Now it's Deflation? Condo and crypto crash, a 1956 T-Bird and a British Wren in Canada.
November 14, 2022 Volume 3 # 32
Did someone say deflation?
Huge stock market rally on Thursday and Friday. Biggest in more than two years. And interest rates — in the bond market tanked. Again this week I will take a snippet from Hubert Marleau’s newsletter: “What really happened was the realisation that the days of accelerating price increases are behind us and that inflation has not only peaked but could sharply reverse.” He uses the word deflation twice.
Speaking of Deflation: Hate to say we told you so..
Condo buyers in Toronto, one of the most over heated residential real estate markets in the world are now on the hook for coming up with cash to cover condos they bought sight unseen. The Toronto Star interviewing a man who bought a condo off the plans in April of 2020. He figured it was an investment. Now he has to come up with the cash but the condo is now worth $150,000 less than he agreed to pay for it. Mortgage rates were 1.5%; now they almost 6%. He is cooked. Now he doesn't have the cash to close.
“When I bought the condo, I knew what I could afford with the stress test,” he told the Star.. “No one knew interest rates would go up this much and so quickly.” He blames the Bank of Canada. He would, wouldn’t he.
Crypto Collapse
Quel surprise. FTX, a crypto exchange and its baby-faced CEO have declared bankruptcy. There are $9-billion in liabilities and $1-billion in assets.
Other crypto assets are under pressure. Bitcoin dropped 6.5%. Is it surprising that something ordinary mortals can’t get their heads around is a flop?
Soccer mania outstrips Moral Outrage
The FIFA World Cup opens on November 20 in Qatar in a futuristic stadium.
Many people calling for a boycott of the World Cup in Qatar because the oil rich state mistreats so-called guest workers — foreigners who do the work the rich locals, with highest per capita income in the world, won’t do- and other human rights abuses, such as three year prison sentences for gay men.
Is it ethically OK to attend the World Cup? asked the Financial Times on Saturday.
The Guardian might be outraged, CNN may call it out and western politicians can tut-tut, but World Cup fans are holding their nose and buying tickets.
The World Population Hit 8-billion this Month
A Great Car from the 1950s
A 1956 Ford Thunderbird. Ford made the two seater to compete with Chevrolet’s two seater Corvette. Ford only made the two seater models for two years, even though they outsold the Corvette big time. Big V-8 engine. Not a sports car, a beautiful cruiser.
The two seater Thunderbirds aren’t worth as much as you might think. A quick check on the web shows this one would be maybe US$40,000. It’s gorgeous, but not perfect.
The Taillight and subtle fin marks it as a 1956 Thunderbird.
Figs in Space
From the Daily Telegraph
Essay of the Week
Bridget Gregson's teenage years were shaped by the war, first as a 15-year-old English schoolgirl evacuated from her boarding school in southern England and sent to Canada for safety. Her three younger siblings came with her to Canada. Three years later, she graduated from high school and joined the Royal Canadian Navy. She was sent to Halifax, where she worked as a decoder, and in May of 1945, she and a colleague saw the message sent to German U-boat crews to surface and surrender to the nearest Allied port
Bridget Gregson was born in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, in 1925. Her father, Donald Gregson, was an officer with the British Army in India, then part of the British Empire, and her mother, Violet Hanson, came home to England to give birth. When Bridget was two, she, her mother and her younger sister returned to Puna in India, and the family came back to England in 1932.
Her father then went to work for the family coffee firm. He re-joined the Army at the start of the war and was part of the evacuation from France at Dunkirk in late May and early June of 1940. Mr. Gregson feared for the safety of his four children, as they were living in Dorset near the coast, and the children were sent to Canada later that year. "The grownups seemed to talk about nothing but war and how England could be invaded by Germany," she wrote in a memoir of the period.
The ten-day Atlantic crossing was on the Duchess of Atholl, a fast Canadian Pacific ocean liner converted to a troop carrier that it was hoped could outrun the German U-boats. It made that trip safely but was sunk by a German submarine in 1942; four crew members died, but all aboard were rescued. (More on the sinking after this story)
Bridget said she and her sister were in a tiny cabin down in E Deck that smelled oily and where she could hear the constant hum of the engines.
"Each day, we would have a lesson about Canada, our new home, and so we learned the names of the provinces, the capitals and best of all, the words to O Canada and The Maple Leaf Forever!" She marvelled at the forests along the shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, then the cultivated fields and "lovely little farmhouses."
"We stood by the railing as we landed in Montreal and were thrilled to see the docks lined with Mounties in splendid red coats, just like their pictures we thought," she wrote. "Beautiful women in Red Cross uniform(s) stood inside the building with trays of orange juice and biscuits for us."
As soon as Bridget arrived in Canada, she was sent to summer camp in Algonquin Park. She loved it.
"It was the beginning of bonding with Canada," said her daughter Hilary. "My mother loved the Canadian outdoors and the informal way of life."
Bridget and her sister Hilary went to Branksome Hall, a private school in Toronto, and her brothers Michael and Richard went to Upper Canada College.
At 18, she joined the Royal Canadian Navy and moved to Halifax. She worked as a decoder, which she said required quite a bit of math, and she soon mastered it. "They were trying to decode messages that gave the position of German U-boats in the North Atlantic," said her son Hugh. "She said that it was one of the best times in her life, and she felt she made a contribution, however small, towards the war effort."
