Credit Ratings, Volcanos, Prices Rise for the old Porsche 912 and a Quebec Business Legend
November 20 2023 Volume 4 # 27
World Credit Ratings
Canadians love to whine about the economy, but its credit rating is still strong. Australia beats it though, so does Singapore. Amazing to me that Japan is so weak; China is a bit stronger. Russia, at the bottom is no surprise.
What the World is Clicking On
There are some surprises here. Having never used Til Tok, shocked that it is number one. Spotify continues to ruin the music business one performer tells me. It pays peanuts. WhatsApp saves me a bundle on overseas phone calls. And it’s a mystery why McDonald’s website is so popular.
The Lineup at Number 10 After David Cameron’s Comeback
Why Does the New York Times Hate Chris Christie?
Chris Christie is now third in the Republican leadership race, behind Donald Trump and Nikki Haley. He has left the boring and provincial Ron DeSantis in the dust.
I find Chris Christie highly entertaining. He is the only one that I have heard attack Donald Trump in blunt, plain English. Just google him and watch. The New Jersey tough guy versus the Manhattan gangster. The New York Times all but ignores any gains by Christie. Type in: “Why does the New York Times hate Chris Christie” and back comes a string of very nasty headlines. You would think that The Enemy of My Enemy is my Friend would be the byword at the anti-Trump NYT. But no.
Chris Christie on CNN this week
Krakatoa or Bust
Indonesia, ID on this chart, has the world’s most active volcanoes. It was an undersea earthquake off Indonesia in 2004 that caused the tsunami that killed 228,000 people.
Name that lava
This is the Icelandic volcano that is acting up at the moment. Its name: Fagradalsfjall.
If that has announcers stumbling over how to pronounce it, think back to Eyjafjallajökull which stopped transatlantic traffic when it blew in 2010.
CL is the country code for Chile, home to 19 volcanos and some terrible quakes.
France and Britain each have nine volcanos, not in Europe but in their overseas territories such as Guadeloupe for France and Monserrat for Britain. The sun still never sets, at least on the volcanos.
Oil Companies Keep Employees Longer Than Tech
Apple employs a lot of people in its stores and it looks as if they switch them out in a hurry or people quit. Same at Amazon and Facebook, aka Meta.
But those evil fossil fuel guys and utilities appear to be kinder to the people who work for them.
A Faster Electric Car Charger From Mercedes
Along with range, charging time is a big drawback to electric cars, especially on long trips. Mercedes is introducing a 500 Kilowatt charger in North America. That is faster than Tesla’s Supercharger, though Tesla has plans to go to that level or higher. The charger is partially liquid cooled because if it is in constant use it can overheat.
Mercedes has a long way to go to challenge Tesla’s network. Here is a map of supercharger stations in North America. Nothing matches it.
The Porsche 912: A slow car that’s fun to drive fast
thThe Porsche 912 has a 911 body but an engine from the old Porsche 356.
That’s a 1.6 litre four cylinder engine, pumping out just 90 horsepower. But as Hemmings Motor News points out, the 912 was better balanced than the old 356 and was fun to drive. You used to be able to buy one of these cheap, because everyone wanted the 911 with the six cylinder engine. But 1966 to 1969 912s are going for north of US$50,000, when you could buy one for $12,000 five years ago. If it’s a Targa it might go for $100,00 says Hemmings.
Speaking of Cars: LA without a Car
This is a short essay I wrote several years ago. The prices are certainly higher but I am sure the experience is still the same.
Los Angeles without a car.
Everyone says you can’t stay in Los Angeles with a car. Wrong. It is as wrong as saying you can’t stay in Toronto or Vancouver without a car. I spent 17 days in Los Angeles, 10 of them in West Hollywood, and the last week in Santa Monica and never drove a car in the city famous for its devotion to the car.
Los Angeles turns out to be not a bad city for walking. I was in West Hollywood to attend a couple of conferences for writers and actors. My hotel was a couple of blocks below Sunset Boulevard. One warm evening we walked along Sunset Boulevard to the Chateau Marmont for a drink and some people watching, about half an hour each way.
Another night we took a cab to a pizza place called Mozza, a $17 ride. I complained to the Angelinos we met for dinner that the cab was uncomfortable, played loud advertising on a screen in the back and wouldn’t accept a credit card. They suggested a try Uber. I downloaded the App, put in my Canadian credit card and at the end of the evening ordered a car. It was there in a minute, a Lexus E350, with a polite woman driver named Crystal and the fare was $5.80. It was my first introduction to Uber and I have used it ever since.
Another day we took a 45-minute walk from West Hollywood to The Grove, a marriage of an upscale shopping area attached to an old fashioned market. That walk takes you through a mix of neighbourhoods, including past some design shops and restaurants boasting valet parking on Melrose Avenue. We spent a couple of hours at the Grove and then ordered an Uber car back for about $8.
