The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree!

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

Welcome to Week 39 and the challenge of getting a tree. But that's not all!

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily it's monday of week 39 that means we'll be saying week 40 in just seven days. Week 39. And we're marching closer towards the end of this year, but before we get to the end of the year, we get firmly into the holiday season. And as a result, certain things start to happen. You know, I can remember as a kid, certain things start to happen.

You know, I can remember as a kid in the 50s, one of the biggest deals once we got to Canada was the excitement surrounding going out and finding a tree, Christmas tree, and how things have changed in the 65, 70 years since then. Because I remember when we got our first tree, I am sure I can remember the signs out there at the kind of corner lot. Christmas trees, 50 cents, 75 cents, a dollar. That's not the case anymore.

And this year, particularly tight in some areas around Christmas trees, a lot of people want them to try and get away from the obvious pandemic issues that confront all of us and try to find some joy somewhere, and Christmas trees are part of that. So here in Stratford, no corner lots with trees for 50 cents. Ooh, they're much more expensive now. But they also at the same time do reflect the times we're in because everybody there, whether they're shoppers or sellers, are in masks and being very careful about distancing

the whole bit. And that's, you know, good to see. But beyond that, things are pretty straightforward here. We're lucky in Stratford. There are cases and there are more cases, a lot more cases than there were a month ago. But nevertheless, we're not in the middle of a big city. Like we're seeing confronted in Ontario and Quebec and the western provinces. So it's a difficult time. But we got our tree, picked it up on Friday, had it decorated by late Friday night, actually,

and it looks great. And it does, you know, make you realize this has been quite the year. And we're looking, as I think I said to you the other day, at a Christmas unlike all our Christmases past here in Stratford, where it's always been a big family celebration, it'll be a very quiet, small, immediate, inside thethe-bubble family celebration here, as it will be, I'm sure, in all of your homes as well, as we all sacrifice a little for the greater good. Now, as I said, things are pretty much normal in Stratford in terms of the purchase of a Christmas tree.

But I was talking to one of my daughters in Winnipeg over the weekend. And they had gone out, along with my grandson, to pick up a Christmas tree this weekend. Now, Manitoba is the whole province is in red, right? Their numbers have absolutely ballooned after a relatively quiet summer. Things have taken off, and arguably, some feel the government is far too slow to react, the provincial government.

But they're certainly reacting now. They've placed the whole province in a red zone, and that obviously has an impact on everything from shopping to restaurants to public transit, everything, including Christmas trees. So my daughter told me how they got their Christmas tree. It's very different than is happening anywhere else. Certainly very different from what's happening here in Stratford. You have to call in advance to order your tree,

or you have to order it online. And all you can do is basically say what size you want. You can't see it. You know, I want a six foot tall tree. Then you drive to the greenhouse, pull into a curbside stall. The building itself is closed. You can't get in it. You stay in your vehicle. You call and they bring your tree to you. Put it in your

trunk or the, you know, the box of your truck. And that's it. That's all. It's not like you go, oh no, I like that one over there. You get the one they bring out to you and put in your vehicle. And nobody seems to be complaining because they were sold out in this one particular place that my daughter went to. They were sold out by Friday night, gone. In fact, she had to call three places

before she could find one where they had it. You don't get to pick anything. You just get what you get. And in their case, I think they got a seven-foot balsam. They paid about 75 bucks for it. Now, there's a reason I'm telling you these Christmas tree stories. Because I love the story in England.

Okay? I think I mentioned a couple of weeks ago they were already running story in England. Okay? I think I mentioned a couple of weeks ago they were already running out in England and they have run out in many, many places. And obviously they're running out here too. And it's only the seventh day of December. Sorry, I'm sipping a little warm apple cider. I love apple cider, and I love it especially at this time of year, and I love it when it's warm. Hot, even. Anyway,

7th of December, we know, of course, what that date means, a day to live in infamy, Pearl Harbor. Yeah, December 7th, 1941. 79 years ago. And anyway, I was going to tell you about this setup they have in England for Christmas trees. You rent your Christmas tree. Well, this is one area where you do. And these guys have been incredibly successful. They started two years ago.

