Article content continued

Macklem, along with the late Jim Flaherty who was then his boss at Finance, and Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney were preparing for the Big One. But that’s not something the head of a major central bank, or one the highest ranking officials in the finance ministry of a Group of Seven country, could share with a lot of people.

They quietly encouraged Canada’s banks to get ready for a storm. They started work on contingency plans. And they learned to endure high levels of anxiety. Reflecting, Macklem struggled to find the words to describe what that was like. He eventually gave up trying.

Photo by Galit Rodan/Bloomberg

“In some ways, the most difficult parts of the crisis were in between Bear and Lehman because you have this ominous feeling that it was going to get worse before it was going to get better,” Macklem told me in an interview on Sept. 12.“By this point, we had done the analysis,” he added. “We knew how vulnerable the system was. We knew there were other banks that looked like Bear. It wasn’t hard to imagine that it could get worse.

“Knowing it could get worse, but not knowing when or how or what it was going to look like? That was. That was. Yeah.”

We knew how vulnerable the system was. We knew there were other banks that looked like Bear. It wasn't hard to imagine that it could get worse Tiff Macklem

There was a pained expression on Macklem’s face as he dug up those memories. We were in his office at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Business, where he has served as dean since 2014. Over my shoulder was a framed photograph of Macklem sitting next to Ben Bernanke, the former Fed chairman, at the meeting of G7 finance ministers and central bankers in Washington on Oct. 10, 2008 when the world’s most powerful countries promised to do whatever it took to stop the collapse of the global financial system.