The Barris Beat

Ted Barris's new website is www.tedbarris.com

2010-09-19T18:53:00.001-07:00

Since the beginning of 2010, Ted Barris has written his weekly "Barris Beat" column and blog, offered background on his latest books and updated his event schedule at his new website. Please go to www.tedbarris.com to read him now. Thank you.

When the earth shook

2010-01-22T13:23:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, I happened to be on a massage table. Because my massage therapist also happens to be one of the most plugged-in and erudite people I know, she and I talked about the devastation in Haiti. To my surprise, she informed me that Uxbridge has become involved. She said that among a number of awareness-raising and fund-raising activities, the Rotary Club of Uxbridge has rallied to assist victims of last Tuesday’s earthquake. I wondered how our community – so far away from the disaster – could hope to deliver any tangible help.

“Well, there are 17 Rotary Club branches in Haiti,” she said. “That’s how local donors can be reassured donations will get there.”

That was some of the first reassuring news I’ve learned since the earthquake took place on Jan. 12. Almost since the next day, stories of victims enduring limb amputations without anesthesia, of marauding gangs stealing from homeless victims, and of orphans roaming the streets of Port-au-Prince, have haunted all of us outside this impoverished Caribbean nation.

It’s not nearly the same, but I remember how helpless I felt when the last big California earthquake struck in 1970. At the time, my mother and sister lived a few kilometres from the epicentre in the San Fernando Valley. For a time, there were no communications either in or out of the area. My father and I – here in Canada – had no way of knowing how they were affected. The greatest relief was that first telephone connection to know they’d experienced a lot of rocking and rolling, but the only damage sustained were cracks in the walls of the house. Unlike Haiti, in California help was moments away.

Then, this week, as Canadian officials announced that 2,000 members of the Royal 22nd Regiment (the Vandoos) were being dispatched from Valcartier, Quebec, with humanitarian aid, the Haiti earthquake touched me again.

As some of you know, I teach journalism at the downtown campus of Centennial College on Carlaw Avenue, just off the Danforth. Our communications school shares facilities with the Toronto campus of College Boréal. Most of its instruction is conducted in French. On Tuesday, I bumped into Bululu Kabatakaka, the director of the college’s cultural integration program. He told me that of its 160 students in Toronto, College Boréal has two faculty members, two support staff and a dozen students all originally from Haiti. I asked the director what he’d heard from them.

Bululu told me that one of his instructors, a 30-year-old professor of law, told him her family in Port-au-Prince had survived, but their house had not. They had nothing and were literally left to fend for themselves in the streets. A second professor of social services also had family in the capital city, but the quake had killed most of them. And then he described his twelve Haitian students.

“They’ve disappeared,” he said. “ Since the quake they haven’t come back to classes. We’ve tried to call and comfort them, but they seem to have lost all hope.”

I asked Bululu if his work or travels had ever taken him to Haiti. He said it had. Originally from the Congo, he said some of his colleagues had taken their skills and talents to Haiti to teach and guide young people there. I asked him what the country looked like before the quake. He described the palace, the large hotels, the government buildings in downtown Port-au-Prince. They he paused and said he’d heard from a friend who’d come through the quake.

“The places you visited,” his friend said, “they’re all gone. They don’t exist anymore.” And Bululu said he just sat down and cried.

Moved by the losses his college faculty and students have suffered, we quickly arranged our own fund-raiser for the next day. Our joint Centennial College/College Boréal event quickly attracted speakers, silent auction items, entertainment and yours truly (the MC) to rally ’round the Haitians in our midst. Of course, it would never bring back lost family or the cityscapes of Port-au-Prince. But it did offer everybody an outlet for grieving and tangible support for the victims in our midst.

“The disaster is closer than you think,” Bululu pointed out.

Before I left my massage therapist this week, I wondered out loud how funds given to the Rotary Club of Uxbridge might be used to assist Haitians with a million and one needs right now. She told me she understood that Uxbridge donations would go directly to those local branches in Haiti, to deliver medical assistance, to begin reconstruction of lost homes and schools and to dig new wells.

Like the disaster, relief is closer than you think.

Custodian of the Maple Leaf

2010-01-16T20:41:00.000-08:00

It happened early last spring. With just a few days remaining before I led one of my annual tours to the battlefields of Europe, I paid a visit to the man who regularly supplies me with this country’s greatest calling card.

Bryan Petry was ready and waiting for me. At his All Seasons Display office in Markham, Ont., he had three full-sized Canadian flags I planned to use as official gifts. He had bags of Canadian flag pins we would give as souvenirs to French and Belgian acquaintances, and he had bundles of paper Canadian flags we would plant in front of Canadian military headstones at Commonwealth War Grave sites.

“Plant one for me, would you?” Bryan asked me.

His request caught me a little off guard. “Of course,” I said eventually. “Anything for my favourite custodian of the flag.”

I guess I didn’t realize how telling that moment in his office really was. Though I would see Bryan Petry a few more times later that summer and into fall, his request to be remembered during one of our cemetery visits turned out to be the last favour I was able to return to him. On Monday, Bryan died of complications caused by cancer at Toronto East General Hospital. He was 54.

Bryan and I were not close friends. In fact, he had many more tight friendships cultivated through his son’s hockey, his volunteer service with youth and adult hockey, and most particularly, his longtime association with the Islanders Oldtimers Hockey Club in Uxbridge. You won’t be surprised to learn that Bryan and I met via hockey.

One year we happened to be on the same team in Uxbridge’s Sunday night men’s recreational hockey league. He was the team rep. As usual, he quietly took on the responsibility of assembling the team in the fall, doing all the associated paperwork and then representing the team on the executive. He even took his share of jabs in the dressing room about being “a member of management.”

“Somebody’s got to do it. And I’m just as competent or incompetent as the next guy,” he would say.

But it’s mostly as an ambassador of Canada’s national emblem that I think of Bryan Petry. Do you remember that incident a few years ago, in which an Uxbridge resident had his Canadian flag torn down and stolen? Within hours of the incident, Bryan suggested he and I call and offer to replace it. I think the folks at the Legion were the only ones to make the same offer faster than Bryan did. Then, there was the Vimy flag.

During another of my annual spring visits with Bryan at his flag shop in Markham, back in 2007, I happened to mention that I needed not just any Canadian flag, but a Red Ensign. It had been the national emblem that 48 regiments of Canadian troops had carried up Vimy Ridge during the famous First World War victory in France, I told Bryan. I thought it would be a classy touch to have a replica of the Red Ensign on display at our annual Oilies Remembrance Day tournament in November 2007 (the 90th anniversary year of the historic 1917 battle).

A few days before I flew to France to attend the special observances at Vimy in April 2007, Bryan called to inform me he had two Red Ensigns for me – one for the Oilies’ tournament and another that Don Mason of the Islanders had requested. I made sure that both flags were photographed at the base of the twin towers of the monument as evidence of their journey from Uxbridge to Vimy and back. Of course, all members of both oldtimers teams were pleased to see the images. But I remember Bryan’s face especially. It lit light up brightest.

“Like gems against that Vimy marble,” he commented. “Nothing ever looked better.”

A few weeks after I’d shared the photos with my Oilies teammates and Bryan’s Islanders teammates, Bryan had another emblem to contribute. He’d created a pennant we could hang from the same pole as the Red Ensign. The pennant had an inscription embroidered into it:

“This Canadian Ensign retraced the path of the 116th (Ontario) Regiment from Uxbridge to France and the site of the First World War battle at Vimy Ridge, in which the regiment participated. It visited the Vimy Memorial on April 9, 2007, the 90th anniversary of the battle.”