Walking to Rodeo Drive from West Hollywood takes about 45 minutes, most of it through an urban park and walking path in Beverly Hills that runs along Santa Monica Boulevard, though a safe and quiet distance away from the street. The walk back along busy streets is even longer and more interesting.
You have to be careful walking in Los Angeles. The car is still king. People coming out of parking lots or driveways often drive straight to the street, not expecting a pedestrian, so you have to watch out. And walking signals at cross streets only work if you push the button first, otherwise the don’t walk signal will stay on. I waited through a couple of light changes until I figured that out.
The last week we stayed in Santa Monica at the art deco Shangri-La Hotel (not part of the chain) on Ocean Avenue, right across the road from the beach. The first morning we spent puttering around the Santa Monica Farmer’s market, where several streets are closed to traffic. Santa Monica is like an urban resort town, great for walking. We only hired an Uber car twice, to go to and from a restaurant in Venice Beach.
This was our second trip to Santa Monica, a surprising place for a vacation for people from eastern Canada. There are miles of beach to walk and apart from the area around the Santa Monica pier, the place seems almost deserted, and you forget there is a city of 13 million people a couple of hundred meters away
The empty Santa Monica Beach at 9:20 on a February morning. Photo: Fred Langan
There is also a paved bike path at the edge of the beach and one day we rented bikes at the base of the pier, $18 a day, and rode about 12 kilometres out past Marina del Ray and back. My thighs ached for days.
Renting a car is expensive and the hotel in West Hollywood charged $40 a night for parking; the hotel in Santa Monica, $36. During my stay I spent $100 on cabs, including a $65 ride from the airport, and $125 on Uber rides.
Essay of the Week
An Obituary I wrote that ran in Saturday’s Globe and Mail
Entrepreneur Bernard Lemaire was a star of the francophone business class that emerged in the 1960s, a group known informally as Quebec Inc. Starting from nothing, he cofounded Cascades, a company that specialized in recycled paper products ranging from tissues to cardboard boxes. Today, Cascades operates in five Canadian provinces and across the United States, and has repeatedly ranked among the world’s most sustainable corporations. More than 80 percent of its products are made with recycled material. Mr. Lemaire died at home in Kingsey Falls, Que., on Nov. 8 at age 87.
Jean Charest, who was premier of Quebec from 2003 to 2012, says Mr. Lemaire was an iconic figure in the province. “On the environment and sustainable development he was a visionary,” he told The Globe and Mail.
In the 1960s, when he and his family started recycling materials to produce their products, consumers had not yet begun to appreciate the importance of recycling, so the company didn’t indicate on the packaging that recycled materials had been used. “He believed very strongly in recycling when no one else did,” said Paul Bannerman, who worked closely with Mr. Lemaire for more than 30 years.
Mr. Lemaire was also a staunch Quebecer. “He was very anxious to prove that there could be a francophone in the pulp and paper business,” Mr. Bannerman said. “He was interested in creating jobs for Quebecers.” When Mr. Lemaire started, the pulp and paper business was – with the exception of Rolland Paper – dominated by American, British, and English-Canadian-run firms such as International Paper, Consolidated Bathurst and Anglo-Canadian. Mr. Lemaire became a legend in Quebec. When he died, it was a bulletin on French-language news stations and a front-page story in the province’s newspapers.
Today, Cascades employs 11,000 people at 70 plants in Quebec, the rest of Canada and the United States. Mr. Lemaire believed strongly in profit sharing and in having an open relationship with his employees. He never forgot his humble roots. His door was always open, and when he went to France, which had a stiffer hierarchy, he insisted that the doors be taken off the managers’ offices.
“Bernard was an exceptional man, a larger-than-life character. Visionary, generous and charismatic, he convinced countless people and communities to participate in a huge project, the project of his life: Cascades. His career embodies the emergence of a francophone Quebec that is proud of its roots. Our big brother was a great man,” his brothers, Laurent and Alain Lemaire, said in a statement.
The company produces everything from paper towels to tissues, most of it for large retailers who sell it as their own brands. Its biggest business is making material for cardboard boxes and food containers.
Bernard Lemaire was born on May 6, 1936 in Drummondville, Que., a city about halfway between Montreal and Quebec City. He was one of five children born to Bernadette and Antonio Lemaire, who collected garbage. Mr. Lemaire told a colleague he remembered when a banker came to the family house threatening to seize the property. His parents broke down in tears. Mr. Lemaire said he decided then he would never be at the mercy of a bank, and that is how he ran his businesses for the rest of his life.
Antonio Lemaire noticed a lot of material in the garbage he collected, such as paper, that could easily be recycled. During this period, Bernard was studying engineering at the University of Sherbrooke and McGill University. In 1960, Bernard and his father started a small business recycling materials, from bottles to waste paper and especially cardboard. Their company, Drummond Pulp and Fibre, had no business plan at first but soon began growing.
Four years later the company bought an abandoned pulp and paper mill in Kingsey Falls, Que. The plant started making paper from recycled fibre. They hired the old workers back, but the plant couldn’t sell its output at a profit.
