On your marks, get set, pay!

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 5:23 PM - 13 Comments

The entire time I lived in Montreal, I observed a simple but sacred rule: When the F1′s in town, I’m not. It wasn’t the race itself that made me flee to Quebec City or to a campground in Charlevoix; it was the people who attended the thing—and, more specifically, their compulsion to take over the city with their Merit Badges of Midlife Crisis. Needless to say, I didn’t mourn the F1′s disappearance from Montreal’s summer calendar.

Now, as if the F1, with its boorish fans and its creepy executives, could get any more obnoxious, a report in yesterday’s La Presse says it’s angling for a sweetheart deal from the federal government to help cushion its return to Montreal. Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One’s head honcho, has already secured a cool $75 million (over five years) from the provincial and municipal governments, but he’s now after written assurances from Revenue Canada he won’t have to pay any income tax on the cash. Ecclestone cryptically laid his cards out on the table last week, saying, “When I come back from Japan next week, I’m going to need final answers to all of our questions. If I don’t have them, there won’t be a grand prix in Montreal.”

So, if I’ve got this right, the billionaire owner of a racing franchise that appeals to showy millionaires is threatening Ottawa in order to avoid paying taxes on allocations from cash-strapped local governments. (Meanwhile, students pay taxes on scholarships. Go figure.) I’m trying to suppress my inner class warrior here—I really am. But I’ll be damned if I can understand why anyone wants this race badly enough they’re willing to bend over to make it happen.

Philip Ronald Morden 1976-2009

By Ken MacQueen - Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 6 Comments

Philip Ronald Morden was born June 30, 1976, in Hamilton and grew up in the tight-knit suburb of Ancaster. He was the second child of Judy Morden, an office administrator at the school board, and her husband, Glen, who worked in construction. Philip was close to his older sister, Andrea, who “mothered him as her own,” as Judy puts it. Family and friends describe him as charismatic, with boundless curiosity for the inner workings of everything, be they machines, economics or people. Judy recalls a trip to Walt Disney World where the site’s famous roller coaster fired their young son’s imagination. “Philip was more interested in how they built Space Mountain than the ride itself,” she says. Philip and his dad were often bent over bicycles or cars. “I’d let him take things apart and then help him put them together,” says Glen. “Just so he had an understanding of it.”

He was a natural athlete, always eager to push the limit in any sport he embraced, from snowboarding to hockey to skateboarding, says Josh Doan, a childhood friend. “He didn’t really have any fears trying the newest trick on a skateboard or a snowboard,” says Josh, now head golf pro at the nearby Glen Abbey Golf Club. “I was always envious of that. He would push me definitely to do what he could do, to just take it over that edge.” Philip did not share Josh’s passion for golf, but when the two teens worked as “backshop boys” at Ancaster’s Heron Point Golf Course, Philip added excitement to the game by overriding the speed governor on the gas-powered carts. “He was a bit mischievous,” says Josh. “He made those golf carts go really fast.” Continue…