There’s a standard post-game joke that circulates in most recreational hockey or oldtimers’ dressing rooms. Especially if the butt of the joke has made a ridiculously bad pass, missed an obvious goal or (in the case of a goalie) blown an easy save during the game. It doesn’t take long – within minutes of the end of the scrimmage – and it usually follows a short period of silence as players catch their breaths on the dressing room benches. Then, it comes with the predictability of a sunrise.
“So what happened?” the jokester begins. “Did you trip on your toe picks?”
In case you didn’t get the reference, toe picks are the jagged edges common to the leading edge of most figure skaters’ skates. The point is that the hockey player involved in the gaffe, looked so hopelessly inept during the play, that the worst comparison the jokester could imagine would be the hockey player being only good enough to try figure skating or ice dancing.
In truth, those picks are more than practical for figures skaters; they’re essential. My sense of them is that toe picks give height and strength to their take-offs. They ground their dizzying spins. And they deliver precision and accent to their classical or modern dance moves. They’re as vital as a puck is to hockey.
If there was any doubt about either the value of toe picks or the quality of skating inherent in figure skating, watch any of this country’s legends in the sport: figure skaters such as Barbara Ann Scott or Toller Cranston and ice-dance pairs such Barbara Underhill and Paul Martini or Shae-Lynne Bourne and Victor Kraatz. No self-respecting hockey player would ever suggest – even for a second – that these extraordinary skaters were less agile, less talented, or less athletic than an Henri Richard, Gordie Howe, Wayne Gretzky or Sidney Crosby. And if it wasn’t obvious before, the point was delivered definitively this week as CBC TV’s “Battle of the Blades” competition concluded.
I hadn’t planned to watch Monday night’s broadcast, but tripped into it with my TV remote and found myself mesmerized by the skaters and the “reality” TV dimension that I generally find a bore. I found myself wanting to see the three final pairs profiled, wanting to experience the build-up and final decision. What’s more, I guess I wanted to watch the apparent merger of ballet on skates – figure skating – with Canada’s national winter sport – ice hockey.
And like the 2 million or so who tuned in, I was not disappointed. The hour-long broadcast was better than any Ice Capades show I’d ever attended as a kid. It was more informative than most national or Olympic competitions I’ve witnessed. And it answered a question we have all asked at one time or another: Can/would a hockey player ever succeed as a figure skater?
Craig Simpson, who won the first “Battle of the Blades” championship with partner Jamie Salé Monday night, proved he could make the transition from rockered skates to toe picks. And then some. The former Edmonton Oiler learned dance moves, executed partner throws and he was the first of the show’s male competitors to complete a free-skate jump.
And he did it all in a spandex costume, not a hockey jersey, shoulder pads, hockey pants and a helmet. Where twice he has left NHL hockey arenas with the Stanley Cup hoisted over his head, the other night he and Salé left Maple Leaf Gardens, a temple of hockey excellence, with the first ever figure-skating “Battle of the Blades” trophy in their hands.
It could be argued that in smaller communities across Canada, aspiring to greatness in the sport/art of the figure skating is not as high a priority as becoming the next hockey phenomenon. Even in sophisticated neighbourhoods such as ours, figure skating is often ranked as an also-ran at the arena. There are those who consider playing hockey after a figure-skating practice a disadvantage because of all the gouges in the ice surface; the same might be said of the reverse, I might add.
When it comes to athleticism on skates, hockey has always been the meat and potatoes in small-town Canada. But thanks to Salé and Simpson, that may suddenly have changed.
What’s more I think the brave statement they’ve made in the past weeks of “Battle of the Blades” video-taping, may have dispensed “toe pick” jokes in Canadian hockey dressing rooms … forever.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
The meaning of silence
Recently, I spoke to a midday session of the International Writers’ Festival in Ottawa. I projected images of veterans I have known onto a movie screen. Then, I told stories about the men’s and women’s nearly total reluctance to speak about their wartime experiences. It’s the subject of my latest book, “Breaking the Silence.” And I finished my talk this way:
“I’ve spent many of the past 30 years writing the stories of battle,” I said. “In this latest work, I’ve attempted to write about the battle to get the stories.”
In my talk, I offered several key illustrations of the way Canadian veterans have almost universally refused to share with their families and civilian friends the extraordinary moments of their war. Among the examples of this unwritten code of silence, I cited the story of my closest air force friend Charley Fox. Though he had completed 234 successful sorties in air force Spitfires and won two Distinguished Flying Crosses, he rarely spoke about his successful airborne attack on the highest ranking and most important German general in occupied France, Erwin Rommel.
Similarly, I recalled for that Ottawa audience the story of a Second World War vet who re-mustered at the start of the Korean War. Hal Merrithew, a lieutenant in the Royal 22nd Regiment, led a platoon of pioneer (mine-laying and mine-defusing) troops along the front-line at the 38th parallel. In one heroic operation, Lt. Merrithew had guided his men into a minefield to retrieve the dead and wounded from a night-time misadventure in No Man’s Land. The experience left Merrithew sobbing – I thought – over the horrific images of the rescue. But no, it turned out that his distress had come from his inability to reconnect – even after 50 years and despite every effort – with the men who’d shared that horrific night with him in Korea.