I’m going to miss my annual visit with Bryan Petry this spring. I’ll miss his eagerness to share Canadian emblems in our community, across the country and beyond. And whenever I see that perfect Maple Leaf on a lapel, a backpack or a flagpole, I’ll remember the gentle patriot who helped put it there.

Ending the year with a bang

2010-01-06T12:44:00.000-08:00

I simply went to exchange a Christmas gift. By 11 a.m. on Dec. 30, I reached the electronics store in south Whitby, Ont. But because of holiday demand, the store didn’t have much selection left. So, they gave me a credit and asked me to come back in the new year. I headed home – northbound on Thickson Road. It was just after noon. On the radio they were about to announce the roster for Team Canada, the men’s Olympic hockey team.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer said, “Steve Yzerman.”

That’s the last sound that came from my car radio. At that moment, I entered the intersection of Thickson and Rossland, east of downtown Whitby. As I did, a one-ton pickup truck suddenly came at me from the right. Before I could react, we collided and my car was spinning clockwise. I thought, “There’s going to be a second impact … a pole … another vehicle … or a least the curb.” But it never came.

Fortunately, my little old Corolla just stopped spinning on its own. And – seconds later – when I focused, I was facing the opposite direction. The truck that had hit me sat crosswise in front of me. I was covered in glass and debris from the truck’s front-end and what was left of the passenger’s side of my car. Then I consciously looked to my hands and feet. Thankfully, I could move them. A woman approached and told me my head was bleeding. And I suddenly felt pain there. A moment or two later a man with a cell phone to his ear approached from the driver’s side, opened the door and spoke with a bit of an accent.

“Are you OK?” he asked.

At first, all I cared was that I could hear him and that I could understand him. “Was the light green?” I asked.

“I saw it all. You had the green. You were in the right,” he said. “I’ve called 911. Help’s on the way.” And he handed me his card: Alva Wedderburn, Al’s Home Services, it said. “Hold onto that, if you need a witness or anything.” And I promised myself I’d call and thank him when I could.

I next remember sirens, a couple of them. Then someone in one of those fluorescent pullovers – a police officer – began directing traffic. And two voices – a couple of paramedics – began asking me questions: Where was there any pain? Was I able to breathe OK? They asked me my name and asked me to stay still in case I had a neck injury. It occurred to me later that they’d asked all the right questions, but they’d also treated me like a person, not just a nameless victim in a car wreck. And that never changed – from the accident scene, on the ride to Ajax Hospital and into the emergency ward.

I learned that one of them – Darcy Caffin – had been a paramedic for 16 years. He’d studied at Fanshaw College and regularly upgraded his training to stay on top of his profession. His partner – Derek Brain – reacted when I said I needed to call a veteran I’d intended to meet that afternoon. He said he had a special interest in vets. And we shared some military history. But amid the friendly conversation, they never lost sight of my well-being – checking my blood pressure and heart rate like clockwork. Whether protocol required it or not, Caffin and Brain made my case seem priority one. And they never let me out of their sight until I was safely in the hands of hospital staff. They seemed surprised when I asked for a pen to write down their names. I said I didn’t want to forget their professionalism or kindness.

“All in a day’s work,” one of them said.

A few hours, an examination and four staples in my head later, I left the hospital and visited what was left of my Corolla among wrecks in a Whitby towing company yard. I felt sad the last car my parents had ever owned and passed on to me should end up this way. Maybe my survival that day was among their last gifts to me. But then I remembered my Good Samaritan. I called Al Wedderburn back to ask why he’d stopped.

“It was nothing really,” he said. I placed his accent as Jamaican, but he said he’d been here 30 years. “Nowadays people are too busy to stop. But where I come from, if your fellow man is in distress, you lend a hand.”

By quarter-past-noon on Dec. 30, I’d been quite prepared to hate the world for what had happened. But by day’s end, I was thankful for the kindness of a stranger and two paramedics and their humanitarian gifts when I most needed them.

Gift of a song

2009-12-26T12:30:00.000-08:00

The sounds of Christmas are everywhere in song, whether Silent Night or Little Town of Bethlehem or even the Chipmunks' Christmas Song and Deck the Halls with Boston Charlie. But I’ve got a story of a Christmas song you’ve never heard of. In fact, it’s not even about Christmas; it’s about the day before. It began one day back in 2001 when my father – Alex Barris – called me with a problem.

“I’ve written a song,” he said. “It’s called ‘It’s Christmas Eve.’”

“So what’s the problem?” I asked.

Dad said it was a piece he’d composed some years before. Not only had he written up the musical score sheets and the lyrics, but he had also published it and even recorded a rough soundtrack of his own voice singing it. His dilemma, he told me, was that he now wanted to have the song professionally recorded in a studio, with piano accompaniment and a female vocalist. Therein lay the dilemma, he said. He wanted one of our daughters to record it. But which one?

“Why not have them do it together,” I suggested, “in harmony.”

And so my father’s family Christmas project was set in motion. The girls – one professionally trained, the other naturally gifted – took time over that spring to rehearse with renowned Toronto pianist Norm Amadio. Then on a warm day in June 2001, pianist Norm, singers Quenby and Whitney, and composer/lyricist/producer Alex arrived at a sound studio in Toronto’s east-end for the recording session. The song begins:

“It’s Christmas Eve, a time to think,
And here’s a thought you can borrow:
If you believe in Christmas Eve
You’ll banish all of your sorrow.
The mistletoe, the frosty snow,
Are gifts you’ll treasure tomorrow.
So start to weave this hallowed eve, a merry Christmas Day.”

As the music and vocals were laid down that day eight years ago, the rest of us – my mother, my sister, my wife and I – looked on in awe as the magic in the studio happened. Within just a few hours, the recording session had created a most wonderful tribute to an often overlooked Christmas moment – the poignancy, calm and anticipation of the day and night before Christmas. The chorus concludes:

“It’s Christmas Eve, a magic time
A time to think about giving,
A gift of cheer to those held dear,
Who make our lives worth the living.
It’s time to praise in song and phrase
The One who’s always forgiving
The One whose birth upon this Earth
Created Christmas Day.”

More than just a song, my dad and our girls had concocted for the rest of us a permanent record, literally, of a family’s tribute to a most special time of year. In the months that followed the recording, we tried to get some of the big names in the Canadian recording industry to pay attention to this little demo CD. Some agreed to take a listen. None was interested enough to record it. Not long after, my father was crippled by a number of strokes and health setbacks that took him from us in 2004.

Every year, when the holidays roll around, we reflect on Christmases past, celebrations to remember and gifts that stand out. A few years ago, I noted, for example, that the National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York (established in 1998), issued its list of all-time most memorable toy gifts – including such items as alphabet blocks, Barbie dolls, crayons, yo-yos, Frisbees, Silly Putty, jump ropes, Hula Hoops, checkers, red wagons, Erector Sets and View-Masters.

Of course, being an American museum, they just didn’t get it when it comes to a kid’s first hockey skates. When I was a boy, my most memorable Christmas gift came right out of a Roch Carrier short story. The folks gave me a peewee-sized set of pants, suspenders, socks, shoulder, shin and elbow pads and CCM skates – my very first set of hockey equipment – complete with Hesspler green flash hockey stick, gloves and helmet (I think I was among the first on my team to wear that Butch Goring style three-piece head gear). That Christmas morning I shed my pajamas right there in the living room, suited up in my hockey gear and stayed in it 0’til Christmas dinner.

