Prince Harry has been busy this week! On Monday, he jetted into Toronto for the OREA Powerhouse Conference and gave a keynote speech of some kind. Harry was not photographed in Toronto because the Daily Mail literally sent a reporter into the conference and a paparazzo captured pics of Harry entering the building (no photos of Harry were allowed inside the building). The Mail actually had an exclusive about all of this, where their reporter admitted that they removed from Harry’s speech because they were filming Harry’s entrance on stage. Organizers made the Mail reporter delete their footage, then the woman sulked through the rest of Harry’s speech. The Mail paid someone to fly to Canada, buy a ticket worth hundreds of dollars, be forcibly removed from the conference hall, all to call HARRY “cringeworthy.” Baby, he’s not the cringeworthy one. Meanwhile, the Canadian outlet Toronto Life had some actual gossip about Harry’s trip:
A prince, a premier and a bunch of Ontario real estate cronies walk into a swish sushi restaurant. It sounds like a pretty solid joke set-up, but it was in fact the scene on Monday night at Nobu. That’s some piping hot miso courtesy of our favourite society snoop, Shinan Govani, who posted about the unlikely coupling on X.
Granted, the story makes a lot more sense when you add the fact that both Prince Harry and Doug Ford were speakers at this year’s OREA Powerhouse Conference, alongside Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles, MPP Stephen Crawford, former premier Kathleen Wynne and various other notable locals with connections to Ontario real estate. Still, one of these people doesn’t seem to belong.
Or at least that was the knee-jerk assumption. What on earth does an off-duty duke have to say about affordable housing and the Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act? Has the royal purse run so dry? Or was this just an opportunity to flee the home front while Meghan Markle’s holiday special hit the airwaves?
Of course, the British media got its claws out. “Inside Prince Harry’s cringeworthy VIP guest appearance to discuss…the state of Canadian real estate! No wonder photos were banned,” crowed the Daily Mail, which should really be renamed the Daily Harry and Meghan Pile-On at this point.
The US media was no more generous, with the Daily Beast noting that “it’s hard to think of a sadder symbol of Prince Harry’s slide from global changemaker to rent-a-prince than the news that he will on Monday take the stage at a Canadian real-estate conference, a pay-to-play gathering designed to hash over Ontario housing policy and zoning permissions.”
In reality, an OREA gig is not the career low point these outsiders are making it out to be. Bill Clinton was the big name in 2022, and nobody accused him of scraping the bottom of the speaking-engagement barrel. So, really, the more pertinent question here is: how much is OREA’s guest-speaker budget, and how does one throw their hat in the ring?
Back to the budding bromance: the Nobu dinner appears to have been a post-conference formality, so Prince Harry probably didn’t wake up on the couch of Ford’s infamous man cave on Tuesday morning. As for the OREA event itself, one attendee revealed that Harry’s speech was not in fact focused on zoning but on leadership. “His message hit hard: take care of your own mental health first so you can show up with real energy and capacity for the people who need you.”
LMAO, Bill Clinton was the speaker in 2022! Amazing. I’m glad Canadians are defending their own and saying “well, actually, this is a great gig and it certainly pays well.” It’s interesting that Harry went to Nobu as well, I wonder if that was built into his speaking contract or maybe he was just hungry and ready to mingle.
PS… NewsNation claims that Harry’s speech in Toronto didn’t sell out. Not even when British reporters flew in to attend it? Oh well! Harry got paid all the same.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
