The ballad of Conrad Black.

• Author: Atkins, Michael
• Position: President's Note

Somewhere out there is a book called Why Smart People Do Dumb Things. I remember trying to skim it in a bookstore many years ago after a particularly annoying run of dumb decisions. Of course, I flattered myself by thinking the book might have some modest application to myself. I didn't buy it.

It wasn't a book I really wanted to have in my bookcase, but like a headline in a newspaper, it caught my attention.

Thinking of headlines, it would be hard to find a better archetype for this book than Conrad Black. He tops the scale for smart and dumb. Who do you know who squandered away a billion-dollar international publishing company the same week he launched a brilliant international best seller on the life and times of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The answer is no one.

For the record, Conrad used to own most of the daily newspapers in Northern Ontario, and still owns a piece of the Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal, which he holds through the controversial Horizon Publishing Company. It is unlikely he will own it for long.

Few of us in these parts have met Conrad. I doubt he ever made it north of Lake Muskoka where he and his brother had a cottage for many years. He certainly wouldn't have visited any of his papers up here - not worth his time. He left all that to David Radler, his sidekick who is also smart and dumb, but in a very different way.

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David did show up at least once on his private jet to harass employees of the Sudbury Star to put us (our community newspaper in Sudbury) out of business, but generally he would call from Chicago where he had bigger fish to fry.

Why would a man, desperate for the attention of the chattering classes, a man who would give up his citizenship to be called a Lord in someone else's country throw it all away?

I went back to his well-written and entertaining autobiography of a decade ago, for a clue.

Conrad was thrown out of a variety of schools in his time. His most spectacular prank was to steal both the academic records and most of the final exams at Upper Canada College. He says most candidly "As I had already, for my own curiosity and amusement, taken a copy of the academic records of every student in the upper school, I could easily identify those who would be prepared to pay most dearly for them. A brisk, high-margin commerce ensued (a margin of 100 per cent, as I had no cost of sales).

Basically, Conrad is a diamond thief. Always has been...