Somewhere between those observations are found the five heirs of the Wal-Mart fortune, whose collective net worth is equal to about 40 per cent of all private wealth in America; and the Occupy movement, which did the world the noble service of highlighting the growing gap between rich and poor – in affluent and destitute regions alike. The logical outcome of that chronic unfairness is an uprising against plutocracy that will harm us all. (The fall of the insensitive Romanovs was followed by 73 years of Soviet oppression.)
I hope the annual ranking of the country’s hundred richest people, conducted by Canadian Business magazine (CB), which released its latest “richies” edition Friday, will not add to ill feelings directed at the ultra-rich.
I’m not here to defend plutocrats, exactly. Neither, I think, are the editors of CB, who write that their Top 100 “keep getting fabulously, obscenely, gloriously richer.” I don’t know any fans of “obscene” wealth, which suggests leaching on others and trying to take all of one’s winnings to the grave.
Yet it’s true that Canada did and still does lack sufficient personal wealth. An unprecedented number of Canadians are in over their heads with personal debt. Hence there is a need for plutocrats to step up and help.
And what might strike many as a surprisingly large number of them do.
The magnificent High Line in Manhattan, transformed from a rusted-out eyesore of an elevated freight rail line into the world’s only elevated park of its kind, was sparked by grassroots activism but largely paid for by corporate donors.
The same applies to Millennium Park on Chicago’s renowned “front lawn” abutting Lake Michigan, whose mesmerizing original art installations and concert spaces were financed by corporate interests.
Pittsburgh should have met Detroit’s sad fate. But such was the legacy of Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon and other benevolent local philanthropists that when Pittsburgh ceased to be steelmaker to the world, it was able to reinvent itself around the museums, art galleries, universities and other public amenities that the plutocrats had built.
Carnegie famously gave away his entire fortune on his theory that “Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.”
And what of the GTA’s relationship with its super-rich? It’s often said that Canada, in contrast with the U.S., has traditionally looked to government for public amenities.
Truth is, despite the relative paucity of ultra-wealthy people in our young nation’s history, our plutocrats have with growing ambition parted with large personal sums to better their communities and the country.
Sir Joseph Flavelle, biggest pork processor in the British Commonwealth (hence Toronto’s fading sobriquet “Hogtown”), was chief benefactor of a vastly upgraded Toronto General Hospital, where Peter Munk later financed a world-class cardiac centre.
Toronto waited decades for a proper opera house until Rosalie Wise and Isadore Sharp largely funded the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, after their donations had already upgraded what is now OCAD University. The Rogers family funded both the new business school and the media-studies centre at Ryerson, a campus the family seems to own, though paterfamilias Ted Rogers was a U of T grad.
The Reichmann family at its height was able to finance scores of Talmudic study centres at home and abroad in addition to its out-sized donations to Gentile causes such as the Sunnybrook Medical Health Centre. David Thomson commissioned Frank Gehry’s marvelous rehabilitation of the Art Gallery of Ontario.
We owe one of the GTA’s loveliest recital halls to the Weston family of Loblaws renown, a facility that recalls the Massey family’s gift of Massey Hall.
Charity, no matter how expansive, does not excuse even one breach of good character. I cannot visit the Carnegie library around the corner from my West End home – one of 1,100 libraries Carnegie funded across North America – without mixed feelings arising from the massacre of striking workers at his Homestead mine.
We need the wealthy to fund community playhouses and other non-spectacular facilities, as the late Peter Bronfman did in making possible Jessie’s Centre for Teenagers, a Parliament Street shelter for pregnant teens. And, emulating the longstanding practice in cities like Pittsburgh and Minneapolis, we need GTA tycoons to join the conversation on improving sub-standard aspects of urban life.
That said, bring on the billionaires and their largesse. The reason they’re rich isn’t the reason so many of the 99 per cent of us are struggling.
That abomination owes chiefly to insensitive governments. The plutocrats have not raised their voices in outrage over that dangerous inequality. This is where the richest among us can make their greatest contribution.
Source: thestar.com
Author: David Olive
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