Ms. Lawson never spoke in detail of her work in Halifax, her children say, probably because of a promise of secrecy.
Bridget left Halifax in August of 1945 and returned to Toronto, where she enrolled in the University of Toronto. In February of 1946, she went on a skiing trip to St. Sauveur, in the Laurentians north of Montreal, where she met a law student, Bill Lawson. They married in October of that year. She helped put him through law school, and they eventually moved to Pickering Village, now Ajax. Mr. Lawson commuted to a law firm in Toronto for a while but opened a practice in Pickering Village. Ms. Lawson was active in the community; she was the head of Children's Aid and helped establish the Oshawa Art Gallery. The family had a cottage on Lake Kashabog, then another at Stoney Lake. Life was idyllic, but Bill Lawson died in 1971when he was just 47. By this time, Ms. Lawson had four children. The two older children were relatively independent, and in 1973, Ms. Lawson and her two younger children set off for Malawi in East Africa. Before she left, she took a course in silk screening at Sheridan College because part of her work there would be in a silk screening shop. For two years, she worked for the Christian Service Committee in Malawi. She said it was: "The beginning of my lifelong love affair with Africa."
When she returned to Canada, she started working for AMREF, an NGO that provides health care in East Africa. From 1984 to 1990, Ms. Lawson was executive director of AMREF Canada; she travelled to Africa twice a year
."Bridget…served as a catalyst in helping to set up the McMaster Community Health Training Course in 1987 by connecting Dr. Chris Wood (one of the founders of AMREF) with the relevant personnel at CIDA( the Canadian International Development Agency)," wrote Nora Wilson, an AMREF board member.
In 1990 Ms. Lawson married John Duncanson, a long-time friend, and moved to Mono Township, north of Toronto. There she returned to the rural life of her first marriage and was an avid gardener, joined a mediation group, took a writing course and was involved in the Dufferin Arts Council. She also continued her involvement in several African projects.
Bridget Elizabeth Lawson was born in North Yorkshire, England, on June 11, 1925. She died in Toronto on October 29, 2022. She is survived by her brother Michael and her children, Hugh, Hilary and Emily, stepchildren Susan, John and Bob, 17 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren. Her son Nick died in 2019, and her husband John in 2016.
The Sinking of the Duchess of Atoll
Canadian Pacific passenger ships were often named Empress, as in Empress of Canada. CP Ships started a new type of ship in the 1920s that was mostly `Tourist Class’, aimed at that growing market. A Duchess is the highest aristocratic rank and ships in the that class were a notch below the Empress class. Both classes were designed to go under the bridge at Quebec City and make it to Montreal.
Come on our ships, take our trains, stay in our hotels.
In 1940 the Duchess of Atholl, named after a Scottish aristocrat, was requisitioned as a troop ship. She carried soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians from all corners of the British Empire, including the trip that brought Bridget Gregson to Canada. On October 3, 1942, the Duchess of Atholl left Cape Town in South Africa, bound for Freetown in Sierra Leone and then on to Britain. She was unescorted and to foil a U-boat attack sailed in a zig-zag pattern. On October 9 German submarine U-178 spotted the ship at a range of three nautical miles. The submarine, which usually travelled on the surface, dove and went into attack mode. It sent two torpedoes at the Duchess; the second one struck, killing four crew members and crippling the vessel. Other torpedoes followed and the order was given to abandon ship. There were 534 passengers on board: 236 army personnel, 196 naval personnel, 97 Royal Air personnel, five nurses and 291 civilians, including many women and children. The U-boat came alongside and asked some questions about the name of the ship and other details, and left.
Think where they were. Two hundred miles from Ascension Island, and 1,000 miles from the coast of Africa. St. Helena, where Napoleon died, is less isolated.
Ascension Island, the middle of nowhere.
One of the crew brought a radio and sent a distress signal. A cargo ship came to their rescue. escorted by a Free French Flower Class Corvette — the same type used by the Royal Canadian Navy.— and took them to Sierra Leone, and then safely to Glasgow.
U-178 at its home port in Bordeaux
U-178 was on its first mission when it sunk the Duchess of Atholl. Miraculously it survived the war and was scuttled at its French home port as the Allies approached.
As an aside, I worked as an office boy for Canadian Pacific in Montreal when I was 16 and one of my jobs was to go down to the docks and empty the suggestion boxes on board the CP passenger and cargo ships and return anything in them to the Suggestion Bureau, which was part of the Personnel Department where I worked. The suggestion boxes were filled with beer caps and cigarette butts. The only suggestion ever was: “Fire the cook.”
I used to meet young English boys my age with Liverpool accents and have a beer with them in Joe Beef’s tavern across from the docks. I know it is now on Notre Dame, but that’s where it was then.
CP Ships closed long ago. But it is the reason that, Paul Martin, the former Prime Minister of Canada, is a rich man. In 1981, Mr. Martin was working for Paul Desmarais of Power Corporation, running its subsidiary, Canada Steamship Lines. Mr. Desmarais made a bid for Canadian Pacific, but to do so he had to divest ownership in his shipping company. Long story, but with help from other investors, Mr. Martin bought it, made it a success and still owns it. The Power Corp takeover of CP never went through.