And towards the end of my talk, I shared with that audience a recounting of my face-to-face interviews with three Canadian veterans of the Afghanistan mission. All three had been at a place called Tarnak Farm, outside Kandahar, where on April 17, 2002, a U.S. fighter jet fired a laser-guided 500-pound bomb at the Canadians – killing four and wounding another half dozen in the so-called “friendly fire” incident. Each of the men I interviewed had vivid memories still haunting him; each had paid a physical and emotional price in his survival of the attack; and each recognized the incident had changed him permanently.
“I’d like to say it has affected me for the best,” one of them said. “I’d be lying if I said that.”
At any rate, following my talk I took questions. Several veterans wanted to know more about the airman I mentioned. Others were curious if the Korean War vets had ever re-united. And then a woman put her hand and asked a favour of me.
“My partner left for Afghanistan a month ago,” she said. “What am I supposed to do when he comes home?”
She stopped me dead. I wasn’t quite sure where to begin. In all my lectures, talks and media interviews I’d never been asked that before. I began by cautioning her that I was not a professional psychologist, nor an expert in post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I said all I could do was offer her suggestions of things to consider upon his return: giving him time to sort things out, becoming as knowledgeable as she could about what her partner had faced, ensuring he knew that she wanted to understand his war experience, and choosing the right time and place to share it.
A few moments later another woman put her hand up. She explained that her husband had served in the Vietnam War in the 1970s and that he had suffered severe PTSD. She went on to explain that as a consequence of their experience, she had become a full-time certified trauma specialist
“What you just said to that woman,” she pointed out, “was exactly the right procedure in such circumstances.”
Late that Sunday night, as I travelled home, I reflected on the day’s events. I had related some of my own battles to get the stories of veterans. I had sparked some lively discussion on a difficult topic – veterans’ collective silence. I had even earned a bit of praise for offering constructive advice to the family of a soon-to-be Canadian veteran. But it all seemed for nothing.
That night we learned that another Canadian soldier had died in Afghanistan. And another family would spend the approaching Nov. 11 Remembrance Day mourning and fearing a different kind of silence – the silence of losing a loved-one.
“I’ve spent many of the past 30 years writing the stories of battle,” I said. “In this latest work, I’ve attempted to write about the battle to get the stories.”
In my talk, I offered several key illustrations of the way Canadian veterans have almost universally refused to share with their families and civilian friends the extraordinary moments of their war. Among the examples of this unwritten code of silence, I cited the story of my closest air force friend Charley Fox. Though he had completed 234 successful sorties in air force Spitfires and won two Distinguished Flying Crosses, he rarely spoke about his successful airborne attack on the highest ranking and most important German general in occupied France, Erwin Rommel.
Similarly, I recalled for that Ottawa audience the story of a Second World War vet who re-mustered at the start of the Korean War. Hal Merrithew, a lieutenant in the Royal 22nd Regiment, led a platoon of pioneer (mine-laying and mine-defusing) troops along the front-line at the 38th parallel. In one heroic operation, Lt. Merrithew had guided his men into a minefield to retrieve the dead and wounded from a night-time misadventure in No Man’s Land. The experience left Merrithew sobbing – I thought – over the horrific images of the rescue. But no, it turned out that his distress had come from his inability to reconnect – even after 50 years and despite every effort – with the men who’d shared that horrific night with him in Korea.
And towards the end of my talk, I shared with that audience a recounting of my face-to-face interviews with three Canadian veterans of the Afghanistan mission. All three had been at a place called Tarnak Farm, outside Kandahar, where on April 17, 2002, a U.S. fighter jet fired a laser-guided 500-pound bomb at the Canadians – killing four and wounding another half dozen in the so-called “friendly fire” incident. Each of the men I interviewed had vivid memories still haunting him; each had paid a physical and emotional price in his survival of the attack; and each recognized the incident had changed him permanently.
“I’d like to say it has affected me for the best,” one of them said. “I’d be lying if I said that.”
At any rate, following my talk I took questions. Several veterans wanted to know more about the airman I mentioned. Others were curious if the Korean War vets had ever re-united. And then a woman put her hand and asked a favour of me.
“My partner left for Afghanistan a month ago,” she said. “What am I supposed to do when he comes home?”
She stopped me dead. I wasn’t quite sure where to begin. In all my lectures, talks and media interviews I’d never been asked that before. I began by cautioning her that I was not a professional psychologist, nor an expert in post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I said all I could do was offer her suggestions of things to consider upon his return: giving him time to sort things out, becoming as knowledgeable as she could about what her partner had faced, ensuring he knew that she wanted to understand his war experience, and choosing the right time and place to share it.
A few moments later another woman put her hand up. She explained that her husband had served in the Vietnam War in the 1970s and that he had suffered severe PTSD. She went on to explain that as a consequence of their experience, she had become a full-time certified trauma specialist
“What you just said to that woman,” she pointed out, “was exactly the right procedure in such circumstances.”
Late that Sunday night, as I travelled home, I reflected on the day’s events. I had related some of my own battles to get the stories of veterans. I had sparked some lively discussion on a difficult topic – veterans’ collective silence. I had even earned a bit of praise for offering constructive advice to the family of a soon-to-be Canadian veteran. But it all seemed for nothing.
That night we learned that another Canadian soldier had died in Afghanistan. And another family would spend the approaching Nov. 11 Remembrance Day mourning and fearing a different kind of silence – the silence of losing a loved-one.
