Tall Buildings, Honey, Work, Mob hit, Rock Goddess and the woman who Launched Christopher Plummer
May 22, 2023 Volume 4 #4
Where The Tall Things Are
This was the tallest building in the world in 1931. The Empire State Building.
And the 102 storey building stayed the tallest until 1971. As the graphic below says, there are now 50 buildings in the world that are taller than the Manhattan skyscraper.
The Tallest Skyscraper List
Who Works at What in the USA
More people work in offices and administration in the United States than anything else. Throw in management and you are up to 15% of the total. What is amazing is farming. Only one person in a hundred farms and to get that high they had to throw in fishing and forestry.
One hundred years ago 30% of Americans worked on farms. That was 30-million people out of a population of 106-million. And that didn’t count fishermen and lumberjacks.
Who is Adding Sugar to Honey?
China, among other culprits. And China is the world’s largest honey producer.
Forbes says half the honey in Europe is fake, that is cut with sugary syrup.
This from an investigation by the British edition of Wired:
“Most of the honey imported from China into Europe is blended with syrup,” says Etienne Bruneau, chairman of the honey working party at the European agricultural umbrella organisation Copa-Cogeca. “In China, they tell you if you want honey it’s one price and if you want a cheaper price you can have syrup in it.”
I was surprised to see Canada at number two. The three prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta produce 82% of Canada’s honey, according to Statistics Canada which says the reason is: “Long summer days and large areas of good forage crops for bees…” We buy honey from Ferme Api, a small apiary in Mansonville, Quebec, a few kilometres north of the border with Vermont. It is run by David Marchand-Duchesneau and his wife Maude Tougas.
For a while David kept hives in a field across the road from us in Knowlton, but bears kept ravaging the hives. His honey is amazing, and no funny stuff added.
Rock Goddess
Pattie Boyd walking with her husband George Harrison. They married in January of 1966 when she was 21.
Layla, the song Eric Clapton wrote about Pattie Boyd while she was still married to his friend George.
What'll you do when you get lonely
And nobody's waiting by your side?
You've been running and hiding much too long
You know it's just your foolish pride
Layla
You've got me on my knees
Layla
I'm begging, darling, please
Layla
Darling, won't you ease my worried mind?
I tried to give you consolation
When your old man had let you down
Like a fool, I fell in love with you
You turned my whole world upside down
Layla
You've got me on my knees
Layla
I'm begging, darling, please
Layla
Darling, won't you ease my worried mind?
Let's make the best of the situation
Before I finally go insane
Please, don't say we'll never find a way
And tell me all my love's in vain
Layla
You've got me on my knees
Layla
I'm begging, darling, please
Layla
Darling, won't you ease my worried mind?
Layla (Layla)
You've got me on my knees
Layla
I'm begging, darling, please
Layla
Darling, won't you ease my worried mind?
Well she did ease his worried mind. In 1977 she and the Beatle divorced and in 1979 she married Eric Clapton. She left him after 10 years. Clapton was a heavy drinker and philanderer. Boyd is still thriving at 79; Harrison died of lung and brain cancer in 2001 at the age of 58; Eric Clapton, a rock musical genius, is 78 and in a wheelchair.
Pattie Boyd was more than a rock star’s wife. She was a top model in 60s London, along with the likes of Jean Shrimpton. Boyd is also a top photographer.
You’re not Supposed to kill Connie Corleone
Claudia Iaconno was shot dead in her car on a busy Montreal street this week.
“Iacono was the daughter-in-law of Moreno Gallo, a very influential figure on the Calabrian side of the Montreal Mafia before he was killed in Mexico a decade ago,” said the Montreal Gazette. It is said to be the first time a woman related to the mob has been executed in Canada.
The 39-year old woman owned the Salon Deauville Coiffure Spa. She was on her way to work when she was shot many times. She had two children.
Error last week.
When I listed the market cap of the Toronto and Australian stock markets I used $-billion. It should have been $-Trillion. Mea culpa.
Essay of the Week
Rosanna Todd was an eccentric Canadian born actress and producer, who started her professional career in Britain in the 1930s. Back in her native Montreal after the war, she started the Open Air Playhouse theatre and gave Christopher Plummer his start.
"Rosanna was the first person to give me a break. I was 16 or 17 and she gave me the role of Posthumus in Cymbeline. It was my introduction to Shakespeare," Mr. Plummer said from his home in Connecticut.
He remembered that Ms. Todd acted in all her productions and "was able to attract top actors and directors to what was really a small outdoor theatre near Beaver Lake on Mont-Royal. She was devoted to the theatre," Mr. Plummer said.
