Did Prince Harry and Doug Ford go on a dinner date?
The rumoured location is Nobu, obviously
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 Harry and 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.
Related: Prince Harry is sorry for wearing the Dodgers hat
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.”
Related: Noted Dodgers fan Prince Harry will be in Toronto this week
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.”
Courtney Shea is a freelance journalist in Toronto. She started her career as an intern at Toronto Life and continues to contribute frequently to the publication, including her 2022 National Magazine Award–winning feature, “The Death Cheaters,” her regular Q&As and her recent investigation into whether Taylor Swift hung out at a Toronto dive bar (she did not). Courtney was a producer and writer on the 2022 documentary The Talented Mr. Rosenberg, based on her 2014 Toronto Life magazine feature “The Yorkville Swindler.”