The original "Boo"
The world ended that night. A high school girl in a major eastern city was hysterical; she claimed she and her girlfriends cried and held each other preparing to die. Rural residents on mid-western farms prayed harder than they ever had before. And thousands more rushed headlong into the streets of New York City that night. They hallucinated that aliens from outer space were invading their city, their country, their planet. They’d heard a radio broadcast – 71 years ago tomorrow night – and thought it was really the end of life on Earth.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” they heard the announcer say, “this is the most terrifying thing I have ever witnessed! … Wait a minute! Someone’s crawling out of the hollow top … Someone or something. I can see peering out of that black hole two luminous discs … are they eyes? It might be a face…”
Fright, real fright was born Oct. 30, 1938.
It was that pre-Halloween night that a bunch of daring writers, actors, producers and sound effects technicians successfully fooled many North Americans into believing that an invasion of hostile Martians had begun. Known as the “Mercury Theatre of the Air,” the radio troupe had rehearsed all week in the CBS Radio studios in Manhattan. Their writer – Howard Koch – had adapted an H.G. Wells science fiction story (set in 19th century England) and updated it to the uncertainty of the late 1930s in the U.S. Their director and leading actor – Orson Welles – had then led the cast into the original live broadcast of “The War of the Worlds.”
It was totally convincing. Within minutes of the start of the broadcast, regular listeners to CBS heard on-location music from the ballroom of an identifiable New York hotel. But then the first of a series of interruptions began – each one more threatening than the last, each offering bulletins about odd explosions noticed on Mars, and each voices of authority warning of a major, national threat from the heavens. What proved even more extraordinary than the broadcast itself, however, was the degree to which the North American public believed what it was hearing was actually happening.
Why did it work? Well, there were only two radio network shows on the air that night – “Mercury Theatre” on CBS and the “Chase and Sanborn Hour” (with ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his smart-mouthed dummy Charlie McCarthy) on the rival NBC network. In fact, some who started listening to Bergen and McCarthy and switched over to CBS did not hear the disclaimer identifying the show content as a dramatization of H.G. Wells’ sci-fi story. The format of the show – a series of news bulletins interrupting regular programming – proved entirely believable. Actual places – in New Jersey and New York – were named. People in authority – reporters, scientists, police and military spokesmen – were interviewed with credible sound effects and appropriate stumbles to give the on-location atmosphere plenty of authenticity. Ultimately though, radio was trustworthy. People felt if it was on the air, it had to be true.
In an essay entitled “The Great Martian Invasion,” writer Ann Elwood went even further in her analysis of the public state of mind in 1938. In her story, she asked: “Was it just the play that caused the panic on that October night? Or was it something else for which the Mercury Theatre broadcast served merely as a catalyst: a combination of the anxiety and tension permeating a world on the brink of war (or) the low mental defences of a people exhausted by the Great Depression…”
Years ago, I interviewed the producer of the War of the Worlds broadcast. John Houseman claimed the entire radio station and cast were in on the hoax.
“We weren’t pulling one over on the network. CBS knew what we were doing. We read the script over and then Orson (Welles) took over and directed it brilliantly.”
But when I asked him (back in 1978) if a similar hoax could be repeated on contemporary media, he answered definitively,
“No. This could only have happened on radio.”
Ultimately, the last laugh that October night in 1938 went to the show’s directing mastermind, Orson Welles, as he stepped out of character in the final moments of the broadcast.
“Remember the terrible lesson you learned tonight,” Welles concluded. “That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch. And if your doorbells rings and nobody’s there, that was no Martian. It’s Halloween.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” they heard the announcer say, “this is the most terrifying thing I have ever witnessed! … Wait a minute! Someone’s crawling out of the hollow top … Someone or something. I can see peering out of that black hole two luminous discs … are they eyes? It might be a face…”
Fright, real fright was born Oct. 30, 1938.
It was that pre-Halloween night that a bunch of daring writers, actors, producers and sound effects technicians successfully fooled many North Americans into believing that an invasion of hostile Martians had begun. Known as the “Mercury Theatre of the Air,” the radio troupe had rehearsed all week in the CBS Radio studios in Manhattan. Their writer – Howard Koch – had adapted an H.G. Wells science fiction story (set in 19th century England) and updated it to the uncertainty of the late 1930s in the U.S. Their director and leading actor – Orson Welles – had then led the cast into the original live broadcast of “The War of the Worlds.”
It was totally convincing. Within minutes of the start of the broadcast, regular listeners to CBS heard on-location music from the ballroom of an identifiable New York hotel. But then the first of a series of interruptions began – each one more threatening than the last, each offering bulletins about odd explosions noticed on Mars, and each voices of authority warning of a major, national threat from the heavens. What proved even more extraordinary than the broadcast itself, however, was the degree to which the North American public believed what it was hearing was actually happening.
Why did it work? Well, there were only two radio network shows on the air that night – “Mercury Theatre” on CBS and the “Chase and Sanborn Hour” (with ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his smart-mouthed dummy Charlie McCarthy) on the rival NBC network. In fact, some who started listening to Bergen and McCarthy and switched over to CBS did not hear the disclaimer identifying the show content as a dramatization of H.G. Wells’ sci-fi story. The format of the show – a series of news bulletins interrupting regular programming – proved entirely believable. Actual places – in New Jersey and New York – were named. People in authority – reporters, scientists, police and military spokesmen – were interviewed with credible sound effects and appropriate stumbles to give the on-location atmosphere plenty of authenticity. Ultimately though, radio was trustworthy. People felt if it was on the air, it had to be true.
