All That Glitters
A US Senator and his wife are accused of bribery and the FBI trotted out this evidence.
Gold bars found hidden in Senator Bob Menendez’s house, mostly stuffed in the pockets of jackets. There was $100,000 in gold, along with $480,000 in cash. A one kilo bar of gold was worth about $62,000 on Friday. A one kilo bar is a handy way to hide assets— it is 2.2 pounds, a little bit less than weight of the laptop I am typing on.
A clever piece in the New York Times saying it’s a great way for drug dealers to move money around: you can melt gold and re-shape it into ordinary looking objects. And it’s anonymous. You can convert gold into cash in most big cities. Example: the Senator’s wife, Nadine Arslania cashed in $400,000 worth of gold bars in 2022.
A Warm Place to Park My Yacht
The photo below is Dubai in the United Arab Emirate. Home to a growing number of rich Russians, and beach off that it has the fastest growing house prices in the world. “Buyers queue up for $5-million homes,” said Bloomberg this week. Many of the houses are on those fingers of land known as the Palm Island.
UBS, the Swiss bank, says the 15% price jump in the last year was the largest in 25 major world cities, twice as fast as Miami for example. The same report said prices in London were off 14% in the last year. Dubai has no sanctions against rich Russians here says the Daily Telegraph. Russians are flocking to Dubai. Stores and hotels are said to be hiring Russian-speaking staff.
As Somerset Maugham once said of Monaco and the French Riviera where he lived: a sunny place for shady people.
Oversized Paycheques
Should you really make a quarter of a billion dollars to run Google? What happened to the Do No Harm slogan of the founders? A story this week said American executives are staying longer at the top. Little wonder. Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, the corporate name of Google, has been in the job for eight years. Why quit?
The over-sized paycheques of the people who run car companies is one of the reasons car workers are asking for big pay increases. Mary Barra president of General Motors was paid almost $29-million, 362 times the median hourly worker at GM. She doesn't even make the list above.
Where Countries Make Money
Maybe the reason Mary Barra doesn't make the cut on the above chart is that services, and that includes Google and Netflix, are more important than industry. Even New Zealand, which you think of a country overflowing with sheep and cows, is more service than farm. Agriculture is only big in poorer countries.
Where it is Faster to Run Than Drive
Though you would have to be marathon class to do 10 kilometres in 36 minutes and 20 seconds. Even with the old congestion charge, still a tedious drive in London. Surprises me that Dublin in so slow.
The World by Fibre
There are 1.9-million kilometres of undersea cables connecting the world. This newsletter might have been routed by Indonesia. Who knows? The thin fibre optic strands are inside a protective cable not much bigger than a garden hose. They are always being re-laid. Fish gnaw at them but most of the damage is from trawlers and large ships dropping anchor. Still these cables are cheaper and faster than satellites.
Are these the Most Beautiful German Cars Ever?
Both these cars are from the late 1960s and early 1970s, a BMW and a Mercedes.
The BMW 3.0CSI in the top frame. There were two version, CS and CSI, both with three litre engines, the I a little faster. On the used market there are still some relative bargains: Hemmings Motor News lists a CSI in `Fair” condition for US$55,000. Prepare to put a mechanic’s children through college. The average price seem to be US$100,000 and more.
The Mercedes 280SL is known by its nickname, The Pagoda, after the shape of removable hardtop. The price tells you the Mercedes is more desirable. On Hemmings Motor News Pagodas in good shape fetch around US$150,000.
Essay of the Week
This a draft chapter on a book I have been working on about the life of Dr. Bob Francis. This is about the town in Nova Scotia where Bob grew up.
Chapter 2
Stellarton
Bob Francis is a product of a large, happy family in a tough coal-mining town in Stellarton, Nova Scotia. He was a bright boy in a place where you didn’t always show off how smart you were. He was also a good size, the self-confident, oldest child in the family of seven who knew how to take care of himself. You wouldn’t think this would come in handy in the world of medicine, especially corporate and private medicine, but it did. Read on.
But first, a little family history.
Robert William Francis was born in a hospital in New Glasgow in Pictou County, Nova Scotia on February 19, 1945. That year was one of the most important in the 20th century, the year the Second World War ended. On the day Bob Francis was born, US Marines landed on the tiny Pacific Island of Iwo Jima, one more step to the defeat of Japan; Hitler was still alive but Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met at Yalta that week to plan his demise.
The Francis family should probably be called Clarke. William Francis, Bob’s grandfather, was born William Clarke in 1880 in Wolverhampton in the English Midlands. His father died and his mother re-married, to a man named Pye. Both of them died when young William was just seven years old. He was taken in by a family named Francis, and he adopted their name.
After so much tragedy in his young life, William got lucky. The Francis family was prosperous, they owned a couple of pubs in the Wolverhampton area: The Leopard and the Sir John Falstaff. Young William had a happy childhood and adolescence. When he was 18 or 19 he joined the British Army, and stayed in it through two wars and more. He was involved in suppressing an uprising in Ireland, then fought in the Boer War in South Africa, which lasted from 1899 to 1902.