For me, however, all that pales next to the gift of a song from the heart of a father, delivered by the voices of his granddaughters, to the rest of his adoring family.

A taste of concern

2009-12-16T03:08:00.000-08:00

Monday night was bittersweet. Through the evening, a lot of friends and neighbours shared food and drink in anticipation of holiday festivities, just days away. But in the middle of a special wine and food tasting at the Tin Mill, a local eatery in Uxbridge, Ont., I listened to a friend of mine grieve. He couldn’t fathom that just eight weeks ago, his son Christopher was as alive as ever.

“I wake up each day thinking he’ll be there,” Warren Skinner told me. “It’s absolutely surreal.”

Christopher, Warren and Ellen Skinner’s 27-year-old son, died on Adelaide Street in Toronto on Oct. 18. He’d been celebrating his sister Taryn’s birthday in the city’s entertainment district. He’d begun to walk home about 3 a.m. As best authorities could determine, it appeared that Christopher and occupants of a dark-coloured SUV had a confrontation. The police said his attackers beat Chris to the ground, then drove over him and sped away. That cowardly act snuffed out an extraordinary young man’s life and devastated his family.

In the days that followed, this town held its breath. Homicide officers with the Toronto Police Service announced they had security video footage from the area. It showed the SUV speeding away. A few days later, as a thousand gathered in Toronto for a candlelight vigil, everybody expected it would only be a matter of time before police made arrests. Then, in response to deafening silence and frustration, TPS announced a $50,000 reward for information. The Skinners offered a further $25,000, hoping someone might step forward.

Well, no witnesses have stepped forward yet. But this town certainly has.

No more so than Monday night, when co-restaurateurs Don Andrews and Conrad Lepine presented a unique fundraiser at the Tin Mill. The two hospitality veterans called upon friends and business associates alike to step up the plate – as it were – to share an evening of wine and food tasting in aid of the Skinners’ reward fund. Sysco Foods, Len Graphics, Stage One, both newspapers and the Tin Mill staff all offered supplies and services. Conrad told me he’s conducted business with such wine and spirits suppliers as Kittling Ridge, Willow Springs, Ocala, Profile Wine Group, The Vine and Corby Distilleries for so long, he felt sure he could depend on them to contribute to the tasting. They responded right away.

“We wanted to raise a good deal of money in a hurry,” Don Andrews told me. “This seemed the best way to do it.”

Though we didn’t expect them, Ellen and Warren Skinner and other members of the family arrived at the Tin Mill to join in. For many of us, it was the first time since Christopher’s funeral, that this community had had a chance to express its concern. I can’t remember hugs and conversation with such heartfelt, genuine emotion. A woman new to town couldn’t believe so many – nearly 200 people – would show that kind of support. I suggested it wasn’t unusual considering how closely the Skinners and this town are tied together.

Of Christopher, I have a number of vivid memories. I recall fondly the times when he and our daughter Whitney appeared with Uxbridge Youth Choir and the Port Perry High School music ensemble “Jazzmerize.” The Skinners and the Barrises often shared duties chauffeuring the two to and from early morning rehearsals or evening performances. It meant the world to them to have those moments on stage doing what they loved. They had no idea how much it meant to us – their parents.
“Christopher was so vital,” Ellen Skinner said to me Monday night.

As I listened to Warren describe the last eight weeks, I watched a man tormented and distraught by the events of Oct. 18. At one point in our conversation he showed me the contents of his pocket – principal among the cards and slips of paper were a couple of snapshots of Christopher. He said he looked at them often. He told me an extraordinary story about the impact of Christopher’s funeral on one of his working colleagues – a judge in Newmarket. The woman had come away from the service so moved that she said she wished she had known Christopher and finally she told Warren, “I’ve decided to be a better person.”

Like the extraordinary evening Don and Conrad arranged, I’m sure my experience Monday night was but a sample of the genuine outpouring of support for Ellen and Warren Skinner. The evening raised a lot of money. It sparked some laughter, plenty of reminiscences and continued concern that neither the Skinners’ job nor our job is complete – until the fund and the case are successfully closed. As things wound down at the Tin Mill Monday night, I asked Warren finally why he and Ellen had chosen to come.

“We had to,” he said. “We had to embrace this moment.”

So did we all.

The face that chose me

2009-11-25T06:37:00.000-08:00

The day I first saw it, I had no idea how much impact it would have on my life or the lives of several others.

I came across the photograph back in March. I had opened a copy of the Globe and Mail and spotted the image right away. I suddenly realized the picture might provide the exact image I’d been searching for. It showed a contemporary Canadian soldier in Afghanistan. He seemed to be seated inside a troop transport. He looked exhausted, done in. I checked the caption under the shot. It said:

“Master Corporal Chris Jebeaupre rests after a mission in the Taliban stronghold of Zhari district.”

All last winter I had searched for an image to place on the cover of my new book, a book I hoped might change attitudes about the way we view Canadian veterans. I wanted the image to say several things. It had to depict a veteran; clearly this man was a veteran, not of long past wars, but of a current war. It had to be an honest reflection of the aftermath of a wartime event; the Reuters news agency photographer, Stefano Rellandini, seemed to have caught this Canadian soldier in a state of exhaustion. Perhaps even loss. So I called Reuters seeking permission to use the shot on the cover of my book.

“You’ll have to call New York,” the woman at the Toronto Reuters office told me.

Once I’d made contact, I asked Reuters to forward the photo to my publisher’s cover designer to incorporate the image around the title of my new book, “Breaking the Silence.” From the first draft of his treatment, I knew that my instincts to get this photograph were right. The image of Master Cpl. JeBeaupre seemed perfect.

Early this fall, the production of my book and its dust jacket came off the printing presses and by October I held the first copy in my hands. Suddenly it hit me. We had paid for clearance to use the photograph. The production designer had incorporated it perfectly into the jacket. But we had never bothered to contact the Canadian veteran whose face would appear on thousands of books.

“I don’t want this guy to hear about being on the cover of a nationally published book by accident,” I told my publisher. “I want him to hear it from us.”

Thus began my search for the veteran on my book jacket. I tried to find him through the Canadian Forces database. I called friends of mine in the military. I went as far up the Department of National Defence ladder as a civilian can go to find him. Nothing.

“Is it possible his name is not Jebeaupre, but deBeaupre?” I asked a military officer.

That was it exactly. And the Canadian Forces system immediately traced the soldier. By coincidence, he had just returned from his overseas deployment in Afghanistan and been posted to CFB Gagetown, N.B. It took a while, but eventually I convinced a duty officer there to receive a copy of the book and pass it along to deBeaupre himself. In about a week, I received word the soldier had received it. He contacted me by voice-mail and said he was honoured to be part of a book that recognized Canadian veterans.

By mid-October, I was on the road, on television and radio and online talking about the content of the book. In just over five weeks I have been interviewed or delivered talks, presentations and keynotes 85 times. Then, last Wednesday evening, as I was about to speak one more time, a woman in the audience caught my attention. I introduced myself. And so did she.

“I’m Sandy deBeaupre,” she said, “Chris deBeaupre’s mother.”