In an essay entitled “The Great Martian Invasion,” writer Ann Elwood went even further in her analysis of the public state of mind in 1938. In her story, she asked: “Was it just the play that caused the panic on that October night? Or was it something else for which the Mercury Theatre broadcast served merely as a catalyst: a combination of the anxiety and tension permeating a world on the brink of war (or) the low mental defences of a people exhausted by the Great Depression…”
Years ago, I interviewed the producer of the War of the Worlds broadcast. John Houseman claimed the entire radio station and cast were in on the hoax.
“We weren’t pulling one over on the network. CBS knew what we were doing. We read the script over and then Orson (Welles) took over and directed it brilliantly.”
But when I asked him (back in 1978) if a similar hoax could be repeated on contemporary media, he answered definitively,
“No. This could only have happened on radio.”
Ultimately, the last laugh that October night in 1938 went to the show’s directing mastermind, Orson Welles, as he stepped out of character in the final moments of the broadcast.
“Remember the terrible lesson you learned tonight,” Welles concluded. “That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch. And if your doorbells rings and nobody’s there, that was no Martian. It’s Halloween.”
Sunday, October 4, 2009
The male heir
It was a Tuesday – Sept. 15 – and we were rushing in a number of directions, as usual. I had just finished delivering a broadcast history lecture and was also about to drive to a photo session out of town. My wife had just received word from her magazine publisher that she would have to cover a story in the Arctic; she’d have to rush home, pack for a 12-day trip, and immediately catch an airplane bound for Greenland. All of our plans, however, moved down the priority list, when our son-in-law phoned with an urgent message.
“You’re grandparents again,” he said, “of a baby boy.”
Detours are generally not difficult to accommodate in our family. We’re used to them. We alter plans all the time. But this detour proved different. By early evening, Jayne and I had made our way to the Port Perry Hospital to meet the latest addition to our family – Sawyer Massey. And, you know, as much as we figured we would react very differently from every other grandparent before us, we didn’t. We smiled, sighed and cooed over the little guy the same as every other doting grandparent that ever entered a maternity ward.
We wanted to know how much he weighed. We wanted to know when his mother, Quenby, had gone to the hospital and how long the labour was. We had to know if the baby’s dad, J.D., had made it to the birth in time. And we needed to have photographs taken, as each of us held the newborn as if he were a piece of prized china.
“How does it feel to have a boy in the family?” a friend asked me.
“It’s quite a departure,” I admitted.
In both my wife’s and my family, the birth of a boy was not a regular phenomenon. Jayne had grown up with one sibling – a sister. So had I. And I was the exception in my family; my father’s brother had had six daughters. Then, Jayne and I had two children, both girls. Women had dominated my bloodline going back several generations. What’s more, growing up among my mostly female relatives, my life had been dominated by long line-ups for the bathroom, waiting for dancing or horseback riding lessons to end, and plenty of frills and finery emerging from wrapping under the Christmas tree each Dec. 25.
But this was different. For the first time in my life, I could think “boy” when I thought of offspring. I could think about such things as sandboxes with toy soldiers and trucks, walks and talks about RBIs and Treasure Island, maybe camping and canoeing weekends with the guys, and, one day, relating to the opposite sex from the male perspective. Sure it’s a little cliché (because I’m sure I’ll share many of these same experiences with Layne, Sawyer’s nearly two-year-old sister), but his arrival has kind of put a new spin on upbringing, albeit from a grandparent’s point-of-view.
I know I had a unique relationship with my Popou (the Greek equivalent of Grandpa). We talked about sports together (he insisted that wrestling was not fixed, but that baseball was.) We shared duties cultivating the vegetable garden (he supervised and I cultivated). We discussed the news and the way news was reported. Regrettably, he introduced me to Greek liquors, such as Retsina and Ouzo, but he also showed me bouzouki music and Greek line dancing. In return, I gave him time – as much as I could – sitting through long interviews about his Greek family roots and his extraordinary immigration from Europe to New York at the beginning of the last century. Of course, my Popou and I were closer than most. You see I was named after him.
But names are symbolic. When our two daughters were born in the late 1970s, friends and relatives asked me whether I worried that the Barris surname would end. Acknowledge, sure, but not worry. The fact is that our daughters do exhibit physical and personality traits of my side of the family and my wife’s too, whether or not they use our surnames. I’ve always felt it’s not a child’s job to live inside a parent’s name. Nor is it a boy’s job to carry a surname as if it were an obligation.
Besides, thanks to the parents of our new grandson, he has indeed carried the family name a further generation. They honoured the memory of my father by giving Sawyer a second name – Alex.
And that only begins to describe the joy we feel in our new lives as his grandparents.
“You’re grandparents again,” he said, “of a baby boy.”
Detours are generally not difficult to accommodate in our family. We’re used to them. We alter plans all the time. But this detour proved different. By early evening, Jayne and I had made our way to the Port Perry Hospital to meet the latest addition to our family – Sawyer Massey. And, you know, as much as we figured we would react very differently from every other grandparent before us, we didn’t. We smiled, sighed and cooed over the little guy the same as every other doting grandparent that ever entered a maternity ward.
