End of the line for Jumbos and Cruise ships and remembering Baron von Richthofen.
April 18, 2022 Volume 2 # 47
Tweety Bird
“My stock price is through the roof, in part because of all the things I say on Twitter. It’s helped make me the richest bird on Earth. I was so impressed I bought the company.”
Book Sales soared in Pandemic: not anymore.
Ken Whyte, first editor of the National Post, is now publisher of Sutherland House in Toronto. He has a newsletter, SHuSH and this week quoted Publisher’s Weekly: “The Book Sales Boom is Over.: Here are the numbers from the United States:
No More Jumbo Jets
Boeing will build four more 747s, a plane that once dominated the long haul passenger business. I remember flying on the first New York to London British Airways flight 51 years ago this past week. A discotheque upstairs. A transatlantic party.
There are only 10 airlines that still fly the 747. It’s too thirsty. A fully loaded 747 carries 216,000 litres of jet fuel. Take out the windows and it makes a great freighter. Those are the only ones still being built.
An exception: The latest Air Force One
Boeing is building two special 747-8s to act as the Presidential aircraft. They are super special. Example: Air Force One can be refueled in flight. Boeing has a chart that shows the difference between the current Air Force One type, a Boeing 747-200, and the new one to be ready in a couple of years.
No place for an Oligarch to hide? Try Turkey.
Like many countries — including Canada and the United States — if you show up with enough cash you can buy your way to citizenship. All you have to do in Turkey is buy a property worth $250,000. Rich Russians are piling in according to the Wall Street Journal.
Superyachts, Seaside Apartments and Suitcases Full of Cash: Russians Pour Money Into Turkey
Western sanctions and capital controls imposed by Moscow have sent Russians looking for havens for their cash and assets
Istanbul isn’t London or Paris in the fun department, but it’s beautiful with lots of waterfront real estate.
Turkey is a safe place to keep a yacht. It also has a ship repair business if your behemoth needs maintenance. Turkey also has huge wrecking yards for old ships.
After the pandemic killed the Cruise Ship biz, companies like Carnival cut their losses by trimming their fleets of $300-million floating hotels. The cruise ships have valuable innards and take a lot longer to break up than a cargo ship or oil tanker. Business Insider says it is a dangerous job, though it is even more dangerous in Bangladesh where there are few safety or environmental rules.
Upgrade from free to paid.
My Election Bribe
Thursday’s mail produced a $330 cheque from the Ontario government. Doug Ford, the populist Ontario premier who runs as a Conservative, is canceling fees for licence plates. If you paid in advance— as I did— you get your money back.
There’s a provincial election on June 2. It is going to cost almost a billion dollars to pay everyone this little goodie. Dumb and dumber. People who drive should pay something. How gullible does Doug Ford think people are? Answer: He’s a shoo-in come June.
My lovely neighbour in Knowlton, Quebec, flying the Ukrainian flag
Essay of the Week
This is an obituary from January of 2000, that ran in the National Post. It is unusual in that I interviewed Wolfgang von Richthofen about his life before he died. I have only done that three or four times that I can remember in 35 years of writing obituaries. His daughter, Carmen, is a friend of mine which is how it came about. He was open and friendly, a delightful man.
Baron Wolfgang von Richthofen, who has died in Toronto aged 90, was prominent in Canadian thoroughbred racing, and once advised a client to buy Northern Dancer, the greatest racehorse of the 20th century. Instead, the Hamilton industrialist bought Grand Garcon, a larger colt and the only Canadian horse ever to defeat Northern Dancer on the track.
Just after the war his famous name saved his life when two British officers released him from a prisoner of war camp on recognizing his name. Like many members of the German aristocracy, Baron von Richthofen had been against the Nazis and was fired from his job with the track-and-field association for refusing to discriminate against Jews.
Wolfgang Friedrich Wilhelm Hugo Praetorius von Richthofen was born in Pless in Silesia, then part of Prussia, now part of Poland, on March 28, 1909, into an aristocratic family that included his second cousin, Manfred von Richthofen, the First World War fighter ace known as the Red Baron.
The von Richthofen family moved from the country to Berlin after the First World War. As a young man, Wolfgang helped his mother run an art gallery in the city. Here he lost the country prejudices of his class, and thrived in the cosmopolitan Berlin of the 1920s and early 1930s, even becoming an extra in the opera. Later he was referred to as "The Red Richthofen," though he was hardly a radical. He did, however, acquire a liking for modern art, which was later banned by the Nazis.
