Fred has had a full career as a CBC TV host and reporter. He has written countless articles for many renowned publications such as The Economist, The Globe and Mail, BusinessWeek and many more, as well as more than 2000 obituaries. He is also a successfully published author and ghostwriter. His current projects include writing and co-authoring books, as well as lending his talents as a speaker and interviewer for webcasts.
Rita Grimshaw – she was Rita Pyman at the time – was 18 years old and living in Toronto when she read a newspaper advertisement that promised travel and adventure. The ad’s headline: “To Work for Britain.” It read: “A department of the British government in New York City requires several young women, fully competent […]
July 27, 2020. Volume 1 # 14 This newsletter comes out every Sunday night/Monday morning. There is a subscription charge of $50 a year after you receive a few issues. The content is usually, but not always, money-related. Some weeks there will be an interview and/or a video. To subscribe, email me at fred.langan@gmail.com. […]
Larry Stout always loved ABBA. On a family road trip, his son John asked him why he listened to their music so much. “He told me when he got out of Beirut at a pretty hairy time during the civil war, the first music he heard when he was safe was ABBA. And he said […]
If I had even 10% of the answers for what makes the stock market tick I could be “sunnin’ meself in the Bahamas”, to pluck a line from Beyond the Fringe. People are mystified that the stock market is on wheels, except for last Thursday, at a time when the world economy is in the […]
Since the middle of March $180 in cash passed through my fingers. Sure, I am spending less, but the reason is I hardly do anything face-to-face. A pizza, a sushi dinner, with the cash left on the bench, both of us wearing a mask. Everything else is done using my two credit cards, my debit […]
Sylvia Ostry, who died Thursday at the age of 92 after a long illness, was one of the most accomplished civil servants of her generation. The head of Statistics Canada, she was the country’s first female federal deputy minister – a post she held in several government departments – before becoming the chief economist at […]
Donald McIvor, who has died of COVID-19 at the age of 91, was chairman and chief executive officer of Imperial Oil at a time when the Cana- dian subsidiary of Exxon clashed with Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal government over the National Energy Program, introduced in 1980. As the head of Canada’s largest integrated oil company, Mr. […]
Marvelle Koffler, who died on Jan. 14 at age 90, was a prominent patron of the arts in Toronto as well as being an active supporter of medical research. Along with her husband, Shoppers Drug Mart founder Murray Koffler, she helped establish the Toronto Outdoor Art Festival and the Koffler Centre of the Arts. A […]
Jeremy Reitman, who has died at the age of 74, was the chairman and CEO of Reitmans, the Canada-wide retail chain his grandparents started in 1926. He and his brother, Stephen Reitman, ran the company together for almost 50 years. Reitmans was one of the survivors of the “retail apocalypse” brought on by online competition. […]
Jacques Ménard was a dynamic force in many different slices of public life in Quebec, from banking to ballet and baseball to electricity. Early in his finance career he decided to devote 20 per cent of his time to social and cultural causes outside his primary occupation. Mr. Ménard, who died on on Feb. 4, […]
Imagine you're 23 years old, the low man on the newsroom totem pole, and they are about to send the police reporter, the oldest guy in the room, to cover
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Rita Grimshaw – she was Rita Pyman at the time – was 18 years old and living in Toronto when she read a newspaper advertisement that promised travel and adventure. The ad’s headline: “To Work for Britain.” It read: “A department of the British government in New York City requires several young women, fully competent […]
July 27, 2020. Volume 1 # 14 This newsletter comes out every Sunday night/Monday morning. There is a subscription charge of $50 a year after you receive a few issues. The content is usually, but not always, money-related. Some weeks there will be an interview and/or a video. To subscribe, email me at fred.langan@gmail.com. […]