We wanted to know how much he weighed. We wanted to know when his mother, Quenby, had gone to the hospital and how long the labour was. We had to know if the baby’s dad, J.D., had made it to the birth in time. And we needed to have photographs taken, as each of us held the newborn as if he were a piece of prized china.
“How does it feel to have a boy in the family?” a friend asked me.
“It’s quite a departure,” I admitted.
In both my wife’s and my family, the birth of a boy was not a regular phenomenon. Jayne had grown up with one sibling – a sister. So had I. And I was the exception in my family; my father’s brother had had six daughters. Then, Jayne and I had two children, both girls. Women had dominated my bloodline going back several generations. What’s more, growing up among my mostly female relatives, my life had been dominated by long line-ups for the bathroom, waiting for dancing or horseback riding lessons to end, and plenty of frills and finery emerging from wrapping under the Christmas tree each Dec. 25.
But this was different. For the first time in my life, I could think “boy” when I thought of offspring. I could think about such things as sandboxes with toy soldiers and trucks, walks and talks about RBIs and Treasure Island, maybe camping and canoeing weekends with the guys, and, one day, relating to the opposite sex from the male perspective. Sure it’s a little cliché (because I’m sure I’ll share many of these same experiences with Layne, Sawyer’s nearly two-year-old sister), but his arrival has kind of put a new spin on upbringing, albeit from a grandparent’s point-of-view.
I know I had a unique relationship with my Popou (the Greek equivalent of Grandpa). We talked about sports together (he insisted that wrestling was not fixed, but that baseball was.) We shared duties cultivating the vegetable garden (he supervised and I cultivated). We discussed the news and the way news was reported. Regrettably, he introduced me to Greek liquors, such as Retsina and Ouzo, but he also showed me bouzouki music and Greek line dancing. In return, I gave him time – as much as I could – sitting through long interviews about his Greek family roots and his extraordinary immigration from Europe to New York at the beginning of the last century. Of course, my Popou and I were closer than most. You see I was named after him.
But names are symbolic. When our two daughters were born in the late 1970s, friends and relatives asked me whether I worried that the Barris surname would end. Acknowledge, sure, but not worry. The fact is that our daughters do exhibit physical and personality traits of my side of the family and my wife’s too, whether or not they use our surnames. I’ve always felt it’s not a child’s job to live inside a parent’s name. Nor is it a boy’s job to carry a surname as if it were an obligation.
Besides, thanks to the parents of our new grandson, he has indeed carried the family name a further generation. They honoured the memory of my father by giving Sawyer a second name – Alex.
And that only begins to describe the joy we feel in our new lives as his grandparents.
A community mission
About 2 o’clock that Saturday afternoon, somebody moved across the floor at an old automobile showroom on the south side of town. She was holding up a long-sleeved, over-sized shirt. For a second she showed off how clean and new it looked to the rest of us. But then she needed our help.
“Does anybody know what this is?” she asked. “Is it a men’s shirt or what?”
“Well, what side are the buttons on?” someone else asked, knowing that men’s shirts button from right-to-left, vice versa for women’s tops. But that didn’t solve the mystery of what it was.
Then, a voice piped up from the corner: “Looks like a men’s night shirt,” he said. And because the assessment came from Ahmad Golan, we all agreed he must be right and the “nightshirt” was gently packed into cardboard box quickly filling with men’s clothing.
Saturday was the day that Ahmad’s (everybody knows him as Shah, who manages the Mac’s Milk Store in town) mission, to send everyday dry goods to those in need in Afghanistan, took an important step forward. Volunteers from across the township worked all day sorting, itemizing, folding and then packing such utilitarian items as hats, gloves, pants, shirts, jackets, socks and boots for the winter ahead.
Last winter, Shah let it be known that he wanted to gather used house wares, school supplies and clothing and somehow send the second-hand items to those in need in his former hometown, Kabul, by the following winter of 2009. He had been sending money there whenever he could spare it, but he told some of us that people “back home” desperately needed winter clothing as well as footwear and bedding to keep warm next winter. The response proved overwhelming. Before long he had filled the back of the store, his own home in town and several friends’ storage spaces. There were some cash donations as well.
That’s when Williamson’s, the local car dealer, stepped up and offered the vacant showroom as temporary storage. So, with several hundred square feet of floor space suddenly available, the trickle of donations over the spring and summer grew to a flood. And in addition to the clothing and linens he gathered, Shah also began receiving several unexpected (but equally valuable) contributions – hospital beds, wheel chairs and bicycles – all from local donors and organizations. As the donations piled up, some of us began knocking on politicians’ office doors, probing overseas travel routes of NGOs (non government organizations) and even approaching the Canadian military to help transport Shah’s mercy mission supplies to Afghanistan. Assistance was not immediately forthcoming. Our deadline to move out of the showroom was.
The job fell to Shah and his little band of volunteers. Among those most eager, willing and able to organize and help were local residents Audrey Bain and Gloria Parsons. Not only did they put the call out for volunteers, last Saturday, overnight they approached many of the local service clubs for financial assistance to help transport the goods overseas. Audrey and Gloria made representations to the clubs in person. The “Uxbridge/Kabul Friendship Fund” was born. The bank account is a long way from underwriting the rental of an ocean container and shipping it to Afghanistan, but you wouldn’t have known that last Saturday.