I don’t know whether it was out of respect or surprise, but I directed a lot of my presentation to her that evening. I spoke about one of my book’s themes – the code of silence that veterans use on sons and daughters who ask “What did you do in the war, Dad?” I suggested that sometimes it is we who impose the silence on veterans out of reverence for their loss on Remembrance Days. And I explained that sometimes veterans don’t have to be elderly to have suffered trauma, pain and loss; I described my conversations with Canadian veterans back from Afghanistan. And I acknowledged that Sandy deBeaupre’s son Chris – depicted on my book jacket – might well be one of those silently suffering veterans. Sandy nodded in understanding.

“You may not realize it,” she said, “but that photograph on your book was taken just after Chris had lost four of his comrades that very day.”

The face I had tripped over, chosen for my cover and hoped would represent the face of the veteran experience, had indeed lost a lot that day.

Making the point

2009-11-18T13:17:00.000-08:00

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.

The meaning of silence

2009-11-10T19:49:00.000-08:00

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.

The original "Boo"

2009-11-10T19:45:00.000-08:00

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.”

The male heir

2009-10-04T09:49:00.000-07:00

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.

A community mission

2009-10-04T09:44:00.000-07:00

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.

His place to stand

2009-10-04T09:40:00.000-07:00

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.’”

Too young to know?

2009-09-01T15:27:00.000-07:00

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.

The fixer

2009-08-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, a hockey buddy and I went out for a round of golf at a nearby course. He’s a member there, but this was just a casual round for a bit of relaxation, conversation and refreshment after the round. Through most of the game, I’d had no luck hitting the greens with my tee shots. Since most of the holes are par threes, my problem was critical.

“Try this,” Geoff Gaston said and he handed me a hybrid golf club.

It looks like a small driver, but lighter. I tested the club’s weight, teed up the ball and sure enough I drove the green. First try.

“That fixed that,” Geoff said. And – thanks to his club and his tip – I consistently drove par three greens all afternoon.

As he and I sat enjoying that refreshment after the game, I pondered my golfing breakthrough. More important, I thought about the guy who’d fixed my problem. In many ways, that’s the story of Geoff Gaston’s life. Whether in his work, at home or in his relationships, Geoff has very often been “the fixer.” Just ask anybody he met while on the job in recent years at Zehrs, the local grocery store. Can’t find something? Need a hand? Geoff provided it, and not just because it was his job either. It came naturally.

Geoff was born in England, but emigrated with his family to Canada in 1949. Raised in the Markham, Ontario, area, Geoff was a typical high school kid in the 1960s – loved baseball and hockey, played rock ‘n’ roll guitar (he excelled at all of them) and knew a good job opportunity when he saw it. He joined Bell Canada in 1966 and worked virtually his entire career as a splicer with the phone company.

Just last week, when Geoff and I were having a visit at his home, former Bell co-worker Les Smith dropped by. Before long, he and Geoff were reminiscing about “the good old days” – splicing phone lines, dealing with customer complaints and staying on top of the latest telephone technology.

Their toughest problem? Fighting company policy that allowed Bell splicers to work alone in street manholes. Les pointed out that (among others) Geoff campaigned to have the policy changed. Today, Bell splicers use the buddy system in such situations. A potentially life-threatening problem … fixed.

In 2002, after 33 years of loyal service, Geoff retired with hopes of spending time with his wife Gail at their trailer up north and the rest of his summers golfing. Within a year he was diagnosed with throat cancer. It took heavy chemotherapy and radiation, but he fixed that too – for a time.

Within a year or so, he’d built up his strength enough to rejoin the Uxbridge Oilies, the oldtimers hockey club he’d co-founded in 1983. Some of us noted that his health setback had slowed his skating down, but not his laser snap shot. Just ask local goaltenders; they tell you. Nor did the cancer hurt his sense of humour in the dressing room.

“Now I can even drink crappy beer,” Geoff said. “When your taste buds are gone, who can tell the difference?”

I remember my first days with the Oilies. I was the new guy, until Geoff took me under his wing. One Wednesday night, as we suited up for our weekly scrimmage, in front of everybody, Geoff strode over to me, took my stick and pointed out that it needed “an Oilies tape job,” which he promptly delivered. It was my initiation. He’d fixed things to make sure I belonged.

“Almost five years to the day after the throat cancer,” Gail told me, “Geoff’s cancer came back.”

But from then on, he seemed resigned not to go the chemo and radiation route again. At first, it didn’t seem to hamper his style. He was still fixing wherever he could. By this time, his daughter Laura was living with them and Geoff managed his health while helping Laura take care of her kids. The family always enjoyed each other’s company. Even last Thursday – with Geoff in hospital – his family was close by to acknowledge his 63rd birthday.

I visited him Monday morning. He was on a ventilator – his eyes closed. I couldn’t tell if he could hear me or not. But I thanked him for the hybrid golf club (he’d given me for my birthday). I told him I’d used it on the first par three in a golf game last Friday and put my tee shot on the green.

“You fixed things for me one last time,” I told him.

Geoff Gaston, died Monday evening, with his wife Gail at his bedside. Try as we might to repay him, his cancer was one thing none of us could fix.

Water follies

2009-08-15T21:05:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, a few members of my family – several cousins and an uncle from the U.S. – gathered at a rented cottage up north. Between cloud bursts and wind gusts, we attempted to holiday. We threw a few horseshoes. We got some summer reading in on the deck. We attempted a couple of barbeques. We even approximated some swimming. During one of those warm spells, my cousin’s husband made an announcement.

“I’m off to dig up earth worms,” Jerry said, “and I’m going to do some fishing.”

“Go to it, Jerr,” we all said.

It was only when we noticed him at the end of the dock with a bucket of worms, his fishing rod and a handful of lures that we wondered whether there was something rather important missing: A fishing licence. Frankly, we didn’t know whether one was needed for casting baited hooks off a pier on a lake from a rented cottage, or not. But we warned him to keep an eye out, just in case an Ontario conservation officer happened by. I didn’t want my innocent relative from Florida suddenly running afoul of the law, losing his car or ending up in the slammer just for playing-fishing off a dock.

“Are there that many conservation officers around?” he retorted.

Particularly in the wake of events this past week, I guess my family illustrated the epidemic sweeping Ontario’s vacation spots this summer. The public is horribly ignorant of what’s the law. What’s worse, we’re not even practising common sense by the water’s edge.

Take for example a few of the recent cases of drownings in cottage country – as of this writing, I think, nine people have lost their lives in swimming, boating and waterskiing accidents in the last 10 or 11 days. Doubly tragic is that most of them were preventable. In other words, if those people had worn life jackets (not just stacked them in the boat), not gone boating under-the-influence, or checked with local residents about the high water levels this year, some of those nine individuals might be alive today.

It would be easy to blame youth for the false sense of invincibility and associated cockiness out in the water. But it’s not fair and it’s not accurate. Three of the nine people who died in this spate of drownings were between 40 and 55 years of age, several more in their 30s, the rest 20-somethings. And to be perfectly honest, when our men’s canoe group hits the water each April, to take on the Black River current in flood, we mostly just wear life jackets when we enter rapids or bad weather; the rest of the time our preservers are preserving nothing but an empty space in the canoe bottom. Not too smart for a bunch of guys with so-called life experience.

Not to be outdone by those forgetting common sense in the water this summer, there’s the nutty group that decided to illustrate their ignorance and lawlessness on the water. The case of the three prairie hunters who conducted target practice on a bunch of out-of-season ducks on a western lake or pond has just come down to a conviction. According to a Saskatchewan court ruling, the three took pot shots at ducks and ducklings just to witness the carnage. What’s more they video-taped it and put it on YouTube.