Bit of a struggle out of the gate. But they're now, like gung-ho, very successful operation. Here's how it works. And this is all to, you know, part of saving the planet. You rent a tree. It's potted, so it's still living, all right? And you can get a four-foot, five-foot, six-foot tree. It's potted, still living all right and you can get a four foot five foot six foot tree it's potted still living the deal is you have to water it every day you pay an upfront cost i think it's about 50 pounds so it's not cheap

and you put a place a deposit on it because you have to have it for three weeks. You have to water it every day. And when you return it, it's got to be a living tree, right? It's got to be fine. It's got to be okay. And then you get your deposit back. Here's the beauty of this deal. Not only do you save what they claim to be millions of trees every year that we're having, having to, you

know, go to the dump. And all that entailed on wasting energy to have them destroyed and et cetera, et cetera. But not only do you return the tree, you can book that same tree for next year because they've got it at their farm. They're looking after it. Thousands of trees in the pots. And so you can keep getting the same tree and watch it grow over time for a number of years to the point at which it's not movable anymore in a pot, and they will then have it planted in their forestation area.

So this sounds like a great idea. I mean, I've just read a couple of articles on it, and I'd want to see a little more in terms of how this is working out over a period of time. As I said, they just started two years ago, but it's pretty neat, right? We're going to rent our Christmas tree. And not only that, when we give it back, it's booked for us for next year, assuming we liked it.

So there you go. There's a little idea for you. Maybe it exists somewhere in Canada already. I haven't heard about it. If it is, drop me a line at the MansbridgePodcast at gmail.com, and I'll mention it. But if it isn't, it's an innovative idea. Somebody might want to consider it for the years ahead. Okay.

Now, I've got some other things to talk about. Not surprisingly. I should update you, first of all all on the book situation For some reason this weekend a lot of you Seem to have said hey I want a book plate And it's obviously a lot of you because I don't mention this anywhere else I mention it here on the podcast that if you write To the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com and you show me, because I need this, unfortunately, you show me that you in fact have purchased the book. You can

do that either by sending a picture of you in the book or send a receipt, copy of the receipt. I will send you a signed book plate, which you can then, you know, it's like a sticky. You can then put it inside your book. You can stick it in on one of the title pages, where I would sign if we were doing signings. But obviously with COVID, those aren't happening this year. But to cut to the chase here, there were lots and lots, dozens and dozens of them this weekend. And as I mentioned to you, I think on Friday, I was just about out of book plates. They're long gone now. But I have a stack of

letters from many of you have written in looking for a book plate. And once they send me, Simon and Schuster sends me some new book plates, I will send them off to you. And I'm sure that they'll get them to me in the next couple of days, so you should get your book plates before Christmas. All right? I appreciate it. I appreciate the support you've given this book.

I know that at least one of the big chains, Amazon, ran out of books. They were sold out of Extraordinary Canadians about a week ago, and they're still getting their act together in terms of processing a new shipment, which Simon & Schuster sent to them last week. but Indigo, Walmart, Costco, as well, obviously, as your local bookstores. Although, as we heard in the weekend special over the weekend, a number of local bookstores, your independent sellers, have run out of the book as well.

So that's good news in the sense it's selling, bad news in the sense it ain't selling if there's no books there. So hopefully that will get itself sorted out because it is, I think you would admit, those who've read it so far, it's a great Christmas present. Am I doing a good sales job here? Anyway, my co-author, Mark Bulgich, and I are very, obviously very pleased with how it's come and very grateful to those of you who have been purchasing and talking up the book and giving the book as a gift for this Christmas. All right, and the book is on the way to the weekend special winner.

And I'm thinking, you know, we've done two weeks of Tell Me Something Good. And I'm thinking of some kind of other contest for this Friday's weekend special. I haven't quite figured it out yet. But I will and probably tell you tomorrow. But something else that you can write in and tell me about that reflects kind of you, kind of reflects the year you've been having, reflects something about 2020. I don't want to go negative.

It's so easy to go negative right now. It's not only easy, it's, you know, appropriate in many ways, but it's also appropriate to try and lift spirits somehow, and I think we try to do that here on the bridge. Okay, a couple of things I said that I want to bring you up to speed on because it's been a brutal year, right? Health-wise, obviously, but in terms of the economy, it's been brutal. We know what's happened to some industries and some areas of the economy, like whether it's tourism, the travel industry, leisure industry. They've been hit extremely hard, and that involves a lot of jobs. So, of late, people are trying to look around and say, okay, if it's starting to come back or if we see light at the end of the tunnel, the old, there's light at the end of the tunnel, then it's the job of smart investors and analysts to be looking at, okay, where are we going to see that first in terms of a rebounding economy?