At the height of a gorgeous September afternoon, 15 or 20 dedicated volunteers – including other members of the Bain and Parsons family, Patti Brady, Lee Hughes, Julie Slater, Mary Dubé, Reid Irwin, Nancy Wood, Alan Mills, and several members of the Prowse family – waded into piles of green garbage bags and carefully began sorting hundreds of pounds of clothing. I know Reid Irwin and I tied shoe and boot laces for the better part of six hours and packed between 300 and 400 pairs into boxes. After a while we lost count. At one point, I looked over at one of the boxes and the volunteers were writing on the side “210 women’s tops.” And somebody said, “Well, 210-ish.”
About 5 p.m. a weary band of volunteer packers called it a day. In one workday – powered by muffins, coffee and a lot of backbreaking effort – they had packed more than half the contents of that showroom. Shah hadn’t stopped smiling all day.
“What wonderful people. All good Uxbridge neighbours who care,” he said.
Then, I suddenly realized that for him – a faithful Muslim – this was his final day of Ramadan. He had worked all day, as hard as any of us. But he hadn’t eaten or drunk a thing. He was still fasting. He had fed on the energy of goodwill from his new community and a hope that these donations will arrive in the hands of the old one.
“Does anybody know what this is?” she asked. “Is it a men’s shirt or what?”
“Well, what side are the buttons on?” someone else asked, knowing that men’s shirts button from right-to-left, vice versa for women’s tops. But that didn’t solve the mystery of what it was.
Then, a voice piped up from the corner: “Looks like a men’s night shirt,” he said. And because the assessment came from Ahmad Golan, we all agreed he must be right and the “nightshirt” was gently packed into cardboard box quickly filling with men’s clothing.
Saturday was the day that Ahmad’s (everybody knows him as Shah, who manages the Mac’s Milk Store in town) mission, to send everyday dry goods to those in need in Afghanistan, took an important step forward. Volunteers from across the township worked all day sorting, itemizing, folding and then packing such utilitarian items as hats, gloves, pants, shirts, jackets, socks and boots for the winter ahead.
Last winter, Shah let it be known that he wanted to gather used house wares, school supplies and clothing and somehow send the second-hand items to those in need in his former hometown, Kabul, by the following winter of 2009. He had been sending money there whenever he could spare it, but he told some of us that people “back home” desperately needed winter clothing as well as footwear and bedding to keep warm next winter. The response proved overwhelming. Before long he had filled the back of the store, his own home in town and several friends’ storage spaces. There were some cash donations as well.
That’s when Williamson’s, the local car dealer, stepped up and offered the vacant showroom as temporary storage. So, with several hundred square feet of floor space suddenly available, the trickle of donations over the spring and summer grew to a flood. And in addition to the clothing and linens he gathered, Shah also began receiving several unexpected (but equally valuable) contributions – hospital beds, wheel chairs and bicycles – all from local donors and organizations. As the donations piled up, some of us began knocking on politicians’ office doors, probing overseas travel routes of NGOs (non government organizations) and even approaching the Canadian military to help transport Shah’s mercy mission supplies to Afghanistan. Assistance was not immediately forthcoming. Our deadline to move out of the showroom was.
The job fell to Shah and his little band of volunteers. Among those most eager, willing and able to organize and help were local residents Audrey Bain and Gloria Parsons. Not only did they put the call out for volunteers, last Saturday, overnight they approached many of the local service clubs for financial assistance to help transport the goods overseas. Audrey and Gloria made representations to the clubs in person. The “Uxbridge/Kabul Friendship Fund” was born. The bank account is a long way from underwriting the rental of an ocean container and shipping it to Afghanistan, but you wouldn’t have known that last Saturday.
At the height of a gorgeous September afternoon, 15 or 20 dedicated volunteers – including other members of the Bain and Parsons family, Patti Brady, Lee Hughes, Julie Slater, Mary Dubé, Reid Irwin, Nancy Wood, Alan Mills, and several members of the Prowse family – waded into piles of green garbage bags and carefully began sorting hundreds of pounds of clothing. I know Reid Irwin and I tied shoe and boot laces for the better part of six hours and packed between 300 and 400 pairs into boxes. After a while we lost count. At one point, I looked over at one of the boxes and the volunteers were writing on the side “210 women’s tops.” And somebody said, “Well, 210-ish.”
About 5 p.m. a weary band of volunteer packers called it a day. In one workday – powered by muffins, coffee and a lot of backbreaking effort – they had packed more than half the contents of that showroom. Shah hadn’t stopped smiling all day.
“What wonderful people. All good Uxbridge neighbours who care,” he said.
Then, I suddenly realized that for him – a faithful Muslim – this was his final day of Ramadan. He had worked all day, as hard as any of us. But he hadn’t eaten or drunk a thing. He was still fasting. He had fed on the energy of goodwill from his new community and a hope that these donations will arrive in the hands of the old one.
His place to stand
I think I can recall the exact day I discovered my nationality. My younger sister Kate was there.
My parents – both transplanted Americans – were there. We had all made the trek from our home outside Toronto to Montreal. We couldn’t get hotel accommodation that summer of 1967, so we booked into a small trailer camp outside the city and planned our several days of sightseeing at Expo 67. Everything about the exposition was a thrill. But nothing – not Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome, not Labyrinth, not the monorail nor even the hydrofoil on the St. Lawrence – could compare to my visit to the Ontario pavilion.