“Did you get the baby?” calls out one of the hunters.

Another is heard shouting it’s “a massacre!”

Meanwhile, the judge in the case called the entire escapade, “stupid, reckless and irresponsible,” and he could fine the threesome $100,000 under provincial law and $300,000 under federal law – not to mention throw them in jail for six months. I don’t mind telling you that the YouTube video turned my stomach. Not surprisingly regional conservationists, the Wildlife Federation, Environment Canada and even the hunting fraternity are all outraged at these men’s antics too.

But here’s perhaps the most alarming aspect of the entire incident: if the egotistical hunters hadn’t used social media to show off, it’s unlikely that any conservation officers would have brought them to justice. The truth is – with general cutbacks over the years – that there are not nearly enough conservation officers around to catch lawbreakers in or on the water.

The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (on its website) indicates that the department has more 250,000 lakes to supervise; and there are but 273 COs to cover a million square kilometres of Ontario back country.

That’s why my cousin Jerry, casting baited hooks off the end of the dock in cottage country for perch and bass, probably had nothing to worry about. Still, ignorance may be bliss, but it’s no excuse.

Words without speaking

2009-08-08T08:26:00.000-07:00

Just after the holiday Monday, I walked into my favourite local bookstore - Blue Heron Books - to find its proprietor on the phone. She looked as if she were having a lively conversation. She was as animated as she usually is when anybody drops into the store for a book or to talk about a book. As I got closer I realized that, no, the conversation was one-way. She was essentially leaving a message for a book representative or a publicist.

“So if you can get back to me,” Shelley Macbeth said, “maybe we can work out a way to stage the event.” And she hung up the phone, rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulders. Clearly, the experience was unsatisfactory.

I lamented to Shelley that it’s too bad people don’t talk to each other anymore, that we’ve resorted to communicating by leaving voice mail for each other, or tapping out coded messages on computer keyboards as e-mail, or, more than likely these days, “twittering” text messages in more abbreviated and clipped language than even an e-mail message allows. I mean, how many times has someone on the other end of the telephone line cut short a conversation by saying:

“Why don’t you just e-mail me and I’ll get back to you.” Which is short for “I can’t be bothered talking to you. I feel less threatened if I sit at a computer keyboard and compose an answer later, rather than deal with you person-to-person right now.”

Much as his descendant corporation – Bell Canada and its various subsidiaries – have continued to profit by his original, crude “phonotograph” invented in 1874, Alexander Graham Bell must be spinning in his grave at the state of phone conversation.

It’s almost exactly 150 years ago that the brilliant Scottish-born inventor entreated his faithful colleague Thomas Watson, “Come here, I need you.” From that transmitted phrase came telephone bills, party lines, faxes, that long-distance feeling, cell phones and even micro-waved voice technology from astronauts on the moon. The sky was literally the limit, thanks to his original telephone.

But Mr. Bell wasn’t the only famous telephone conversationalist.

The top-secret chats that Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt shared by trans-Atlantic telephone probably changed the fate of the world during the Second World War. And speaking of world security, diplomacy in the 1970s would not have existed without the telephone conversations that then National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger had with presidents Nixon and Ford; indeed, the U.S. National Security Archive houses over 30,000 telephone transcript pages of conversations the esteemed Dr. Kissinger had with such personalities as Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin, journalist Ted Koppel and show-business pal Frank Sinatra – all in the interest of national security.

But no longer an up-close-and-personal device, the telephone (and the voice communication that it fostered) have fallen out of favour, particularly with a young generation, that would just as soon chat online, text or twitter with each other, as opposed to actually talking to anybody.

I remember a few years ago, when I began teaching young journalists about beat reporting, that is, short-term, highly focused and very intense reporting on specific subjects (beats) such as education, politics, health, etc. When budgeting the beat reporting semester, we factored in long-distance calls we expected our students might place during the course of their 15-week pursuit of beat reporting sources. We were astonished when our college telephone bills hadn’t spiked at all. Indeed, our students had conducted barely any long-distance interviews at all, preferring instead to interview by e-mail.

Why? We subsequently learned that our young charges preferred the safety of e-mail billboards, or chat rooms, or worse still – question-and-answer sessions conducted entirely at computer keyboards. The students’ improvised dodging of direct contact with their sources, made it easier for them to deal with their fear of failure. But it also made for lower quality reporting.

To combat the apparent phone phobia and to ensure that our reporters got over their fears and got better stories, we insisted – from then on – that all interviews had to be conducted face-to-face or at least by telephone. I have to report, several years later, there remain some students who still refuse to pick up the phone to talk to their sources.

Which brings me back to Shelley Macbeth’s one-way conversation with her book rep. Maybe before making any commitment – least of all on a telephone – people should expect to hear from a real live, speaking person.

But, what a minute. That’s where telemarketing came into the picture. That’s one live phone voice I’d just as soon “twitter” into oblivion.

A brother's keeper

2009-07-28T13:14:00.000-07:00

I think I can pinpoint the first time I ever felt self-confident.

It didn’t come on graduation day. It wasn’t contained inside that rolled-up education degree. I can’t even say I felt self-assured when I got married or with my first steps as a professional. You’d think a guy who had his first newspaper column published in high school, his first radio show as a teenager, his first book released in his twenties, would have loads of confidence. But no. The day I think I realized I had found my niche in the world was the day my brother-in-law Bill Doig gave me a friendly poke in the shoulder.

“You know,” he said, “you’re pretty good at what you do.”

I had only just left my hometown of Toronto for work a few months earlier in 1976. My wife – his wife’s sister – and I had only been married a year or so. She and I really had no car of our own (my folks had given us one). We didn’t have a roof over our heads (Bill solved that; he invited us live with them). We had very few possessions. Heck, we didn’t even have a credit rating. But somehow because I was (overnight) Bill Doig’s brother-in-law and working in the same city as he was, I suddenly became a somebody.

You see, when Bill gave me that compliment, it was more powerful than a pat on the back for being a good communicator. It went beyond the fact that Bill regularly tuned into whatever I was doing on the air. I mean, he could have listened to the local country or rock ‘n’ roll station, not his brother-in-law’s morning information radio show. But because he respected what I did – and often told other people so – he invited me into his world, his circle of acquaintances, and a friendship, which I’m proud to say flourished for over 30 years.

Sadly, the earthly part of our close friendship has just ended. Last week, my brother-in-law Bill Doig died at 67.

Genuine kinship with someone who’s a relative by marriage is rare. But Bill and I felt simpatico and not just out of professional respect. I remember the first time I met him on a hobby farm just outside Saskatoon. It was July and he needed to transport hay for his horses from the fields to his barn. While Bill had scores of friends – closer and more physically adept at such things – this wimpy and unskilled Barris body was the only one that showed up to help. He never forgot it.

Some years later, when Jayne and I bought a piece of Saskatchewan prairie adjoining his and Pat’s land, west of Saskatoon, and then moved our first house, a 40-foot mobile home onto it, Bill was always there to help – with the tools I never had, the skill I never had, and the loyalty I never thought I deserved. But all that gave me something extra. Because Bill showed me how to build a fence, plant a windbreak, do minor repairs, and even handle basic tools such as drills, wrenches and a chainsaw, for the first time in my life, I felt – if I had to – I really could fend for myself.

