The Commerce Times

In 2010, the Ted Rogers School
of Management and the Journalism
school will be welcoming acclaimed
Canadian political and
business writer Peter C. Newman
as a distinguished visiting professor.
Newman has sold over two
million copies of his twenty-two
books, and performed as Editor in
Chief of Maclean’s magazine and
the Toronto Star. He is currently
working on four more books.
Throughout his career as a journalist,
Newman became famous for
creating and commenting on the
Canadian Establishment, stating
that Canada isn’t run by politics,
but by the few elite business owners
and CEOs of Canada’s rich
families. “I wasn’t a radical attacking
the system, I was a reformer
trying to make the system better,”
he said regarding his writing.
Newman’s discussions will outline
how business success is becoming
more entrepreneurial as
opposed to owners inheriting a
business from their parents. “I’m
hoping to connect with students
through some of the anecdotes
and things that happened to me,
because I know those things best,
to get them interested,” he said.
How long have you been based
in Toronto, and why this city?
I’ll have to give you a little history.
We came to Canada in 1939
I am very excited
about the new generation
because they are
inventing themselves
and new businesses
Interview by Phoenix Tarampi
The new Canadian Establishment
From Ottawa to Bay Street, journalist Peter C. Newman brings his stories and ideas to the Ted Rogers School
and we lived on a farm near Burlington,
and none of us spoke a
word of English. But my father
was way ahead of his time, and he
realized that as long as I’m living
at home speaking Czech and German,
I would never speak English.
So he sent me to Upper Canada
College. I learned English in about
six weeks, [because other] boys in
their teens are the best teachers,
you want to stop [being teased all
the time.]
For example, as a boarder you
eat in all the time, and somebody
asked me, “Are you still hungry?”
And I said, “No I’m quite fed up,”
which, grammatically made sense,
but that’s the kind of mistakes I
made. You do that once and the
next time you say it right. So I
learned English quite fast.
So Toronto became the place to
be. My family sold the farm and
moved to Toronto, and I then
went to University of Toronto for
a BA and MBA, and then got my
first job at the National Post and
later became the Editor in Chief
of the Toronto Star.
When you speak to the Ryerson
business and journalism
schools, do you think that the
future of the publication process
and business will come into
your talks?
Sure. And on the business side,
I’m the guy that invented the “Canadian
Establishment” and I did
seven books on the Canadian Establishment
as the people who run
the country. You know, politicians
think they run the country but I
think the Establishment – any
by the Establishment I mean the
hundred or so top CEO’s and accountants
and lawyers – runs the
businesses and they run us [consumers].
The news there that I’m
going to be talking about to the
business school is that the Establishment
is dead, or dying. In the
sense that, [people aren’t important]
just because your father was
[a part of the Establishment], or
because you belong to a club or
went to Upper Canada College,
all that matters now is what your
quarterly earnings are. So we are
now leaving the age of the Establishment
and entering the age of
meritocracy, where what you’ve
done is what matters, not who you
are. And that’s a huge shift because
it’s going to be a totally different
kind of person coming in. [Essentially],
the old Establishment was
a club, and the new Establishment
is a network. And that’s going to
the theme.
You’ve spent your career as
a journalist and a figure in Canadian
journalism under the
names Peter Newman and Peter
C. Newman, but how do you
want to be perceived by Ryerson
students and faculty? How
do you want people here to see
you?
Well, I have a split personality
at Ryerson, I come as a journalist
or I come as a business expert. As
a writer I want to be perceived as
someone who brought a new perception
to Canadian journalism,
which is to write about feelings
too. The quote I use – which is often
taken out of context – is “making
facts dance.” By that I don’t
mean to distort facts, but to make
them interesting. You’re not going
to devote a lot of time to reading
a book or magazine or newspaper
unless it gives you something back.
It could give you entertainment or
information, or like in my case, it
can be written in a way that can
make it interesting. I have a sense
of audience, to keep the audience
entertained, and that’s what I
bring to the journalism [students],
to get them to do that, because it
works. People give you their time
because they think it’s worth it.
And on the business side, again I
make it interesting. Instead of saying
they’re all just a bunch of guys
trying to make a lot of money, I
turn them into a group, the Establishment,
which was true. I drew
wonderful anecdotes and stories
about them. And now, they’re even
more interesting because they’re
everybody. You look at the Globe
[and Mail] business section, and
the [featured people] are not
names that anybody knows. There
was a time when you would make
the connections with big families.
But in fact the big families will be
gone, like the Eaton’s, those dynasties
have vanished. We can survive
in the 21st century if we’re going
to be very entrepreneurial because
these guys are all going to make
their own way as opposed to inheriting
from another generation.
Do you ever get questions
from students challenging
things that you have written?
Do you see traits in them, as
young leaders and entrepreneurs,
that you have also seen
in the business world that you
have reported on?
Yeah, I am very excited about
the new generation, because they
are inventing themselves and new
businesses. They are using intuition;
you can’t be taught how to
survive in the business world. You
have to get out there and do it.
You can be taught certain things
about how to do business and
some accounting rules, but in the
end it’s your intuition against 20
other guys who are trying to get
the same contract, and so it makes
it a fight. I’m going to have to
do a new book on the Establishment
soon, because there’s always
an Establishment. It just means
that making it now means quarterly
earnings instead of having a
father who owns the company or
marrying somebody, or all of these
dining clubs. None of that means
anything.
How do you feel about the
trends that came up recently
about buying Canadian and
sticking “north of the border”
about how we run our businesses
and how we purchase, and being
conscious about this kind of
thing? Do you think it’s going to
be successful?
This is where I depart from most
people. Most people say it doesn’t
matter anymore that something’s
Canadian, but I think it does. I
think it’s a question of values. I’m
not anti-American, I think they’re
our best friends whether we like
it or not, but I also want there to
be the Canadian value content,
because we are different. A New
Yorker isn’t the same as a Torontonian.
They have a different set of
ethics and values and priorities. I
like to think that we can preserve
a Canadian way of doing things.
I’ll get an argument, but I think it
may be a generational thing, but I
still feel strongly about it.
Is there anything that you
want students to know about
you before meeting you?
Well, I deliberately asked [the
Ted Rogers School] to give me
an office. Most visiting professors
don’t have offices, and I want to
be there a day a month for people
to come and see me, to talk about
anything. I want to be accessible
as opposed to just coming in and
having a speech.