Joe O'Connor on LinkedIn: There is trouble brewing in RV country (2024)

New from me. Question: what did you do for your honeymoon? Me and my oh-so-better half went to Argentina, ate great food in Buenos Aires, realized the Argentines are the best looking humans on the planet, at least compared to us Hosers, and then lit out for the Andes to snowboard with some wacky Brazilians before capping things off with a trek in the country's north that featured a good-natured llama with a bell around its neck, and a Golden Retriever the llama thought was its mother. An amazing adventure.But...not quite as adventurous as Helen and Stu Scott. The Scotts got hitched, had plans to honeymoon in Quebec City, and then pivoted to an alternative scenario that involved prospecting for lithium in Manitoba. Instead of a Cadillac trailing a string of tin cans, the newlyweds hit the wilds for weeks on end in a Prospector canoe. It is the boat that literally built Canada, and its descendants are still paddling the waterways today, steered both by cottagers, blissing out to the call of the loon, as their paddle slices the water, but also by modern day fortune hunters in the more rugged areas of Ontario, where there is immense mineral wealth to be discovered. The thing is, you're going need a canoe to get there. So, don't forget to pack a life jacket.And thanks, as always, for reading,jo'c Ps. Happy (almost) Canada Day!

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Dear aspiring scribes, fallen hacks, wordsmiths, who left the biz for a comms gig and have the itch to get back in the game, now is your chance. In fact, two chances. FP is hiring a couple reporters. What can I say about the gig? I've been a Postie for 20-plus years, so I am either not particularly bright, or else I like the place, and the talented people whom I work with, trust, and root for, and who do the same for me. There is lot of room for creativity, a big appetite for telling stories that aren't the same old, same old, and, gee-whiz, a culture of having fun. (We also do serious, FYI). Journalism matters. So, come, apply, and get in on the mattering.

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New from me. As a journalist, you never really know when, or where, you are going to come across a good story idea. Some ideas fall from the sky, others get assigned by a like-minded editor - here's looking at you, Andy Holloway - and others you simply stumble across, when enjoying a morning stroll around the neighbourhood and presto, there it is. The is, in this instance, is a stately-looking, Victorian-era beauty of a red brick heritage home in west end Toronto.Walk past it some mornings, and you might notice a guy in white robes in the front window saying mass. Hmmmm. Knock on the door one day, say, and you might learn that the house was in fact owned by an order of Anglican monks, and that the monks were all getting older, and the house ever-more expensive to maintain, hence the time had come to stick a For Sale sign on the front lawn.The monks, the for sale sign, and a massive, historic-church-to-condo conversion project nearby led to this story about the role churches of all stripes, which are often planted on incredibly valuable pieces of land and ideally situated on street corners in major cities, have to play in addressing the national housing crisis. And the answer isn't by building a bunch of awesome-looking, church-to-gazillion-dollar loft conversions, that only the Richie Riches can afford, but by getting creative, and understanding that churches, the developers and the humble working stiffs saddled with insane rents, or stuck living at home with Mom and Dad until age 30 because they can't afford to move out, all potentially stand to come out ahead by unlocking church real estate in a way that leads to better, more inclusive, mixed-income communities. Truthfully, I only get to church for funerals these days, but that's something worth praying for, no? Thanks, as always, for reading.jo'c

