Dear Douglas,
I have been a cautious admirer of your work since my neighbour Celia’s martini mixer last June. She went on about you being such a fab “artiiste”, as she puts it, and the only authentic Canadian “thinker”. This last gusher caught my attention as I’ve never heard of a professional thinker – but good for you, dahrling.
Anyhoo, I read your little Pessimist piece in the Globe last Saturday. You really do like to flash your cortex around, don’t you? Très avant-garde, mon cher.
But I digress. The issue I wish to raise is point number 6:
“Remember travel agents? Remember how they just kind of vanished one day?
That's where all the other jobs that once made us middle-class are going – to that same, magical, class-killing, job-sucking wormhole into which travel-agency jobs vanished, never to return.”
Perhaps you were put on formula before being quite ready to give up the teat, but being cranky is no excuse for being misinformed. My dear fellow, you really do need to check your facts before writing such things. Travel agents are alive and well and living in your city. In fact, many are making more money now than they did before the interneapocalypse (you’re not the only one who can make up words).
There is life beyond ‘the Google’. Many lesser beings than yourself prefer to pay a professional $50 to organize their vacation than spend all night being tossed around the web’s tangle of deals. In your case, I would recommend hiring an experienced pro who can accommodate that over-sized temporal lobe – or should I say hippocampus – of yours.
More importantly, without the love and admiration of thousands of warm blooded travel agents, Generation Ivanna would cease to exist. And, lord knows, that would be a tragedy.
Pessimistically yours,
Ivanna Gabbalot
