{"id":384679,"date":"2021-12-22T19:22:07","date_gmt":"2021-12-22T16:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-the-most-connected-man-in-toronto-came-back-from-death\/"},"modified":"2021-12-22T19:22:07","modified_gmt":"2021-12-22T16:22:07","slug":"how-the-most-connected-man-in-toronto-came-back-from-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-the-most-connected-man-in-toronto-came-back-from-death\/","title":{"rendered":"#How the most connected man in Toronto came back from death"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#How the most connected man in Toronto came back from death<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Bob Ramsay is one of Toronto\u2019s pre-eminent connectors, a man with 5,000 personal email addresses in his computer. The communications professional writes opinion pieces for media<\/a> outlets and speeches for CEOs, and runs a speakers\u2019 series<\/a> that regularly presents thinkers from Niall Ferguson to Malcolm Gladwell. Husband to prominent MAiD (medical assistance in dying) physician Jean Marmoreo, Ramsay is also author of the arresting memoir Love or Die Trying: How I Lost It All, Died, and Came Back for Love<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In it he writes about his Edmonton childhood, the cocaine addiction that destroyed his business and upended his life at age 40, how his relationship with Marmoreo began in soul-baring phone conversations from an Atlanta treatment centre, and their transformed life together afterwards\u2014mountain climbing, marathon running and circumnavigating Manhattan Island by kayak in 2019, when Ramsay was 70 and Marmoreo, 77. And also about the severe health setbacks he\u2019s had in the past decade, from dying, albeit briefly, during open-heart surgery to strokes and bladder cancer. Love or Die Trying<\/em> is a tale of (near) death, skillfully conveyed in an amusing way, and a love story, described much more earnestly, with a large cast of well-known Torontonians passing through both parts.<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n

There is a lot of your life in this book, but one question that pops up very early in it is, just how many times did you \u201cdie?\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> Several, several, but better is the way\u2014after I was saved from my bladder cancer\u2014that a great friend of mine put that question: how many times has that woman saved your life? For now, both Jean and I are hanging in, trip<\/a>le vaccinated and for the most part staying up north.<\/p>\n

\"Bob<\/p>\n

Bob and Jean enjoy a morning run, in Toronto, in 2012 (Photograph by Cole Garside)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

That first brush with death was a decade ago, so what was the genesis of writing your book now? <\/strong><\/p>\n

It did actually begin in 2011 after I had my open-heart surgery and died. I wanted to write a book about that, and I put together a proposal. Michael Levine, my agent, sent it around to all the publishers\u2014and I deal with publishers all the time, flying in all these writers through my speakers agency\u2014and every single one of them turned it down. I was, of course, deeply insulted. So, Michael talked me down off the ledge and eventually I got the story placed in\u00a0Maclean\u2019s.<\/em> Then all these other things happ<\/a>ened. And I thought I\u2019d like to give this book idea another go, this time not just the story of my heart, but the things since and the things before, the old days and the drugs. Then Michael said, \u201cI don\u2019t think it should be a death story, because people do death stories all the time, but anybody who\u2019s known you for 30 seconds will know of your love for Jean. Why don\u2019t you write a love story?\u201c<\/p>\n

RELATED:\u00a0Daughter, doctor, death broker: A MAiD provider in her mother\u2019s last days<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

How much did the story change in the writing, now that it\u2019s a death and <\/em>love story?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It did change because it became more ongoing. I wouldn\u2019t call it a late-life love story\u2014like a lot of people, Jean and I view old people as those who are five to 10 years older than we are. So call it a mid-life\/late-life love story that began 31, 32 years ago. Then during the writing came COVID, which changed everything\u2014the book didn\u2019t end where and how I thought it would. It kind of ends and then it ends again and it ends again and it ends again.<\/p>\n

Yes, very much an \u201cOh, and by the way\u201d book.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, yeah. I wanted to include the gigantic fight Jean and I had in the early days of the pandemic because it shows how very different we are. Jean is a MAiD doctor, and she believes in the system and that she\u2019s led a full life, and that when it\u2019s time to go, it\u2019s time to go. I mean, she was raised on a farm. That\u2019s why she thought, in the early pandemic, that if there was a shortage of ventilators and she got sick, she\u2019d refuse one\u2014it should go to someone younger. She has a whole different ethic from me. Mine is rules go out the window when your life is on the line, it\u2019s \u201cHoly crap, if I don\u2019t get to the front of the line, I\u2019m gonna die.\u201c So I said I have your POA [power of attorney] for health and I\u2019ll tell them to put you on a ventilator. So she fired me as POA and passed it on to her doctor. I felt pretty marginalized when my wife fired me.<\/p>\n

RELATED:\u00a0The doctor who took on death<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You devote a few pages to iconic Toronto designer Robert Burns, whose addictions led him to homelessness and early death. Was his fate a \u201cThere but for the grace of God\u2014and Jean\u201d experience for you? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh, Jesus, yes. The reason why I talk about him is I worshipped the guy. He was everything I wanted to be. Robert Burns and Heather Cooper and Jim Donahue took the graphic design world in Toronto in the late sixties and seventies and put it on the world stage. They were fantastically talented. And they led a kind of life I think very few other people did then. It was all about parties and interesting people and then it was about drugs. There were two periods of drugs in my life, the 1990-91 one I talk about in the book, which sent me to Atlanta, and one around 1980, when Robert and I started doing cocaine together. And it got very bad. I really still don\u2019t know the answer to why, but I just woke up one day and I said, I can\u2019t do this anymore. I stopped. Robert kept on going and he brought down his company, brought down his marriage, brought down the people around him and ended up living in the street. That\u2019s why I put him in the book: I stopped and he didn\u2019t, he died and I didn\u2019t, and I don\u2019t know why.<\/p>\n

Tell me about being a connector. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Looking back, I think I\u2019ve always been one. Years ago I had Malcolm Gladwell as a speaker after he had finished Tipping Point<\/em>, and he was among the first to popularize the word. And he called me a connector. Thing is, I got Gladwell to come because his pal, [Globe and Mail<\/em> journalist] Ian Brown, was my pal as well. At the launch event for my book, we had 600 people, and I was interviewed by Ian. \u201cSo you\u2019ve got four or five thousand people on your email list,\u201d he asked me. \u201cHow many are friends? \u201cAnd I said, 4,500 and I meant it absolutely. And you could see everybody\u2019s faces go, what the<\/em>\u2026 What my answer says to me is I work very hard on keeping up my friendships and deepening them, even when that gets to be a bit much for my friends and for me as well. My inner urge to put people together is insistent, based on the idea that since I like A and I like B, they\u2019re going to like each other. It\u2019s just who I am.
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