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Back in Grade 4, whenever a whiny student complained “That’s not fair!”, my teacher, the original Mr. D., would always snap back: “Life’s not fair!” He was not being rude or disgruntled; he was genuinely preparing us for the real world and the inevitable disappointments we all face. Not that we shouldn’t strive for fairness, but resiliency is a crucial characteristic Mr. D. wanted to instil.
Maybe he was getting us ready for 2020, a year in which so many of us wish we could just hide under a pile of coats. COVID-19 has created some winners (see Jeff Bezos) but many, many losers who are left holding the bag. For 20 years I have been managing my family business, which I’ve bought into, a conference centre in downtown Toronto called Vantage Venues. Our business model is based on leasing commercial office space that we have repurposed for corporate meetings and events — which, if I say so myself, we are exceptional at executing. It is a high overhead business and because of COVID, sales have fallen about 99 per cent.