you come through things and live to fight another day.

02:20:14.760 So, I mean, it sounds pretty hungering.

02:20:17.300 And, no, no, I wouldn't say so, not when it's acted out in reality.

02:20:23.140 And you said that you're satisfied with your life at the moment, that it's full and it's rich.

02:20:28.820 Oh, it's good now. It's good now.

02:20:30.440 I know. Look, I'm following Napoleon's advice to regain lost territory in the inverse order of their loss.

02:20:39.040 So, I'm sort of bootstrapping myself up in one way or another.

02:20:42.640 But, you know, look, I have a new perspective now that I would not have had.

02:20:51.620 And, look, I'm not saying I'm glad I went through all I did, but it had its rewards and its rich experiences,

02:20:58.340 including the ones you mentioned about the prison.

02:21:01.580 But I would never have had the prominence as a commentator that I do.

02:21:07.920 I have millions and millions of readers in the United States.

02:21:11.860 And I'm astounded at how many people read my stuff.

02:21:17.900 And, you know, and I get invitations to speak and go on tours and things and go out and, you know,

02:21:24.420 when we're not hobbled by a pandemic, go out and cruises in the Mediterranean and talk to people on the cruise ships and things.

02:21:30.860 And it's also, you know, when this came upon me, I'd written two books, the Duplessis one,

02:21:40.720 and then one about myself, which was really just to deal with accounts of my career that I considered not to be accurate.

02:21:51.360 I was just setting the records straight.

02:21:52.420 I didn't think they were malicious.

02:21:53.740 I just didn't think they were very informative.

02:21:55.240 So, that's why I did it.

02:21:56.380 But I'd written two books only.

02:21:57.780 And as you kindly mentioned, Ed said, I've written eight since then.

02:22:01.860 They've all been from modestly to very successful.

02:22:05.880 And I like being right.

02:22:07.760 And I absolutely would not have had the time to do it if I'd had to be a functioning chief executive of a $2 billion a year sales company.

02:22:18.360 I mean, it is a full-time job.

02:22:20.520 I mean, you've got to do it right.

02:22:23.520 So, when you look back, what do you think you did right?

02:22:30.040 There's lots of people who are watching this interview who are trying to put their lives together in one way or another and looking for guidance in their attempts to do that.

02:22:38.460 What is it that you've done or what is it that you've seen other people do that you admired and that were successful that was particularly productive and useful and meaningful, let's say, and maybe even right?

02:22:51.460 Well, I think people who do what they have an aptitude to do are much happier than that unfortunate very large number of people who are stuck in occupations they don't like.

02:23:01.560 So, it's been my good fortune that either I was able to do what I wanted to do and had some aptitude to do, I was able to make that choice, or I lucked into it.

02:23:16.520 I didn't realize.

02:23:18.040 I had absolutely no idea that I had an aptitude for it, but as it turned out, I did, you see?

02:23:22.480 I mean, it's like anything else, I guess.

02:23:27.020 I had always assumed that practically anybody who wrote a book of history really knew a lot about it, was a competent writer, and did a good job.

02:23:39.860 Well, now that I've done some of them, as you said, I wrote a book about President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

02:23:46.580 There's a vast literature about Roosevelt, and some of the people who've written about him have been very good.

02:23:51.380 But a lot of them, it's rubbish, absolute rubbish.

02:23:56.300 It's not well-written, and it's not accurate, and they miss a lot of things.

02:24:01.060 It's even more so the case of Mr. Nick's name, so terribly controversial.

02:24:06.620 And indeed, the reason I wrote about those two men was to fill a gap.

02:24:12.480 I never write where I think I have nothing new to add.

02:24:15.040 But I felt that Roosevelt was divided between worshippers and these people uttering this nonsense about him being a communist and a traitor to his class who gave Eastern Europe away to Stalin and all this kind of nonsense.

02:24:27.840 And the thing to do was to put it out.

02:24:32.580 He was neither a saint-played man nor a communist.

02:24:36.080 He was an extremely important and capable and talented political leader and leader of government, but for the reasons I enumerated, not out of Kant and the emotionalism.

02:24:47.760 And with Mr. Nixon, I mean, he had just been pilloried as essentially a man with clothing and feet and horns on his head, you know, and he wasn't.

02:24:57.960 He was a very good president.

02:24:59.760 And by the way, there's still no probative evidence that he committed a crime.

02:25:05.000 As he admitted himself, he made some serious mistakes, and certainly some of the people in his entourage committed crimes.