I’ll never be a handyman’s handyman, but Bill gave me the confidence to try and fail and try again.

There’s one other gift my brother-in-law bestowed upon me. It is perhaps the least obvious, but (to me) among the most precious. Not long after I’d begun my broadcast journalism career at that radio station in Saskatoon, I contemplated assembling a program I sensed listeners needed – a Remembrance Day broadcast comprised of a veteran’s memories. Bill suggested his father, Harold Doig. Like most vets, “H.T.” (as everybody knew him) seemed hesitant to talk about some of his most traumatic navy experiences, least of all to this 20-something stranger with an interest in war history.

But with Bill’s encouragement, H.T. gave me his memories, including a vivid recollection of seeing his brother after his first Atlantic convoy trip to Murmansk, Russia, and back.

“That first mission was so harrowing,” H.T. said, “that when my brother came back, his hair had gone completely white.”

It’s a veteran’s memory I’ll never forget. What’s more, that gift from H.T. and from his son Bill in many ways opened the door for me to explore the memories of hundreds, indeed thousands, of other veterans. Bill’s gift of trust became the most gratifying career I could ever have imagined. So, brother-in-law Bill Doig, though I can never fully repay you, I pay tribute to your greatest gift to me – believing in myself.

Anatomy of a surprise

2009-07-19T20:33:00.000-07:00

I should have been suspicious.

I should have been suspicious when Ronnie Egan, my neighbour of nearly 25 years, asked if I would take her to the grocery store. I should have been suspicious because it was a Sunday. And she wanted me to drive her there at precisely 2:15 that afternoon. Odd in retrospect. But given that 1) she was a chief petty officer in the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service during the war and she therefore does everything with purpose and precision, and 2) that she is the world’s greatest neighbour, who was I to question? But I did speak up at one point.

“What do you need at the store today?” I asked.

“Just a few things for an event I’m going to,” she said.

It turned out the event was a surprise party for me. You see, Sunday was my 60^th birthday. Ronnie and the whole world – well, my whole world – was in on the scheme to gather at the local music hall and surprise me. And I didn’t suspect a thing. Although I should have.

I should have been suspicious when my relatives – all here from the U.S. for a small family reunion – arrived for the usual weekend afternoon of horseshoes in our backyard, but they arrived before noon! The clue? My family is not that punctual.

Furthermore, when they arrived – Aunt Mary and Uncle George (New Jersey), Uncle Angelo (Maryland), and cousins Diane and Jerry (Florida), as well as my sister Kate (Toronto) – they all seemed to hit the ground running. Within minutes of their arrival, the men had launched into the first game of horseshoes and the women informed us they were off on a shopping trip. A shopping trip? What about the hors d’oeuvres, munchies and dip we normally prepare for the backyard festivities? And the backyard bar? What I didn’t know was they were off to prepare the music hall.

I should have been suspicious when neither of my two oldest and dearest friends – Dave Ross and Ross Perigoe – phoned to wish me “Happy Birthday.” Ross, Dave and I have known each other since Grade 2. We were all born in 1949. We’ve always phoned each other on birthdays. But not Sunday, because Dave had travelled from London and Ross from Montreal to surprise me.

When, last week, most of my teaching colleagues at Centennial College in Toronto, didn’t seem to offer final good-byes for the summer holidays, my antennae should have been alerted. Instead, fellow journalism professors – Lindy Oughtred, Steve Cogan, Ellin Bessner, Christine Smith and Malcolm Kelly – were in on the plot.

I should have been suspicious when my wife Jayne didn’t prepare her world-famous artichoke dip for the backyard party, or when our daughter Quenby – months ago – wrote in my date book on July 12: “Book no appointments. It’s your birthday.” And when our other daughter Whitney (who finished her final performance at the Fringe Festival in Toronto Sunday afternoon) said she’d try to attend the family gathering, I should have put two and two together. Whit arrived in time to sing two of my favourite songs, while her sister Quenby masterminded the entire enterprise.

While tending her 19-month-old daughter Layne and expecting our second grandchild in September, Quenby e-mailed all my “families” – high school chums, Uxbridge Oilies teammates, veterans, newspaper kin, writers’ circle friends, musicians, battlefield tour companions, college associates, broadcasting and journalism colleagues, and friends from all over this community. She organized the food and drink. She even gathered pictures from 60 years of my life for projection on-stage at the music hall. She covered every base and buttoned down every potential loose lip – except one.

A few weeks ago, when I ran into the music hall custodian Bruce Bennett, he happened to mention that the facility was ready for “that event I was involved in at the hall.”

“No, I’m not emceeing anything that weekend,” I said. And, yes, I should have been suspicious. But I never connected the dots.

And so, at precisely 2:15 last Sunday afternoon, when Ronnie said we had to leave the horseshoes to do her run to the grocery store, I never tweaked. It never occurred to me I was being had by my favourite neighbour. I never was suspicious. And having helped Ronnie shop, as directed, I delivered her (and me) to the music hall where my whole world was waiting to shout, “Surprise!”

And Quenby got it exactly right when she borrowed from Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” describing my good fortune in friendships. She referred to me as “the richest man in town.”

2009-07-07T14:50:00.000-07:00

Awarding and surviving

2009-07-07T14:35:00.000-07:00

I listened with great interest, the other night, to the pronouncements from the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission about what we’re likely to be watching on our television sets in the coming years. Depending upon whom you believe, this week’s CRTC pay-for-carriage decision is either a victory or a defeat.

“[It’s] the key to our viability,” one broadcaster said.

“I’m fighting mad,” a cable executive countered. “We’ll explore all avenues to contest it.”

What the two giants appear to be fighting over is what the broadcasters claim are appropriate payments to them for the on-air content they produce in their studios and production facilities. While the cable companies call it “a massive tax grab by the broadcasters” to expect cash payment from them, when all they’re doing is delivering the product to viewers.

The truth, in my view, is that neither broadcasters nor cable companies are entitled to claim sovereignty over content. Actually, it’s the writers, researchers, producers, performers, journalists and the technicians who produce the content – they are the true creators. And I believe if both the corporate giants of broadcasting and cable delivery paid the creators their fair share, there might be more production money and content for everybody – including us viewers.

Coincidentally, last week, I attended a broadcasters’ gala event in Toronto, where some of those same producers and journalists – the creators – received recognition for their year’s work. The Radio and Television News Directors Association (a.k.a. the Association of Electronic Journalists) handed out excellence awards in such radio and TV categories as news information, new media usage, live coverage, videography, newscasts, features, commentary, diversity reporting and investigative reporting.

My initial interest in attending the event was to applaud long-time broadcast colleague Ross Perigoe as he received the Michael Monty Memorial Award. The award honoured Perigoe – a professor at Concordia University in Montreal – as the country’s most respected and proficient broadcast journalism instructor.

“There’s no honour greater than from the students we mentor,” he told me.

Watching a life-long friend and working partner win recognition this way – essentially nominated by some of his student protégés – proved a wonderful highlight of the evening. Here among some of the best journalists, producers and managers from both the private and public broadcasting sectors in the country, a man I’ve known all my life earned national attention in his chosen field.

But that was just the beginning of the excitement. All evening long, as the up-and-coming journalists being recognized with other RTNDA awards paraded to the podium, Perigoe kept shaking his head. Not in disappointment, but in disbelief. It turned out that as many as half a dozen of the evening’s winners were former students of his and it was a total surprise to him. In particular, when Elizabeth St. Philip’s name was announced as winning broadcaster in the short feature category, Perigoe really reacted.