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New from me. I am not much of a car guy, and tend to the view of: if the car is safe, and it is bought used, and it has four wheels and I change the oil every 5K, well, long may she run, as our trusty 2012 Hyundai Sante Fe runs (knock wood) today. Malcolm Bricklin was not much of a car guy either. That is, until he got into three-wheeled scooters - which he sold in huge numbers to police forces across North America - before getting on a plane to Tokyo, circa 1968, and meeting with the chair of Fuji, the manufacturers behind a dirt cheap compact car, the Subaru. Bricklin introduced the Subaru to America, and America loved it, until Consumer Reports magazine labelled it the most dangerous car in America. Ouch. Naturally, Bricklin, a supremely colourful character, and serial entrepreneur/salesman, turned to Canada next. And not to sell Subarus to us Hosers, but to find a place to build the safest sports car in North America, a gull-winged door beauty he dubbed the Bricklin SV-1, with the SV standing for "Safety-Vehicle." The car would indeed prove incredibly safe, and also incredibly unreliable, but not before the New Brunswick government had backed Bricklin's dream to the tune of $20-million and workers in Saint John had built 3,000 Bricklins, about half of which are still out there today.Now, here's the delicious thing: Bricklin is still out there, hustling. After the New Brunswick debacle he went on to be the guy who introduced North America to the Yugo (the Yugo!). He had an E-bike company in the 1990s in California, before anybody was thinking E-bikes. Then in the early 2000s he did his best to bring the Chery, a Chinese car, to America. Alas, no dice. He also met with some young upstart, Elon Musk, who was looking to pick his brain about starting a car company. Bricklin doesn't get to back to New Brunswick much. But he was in Toronto recently. He is 85, and he doesn't appear to have lost any of his pep, nor his ambition. His latest automotive dream is to apply some of the lessons he learned the hard way in Eastern Canada to siphon off a sliver of the EV market with a cherry-red three-wheeled car, The Bricklin 3EV, with, yup - gull-wing doors. His advice to young entrepreneurs? See where you go, and go follow it. So, get going. And thanks, as always, for reading.I hope you like the piece. jo'c

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New from me, but first a confession: I am not much of a numbers guy. This is something I came to understand in grade nine in Mr. Guy-With-A-Bushy-Moustache's class at North Toronto (Go Norsem*n). Prior to grade nine, boy oh boy, I was a whiz, and then by grade 11 every elective I took was in either history or english. Some people who struggle with math survive to tell the tale. And some math survivors, like Sanja Fidler, become brilliant university professors who get picked-off by global tech giants to head up their artificial intelligence research lab in Toronto, where math resides at the bedrock of every breakthrough.If you aren't one to follow the stock markets, but are one to dabble with ChatGPT, you will have had hands-on experience with Nvidia's sector (global?) defining artificial intelligence hardware and software. Yup. The revolution is upon us, and Fidler, right here in Toronto, is helping to push boundaries as a leading AI industry pioneer and Nvidia senior exec. (That would be a company with shares that trade for $800 a pop, FYI). But back to math. Fidler, it turns out, hated math as a little girl, but she kept at it, and what had been a torment grew into something she came to love and is now using it to change the world as we know it. Neat, eh? Thanks, as always, for reading,Jo'cPS. If you live anywhere near High Park, and rise early, you gotta check out the cherry blossoms first thing one morning this weekend, there is beauty there in full bloom.

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New from me. Posting this story now because, er, I am looking for reasons not to get cracking on my taxes. Doing taxes has a way of draining my energy. Speaking of energy, did you know that the longest operating nuclear reactor in Canada is purring away as I type at McMaster University? It isn't ringed by barbed-wire fences. There are no Dobermans prowling the grounds with menacing teeth protecting the place. Nope. The reactor flies totally under the radar, and it is safe operation— for 65 years— is but one small, tucked-beside-a-residential neighbourhood example of just how remarkably safe nuclear energy is. Nuke plants don't burn coal. They don't use natural gas. They split atoms, and produce zero-emissions, and they are so utterly green-friendly that even Greta Thunberg has given nukes the thumbs up. So, what does this mean for Canada? I don't know how old y'all are but, once upon my childhood, Canada's very own, designed-and-made-here Candu nuclear reactors were a point of national pride. And Canada remains a Tier 1 nuclear nation with the built-in advantage of being home to the richest uranium deposits on the planet. (Here's looking at you, northern Saskatchewan).In sum, going nuclear could be a massive opportunity for Canada, as well as for our over-heated Mother Earth, to clean up its act and reach net-zero 2050 emissions targets. AND make money. It is also a huge opportunity for our friends in the US to wean themselves off Russian nuclear fuel and start shopping for uranium in northern Saskatchewan. Nuclear power is poised to have its moment, or else poised, perhaps, to be an opportunity missed. Nukes? Or no? What say you...?As always, thanks for reading.Now, taxesjo'c