02:25:10.040 But there's no evidence that he did.

02:25:12.480 And the one term that he served was one of the most successful in the history of the country.

02:25:18.920 If you take into account that when he came in, there were 550,000 American draftees at the ends of the earth with no exit plan, 200 to 400 coming back dead every week, no relations with China, no arms control talks, riots everywhere in the U.S.

02:25:38.300 Every week, every week, all over the place.

02:25:39.520 He stopped all that.

02:25:40.600 He was a very, very good president.

02:25:42.800 Anyway, so it was reassuring to me that I could actually do that, because I had always assumed before that the people who did it did it adequately.

02:25:53.220 Well, some of them do, but a lot of them don't.

02:25:55.440 And there's always room for improvement, or almost always.

02:25:57.640 And so, you know, gradually my horizons expanded, and now I'm in finance and rebuilding my fortunes somewhat, but the exact opposite to how I began in business, where, I mean, as far as anyone in the public would know, where, because I took over a company that was made famous by a very famous businessman, E.P. Taylor and Bud McTigold in particular.

02:26:26.640 I was in the public eye all the time, and as a young man, it's naturally going to be irritating to a lot of people.

02:26:33.480 Well, now I'm not.

02:26:34.740 I mean, I am up to a point, but as a commentator, no one has a clue what businesses are.

02:26:40.460 They're private, and they're in different countries, and no one knows.

02:26:45.540 And so I don't have that problem of wrestling with a public relations monster all the time.

02:26:53.120 And I think you mentioned in one of the books that I read that you, in retrospect, wish that you would have handled the public relations end of things, I suppose, in a more sophisticated manner or earlier, that you didn't realize how critically important it might be.

02:27:10.760 Am I recalling that accurately?

02:27:12.980 Is that a fair summation?

02:27:13.800 Substantially so, yes, but my view was there's no way to avoid a lot of attention, so what I should do is meet it head on and at least cause to be discarded the caricature that all business people are fundamentally stumble bums at self-expression.

02:27:41.020 I can't actually give a fluent explanation of what I'm doing, and secondly, to advance the idea that business is, in fact, not just a bunch of grubby businessmen scruffing for cash.

02:27:54.800 It actually is an interesting subject, and I thought those were correct premises, and I was successful at that.

02:28:02.160 But what you said is exactly right is I didn't appreciate as much as I perhaps should have or would have if I were more experienced how tired people can get of someone who doesn't have a natural call in their attention.

02:28:22.900 I think this, incidentally, was one of the chief problems of the immediate former president of the U.S.

02:28:29.320 He always believed, and I've known him a long time, he always believed that there was no such thing as bad publicity, no matter how apparently negative it was.

02:28:38.260 Well, up to a point, he was right, but it wasn't right once he became president, because once he got to be, in Roosevelt's phrase, the head of the American people, he didn't need the publicity.

02:28:52.060 And he didn't want it and was undignified for him to be seeking it, let alone for him to tolerate so much of it, to be baiting sessions where his enemies challenged him and he responded.

02:29:03.720 I mean, he had reached a position where you can safely rise above most of that and just speak when you have something to say.

02:29:09.980 In my book about Roosevelt, there's a little piece in a letter he sent to someone who had been a colleague of his in the Wilson administration, where he was saying how a president has to know when to be in front of the public and when not, when it will irritate the public and when not.

02:29:27.980 Well, I wish I had, obviously, I never had a position of 1% of the consequence of being president of the US, but I wish I had taken that on board, even at the modest scale of where I was, you know, before I embarked on this.

02:29:44.440 But, you know, part of surviving and growing older is you learn things.

02:29:49.820 I think perhaps that's a good place to stop.

02:29:58.060 Okay.

02:29:58.860 Well, I've kept you too long.

02:30:01.700 I hope either people find some of it interesting, or if not, they should put it on when they're afraid they may be suffering from insomnia.

02:30:11.980 Well, look, thank you extremely for talking with me today and for...

02:30:19.280 Always a pleasure.

02:30:20.440 Always a pleasure, Jordan.

02:30:21.800 I appreciate it very much, and I hope we get to do it again.

02:30:25.200 There's many things that we didn't talk about.

02:30:27.020 I didn't talk about any of your opinions about current affairs or about the future, many things that I would have liked to have discussed, but...

02:30:36.760 No, we can do it another time.

02:30:38.880 Great.

02:30:39.280 Great.

02:30:41.980 Thank you.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - July 05, 2021

181. Baron Black of Crossharbour ｜ Lord Conrad Black

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