Good morning. If you have the money, why train to conduct a professional orchestra or become an astronaut when you can just buy the privilege of doing so? Welcome to Rich Guy Fantasy Camp, where Jeff Bezos and wealthy men like him live in their own worlds. More on that below, along with the last chapter in the Hockey Canada trial and updates on the ground in Gaza. But first:
Today’s headlines
- The arrests of alleged extremists in Quebec City began with a tip from CSIS. Recently unsealed police affidavits outline the story
- The world’s leading authority on food crises said famine is occurring in Gaza City with about a quarter of the population facing catastrophic levels of hunger.
- Prime Minister Mark Carney discussed tariffs, security and Ukraine with Donald Trump over the phone
Illustration by Drew Shannon
Life
DIY Rich Guy Fantasy Camp
Hi, I’m Shannon Proudfoot, a feature writer in The Globe and Mail’s Ottawa bureau.
In late June, when I first read my colleague Josh O’Kane’s story about Mandle Cheung, the wealthy entrepreneur who hired out the Toronto Symphony Orchestra so he could play conductor for a night, my head almost exploded with fascinating, maddening, messy and very human questions.
Who was this man? Why did he want this? Why did he think he should get to have it? How did he see the professional musicians who were angry that they’d been made to play house with him?
Does being rich simply make the world seem like your toy box? If you can buy your way into a rarified experience most people only dream about, what does that mean for you, for the elite people who earned their way there, for the rest of us?
The situation made me immediately think of the Titan submersible disaster of the summer of 2023 – a morality play for the tech-bro era, if ever there was one. It also called to mind people paying guiding outfits to help them summit Mount Everest, and private space travel offering Katy Perry the opportunity to wax philosophical about seeing our earth from afar (look, I had to watch this and I refuse to suffer alone, so now you do, too).
Illustration by Drew Shannon
Whatever your most cherished daydream was when you were in Grade 4, chances are someone very wealthy can purchase that experience for themselves, even if they fall well short of the talent or excellence or winnowing competition that would normally get a person there.
I spoke to Will Cockrell, an author who begins his book Everest, Inc. with some startling accounting about the rarity of a certain kind of towering achievement. With any of these rarefied experiences, he believes rather than questioning who “belongs” the better question is, “Who is it hurting?”
I would argue that when our shared daydreams – the great big things in the world that we all worship like children, still – become plunderable by a lucky few, the answer to that question is: all of us.
But I have to say, Cheung, the amateur conductor, is one of the most interesting interview subjects I’ve ever spoken to.
There’s a usual script for a thing like this: claim the moral high ground, insist you’re only doing this to shine a spotlight on a worthy cause, perform not just innocence, but virtue.
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra performing Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in C Minor with amateur conductor Mandle Cheung.Allan Cabral/Supplied
Cheung did none of that. He just said he loves classical music, and he had the means to do this, so he did, and it was wonderful.
His candour was refreshing and also confounding: Even given all the research suggesting that the wealthy see the world and their place in it differently than the rest of us, does this all boil down to, “If you could, you would, and I can, so I did”?
I expect we’ll see more and more of this sort of thing. In a moment when life is for consumption and everyone is an influencer waiting to be discovered, what’s a bigger cultural or financial flex than living out a daydream and then floating back down to earth to tell the rest of us how it changed you?
I still find this whole phenomenon endlessly fascinating and weirdly human, but there’s also something a little heartbreaking under the surface there, for all of us.
The Shot
‘To leave Gaza City or not isn’t an easy decision to make.’
Palestinian women examine the destruction after Israeli military strikes in a tent camp for displaced people near Al-Aqsa Hospital, in Deir al-Balah, on Aug. 21.Jehad Alshrafi/The Associated Press
The Israeli military maintained its pressure on Gaza City with heavy bombardments a day after it called up 60,000 reservists, signalling that the government was pressing ahead with plans to seize the enclave’s largest city despite international condemnation.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel will begin immediate negotiations for the release of all hostages held in Gaza and an end to the nearly two-year-old war on terms acceptable to Israel.
Also, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification formally declared a famine is taking place in Gaza City on Friday. This is the first time the IPC has done so in the Middle East and said the famine is likely to spread across the territory by the end of next month without a ceasefire and lifting aid restrictions.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: The Crown has decided not to appeal the verdict in the Hockey Canada sexual-assault trial.
Abroad: Uganda becomes the latest African country to accept Trump’s deportees.
Fever: Internal documents show how Alberta’s measles outbreak began to spiral out of control.
Fore: Aphrodite Deng is the talk of the tournament at the LPGA Canadian Women’s Open.
Coming up: Air Canada’s flight attendants will have 10 days beginning on Wednesday to vote on the tentative agreement reached after a three-day strike last weekend.
Going back: A Ukrainian man suspected in the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline blasts has been arrested in Italy.