That’s where I discovered what it was to be proud of my home.
There, inside the pavilion theatre I was dazzled by a short film that had me sighing as if I were watching fireworks, shaking my head as if it was all a mirage, and breathless as if I’d just come off a roller coaster. And, as if that weren’t enough, I came out of the pavilion theatre singing a kind of anthem.
“Give us a place to stand. And a place to grow. And call this land On-tar-i-o. A place to stand. A place to grow, Ontari-ari-ari-o.”
It was only when I moved to Uxbridge – years later – that I really learned how it was meant for me to discover that pride in place. I met the filmmaker who created “A Place To Stand.” I knew the name Christopher Chapman. I’d read how he’d abandoned his job as a career in advertising in the 1950s, found a old 16-mm motion-picture camera and taught himself to shoot documentary film. And did he shoot film.
First was “The Seasons,” which won five awards, including Canadian film of the year in 1954. Then, he created a series of nature films – “Quetico” (about the provincial park), “Saguenay” for Aluminum Company of Canada, and “The Persistent Seed” and “The Enduring Wilderness” for the National Film Board. On one of those first occasions we met and talked about his life’s work, I asked Christopher to explain his films.
“They’re film tapestries,” he said. “Very little if any narration … but plenty of sound and images stitched together to tell a story.”
“But tapestries don’t bowl you over the way ‘A Place To Stand’ did,” I told him.
Until then, however, I didn’t know the half of what Christopher Chapman had accomplished with that film. Technically, it was a masterpiece – just 17 minutes long, but incorporating more than 100 minutes of film by superimposing multiple images on the original footage. It later became known as “travelling mat” or a frames moving across frames. And in order to make it work, he had to sketch or storyboard every edit. It took 350 pages of notes to plot out the 17-minute production – long before computer animation was even thought of.
“It was the most complicated film I ever attempted,” he admitted. “After 18 months of shooting and editing [and with Expo fast approaching] I thought I had a disaster on my hands.” But that’s when he “let himself go” by literally sitting on the roof of his home and waiting for his mind to clear.
And what’s in “A Place To Stand”? Just images of people, places, events, industry, nature, hustle, tranquillity – the sounds and sights of a province at a critical moment in the country’s history – Canada’s Centennial celebration. But there was something more there in the celluloid that only its filmmaker could explain. In fact, when the Government of Ontario (who financed the film) asked Christopher what he planned, he said:
“All I’m going to say is we’re going to make people feel good, whatever part of our country they come from. We’re not using language, except the song. So, whoever people are, they can relate…”
Everybody in the world can relate to the Oscar that “A Place To Stand” earned for its creator. Although, truth be known, Christopher and his wife and creative partner Glen, have never let such notoriety go to their heads; to this day, they use the Oscar as a door stop at Uxbridge their home. But as modest as he is about a lifetime of extraordinary filmmaking and success, Christopher has never lost touch with the value of his work. It made viewers, including a 17-year-old kid from Ontario, proud in ’67 when we most needed to be. In fact, not so long ago, Christopher commented,
“It would be great to revive such films … because we need a boost. We need to say ‘Rah-rah-rah. This country can make it.’”
My parents – both transplanted Americans – were there. We had all made the trek from our home outside Toronto to Montreal. We couldn’t get hotel accommodation that summer of 1967, so we booked into a small trailer camp outside the city and planned our several days of sightseeing at Expo 67. Everything about the exposition was a thrill. But nothing – not Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome, not Labyrinth, not the monorail nor even the hydrofoil on the St. Lawrence – could compare to my visit to the Ontario pavilion.
That’s where I discovered what it was to be proud of my home.
There, inside the pavilion theatre I was dazzled by a short film that had me sighing as if I were watching fireworks, shaking my head as if it was all a mirage, and breathless as if I’d just come off a roller coaster. And, as if that weren’t enough, I came out of the pavilion theatre singing a kind of anthem.
“Give us a place to stand. And a place to grow. And call this land On-tar-i-o. A place to stand. A place to grow, Ontari-ari-ari-o.”
It was only when I moved to Uxbridge – years later – that I really learned how it was meant for me to discover that pride in place. I met the filmmaker who created “A Place To Stand.” I knew the name Christopher Chapman. I’d read how he’d abandoned his job as a career in advertising in the 1950s, found a old 16-mm motion-picture camera and taught himself to shoot documentary film. And did he shoot film.
First was “The Seasons,” which won five awards, including Canadian film of the year in 1954. Then, he created a series of nature films – “Quetico” (about the provincial park), “Saguenay” for Aluminum Company of Canada, and “The Persistent Seed” and “The Enduring Wilderness” for the National Film Board. On one of those first occasions we met and talked about his life’s work, I asked Christopher to explain his films.
“They’re film tapestries,” he said. “Very little if any narration … but plenty of sound and images stitched together to tell a story.”
“But tapestries don’t bowl you over the way ‘A Place To Stand’ did,” I told him.
Until then, however, I didn’t know the half of what Christopher Chapman had accomplished with that film. Technically, it was a masterpiece – just 17 minutes long, but incorporating more than 100 minutes of film by superimposing multiple images on the original footage. It later became known as “travelling mat” or a frames moving across frames. And in order to make it work, he had to sketch or storyboard every edit. It took 350 pages of notes to plot out the 17-minute production – long before computer animation was even thought of.