After he came home from South Africa he met Anna Jonsen, an Australian woman of Norwegian descent. Her family moved to Nova Scotia, and William came with them. The two were married in Pictou County in 1906 settling in Stellarton, where William worked for the Canadian National Railway. When the First World War broke out he volunteered for the Canadian Army, even though as a married man of 34 he could have stayed at home.
William Francis was made a sergeant, because of his military experience, and managed to stay alive through battles such as Ypres, Passchendaele and Vimy Ridge, where his name is etched on the memorial to the Canadian victory there, the battle that many historians says helped established Canada as an independent country. He remained involved with the Army all his life.
“Our grandfather served under five different sovereigns,” says Ken Francis, the second son in the family with a degree in history and the member of the family who knows the Francis story best.
“William was recognized by all five sovereigns, from Queen Victoria right up until King George VI. He was awarded the South African Medal twice, first from Queen Victoria and then from her son, King Edward VII,” says Ken. He points out that the medal from Queen Victoria has five bars—meaning it was awarded a further five times and the medal from King Edward VII has two bars.
“Then, under King George V he got the British War Medal and a Victory Medal. Then, under King Edward VIII who didn’t last too long on the throne, just from January 1936 until December of that year, he received the Long Service Medal and in 1944 he got the Faithful Service Medal.”
There was barely enough room on Sergeant Francis’s chest for all the `gongs’ as the British call medals for bravery.
At the end of the First World War William Francis was a Regimental Sergeant Major, which is a very big deal. The Regimental Sergeant Major is the number one enlisted man, “first among equals” in the Canadian/British Army and works with commanding officer and maintains standards and discipline. The RSM is a highly respected and sometimes much feared man. No one crosses him.
His son William Francis followed in the military tradition, and was a Sergeant Major in the Canadian Army, teaching young recruits how to fight. He was based in Newfoundland while the war in Europe was on and was waiting to go to Asia when the war with Japan ended with the Atomic bombs in August of 1945. By that time Sergeant Francis was already married to his sweetheart, Eunice Anastasia Keay, from Stellarton who travelled from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland for their wedding in 1941.
The two settled back in Stellarton and started raising a family. But early in their marriage, came a dramatic event that shocked the quiet, peaceful town of Stellarton and indeed all of Pictou County.
The Murder that changed the Family’s future.
Eunice came from an entrepreneurial family. Her father was a grocer who had three stores in the area: Lourdes Parish, Stellarton Centre and Stellarton South End. At the time he was competing with a man named Frank Sobey, who had but one grocery store at the time.
Alonzo Edward Keay might have gone on to establish a supermarket empire, like Frank Sobey did. But his budding grocery chain was cut short in a final heartbeat on Monday morning February 11, 1946.
A little after 11:15 a.m. a young man walked into his small shop on North Foord Street and asked to use the telephone. Alonzo showed him the phone in the back of the store and went on with filling the order a customer had phoned in earlier that morning. His delivery man was expected soon. The peaceful morning was shattered when the young man pulled out a pistol and demanded all the cash in the store. Alonzo was a giant of a man, well over six feet and weighting 275 pounds. He hurled a bag of potatoes at the robber.
John Thompson, the robber, shot Alonzo in the leg, but the angry grocer kept coming at the robber. The second or third shot hit Alonzo in the heart, killing him instantly and Thompson fired three more shots, six in all, emptying the revolver. He took $22 from the cash register and then opened the safe and found five $100 Victory bonds—bought by patriotic Canadians during the war—and owned by his Marjorie Keay. He tried to go through the dead man’s pockets but was put off by too much blood. He pulled the curtains and locked the door on the way out. Later two local women recalled seeing a young man with a bandaged left hand rushing down the street around 11:40 a.m.
A few minutes later the lunch bell rang at the nearby school and four boys headed over to the grocery store to buy some snacks. The door was locked, but through a crack in the curtain they could see Alonzo Keay on the floor. They figured he had suffered a heart attack and just then a store delivery employee arrived and opened the door. The shop keeper was lying dead in a pool of blood. The cash register was open and so was the safe. The police were soon called, and roadblocks set up.
The murderer, John Thompson, was an 18-year-old merchant seaman. The police tracked him to Halifax where he was waiting to board a ship. Thompson cashed one of the Victory bonds at a bank, forging the name of Alonzo Keay. He was arrested soon afterwards. Thompson confessed: “I did it. I didn’t mean to, he rushed at me and I shot him.” The found the revolver he used, a .38 Enfield, standard issue sidearm for British and Canadian troops; guns were easy to come by at the end of the war. The bullets and gun were sent to Ottawa for a forensics test and that confirmed it was the murder weapon.
Thompson would have hanged but his lawyer managed to have the sentence reduced to a long prison term. In fact, he only served about six years. When he got out Thompson found work as a newspaper reporter with the Halifax Herald. He was on his way to cover the Springhill Mining disaster in 1956 when he was killed in a car accident. Both those stories were front page news in the newspapers Bob Francis delivered to his customers in Stellarton.
