Property,Cost of Living around the World and a Diamond-Studded Love Story
March 6, 2023 Volume 3 # 46
Real Estate: Home and Work
Residential real estate prices have collapsed in the rich world. In London, some of the richest areas saw big drops in January: Kensington down 4.5%; Islington, -3.4%; and Hammersmith and Fulham -2.9%.
The average price in Kensington and Chelsea is still £1,278,146. Not for those places.
Canada has one of the most over-heated housing markets in the rich world. Toronto housing prices actually ticked up in February, though they are down 18% in a year
Renting industrial space in and around Toronto was up 35% last year, according to a report by Colliers. The real estate firm says businesses have reached the limit of what they are willing to pay to rent space: “…tenants are reaching the upper bounds of their willingness to spend. If they see an opportunity to wait, tenants are choosing to ride out their leases in the hopes of a future decline in rental rates.”, says Colliers.
The average rental price per square foot in the area near the airport is $17.29. The most expensive district is Mississauga East at $22 a square foot. A cursory search for similar space near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport shows prices from C$13 to C$17 per square foot.
Retirement 2:
How long do People Live in Retirement
People in Europe spend the most years in retirement. France is number one. Hardly a surprise: the retirement age is 62 and the French are rioting in the streets because President Macron wants to raise the retirement age.
In this unusual chart, the yellow dots represent retirement age, the green dots are healthy life expectancy and the purple dots are regular life expectancy.
In Greece hairdressers are classified as a dangerous occupation. They can retire at 50.
This also has to do with life expectancy. The United States is low on the retirement longevity list; it also has a low life expectancy: 76.4. Japan is a surprise. Maybe the industrious Japanese keep working past their official retirement age of 64. They have one on the longest life expectancies in the world: 84.91.
A Related Chart
China and Hungary Encourage Fertility
As you can see from this chart, India will soon pass China as the World’s most populous country, if it hasn’t already. For many years China had a one child policy. Now it encourages two or even three children households. Chinese women are not warming to the idea. The Chinese Communist Party wants to freeze the eggs of single women, starts sex educations in Kindergarten and encourage long weekends for young people, hoping to encourage coupling.
Hungary has a population of 9.7-million. It doesn’t even show up on this chart and is listed in `rest of Eastern Europe’. Hungary has one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe. It has physical and legal barriers to immigration and many of its young people go to other places in Europe for work.
If a woman in Hungary has a child before she’s 30, she doesn’t have to pay tax for the rest of her life.
Where the Work is and Where it will Be
Most Expensive and Cheapest Cities
Prices follow work and play. Seems to me that they missed London, which a quick Google search shows is more expensive that Paris. “You would need around 6,102.9€ (5,396.3£) in London to maintain the same standard of life that you can have with 5,200.0€ in Paris. That is by the month, assuming you’re renting.
Political turmoil and war leave Tripoli, and Damascus as cheap place to live. The three Indian cities might have work, but they are crowded and polluted.
Tech Work in North America
Tech workers make lots of money, though a lot of them have been laid off at Google, Twitter, Amazon and Facebook. Montreal’s tech strength is animation, especially for computer games and films. One of my friends is prospering directing animation.
Coffee and Burgers Around the World
Compare Starbucks’ Prices to The Big Mac Index
The Economist use the price of Big Mac in various countries to show if a currency is under or over valued against the US dollar. It is pretty accurate .The latest Big Mac Index confirms the Starbuck pirce differences. A Big Mac is more expensive in Norway and Switzerland, and cheap in Turkey. The Index, which has been running since 1986, now measures other currencies, including the Euro, the Japanese Yen and the Chinese Yuan. The list is huge. Easier to bring it up and cruise it yourself.
Click to get to The Economist Big Mac Index
The Last Gasp of Winter
The path to the chicken coop blown out on Sunday morning after two days of snow.
Essay of the Week
This is a story of a man who died seven years ago. I knew him. He once talked to me about going with him to Greenland to make a film on his mining interests there. He then went to the Northwest Territories and made a fortune in diamonds. But the most interesting thing about him was his love life, and how he went to back to the girlfriend he left behind in England even though she was ill by that time. An honourable man.
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Bob Gannicott left England for Yellowknife when he was 19 because his girlfriend's parents refused to allow them to marry. Gannicott, who has died at the age of 69, had been studying mining engineering at the University of Nottingham, but dropped out to work at the Giant Mine in Yellowknife. From that start he went on to be a prospector and mining promoter and with the discovery of diamonds in Canada became probably the richest man in Yellowknife.
Robert Gannicott was born in 1947 in Sandford, a quiet country village in Somerset in England’s West Country. His mother Ida was a school teacher and his father Ivor was an engineer who was in submarines in the Royal Navy during the war. Back then England had `11 plus’ exams that decided a child’s future life, and Bob Gannicott passed on the bright side, winning a scholarship to a local `Grammar’ school, or one that led to university.
When he was 15 he met Geraldine Davies on the schoolbus and the two became inseparable. They took up the hobby of caving, exploring underground caverns. One of the best places to do that was in the Mendip Hills in Somerset, near where they lived.