“It was the most complicated film I ever attempted,” he admitted. “After 18 months of shooting and editing [and with Expo fast approaching] I thought I had a disaster on my hands.” But that’s when he “let himself go” by literally sitting on the roof of his home and waiting for his mind to clear.
And what’s in “A Place To Stand”? Just images of people, places, events, industry, nature, hustle, tranquillity – the sounds and sights of a province at a critical moment in the country’s history – Canada’s Centennial celebration. But there was something more there in the celluloid that only its filmmaker could explain. In fact, when the Government of Ontario (who financed the film) asked Christopher what he planned, he said:
“All I’m going to say is we’re going to make people feel good, whatever part of our country they come from. We’re not using language, except the song. So, whoever people are, they can relate…”
Everybody in the world can relate to the Oscar that “A Place To Stand” earned for its creator. Although, truth be known, Christopher and his wife and creative partner Glen, have never let such notoriety go to their heads; to this day, they use the Oscar as a door stop at Uxbridge their home. But as modest as he is about a lifetime of extraordinary filmmaking and success, Christopher has never lost touch with the value of his work. It made viewers, including a 17-year-old kid from Ontario, proud in ’67 when we most needed to be. In fact, not so long ago, Christopher commented,
“It would be great to revive such films … because we need a boost. We need to say ‘Rah-rah-rah. This country can make it.’”
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Too young to know?
There is always a day in life one looks forward to. For me it was not necessarily the day I turned 16 (nor, as I described last month, the day I turned 60). It wasn’t the day I first went to high school nor to university nor even to my first paying job. Those dates were exciting, all right, but the day I truly savoured was the day I first became eligible to vote – July 12, 1970. Problem was, just 16 days before I turned 21 – June 26, 1970 – Canada lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.
The federal government had taken the thrill out of becoming legal.
It wasn’t the end of the world, however, because eventually I had the chance to exercise my franchise in a federal election that brought in a minority Parliament. Later, I voted in a provincial election in which my chosen candidate unseated a cabinet minister. And because of my lifetime fascination for politics, I’ve had ample opportunity to cover elections from the municipal through to the federal level. The fact remains, however, somebody else had decided whether I was old enough to make an informed decision.
All this came to mind, this week, as I read about Laura Dekker. She’s the Dutch teenager who had planned to set sail last Tuesday aboard her 8.3-metre yacht, Guppy. In so doing, she hoped to become the youngest sailor to circumnavigate the globe. As it turned out, Laura couldn’t launch because a court in Utrecht, Holland, considers her underage. But what’s underage?
If authorities consider her too young to understand things nautical, that doesn’t wash; her mother apparently gave birth to her on board the family’s New Zealand-based boat and she pretty much lived at sea through her formative years. If the Dutch court doesn’t think she has the capacity to handle a yacht or make nautical decisions capably, that’s perhaps short-sighted too; she’s been sailing solo since she was six years old. And I realize that in a time when hurricanes and pirates seem more violent than ever, it may be folly to send a 13-year-old to sea.
My point, however, is that the world has always underestimated the young.
Need I remind you that 70 years ago this very week, a generation of teenagers and slightly older youth – with a great deal less education and worldliness than today’s young people – went to war against worldwide fascism. And won. No, they weren’t 13. But they, perhaps like Laura Dekker, had maturity and a sense of responsibility that other youth don’t.
A case in point is my veteran friend, Lorne Empey, from Kingston. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, one of Lorne’s brothers joined the air force, another enlisted in the army and his sister became an army nurse. His father moved from the family farm in Saskatchewan to B.C. to build corvettes. That left him – at the age of 17 – to run the farm by himself. When the navy finally accepted his underage enlistment, he became a stoker aboard a minesweeper and survived D-Day and the Battle of the Atlantic.
I have one last underage enlistment story that further illustrates the world’s underestimation of that remarkable generation.
The story came from a conversation I had with former Canadian air force pilot (now retired General) Richard Rohmer, who flew Mustang fighter aircraft during the Second World War. In particular, I recall Rohmer’s description of an inspection of his air force station in England by U.S. Army general George S. Patton. Rohmer vividly remembered that May 1944 morning when “Old Blood and Guts” Patton jumped from his jeep to review a long line of Mustangs and their pilots. Apparently, Patton spoke to no one, until he stopped in front of the boyish-looking Rohmer,
“Boy,” Patton demanded, “how old are you?”
“I’m twenty, sir,” Rohmer replied proudly.
The general pointed up at the nose of the Mustang towering over Rohmer’s youthful frame.
“Do you fly that goddamn airplane?”
“Yes, sir.”
Patton just shook his head and blurted out, “Son of a bitch!”
The judgment of Laura Dekker’s capability does not involve life and death decision-making the way fighting a wartime enemy did between 1939 and 1945. But it may well require a maturity some say she cannot possibly acquire until she’s older. Go tell 17-year-old Briton, Mike Perham, who just completed the same circumnavigation, or 16-year-old Australian Jessica Watson, who hopes to set sail on the same journey in a few weeks.
By the way, when it comes to maturity and the right to vote, if the current world trend comes to Canada, my granddaughter may have the right to vote when she’s 16.
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