When Ken Francis was writing a book on his grandfather’s murder he called the Halifax Herald to get some background on John Thomson, the newspaper reporter. “They asked me why I was interested and I said because he murdered my grandfather. I never heard back from them,” says Ken Francis. He says there was a plaque at the offices of the Halifax Herald honouring the newspaper reporter who died while covering a story. No mention of his murder conviction.
Much of the information on the murder comes from George Megney’s book: “The Stellarton Police Department 1889 – 1989: One Hundred Years of Service and Protection”.
He wrote a particularly moving description of Alonzo Keay’s funeral:
“On February 14th.,1946, the town of Stellarton closed down business in all sectors to enable townsmen to attend the funeral of Alonzo Keay which was held in his church Our Lady of Lourdes. The church was not large enough to hold all the mourners and there were dozens of men standing outside in the cold paying their last respects to a man who had been charitable, kindly and enjoyed the respect of all who knew him. Among the mourners that were mourning were two sons Edward who had only months before returned home from overseas where he had completed a double tour of duty with the RCAF participating in one hundred and ten missions over enemy territory and son John who also had just recently concluded service with the RCAF. The town of Stellarton was outraged at this senseless and vicious murder of an elderly store keeper, who was a family man and a threat to no one.”
***
Given that their grandfather’s murderer worked for the Halifax Herald, it may seem odd that the Francis family delivered newspapers in and around Stellarton. Their entrepreneurial spirit was legendary and there were newspaper articles written about the Francis news carriers.
Bob Francis started delivering papers when he was about nine years old. At first he delivered the Chronicle Herald, a morning paper that covers all of Nova Scotia, not to be confused with the Halifax Chronicle Herald. Later he also delivered the Evening News, a paper that covered all of Pictou County.
Drive through Pictou County and you would think it was paradise. And it is. But an argumentative paradise. There is always political turmoil. There are five towns in Pictou County, New Glasgow, Stellarton, Westville, Pictou and Trenton, and each has its own council; and then Pictou County itself has a separate government. A lot of government for 50,000 people and a lot to write about. Many years later when Ken Francis was a Stellarton town councilor he supported merging the five towns.
“It never happened,” says Ken. “The provincial government was totally behind us; a referendum took place during my tenure as councilor and we were soundly defeated. It was a pretty contentious topic and my wife and I even had threats of having our house being burned down which is how crazy it became.”
Back to the paper delivery.
National Newspaper Boy Day was celebrated on October 15th and one year Bob Francis was the poster boy for the province of Nova Scotia. He was recognized as the carrier boy of the day for Central Nova Scotia, and shared the honour with two other carriers. His father drove him there to the award ceremony. It is 158 miles from Stellarton to Halifax on the TransCanada highway and it takes a little less than two hours. The roads were primitive in the early 1950s and it took a lot longer back then.
“I was just a kid of eleven years old and the fact that they would take you to Halifax and take you to meet the lieutenant-governor who gave me the watch with my name engraved on the back. It was Wittnauer,” remembers Bob. “About ten or twelve years later Harold called and wanted to do a follow-up on what happened to the three of us. One went into the police force and I was already a physician.
Younger Francis children started delivering papers as well. There were about 50 papers on the route and that meant not just dropping them off but going round to collect the subscription money once a week. It built character.
“Our parents were very interested in all the members of our family becoming successful and they thought that delivering newspapers taught responsibility. You had to get up on time, stick to a routine and make sure you kept a record of who paid and who didn’t,” says Ken. “One of the things our parents wanted, besides our success as newspaper carriers was to have contact with the community at large, getting to know our neighbours.”
There was also exercise. Each newspaper route covered about a mile and half, and that was in all weather. Delivering 50 papers in the morning and another 50 in the evening brought in about five dollars a week. That doesn’t sound like much but the average woman was making about $40 a week in 1957; the average man $70. The newspapers themselves were only a nickel each, at a time when a loaf of bread was 18 cents.
The Francis children collected 30 cents a week from each subscriber and there was almost never a tip, though customers would give them something extra at Christmas.
“Christmas time was always exciting because you would end up getting about almost fifteen to twenty dollars in tips which was astronomical in the day. But it was the interpersonal connections that were really wonderful for us all because we became kind of well-known within the community and we all had such personalities that it made us develop great communicative skills along with the responsibility that went with it,” says Ken.
Bob remembers what he did with the money he earned from delivering papers and helping his mother with her sideline.
“I used it as money for myself. I was never out of money; it would be like my allowance,” says Bob. “My mother liked to sell Christmas cards so she would get the sample book and my job was to give it to all my different customers. They would list in the book what they wanted, my mother would order them and I would deliver them.”
In 1966 two other members of the Francis family were recognized on National Newspaper Boy’s Day, except one of the newspaper boys was a girl. Eileen and Owen were the winners. Back then boys, not girls were supposed to deliver papers. Eunice and William Francis encouraged their daughters to do everything the boys did. The newspaper stories about the winners focused on how unusual it was for a girl to be delivering papers.