McClueless

What do Americans think of when they think of Canada? If the subject happens to come up in Canadian conversation — as it does these days every twenty or thirty seconds — I am reminded of a story that George Cohon, the founder of McDonald’s Canada and McDonald’s Russia, enjoyed telling about Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s Everything. It was a story that made George laugh when he told it, although this was true of many of his tales.

George had a serious, even solemn side. I have no doubt that he was a tough negotiator. But most of the stories he told for public consumption were stories that made him laugh while he was telling them. And even George, born in the United States, raised in north Chicago, thought it was funny that Ray knew so little about Canada.

The story’s central image — the moment of revelation around which George’s chuckling, incredulous delivery revolved — was Ray Kroc in the fall of 1968, staring from the windows of George’s Lincoln Continental, on their way into town from the Toronto airport.

The view that Kroc found so astonishing was of highways and high‑rises. Overpasses and train tracks. Traffic and hydro lines. There were suburbs and gas stations and billboards. There were offices and bridges and industrial malls. It was exactly what you’d expect to see on the way in from an international airport. But it came as a surprise to Kroc.

The backstory went like this. When George was a young lawyer in Chicago in the late 1960s, he represented a client who was interested in acquiring the McDonald’s franchise licence for Hawaii. The negotiations were extensive — not because the deal was unusually complicated but because Kroc didn’t like leaving things to chance.

Kroc had started as a travelling salesman of paper cups and, eventually, milkshake makers. He was already a rich man by the mid-1960s. And he had every intention of getting richer. The growth of an empire was under way, and he wasn’t afraid of racking up mileage. He met with George and George’s client in Illinois, in California, and in Hawaii.

As a visionary (albeit of fast-food capitalism), Kroc was not always what you might call logical. He trusted his intuition — starting with his hunch that the McDonald brothers’ walk‑up hamburger and fries stand in San Bernardino, California, might be a franchise idea with some legs. He did okay on that one.

His reasoning was sometimes obscure. His decisions were frequently unpredictable. But you couldn’t argue with his success.

He had his own way of doing things. “Tell me about it,” said George, who had the unpleasant task of breaking the news to his client: At the eleventh hour of negotiations, Kroc had decided to sell those Hawaii rights to somebody else. A spur-of-the-moment thing. Somebody he met on a flight to somewhere. But that was Ray Kroc.

He offered George’s client eastern Canada. Unfortunately, eastern Canada wasn’t exactly what George’s client had in mind. His wife liked beaches. According to George, it was Kroc who then suggested that George acquire the eastern Canada licence himself: “You don’t want to do this”— being a lawyer —“all your life.” George was impressed that Kroc had read him so accurately. The challenge was going to be coming up with the $70,000 and moving his wife and two boys to Toronto. Oh, and by the way, eastern Canada meant from Manitoba to Newfoundland and Labrador.

George wasn’t somebody who let important moments pass without ceremony, and the opening of the first McDonald’s in eastern Canada (London, Ontario, November 1968) was marked with great fanfare. Kroc had flown up to help cut the ribbon at 520 Oxford Street West and shake hands and say a few words to the press. All of which he did with practised aplomb, all the while in a state of shock because Canada was not what he’d been picturing.

What had he expected? It’s an interesting question, and I don’t think the obvious punchline of an answer (polar bears, dogsleds) is correct. He was an experienced businessman — too wise in the ways of the world to give so predictable a cliché much credibility. Moreover, he had too much skin in this burger-and-fries game to be cavalier about any new McDonald’s territory. He made it his business to know his business. So it’s not that Kroc was incorrectly picturing blizzards and Quonset huts. Truth to tell, he was picturing nothing.

Canadians make the mistake of thinking Americans must have some vague, approximate idea of what the country to their immediate north is. They know that Americans might not be able to find Saskatoon or even Montreal on a standard map. They might not know what the notwithstanding clause is. They may not know any of the words to “Barrett’s Privateers.” But surely they must picture something. They must have some notion — however inaccurate, however out of date — in mind. But that’s where we go wrong.

George’s story about Ray Kroc’s visit to Canada concluded at a celebratory dinner at a well-known Toronto restaurant after the opening day festivities. There were toasts and speeches and jokes and ovations, and eventually, well into the noisy, happy evening, Ray stood to speak. The room fell silent. He congratulated George and his team. He said how impressed he was with everything he’d seen. He thanked everyone for their gracious hospitality. And then, in front of George’s family, colleagues, and friends, he offered George $1 million to buy the licence back.

George’s father (of a generation for whom a million dollars was a million dollars) was heard to gasp, “Is he serious?” And he was. Kroc had the signed cheque in his pocket.

George turned Ray Kroc down. Of course. Kroc must have known he would. There was a lot more than $1 million in them thar hills. Anybody could see that — anybody with any familiarity with Canada. And that, for me, was the point of George’s story — one that always made him laugh when he told it: zero familiarity.

There will be exceptions, of course. There are Americans who know more about Canada than Canadians do. But, as a rule of thumb, useful in negotiations with armed border guards, invading Marines, visiting billionaires, or the person on the next sun cot at the Breakers: Assume total blankness. Possibly affectionate, possibly hostile, but blank all the same. Think of any American you encounter as if it’s Ray Kroc on the way in from the airport. You’ll be right more than you’ll be wrong.