Her childhood friend Raymonde Chevalier Bowen said there was a reason she could get famous people, and others, to work with her. "Rosanna inspired great devotion and loyalty from those who worked with and for her," she said.
Rosanna Seaborn Todd was born into a rich family in Montreal in October of 1912. She lived a life that was in many ways more 19th century than 20th: grand country houses, governesses and servants. Her father was a doctor, a world-famous specialist in tropical medicine, and her mother was an heiress, the daughter of Sir Edward Seaborn Clouston, one of the early executives and founders of the Bank of Montreal.
Sir Edward was also one of the founders of the Royal Trust and a mentor to a young man from New Brunswick, Max Aitken, who went on to become Lord Beaverbrook. He always felt a loyalty to any member of the Clouston clan and that helped young Rosanna make connections when she moved to London as a young woman.
The Todd family lived in Montreal and had a country estate on the Lake of Two Mountains in Senneville on the western tip of the island of Montreal. In the winters, the entire family including grooms and horses moved to South Carolina. Mr. Plummer, younger than Ms. Todd, knew her from childhood.
"The Todd family bought my great-grandfather's [Sir John Abbott, the prime minister] house and we lived next to them," said Mr. Plummer, who spent his summers in Senneville.
In a Montreal Gazette interview 10 years ago, Ms. Todd talked about the details of Mr. Plummer's first stage job. "Chris was not getting paid," she said and was at pains to point out hiring him was not nepotism. "His grandmother's sister married my great-uncle. No blood relation at all."
Ms. Todd used to say she never went to school, but was tutored at home.
"I never went to high school. I always had a governess," she told an interviewer. One thing she and her friends did was make films. They wrote scripts, dramas and mysteries, and shot them on the lanes and lawns of Senneville. The results were quite accomplished for amateurs and the experience left Mr. Plummer and Ms. Todd hooked on acting.
She may not have gone to high school but she did go to finishing school in South Carolina, where she met Doris Duke, the only child of the one of the richest men in the United States. They remained friends and when Ms. Duke died 16 years ago, she left Ms. Todd $1-million in her will.
Shortly after finishing school, Ms. Todd moved to London and attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the top drama school in Britain. From there she worked at the old Vic and in repertory theatre in England.
During the war she volunteered as a social worker with the Red Cross. Her younger sister Biddy came to England as a driver for the military and her other sister, Jackie, was a driver in Canada.
After the war the privations of living with rationing meant England was no place for an actress. It was then she returned to Canada and started her playhouse.
One thing her father insisted on was that his daughters learn French. Not only did she learn the language, but also she became fascinated with Quebec's history.
Ms. Todd was obsessed with the uprising of 1837, in particular the bloody battle at St. Eustache near Montreal. She collected what Le Devoir described as "the most important private collection of the 1837 Rebellion."
The collection consisted of more than 1,200 objects including books and private letters from 'les Patriotes' including speeches from Louis-Joseph Papineau and a description of the rebellion from William Lyon Mackenzie.
Her obsession produced a film script, The Great Burning, which she spent the last half of her life trying to produce.
"The main character in the story is Charlotte, the daughter of a local seigneur. She falls in love with a British officer and that is the core of the story," said Ms. Todd's niece, Alison Hackney, who still farms on the family property in Senneville. "My aunt was sympathetic to both sides. But she insisted on historical accuracy. When a producer suggested a sex scene between Charlotte and the officer, she said no because it wouldn't have happened." Her friends say her failure to produce what was the main work of her life frustrated her.
"It was the great disappointment of her life," Ms. Chevalier Bowen said.
Mr. Plummer had perhaps a more realistic view of her failure to get her project produced.
"She wouldn't let people change her script. I told her when I lunched with her that she had to accept changes, but she wouldn't. In the end she saw herself as a misunderstood doyenne of the theatre and film world," he said
At one stage she became partners with Suzanne Cloutier, Peter Ustinov's ex-wife. The two women started a production company called Deux Montagnes, named for the lake on which Ms. Todd grew up in Senneville.
Five years ago she sold off her collection of 1837 memorabilia to help finance her project but nothing could bring it to life.
For the past 30 years she lived in the Bahamas. She did a great deal of travelling and spent several months a year in Montreal, always staying at the Ritz, having lunch with her friends in the garden when it was open.
She produced two plays for the local theatre in the Bahamas and in 1992 starred in Driving Miss Daisy at the Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts in Nassau when she 80. She was perfect for the part.
Rosanna Seaborn Todd, was born in Montreal on October 25, 1912. She died at Lyford Cay in the Bahamas on March 14, 2009. She was 96.