“She almost didn’t make it into the industry,” he told me quietly.

I looked at him expectantly and he explained that initially her credentials as an applicant for the Concordia broadcast journalism program (some years ago) weren’t as strong as most. But Perigoe said he spotted something in her demeanour and her personality a passion to succeed no matter what her scholastic record. It convinced him she deserved a chance. She proved him right (and I guess proved he really did deserve that “best educator” award.) It was as if my friend Perigoe had won a second award that night.

Perhaps the irony in the evening came from St. Philip’s acceptance speech. She echoed the concerns many of the young broadcasters expressed as they thanked the RTNDA for the recognition.

“I am so honoured to receive this,” St. Philip said, “particularly when the broadcasting industry seems to be going through such tough times.”

Many of those individuals recognized through the evening came from broadcast outlets or investigative reporting departments now threatened by both public and private budget cutbacks. The truth was some of these award winners’ jobs might not exist come next year’s RTNDA Awards night.

As I often think about the state of radio and television, if only the accountants of broadcasting spent time listening to the eagerness and passion of its creators, how much better broadcasting might be. If, instead of fighting over who wins or loses the pay-for-carriage skirmish, the broadcast systems and cable companies worried more about saving community broadcasting, how many more Elizabeth St. Philipses we might be inspiring.

And, consequently, how much better the industry might be serving the public airwaves of the country.

A taste of Canadiana

2009-06-24T10:57:00.000-07:00

As a Newfoundlander, she pointed out that back home there are two important observances on July 1.

Each year when the first day of July dawns, Shandel Leamon explained, Newfoundlanders mourn the events at Beaumont-Hamel, France, in 1916. On that July 1, as the Somme offensive began during the Great War, British generals sent hundreds of thousands of Empire soldiers over the top against an occupying German Army. In less than half an hour nearly the entire 1st Newfoundland Regiment – 658 men – became casualties.

“A span of two football fields,” Shandel Leamon explained, “took two months to take from the Germans.”

But then in the evening each July 1, the young student from Little Rapids, Newfoundland, pointed out that she and her fellow citizens celebrate joining Confederation. The island dominion formally became the 10th province of Canada on July 1, 1949. The evening therefore turns into a celebration with promenades, parties and, of course, fireworks.

I met Shandel Leamon and her co-workers – all Canadian university students in the employ of Veterans Affairs Canada – earning tuition money this summer at the Beaumont-Hamel historic site in France.

I had come 6,000 kilometres from Canada and met some of the proudest Canadians I’ll find anywhere. Wearing the VAC uniforms and full of stats, stories and history, they seemed devoted to their work.

Often, however, Canadians are not that distinctive in a crowd. As a nationality – a distinct population inhabiting the northern half of the North American continent – citizens of the “great white North,” can sometimes be hard to discern. So here, for the record are some of the traits that might help the uninitiated recognize me and my fellow Canadians.

Canadians are familiar and (for the most part) comfortable with extremes – cold weather and hot; Pacific and Atlantic Standard Time (a half hour later in Newfoundland); lotteries and the Goods and Services Tax.

When they assemble for sports, Canadians can be just as comfortable slipping on skates or skis or runners; heck, they’ve been known to play baseball while there’s still snow on the diamond or hockey in July.

They have holidays when most others don’t – such as Thanksgiving in October and Family Day in February. But so have they taken a regular holiday, such as Victoria Day, and made it their own – the May 2-4 Weekend (as in a case of 24 beers).

The world can recognize Canadians because – unlike the rest of the world – they’re blasé about such things as Niagara Falls and the Rockies, Celine Dion and Don Cherry, maple syrup and back bacon, sundogs and the Northern Lights, sunburn and the wind chill factor.

Of course, Canadians can be outed by pointing out the way they speak. A quick check of their pronunciation of “house,” “about” or finishing a sentence with “eh” are dead giveaways.

Though not as overt with their Maple Leaf flag on battlefields as say the British or the Americans, Canadians display them proudly on such domestic fixtures as bridges, vehicles, light standards and railings along the Highway of Heroes as a form of comfort, respect and consolation.

Canadians are the world. Most have come from somewhere else. They can just as easily be members of a First Nations society as émigrés from Europe, Africa or Asia. They can be found in churches, synagogues or mosques, or in none of those and still be accepted as spiritual. In that sense, Canadians are perhaps more like a United Nations than the UN is.

By the way, there’s one other uniquely Canadian trait. And once again I discovered this via Beaumont-Hamel student guide Shandel Leamon and her colleagues. At the end of our tour of the historic WWI battlefield, last month, I put a question to her.

“Do you get rest periods?” I asked. “Perhaps a chance for refreshment on a break?”

Leamon and her co-workers nodded in puzzlement.

“Well,” I said, “my tour group and I have a little something to contribute to that break.” And I pulled from my backpack a taste of home – a tin of Tim Hortons coffee.

As It might as well have been the Holy Grail or a king’s ransom. Leamon, as well as Alyx Holland (from Brampton, Ont.) Sarah Aubert (from Trout River, Nfld) and Amie Hodgkinson (from London, Ont.), all began hooting and hollering and leaping around the information centre. They insisted on hugging us and taking pictures (an outburst not typical of being Canadian, I have to say). They told us we had made their day.

Actually, no. They had made our day a distinctly Canadian one, and one worth savouring this July 1.

What time can and cannot heal

2009-06-17T08:02:00.000-07:00

The tour guide had nearly finished his talk.

He had led a group of Canadian tourists (I was hosting) through a former European wasteland. Just over 90 years ago, the centre of Ypres, Belgium, was little more than rubble and mud. Fighting between invading German armies and Allied forces (including thousands of Canadian troops) defending the Flemish city had levelled everything recognizable. The First World War had left virtually every building in the city core in heaps of broken stone and splintered wood. Then tour guide Raoul Saeson pointed to a disintegrating wall of the former rectory near the reconstructed St. Martin’s Church.

“It’s the only part of Ypres that has been left as it was in 1918,” he said. “Every other part of the city has been restored to the way it was.”

My recent trip through the former battlefields of France and Belgium has opened my eyes to the remarkable recovery that people here have achieved in the wake of the two World Wars of the 20th century.

Earlier during that same day, tour guide Saeson had led us through the city’s former Cloth Hall. There, beginning in the 13th century, makers of the finest linens in Europe had gathered year-round to buy and sell their wares. On Nov. 22, 1914, three months into the Great War, the first shells from attacking German artillery crashed into the hall, eventually reducing the structure – about the size of three St. Lawrence Markets – to rubble.

Not until 1967 – more than a half-century later – was the rebuilding process of the structure finally completed. Today, the Cloth Hall (looking like the original marketplace on the outside) has been transformed into the In Flanders Fields Museum.

Each day the facility welcomes thousands of visitors to learn what daily life in Ypres was like during the 1914-1918 war. It houses the most vivid and personal displays of the wartime experience I’ve ever seen.

About 40 kilometres south of the city of Ypres, near the French town of Armentieres (yes, as in the song “Mademoiselle from Armentieres”), a restoration of a different type has recently begun. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, since 1917 the organization that has respectfully buried member nations’ war dead, erected tombstones and tended cemetery gardens, recently began a new project. At Fromelles, where in 1916 the Australian army suffered “the worst 24 hours in its history,” CWGC archaeologists are unearthing a mass grave and attempting to identify (via DNA) and then bury individually the 400 soldiers interred there.