And there's an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal that gives us some indication of that. Investors are betting that coronavirus vaccines and stimulus programs will drive a boom in manufacturing activity as part of a global economic resurgence. We haven't seen that yet, right? We haven't seen it yet, or at least we haven't seen a major recovery yet, but there are starting to be hints and indications,

and that's what this article is about. And where they're seeing it is in the rise on prices of metal. Prices of copper have risen to their highest level in almost eight years. Eight years. Iron ore, the main ingredient of steel, is one of the best performing assets of 2020 Other raw materials such as aluminum and zinc have added roughly 15% since the end of September and 40% or more since mid-May Accelerating factory activity in the United States and in China in recent months has been a windfall for metals producers. Manufacturing has so far led the world economy out of the downturn,

outpacing service industries such as travel and leisure that are still seriously struggling under coronavirus restrictions. Okay, so that's coming out of the Wall Street Journal. And it's interesting to keep that in mind when you start looking at what's moving and why is it moving and where could those products be headed, you know, whether it's copper or iron ore, aluminum, zinc, right? Well, I'll tell you one area that they've been heading, which I think is interesting.

And that is in the fitness area. Now, I'm sure you've seen, because you see it on your television ads, because people are, that was another sip of the old warm apple cider. It was hot when this started. It's warm now. When the pandemic struck and people started to understand the serious nature of it

and how their lives were going to change, many of them started exercise programs that they either never done before or had never thought about doing before in the way they do it today. I mean, I remember back in April, I was telling you about walking around the garden, getting the 4,000, 6,000, whatever it may be, steps in a day.

Well, that's part of your very basic stuff. Well, the real serious exercise people go much deeper. They go into stuff that uses steel and aluminum and copper and various other things. They're going for the high-end exercise stuff. So listen to this from, this is also actually from the Wall Street Journal. The number of people in the United States who use a health and fitness app, okay, one of those apps you can download onto your phone, and there's lots of them in the health and fitness area, but the number of people in the U.S. who use a health and fitness app is expected to increase 27% this year to 87 million, according to a report from research firm eMarketer. Last year, that number grew by 10%, eMarketer said.

So who are the beneficiaries of this in terms of companies? Well, I suppose the end beneficiary is you, if you're using the apps if you're buying the products uh if you've put yourself on a really good exercise program or you don't need any help from an app or a product but clearly others like the products because you know one of the most heavily advertised ones is Peloton. Okay, Peloton. You know, whatever it is they're screaming when they're riding their bikes, their Peloton bikes, stationary bikes, all the fancy gear that comes with it,

and you can have personalized live instructors beamed into you by Wi-Fi. Peloton, a better-known home workout company, said better than some of the others, said its revenue more than tripled, more than tripled the $760 million in the September-ended quarter. Lululemon, Athletica Inc. acquired Mirror. You've seen that?

You probably have seen it on television, right? It looks like a mirror. I mean, it is a mirror. It's a mirror you put on your wall, and it calculates what you're doing in terms of your exercise program. And there's little numbers up here on the mirror screen telling you how many calories you burned or what have you. I've only noticed it in the last few weeks,

but I guess it's been around a little bit. Lululemon acquired Mirror, another fitness company, that streams classes. They do the same kind of thing. They'll stream a class right to your home for $500 million. So obviously it must be doing okay if Lululemon would pay $500 million to buy it back in June. Now, what we do know is at the same time as people are plowing money into equipment like this and doing their thing at home, whether it's walking in the garden and picking up steps

or walking around the block or whatever it may be. At the same time, many of those same people used to use the local gym. Not happening in many parts of the country. Downtown Toronto, they're all closed. Can't get in them. They were closed down over pandemic restrictions. 15% of fitness clubs and studios in the United States are shutting down permanently this year, according to the International Health, Racquet, and Sports Club Association, a trade group that reflects them.

