The Endgame

Newsletter #96 - The march of time

Toronto, February 9, 2025

The march of time

In an earlier Endgame I poked away at the concept of time: “Some people say that time speeds up as you age. A languid day in youth is a momentary flash in senescence. But how could that be? Time is time.” (I mentioned Einstein’s 1905 Special Theory of Relativity, not something to be done lightly.)

Einstein aside, how do most of us measure time? With a watch. Almost everybody wears one. Most old people have had many watches. Someone’s watch-wearing history speaks to his life. The evolution of watches tells us something about the development of society (history through things – “a way of learning about history by examining objects and artifacts”).

I must have had a cheap watch or two as a boy and young man but I can’t remember them (or much else about those years). The first watch I do recall was a gold Baume & Mercier that I bought in Montreal in 1971 for a couple of hundred dollars. A friend of mine had one and when I admired it he lowered his voice and said he had an acquaintance who could give me a good price for a similar watch if I paid cash and didn’t ask too many questions. He scribbled the address on a scrap of paper. I went to Old Montreal, to the third floor of a decrepit office building, and bought the watch through a grimy window opening out onto the corridor. I think the point of that Baume & Mercier was to show that, at last, I had a paying job (teaching at McGill) and could afford (barely) to buy stuff. It was an economic celebration.

Fifteen years later I had left university life and was working on Bay Street (a metonym for Canadian capitalism) making what is sometimes called “real money.” I retired the Baume & Mercier—it was too discrete and fragile anyway—and bought a gold Mont Blanc. It was a chunky, flashy watch. It made a statement. It was a Bay Street watch. (Mont Blanc watches can make other kinds of statements: Twenty-five years ago I gave one to Cynnie as an engagement present.)

In 2000, I left Bay Street to lead what turned out to be an idle and enjoyable life. One summer in that life my wife and I were celebrating our wedding anniversary by spending a few days in Bear River, a small town in Nova Scotia (I published an essay in The Globe and Mail about our visit—the residents of the town weren’t too happy with what I wrote.) In Bear River, as an anniversary present, Cynnie gave me a simple and handsome Momentum watch with an easy-to-read large dial and big numbers marking the hours. The Momentum was now my watch of choice. It told of a time of happiness, which continues to this day.

Then, in an explosion of modernity, came the Apple watch. I’m wearing one at the moment. It connects to my iPhone. It can take an EKG and send it to my cardiologist. It monitors my sleep patterns. It checks the Dow Jones. It is almost irresistible. Meet the devil. “So if you meet me, have some courtesy... Have some sympathy, and some taste... Or I'll lay your soul to waste...” (The Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil)

In late-stage rebellion I am fighting back, trying to save my soul from being wasted. More and more I put my Apple watch aside and instead wear an old and inconspicuous Vulcain Grand Prix. My mother gave my father this watch about 60 years ago. She started wearing it after he died in 1999. I put it on when she died in 2014. Perhaps Gabrielle, my daughter, will wear it after me.

Which goes to show, there’s more to a watch than telling time.

*****

Some reader comments on Newsletter #95 (“Nothing to see here”)

A gentle rebuke from esteemed Canadian writer Mark Abley: “[F]or once I can’t agree with you. I think the idea of being a good ancestor is a profound one: it brings to light a sense of responsibility to the unborn, a conviction that we should not continue to ruin the planet for short-term gain. By imagining the needs of children in the future—clean water and air and a habitable climate, for instance—we are less likely to fall prey to selfishness and greed in the present. To be a good ancestor is an act of imagination. (Few adjectives, no hortatory verbs.)”

Another reader was likewise not impressed by my treatment of the phrase “be a good ancestor”: “While the search results do not definitively attribute the original coining of the phrase ‘be a good ancestor’ to a single person, Jonas Salk is prominently associated with a similar quote. Salk, the founder of the Salk Institute, famously stated, ‘Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors,’ which closely mirrors the phrase in question. The concept has since been popularized through various works, including the children's book Be A Good Ancestor by Leona and Gabrielle Prince, which explores Indigenous teachings about connection to environment and community. The book further develops the philosophical idea of being mindful of one's impact on future generations. Roman Krznaric, a public philosopher, has also written extensively about long-term thinking and being a good ancestor in his book The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World, though he does not appear to have originated the specific phrase.”

But readers did seem to like the concept of an “ideas rabbit”: “Your reflections on being an ‘ideas rabbit’ brought to mind Isaiah Berlin’s well-known essay ‘The Hedgehog and the Fox.’ This allows me then to reference one of my favourite anecdotes—when Winston and Clementine mixed up Isaiah Berlin and Irving Berlin.”

And from another: “An ideas rabbit—there’s a helpful image.”

From Victoria, B.C.: “To paraphrase the 1960s comic legend R. Crumb, we all hope you, like your rabbit, continue to just ‘keep on hopping.’”

The last word goes to the irrepressible David Wolinsky: “Searching for the ‘Big Idea’ is something that should be left for youngsters. Nowadays when I say ‘I have a good idea’ it generally involves stopping at Five Guys for a burger, fries, and milkshake, or how I’m going to explain to my doctor why my blood sugar has gone up without mentioning Five Guys. If you check the paperwork, you’ll see that once you turn 80, big ideas are no longer required.”