“I began to understand why the plant was closed,” Bernard Lemaire told Globe and Mail reporter Harvey Enchin in 1985. Mr. Lemaire bought three books on papermaking, taught himself the techniques and worked day and night, sometimes sleeping beside the paper machines, until the plant turned a profit two years later.
They renamed the company Cascades and his brother Laurent and later Alain joined the family business. Its headquarters are still in Kingsey Falls, a town of 2,200, where it employs 1,100 people. Bernard was its chief executive officer for almost 30 years.
“He took a very small family business that was basically collecting garbage in Drummondville, and he turned it into a business that was based on sustainable development before anybody had even heard those words. He is a pioneer in that area,” said Robert Hall, chief of legal affairs and strategy at Cascades. “Cascades has always made their products with recycled paper. Even their paper mills were made of recycled assets; he would find derelict paper mills, take them apart, bring them to Kingsey Falls or elsewhere, and build them, and they are all still making money.”
Mr. Hall gave the example of a dramatic trip by Mr. Lemaire to take apart an abandoned paper mill in New Jersey and bring it back to Kingsey Falls in Quebec’s Eastern Townships.
“He went down there with his team, and they took it apart, and they had to work quickly because they only had eight hours to work because when the tide came in, it was flooded. They numbered all the pieces, brought it back to Kingsey Falls, and put it all back together again; today, it still makes incredible profits.”
Mr. Lemaire was proud of his hands-on skills.
“Taking used and outdated equipment and making it run better by adding the right addition is what I’m good at and what I like to do,” he told the Pulp and Paper Journal, a trade magazine.
Bernard Lemaire was a bold businessman. In the mid-1980s, he bought five mills in three different countries: France, Belgium, and Sweden. Those particular mills made what is called boxboard, which is used in packaging such as cereal boxes. His specialty was buying mills that were in trouble and rebuilding them. Mr. Bannerman travelled the world with Mr. Lemaire and for many years ran the company’s French sales operations from an office in Paris. He guesses he crossed the Atlantic a hundred times or more over a five-year period.
During that time, Mr. Lemaire also bought two paper mills from the French government, which wanted to unload them at any price after spending hundreds of millions of francs to keep them going. He bought those plants in partnership with François Pinault, one of the richest men in France, who was also a close associate of President Jacques Chirac.
Mr. Bannerman said that Mr. Lemaire was an intensely curious person, always reading and studying. “When we were about to buy the mill in Sweden, Bernard wondered what it would be like to run a business that operated in a language other than English or French.”
Many businesspeople start negotiations by making an offer and then waiting to hear what the counteroffer might be. Mr. Lemaire was direct, a product of his early lessons in avoiding debt. He didn’t like small talk. A dramatic example was a mill owned by the American corporate giant ITT in Port Cartier, Que., on the Gulf of St. Lawrence that had been built for $500-million. Mr. Bannerman remembers being in the room in Stamford, Conn., when Mr. Lemaire made his offer.
“He told them all he could pay was $5-million. The company president asked if we could leave him alone with his team, and we left the room. I told Bernard they were probably going to throw us out. It’s lucky we’re only on the second floor. Then the president came back and said, `We’ll take your price.’ It was quite a coup. That was how Bernard did things,” Mr. Bannerman said.
Mr. Lemaire was showered with awards. When he was named an officer of the Order of Canada in 1987, during his three-decade tenture as president of Cascades, the citation read: “This dynamic businessman has taken up the challenge of acquiring failing companies and transforming them into profitable enterprises. … He has won for his company an enviable place in the world of business and made it competitive in international markets.”
He was also an officer of the Ordre national du Québec, and France made him a knight of the Légion d’honneur in 2002 for his work in the French paper business. He received honorary doctorates from three Quebec universities. Mr. Lemaire played golf, enjoyed hunting, and loved cars, including a Ferrari which he eventually had to sell because it became too much for him. He switched to a Bentley.
After turning over the presidency of Cascades to his brother Laurent in 1992, Bernard created Boralex Inc., which has become a leader in the development of sustainable energy through wind farms, solar parks and hydroelectric power plants. Operating in Canada and France, it has an installed capacity of over 3000 MW. //
Mr. Lemaire leaves his spouse, Irène Godbout; his siblings Laurent, Alain and Marielle; three children, Patrick, Sylvie and Richard; the mother of his children, France Lamoureux; seven grandchildren; and several great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews and extended family. His sister Madeleine predeceased him.
This year, Corporate Knights ranked Cascades 20th in its list of the world’s 100 most sustainable corporations. It was the fourth consecutive year that the company was on the list. It has sales of close to $5-billion in its latest year.
Reflecting on Mr. Lemaire’s legacy, Mr. Charest said, “A whole new generation of Quebecers could see themselves in Bernard Lemaire. He and his brothers changed Quebec and Canada. He will never be forgotten.”