Now, the latest one to get in the game along with, you know, the Pelotons and the Lululemons, et cetera, is a company called Obey. Here's what's interesting about them. I want you to know that I did a workout this morning. It wasn't long, about 20 minutes, but I finally started up again. I was doing pretty good for most of the spring and most of the summer, and then I got lazy. And not only did I get lazy, but I was probably eating a little more than I should, so I put on a few pounds.

I'm up to my pandemic weight. Okay, I'll work that now. Why, it's so easy to put it on, so hard to take it off. Anyway, Obey. Who's this Obey company? What's interesting about it? Well, Obey is a workout platform that offers live streamed and on demand health classes. And it's rolling out a

new feature. So it's kind of like the other ones. You know, you can either get it live streamed or on demand. Hook up to your Wi-Fi. But this is what it's also doing. It allows those who subscribe to it to exercise remotely with up to seven friends at once. So you put together a group of your pals, you know, whether it's yoga class or whatever it may be,

and you exercise together. You get all hooked up, I guess, like in a somewhat like a Zoom call, and everybody works out together. I guess that's kind of interesting. I can tell you if it works, you can be sure that, I mean, if it works in terms of interest, you can be sure that the Pelotons and the Lululemons will figure out a way to quickly incorporate it

into their system as well. So there you go, the workout game and how it fits into our pandemic life. Okay, I'm going to leave you on one thing, and it's actually a little more serious in nature. But I saw this one buried down deep in a kind of survey of different things that have come out in terms of studies. Just a minute, one more sip of the old apple cider here. That's good you know every day there's different studies coming out on different aspects of how we're dealing with this

this one comes out of korea and it was in the journal of korean medical science, it's quite involved, and I'm not going to go into detail on it, but you can pull it up by Googling the Journal of Korean Medical Science. But they were doing a study on something that I've been harping away at for months. I mean, I don't get it with the indoor dining, which still takes place in many areas, including this one, including here in Stratford. I'm not a fan. I'm a huge fan of takeout. As I said, we do it at least once a week.

A, it's good. B, it's supporting an industry that's struggling. So we do takeout, and I encourage others to do takeout. But going in and sitting in the restaurant, sorry, I'm not a fan of that idea. I've never been a fan of that idea. And when numbers started to spike in the late summer, I couldn't understand why Ontario and other provinces

were letting it happen. But it's still happening in parts. Not happening in downtown Toronto. They're locked up tight. It's happening here. Anyway, here's what the Journal of Korean Medical Science, they've released a report that shows, as far as I'm concerned, why indoor dining is still unsafe

and that airborne transmission matters. I'll try to boil it down into one or two sentences. They did studies in restaurants where indoor dining was going on. And they found that, for an example, case B infected case A, so in other words, two people, right? One of them was sitting 21 feet away from the other. So we're not talking six feet or two meters. We're talking the other side of the room or the other end of the room, 21 feet away. That person was infected in 15 minutes.

And the footage that was done for the study, once again, I'm just going through the highlights of this study. You can pick it up online and go through the medical data that was used to calculate all this. But the footage shows that there was no interaction between these two people. And those only in the line of the airflow got infected. 21 feet away. Confined space.

You know, crowded room, no masks. You know, no masks. They're eating. So, I don't know. You won't find me in a restaurant dining as long as this thing lasts. Okay. That kicks off week 39 of The Bridge, The Bridge Daily. A snapshot ahead for the week.

We're going to try to come up with some kind of gimmick for Friday, for the weekend special, where you could win a signed copy of Extraordinary Canadians. Did I tell you that it was, for the last three weeks anyway, the number one bestseller nonfiction Canadian.

Number one. Not bad, eh? Anyway, we try to come up with that for Friday. I haven't thought yet of what it might be. I'll try to have thought of something by tomorrow so you can start working on your entries. Wednesday, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce Anderson joins us again. That was a very successful podcast last week.

Won the week in terms of our week, our five podcasts last week. The week before, David Suzuki had won. Last week, the new podcast within a podcast, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth, topped our charts. So we haven't picked our topic yet for this week, but you know it'll be a good one. I'm thinking, too, of doing something this week on Afghanistan. And you're going, Afghanistan? Excuse me? No, I think it might be time to do something on Afghanistan. I'll tell you why if we do it. Anyway, other than that, I want to thank you for listening.

I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been the Bridge Daily, and you know that we will be back in 24 hours. Thank you.