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New from me. You know how in life, when there is a problem everyone seems to be grousing about, and wondering who is going to fix it, and nothing ever seems to get done or fixed? Wondrous, iconic, mountainous, oh-how-I-wish-I-were-skiing-there right now Banff, Alberta, has been prey to one of those problems for decades now. Chiefly, the place is crawling with cars during tourist season, as well as being crawling with actual tourists. The bad traffic is bad for air quality, while the crush of people coming to Banff need service people to serve them. Alas, housing in Banff has grown far too expensive for humble service peeps to afford, creating a chronic labour shortage and a combination of problems Banffites have long complained about.Count Banff locals Adam and Jan Waterous among the belly-achers. Now, here's the twist: eight years ago the couple had grown so weary of complaining about the same old same old things, and waiting for someone to do something about it, that they decided they would be the doers. And what they are trying to do is build a rail line connecting Calgary to Banff that will be serviced by an eco-friendly hydrogen-powered train. The train line would, in theory, take a bunch of cars off the road, and it would also allow for workers in the small towns along the way to commute to Banff, instead of having to pay insane sums in rent to live there. Amazing!Now, here's the second twist: Adam Waterous isn't your average do-gooder, he is an oil tycoon. Yup, an alleged enviro-bad guy, who along with Jan, and the couples three boys, is attempting to deliver a win for the future of clean-tech mass transit in Alberta and North America beyond. And the thing is, he might actually pull it off. Choo choo.Thanks, as always, for reading,jo'c

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New from me. Every so often, a daydream about living a life elsewhere, say, Collingwood, an outdoorsy small town, with lots of outdoorsy stuff to do, and not the hellscape of traffic snafus like we have here in Toronto, grips me.At some point in this daydream,I might peek at the real estate listings and - ga-zonks - a cookie-cutter, same as the guy next to you pad in Collingwood, costs almost a million bucks nowadays. There must be a better way to escape, is what I am saying, and it turns out the way to beat the housing/rental market insanity for a not insignificant number of people on the West Coast is to live fulltime aboard a boat. Hmmm, I wondered. How does that work? Who does it work for? And could boats, complete with an ocean view, instead of cookie cutter houses that look exactly the same as the guy next to you and cost a million bucks, be a solution to the country’s housing crisis?Come set sail, friends, and thanks, as always, for reading.Jo’cPS: Happy March Break!

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Eeks. This is not new from me. I hit Christmas, and all the Yuletide fun involved not fussing over social media, and generally taking a breather from posting in this space. So, let's call this piece a Christmas holdover, a gift, really, as a storyteller, since the protagonist in the piece, Greg Miller, was a wannabe-punk-rocker from the Prairies who moved to big, bad Toronto in the early 1980s to make it big after high school and, wouldn't-ya-know-it, he did NOT find fame. Darn-it. But what Miller did discover was that he had a talent for developing old film and movie rolls, and also for giving new film for commercials and TV shoots a retro-look. Cool!! Also: holy cow, was he ever busy, and on a one-track ride to Burnout-ville. So much so that he and his life partner, Tracey Gostick, pulled up stakes in 1999 and bought an old bank building in a tiny Saskatchewan town to be closer to his parents. The plan was to work, but not work quite so much. And...well...so much for that plan.Miller's reputation as The Guy who could develop old, forgotten film rolls, eventually landed he and his company, Film Rescue International, on a Kodak referrals list. The company has since gone on to become the global, go-to place for anyone looking to develop long lost rolls of film.That is a list of folks that includes film making giant, Francis Ford Coppola, the estate of George (Beatles) Harrison, the Smithsonian and a whack of other museums, the Alaska coroner, the RCMP, the New York Times and a whole bunch of ordinary people worldwide, who go digging around in a closet, say, and discover a roll of film and wonder what's on it. Hint: there is a lot of nudity, some criminality, as well as an abundance of long lost memories often associated with dead family members, which get brought back to life, one image at a time, to be cherished by the living - with thanks to the film rescuers. In the age of document everything and share it on Insta-Whatever, Miller and Co provide a vital service. In his words, they have something show up in Saskatchewan at least once a month that totally blows their "minds." This was a delightful story to write. I hope you like it. Thanks, as always, for reading,jo'c

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