At school, and afterward, he had been a swimming star, and he became involved in athletic organizations. In 1935, he was fired from the track-and-field association for refusing to disqualify two Jewish runners who won the 100- and 200-metre races at the Brandenburg track-and-field championships. He worked at the Olympic village in 1936, and was an open admirer of Jesse Owens, the black American track star whom the Nazis despised. It was his first contact with Americans and Canadians and he liked their easygoing manner.
After that he joined the army, as he put it: "For my own protection." At that time, the Gestapo had no authority over army officers, but that was about to change.
While he was in the army, there was a scandal involving General Werner von Fritsch, who was tried on trumped-up charges of homosexuality. He was acquitted, but forced from his post. Baron Von Richthofen was disgusted with the Nazis -- he had already managed to avoid swearing the mandatory personal oath of allegiance to Hitler - - and he resigned. By 1938, he wanted to leave Germany. He had a job lined up in California and applied for leave from the reserves. He had his passage booked from Bremerhaven; but, in July, was drafted back into the regular army.
He was an officer in a Panzer division and fought in Russia and in France after D-Day. In July, 1944, after the attempt on Hitler's life by members of the German aristocracy, he called a friend in Berlin. His friends involved in the assassination were being arrested. The Baron volunteered to return to the eastern front, saying it was less dangerous than staying in Berlin.
In late 1944, he left his unit without permission, for which he could have been shot, and borrowed a military vehicle to move his family out of Silesia and the path of the oncoming Red Army. He had heard on the BBC about the Yalta Conference and wanted his family out of the area that was to be controlled by the Russians. Taking back roads to avoid checkpoints, he left his family in what would become the American sector, then returned to his unit. In April, 1945, with the war all but over, he returned to see his family. But he was suffering from an ulcer and had to go to a military hospital. As a captain in the Wehrmacht, he was taken prisoner and was kept in an American camp overseen by General Eisenhower.
Baron von Richthofen became even sicker in the camp, and was sure he wouldn't last much longer. But the British took over on June 20, 1945. Von Richthofen recognized two German Jews he knew from the racing world before the two men fled to Britain. Now they were translators and officers in the British Army. They knew he wasn't a Nazi, and so shortly after that they let him go and he was home by July 23.
In the desolation of post-war Germany, Baron von Richthofen had to sell off paintings at a fraction of their value, including a Degas. He was involved in racing and bought and sold some horses, which helped finance the family's move to Canada.
Wolfgang von Richthofen and his family came to Canada in 1951. They were sponsored by Max Stern, an art dealer in Montreal who, being a German Jew, had left in the 1930s. Baron von Richthofen had known Stern's relatives in the art business in Berlin. He and his family bought a 80-hectare farm in Campbellville, then a village far away from Toronto, now on the edge of the commuting belt. He ran a mixed farm then a dairy farm, but he had brought two horses from Germany, trotters, and he drifted back into the world of racing, first with his own horses, then training horses for rich men.
One of his clients was Frank Sherman, the man who owned Dofasco, the Hamilton steel company. When they went shopping for horses, Baron von Richthofen suggested buying Northern Dancer, which came from E. P. Taylor's stable near Toronto. No one met the price of $25,000 and Taylor kept the horse, which went on to become the star of his racing empire, and the most successful stud horse ever, the progenitor of many of today's winners. Grand Garcon, the horse Sherman did buy, won the Cup and Saucer stakes, a race for two-year- olds at Woodbine, on Sept. 28, 1963, beating Northern Dancer. The prize money was $42,025, with 10% going to the trainer.
On top of that, Baron von Richthofen had put money on his horse, an outsider that returned $91.50 for a two-dollar bet. While working with thoroughbreds, he maintained his interest in standardbreds, the horses used in trotting and pacing. He was the driving force behind the Mohawk raceway, which runs trotting and pacing events. He was involved in picking the location, close to Toronto, Hamilton and Guelph, and helping to convince the local county to change its dry laws and allow alcohol sales.
Baron Von Richthofen was a director and trustee of the Ontario Jockey Club, the group that owns and operates major racetracks in Ontario. On his death, Woodbine and Mohawk racetracks flew their flags at half-mast.
Wolfgang von Richthofen married the Countess Gisela von Einsiedel in Berlin in 1943. She survives him. She was the first great- grandchild of the 19th-century German chancellor Otto von Bismarck. They had six children, three of them from her first marriage.