Raise the Hammer

I just spent way too much time on chrisecklund.com - hours in fact - to find out just what sort of person he is. I liked the waterfall campaign and thought it was an excellent idea. I had done nothing to really examine all aspects of either the "branding" by Ecklund or Chris Ecklund himself. His reaction to Ms. Chapmans questions of his guests from city hall prompted me to do both. Chris Ecklund is not a philanthropist, he would like everyone to think of him as one but he runs a couple of businesses and he makes some charitable efforts which also advertise those companies. Therefore they are exactly the same type of contributions made by companies everwhere in this city /province/ country. He takes great pains on his site to mention his name in the same breath as Chester Waxman and Morgan Firestone musing that these are big perhaps impossible shoes to be filled. He relentlesly informs the reader he has a "driver", so far this year he has identified this "driver" as Dan once, although he did identify him at least several times in 2008. The point is he mentions this driver 14 times on the first page of his blog alone covering Dec 13 2008 to May 20 2009. Hopefully this helps you see him as wealthy and too preoccupied with ideas or as conducting active business enroute. During that same period Chris Ecklund tells you that he is one of the "movers and shakers" of this city 6 times. Anyone else see a pattern here? I see a self styled marketing guy trying to manipulate perception of himself. His blog reminices on his long and succesful business carreer and attempts to portray him as having earned insight available only to those as succesful as him. Just in case you missed Chris's blog intro on the top "Welcome to the official blog for Chris Ecklund, Hamilton businessman and philanthropist....." Odd that the only person to describe Ecklund as a philanthropist is Ecklund. So far this year Chris Ecklund has sponsored a waterfall walk / clean up and an Easter Egg hunt. He has hosted at least 2 other waterfall walks during 2009. I would say Chris Eckland is a good corporate citizen but his claim to be a philanthropist is misleading self promotion and or the product of a distorted ego. Eckland Marketing Group is the primary enterprise of Chris Eckland and a potential beneficiary of any "conversations" Chris might have with a councillor at say a football game. I think Ms Chapmans questions were not surprisingly well founded and reasonable. I might even say without any hidden agenda if not beyond reproach. Chris Eckland is another matter. He is far too manipulative and deceitful to be taken at face value. It would not surprise me discover that his waterfall campaign is a construct of his marketing company he hopes to sell to the city or failing that he will see if he can spring board a political carrer through his charitable contributions and his "moving and shaking". He had better stick with the former though if you look at his blog he asked for the police chiefs resignation for undisclosed reasons in 2008. In 2009 he claims there is some sort of cabal in city hall called "The Slate", and that he has met their leader. However he did turn down their request he join them. The reason he gives is - I'll let Chris explain ".. as I always do this myself each election it was a conflict between us as we already had differences on who we wanted in for the next term." Good to know that things like circumventing the democratic process were not a bother. That last one reminds me of the RGB contribution story.