The same can be said of summer time travel, although your chances of getting meetings when the weather is nice is highest with existing relationships.  

Further about Montreal, in speaking with a partner from a local hedge fund contact, I learned my fathers parents did not have it easy post immigrating from Northern Ireland. Being Irish and a Protestant made it harder to be accepted than the Irish Catholics was how the story about 1940’s in Quebec was told to me. Could be a reason why the grandparents left for Toronto, which I’m happy about for obvious reasons.  

Getting around downtown on the Metro also became easy post realization that its an East West version of the 2 main lines of hometown Toronto’s subway.  

As far as getting in front of allocators goes, the work from home on Mondays and Fridays trend appears to be cemented in the modern work life balance. It makes getting around in a rental car way easier to see the few who actually do make it in the office on these bookend weekdays.  

Now onto Toronto … The amount of condo towers downtown is nuts, were there was a wall of billboards on the Gardiner westbound is now a wall of buildings housing some of the new Canadian making up the now 41 Million national population. If you put any of these 80+ story places in any other city outside the GTA, they would be tallest building by far. Some have said the GTA buildout is similar to Chicago in 1950’s 

As we all know as both allocators or solution providers…….but sometimes need a reminder………get out and see people. You’ll get more done in a 30 min meeting than a month worth of emails and phone calls. As Yogi Berra ‘You can observe a lot by watching.’ 

On the business front, getting dealer approvals is as challenging as ever, and the movement in advised portfolios towards more alternative strategies (via liquid alts) and more alternative assets (private equity, credit or real assets) is growing at a steady pace albeit slower than we solution providers desire.

To me, the good news is that the word “alternatives” is commonly accepted now in a conversation. Anecdotally, we are years away from going mainstream with 1/3 of securities licensed allocators having some exposure to either or both, leaving 2/3 of the market in “observation” mode. Honestly, its not different than the adoption curve of mutual funds and ETFs in Canada from what’s been read or personally experienced. The trick is to keep educating and not get so bored as to give up before the next inflection point of asset growth in the category.  

Finally, know that in being a solution provider (those who represent a fund or product), there are always issues to work on in a portfolio if you engage allocators with a consultative “how can I help” approach, as allocators with a retail book always have projects to work on (recently with new home ownership savings plans to offer, and capital gains tax inclusion legislation decisions), including improving the portfolio construction.