A deserving edifice for Bill Davis
Early last month, a stealth e-mail was sent around to friends and admirers of former Ontario premier Bill Davis, alerting them to a plan to have a building at the University of Toronto's Mississauga campus renamed in his honour - along with a $5-million capital campaign to build a new student services plaza. The project has not yet been publicly announced by the university. For the 80-year-old Mr. Davis, who was born and raised in nearby Brampton and has never let anyone forget that, it is a particularly fitting honour. While provincial education minister in the 1960s and premier in the 1970s and 80s, he had a huge impact on Ontario's school curriculum, the creation of community colleges and the expansion of universities. The long-reigning "red Tory" presided over the creation of Erindale College - renamed U of T Mississauga - in 1967.
The e-mail, signed by Mr. Davis's former press secretary, Joan Walters, and Janet Ecker, who served as his assistant press secretary and later was a Tory cabinet minister, added: "Bill is not aware of this tribute and we ask that you keep this in confidence." Amazingly, everyone did, though Mr. Davis has since been told. "The significance of this tribute is that it appropriately reflects his contributions to education," the two organizers say.
Among the prominent names from the Davis era who are involved in the project are Senator Hugh Segal, Bay Streeter Tom Kierans, former Ontario attorney-general Roy McMurtry and John Tory, former leader of the provincial Conservatives. A dedication ceremony for the William G. Davis Building is in the works but the timing is vague, with U of T telling us "2009-2010."
Come again?
Were the transcription gods trying to communicate something last week after Bank of Nova Scotia's conference call on its third-quarter earnings? In the Thomson Reuters preliminary verbatim transcript of the call, CEO Rick Waugh responded to a question about "transformational deals" by saying: "As the common word now seems to be saying never say never and we will never say never because we did look at Sun which would have been quite significant and then we did look at them and we will look at those things in the future. And if it is on strategy and we figure it will work, but I would put it at a low probability."
Alas, it was not a heads-up regarding Sun Life. Mr. Waugh had actually said "some," not "Sun."
