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| The front, the back of my new card February 26, 2020 |
My new cards arrived eight days after I ordered them from VistaPrint (one of several companies who reinvented the printing business). I tell the story that only a few decades ago the cost of design, photography, typography, colour separation, film, printing, and trimming for a project such as this one would cost approximately $2,000.00 and delivery time might have been three to four weeks. VistaPrint did all of it (with my copy, typesetting and photography placed into their preset design) in a week and delivered it to my home for $35.00 total! And that's what happened to the Printing Business.
The Lithographing [printing] business I enjoyed from 1963 to 1998 was entirely different for most of these years. The materials and processes required craftsmanship to pull it together into a professional looking document; some craftspeople were better than others, their products looked and felt better. At Arthurs Jones Lithographing we hired, trained, developed, and encouraged superior craftsmanship. Our people experimented with new processes and products; we were ahead of the competition let's say. We sold our services as the best that money could buy - and there were customers who would pay a little more to get the best. With all of this in play we excelled and prospered as a printing company. It all changed with the advent of the Personal Computer (and the ersatz printing companies that followed).
Before and during the early stages of the "Mac Attack" we were a dominant supplier. For example, Annual Reports were a specialty for Arthurs Jones - we were the best, and to prove it one year we produced all five of Canada's Big Five Banks' Annual Reports. These projects were their flag ship documents beautifully completed with glorious photography and graphic excellence on fine papers throughout, and we did them one after the other with some overlapping as well. Our competition was unhappy, but also amazed. When one pauses to consider that if all five counterparts consulted and learned that Arthurs-Jones was everyone's printer I'm sure we may not have been awarded all five.
Now, with the PC on the desk of clients and designers, the craft we enjoyed was threatened by these users, and more importantly the desire to have something better gradually diminished in the eyes of the most important people in the process - the clients who paid for all of it. Slowly but surely their needs became, 'who and what can produce my work Faster, Cheaper and Better?' And the people did get their work faster and cheaper, but not necessarily better and they were satisfied. That argument was okay until the scientists, engineers and craftsmen put their heads together and developed additional computer systems that made printing equipment better than ever. Some equipment suppliers saw that opportunity and their improved equipment (at comparable costs) entered the market. Any printer that was ready for a new piece of machinery was promised better resolution along with the added speed and shorter makeready time. The other printers tried to compete using their older equipment - by lowering their prices. Within the printing business the price continued to fall - plummet is probably a better word to describe the issues facing everyone in the Industry. The closing sentence for me right here is to point you to the top of this page - printing was as good as it needed to be and it was cheaper, faster and therefore better.
In 1998 I was 57 years of age; Duncan McGregor, myself and others sold the business twice (once privately to Jannock Corporation in 1991 and once publicly on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 1994). I was not enjoying the work with our newest partners, or under current financial and business trends, and I had the funds to step back and look towards my life's next phase. I decided very quickly and left the Printing Industry on June 28, 1998. (Duncan had left before I did.) I sold my shares and invested my accrued fortune with a qualified Financial Advisor Craig Suttie who liked the Banks and an assortment of other excellent Diversified Securities and we promised to let it ride for at least twenty years. Also in July of 1998 after returning from Wimbledon with Kathy and Pat Jarvis I phoned York University to request enrolment in their first year English Literature course. The Admissions people required a two page letter outlining the events of my last 41 years (how I wish I could put my hands on that document), two weeks later I received a telephone call from Professor Koretsky who said, "May I speak to Gary McDonald?" and I said, "This is he." With that response my soon-to-be English Professor spoke tirelessly on the correctness and beauty of the English language. The entry into my next career has begun at InRefinement Inc. with blog entries here as well as another blog at
The Garfield Legacy Fund.
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| I fly often |
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| The latest Zulu Warrior in South Africa 2020 |
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| A Rhino friend of mine in SA |
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| Opera House in Abu Dhabi 2020 |
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| Grande Mosque Abu Dhabi 2020 |
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| Keeping the swing sharp in Dubai |
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| Azamara Pursuit in Antarctica 2019 |
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| Art sweeps the dust off civilization |
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| Greg and Rob Trinity College, Dublin 2018 |
Thank you for taking a look at these nine representative photographs. Hopefully they suggest that Travel, Photography, Golf, Reading, Writing, Art and other pursuits are all intended to add to my life’s experiences, and in so doing they contribute to my behaviour, temperament, education and demeanour in a positive way. All of which I like to call InRefinement Inc. (1998 to ....).
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