“Caving was one of the reasons he felt comfortable about working in mines, and why he started studying mining engineering at Nottingham, University,” said Geraldine Peacock from Wells in Somerset.
When Bob and Geraldine told their parents they wanted to marry, their parents forbade it.
“We should have just gone ahead with it, but you felt you couldn’t do that back then,” said Ms. Peacock. He went to Yellowknife and the two didn’t get back together for more than 30 years, after they had both been married and divorced.
Young Bob Gannicott landed in Montreal in 1967 and was so broke he jumped a freight train to get himself to Edmonton. In Winnipeg the railroad police nabbed him, but learning where he was headed gave him a train ticket to Edmonton in exchange for his watch. From Edmonton the mine paid for the rest of the trip to Yellowknife. Once he got a paycheque he sent the money to get his watch out of hock.
He worked in the mine then as a geologist for the Giant Mine. In his spare time and on vacations he would go prospecting in the Northwest Territories. The sites where he would search for minerals were so remote that on longer trips he would arrange for an aircraft to drop in supplies. Like an explorer from another era or a Hudson’s Bay factor from the 19th century he grew to cherish the isolation of the wilderness and fell in love with the Arctic.
After several years in Yellowknife he decided he needed more formal education and enrolled at Carleton University in Ottawa and earned a degree in geology. After graduating he went to work for the mining giant Cominco, then owned by Canadian Pacific. He worked in Belgium for a while and at the Black Angel Mine in Greenland. The site was on a deep flord and the mine was on one side and the ore was taken by a cable car to the mill on the other side.
Mr. Gannicott went on to work for himself and started prospecting in Greenland, and founded a company called Platinova, which was listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
“His nickname was Mr. Greenland,” said Gren Thomas, a former business associate and friend of 50 years who now lives in West Vancouver. “He spent about 10 to 12 years exploring in Greenland. They discovered a zinc deposit at Citronen Fjord. It’s at 85 degrees north, probably the most northerly mineral deposit in the world.”
“Bob had a terrific imagination and a sense of adventure. He once convinced a charter airline to land a Boeing 727 on the ice in Greenland,” said Mr. Thomas, an immigrant from Wales who started work in the coal mines there but also went on to become a successful mining entrepreneur.
While Bob Gannicott was prospecting in Greenland, Mr. Thomas and others were looking for diamonds in Canada. The two friends eventually got together and through a series of ventures ended up creating Diavik, and then Dominion Diamonds in 1992. That company eventually became Canada’s largest independent diamond mine.
“Canada is now the third largest diamond producing country in the world, after Botswana and Russia,” said Mr. Thomas. Diamonds made both men, and others, very rich.
Bob Gannicott engineered the purchase of Harry Winston, the high end New York City jewellry store. The diamond trade gave the economy of the Northwest Territories much needed diversification.
“He later took advantage of a rare opportunity with the acquisition of the Ekati Diamond Mines and sale of Harry Winston, returning the company to its roots as a pure-play Canadian diamond miner,” said Dominion Diamond Corporation in a press release on Mr. Gannicott’s death.
Once he became a rich man, Mr. Gannicott split his time evenly between Yellowknife and his native England.
“He took up gentlemanly pursuits like fishing and shooting,” said Mr. Thomas. “Bob loved food and adventure. We once had breakfast in New York, then took the Concorde (the supersonic jet that could cross the Atlantic in three hours) and had dinner in Paris.”
He also took up the relationship he had left behind when he moved to Canada in 1967. It was around 1999 when the two reconnected, both now divorced.
“We had been in contact. But he sent me a ticket to Venice and told me to meet him there. He was such a romantic,” said Geraldine Peacock. “By this time I had Parkinson’s Disease, early onset like Michael J. Fox. But Bob didn’t care.”
Since he was in the diamond business, he gave Ms. Peacock a four carat pure white diamond from the Diavik Mine, surrounded by other stones.
“He said it represented our troubled lives together,” said Ms. Peacock.
In her own way Ms. Peacock was as accomplished as her childhood sweetheart. She had led a number of British charities, ending up running the largest charity organization in Britain. She was made a CBE, Commander of the British Empire in 2000.
The couple tried to divide their time between Yellowknife and a house they had restored in Wells in Somerset. Two and half years ago when he was flying to Britain he felt seriously ill. When he got off the plane a doctor diagnosed him with an aggressive form of Leukemia. He could never fly again.
Mr. Gannicott remained on the board of Dominion Diamond Corporation until earlier this year, but gradually gave up control as his disease progressed. Where he once took care of Geraldine, she now took care of him.
“There were over 200 people at Bob’s funeral. He wasn’t just a boring old businessman he had a vision and he inspired people. He cared about two things in life, me and the Northwest Territories.”
In his will, Bob Gannicott left “a substantial amount of money” to set up the Robert Gannicott Trust to “..help develop the indigenous people of the Northwest Territories.”
Robert Gannicott was born on June 11, 1947, in Sandford, Somerset, England. He died in a private clinic in London, England, on August 3, 2016. He is survived by his companion, Geraldine Peacock.