A sign raised near the newly surveyed Australian cemetery in the town of Fromelles captures the essence of this reburying initiative:

“Don’t leave me behind, cobber,” Aussie troops would often call to their comrades in distress.

The individual, recorded and marked reburials, reuniting many of those 400 Australian troops with their lost identities will begin later this year.

The same day on this recent tour, my tour group travelled to Passchendaele, east of Ypres, where from July to November 1917, members of the Canadian Corps and other Commonwealth regiments had attempted to smash through the German front lines (as they had done successfully at Vimy in April 1917). For one member of my contemporary tour – Yvette Rumple, from Kelowna, B.C. – the Passchendaele area known as Polygon Wood held particular significance.

During the offensive on Oct. 8, 1917, Yvette’s father, Frederick Owen, was hit in the leg by shrapnel in a shell hole. There he lay bleeding for 24 hours, nearly dying before two sympathetic German soldiers (using a flag of truce) pulled him out and delivered him to a British first-aid station.

“My father lived,” she said. “The rest in that hole died.”

That afternoon this past week near Polygon Wood, Yvette and I stepped off the tour bus into what is now an early spring planting of corn. As she took pictures of the area where her father fought and survived his last battle, I walked out into the rows of corn, filled a plastic vial with damp earth from the field and presented it to her.

For Yvette Rumple, Frederick Owen’s now senior-citizen daughter, the moment had closed the circle, connected her with her father’s remarkable wartime story, and restored a piece of that wartime battlefield to one of its victors.

Meanwhile, just outside that same In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, a ceiling-to-floor piece of art, called “Martyred Cities,” reminded visitors such as us North Americans, that while they are restored on the outside, places such as Ypres, Coventry, Rotterdam, Dresden, Hiroshima, My Lai, Jerusalem and Srebrenica, still bear the unhealed scars of war inside.

Lessons in Canadian patriotism

2009-06-11T14:09:00.000-07:00

The lunch seemed more elegant than it really was: jambon, fromage et tarte framboises. My dining partners, enjoying ham sandwiches with cheese and strawberry tarts, were fellow travellers – a retired public servant, a photographer and a D-Day veteran – in the Normandy region of France. Suddenly, however, the lunch became secondary, when a stranger approached us. She spotted our Canadian pins.

“Do you know about the ceremony today at l’Abbaye d’Ardenne?” she asked.

We nodded. We told her our group of 47 Canadians – on a tour of Normandy for the 65^th anniversary of the June 6, 1944, invasion – had included the ceremony she mentioned. We knew that on this day – D-Day-plus-1 – members of German commander Kurt Meyer’s 12^th SS Panzer Division had captured and executed 20 Canadian soldiers and then hurriedly buried their bodies in the garden of the thousand-year-old Catholic chapel.

“It’s the most important thing in my life to remember the murdered Canadians,” she said on the verge of tears, “and to make sure the story doesn’t die.”

Her name is Joelle-Lise Perthuis. At 56, her lifetime occupation has been as a teacher of French, Latin and Greek at a Paris high school. But her more recent life’s preoccupation has been the murders at l’Abbaye. She described the shame she felt when she first came to the chapel near Caen, a decade ago, to find just a cultural centre and no acknowledgment of the SS atrocity (she called it “crime de guerre.”) She trembled with emotion, trying to articulate her anger both at the Hitler youth soldiers who shot the Canadian troops and equally the French government for ignoring the gruesome deaths.

“I come here every year without fail,” she said. “It’s impossible to forget these liberating Canadian soldiers.”

Just hours before this extraordinary encounter, D-Day veteran Don Kerr, HR retiree Neil Moodie, photographer Paul Alexander and the rest of our group had visited Juno Beach where the first wave of Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada assault troops had stormed Hitler’s Atlantic Wall near the famous tutor-styled house seen in all those D-Day pictures of Bérnieres-sur-Mer. By coincidence, while there, a Royal Navy veteran – visiting from Britain – approached us to meet the veterans in our tour group. We all noticed his chest was laden with medals.

“The French keep giving me these awards,” said 85-year-old Ted Emmings, “but the Canadians who landed here on D-Day deserve the credit … They suffered so much.”

The landing craft on which Emmings served, he said, delivered 36 Canadians to the beach in front of Bérnieres on D-Day. He couldn’t believe how many never made it to shore. He mentioned a Canadian sergeant with whom he’d spent 14 months training for the invasion, but “he didn’t get two yards up the beach before he was killed.”

Two days earlier, a Normandy-area dentist I know, took time from his busy schedule of attending patients, assisting the planning of D-Day anniversary observances, and chauffeuring veterans around, to speak to our tour group. In addition to the drama of the wider invasion story, Dr. Jean-Pierre Bénamou reminded us that Canadian troops had paid the highest price during the liberation of Normandy (between June and August 1944.) While the U.K. had suffered one casualty for each 30 men in its forces, and the U.S. one in 17, Canada had sustained one in five casualties.

“These young Canadian soldiers helped turn the tide on D-Day,” he emphasized.

Then, to our amazement and in the midst of his dissertation, the unassuming doctor answered a cellphone call. He began searching the nearly cloudless skies above us as he spoke into the phone. He nodded, turned to the east and pointed just above the horizon.

“In a few minutes, an RAF Spitfire from Le Havre will arrive overhead,” Bénamou said. For us, we asked? He nodded and smiled. “A special aerobatic display for you Canadians in honour of your veterans and what your country did for France.”

The sleek, vintage fighter plane did not disappoint. It roared at low level over our heads, then climbed, rolled and dove past us again. The sighs of awe and delight from our tour group reminded me of those at the best of the CNE air shows or after the finale at a May 24 fireworks display.

“It was the stout-hearted Canadians,” Bénamou said, “boys just 18 and 20 years old … that won the day 65 years ago.”

Three separate encounters with three non-Canadians had given us more reason to be proud Canadians than many of us had been in years. It’s a pity we had to travel halfway ’round the globe to experience it.

More than good taste

2009-05-25T14:07:00.000-07:00

When invited to a luncheon sponsored by a wine company, one might expect a predictable event – a variety of wine samples and an extended commercial for the company’s product.

Last week, a travel agent friend invited me to a 75th anniversary tribute to an Australian winemaker. The sample tasting was pretty straightforward. But when it came time for the guest of honour to be interviewed in front of the guests, a stout gentleman in a dazzling bow tie leapt onto the podium.

Simultaneously, someone at the back of the dining room cracked a joke about the man’s diminutive height. The vintner immediately stood on his chair and came back with a crack of his own.

“I used to be this tall,” he said, “but the wine industry cut me down to size.”

From his entrance, right down the very last mouthful of his wine samples over the meal, Australian winemaker Wolfgang Blass made it clear that this would be no ordinary luncheon. And he would leave no ordinary impression. I attended the Toronto stop of a cross-Canada promotional event – celebrating his 75th birthday and his nearly half-century as the namesake for Wolf Blass wines, formally established in 1966 at his vineyards in South Australia. The man, I learned, is a wine-industry icon.

In fact, when Wolf Blass finally sat down to be interviewed by Globe and Mail wine critic, Beppi Crosariol, it became clear just how much the man is responsible for putting Australian wines on the tables of the world – selling up to 65 million bottles of his “Bilyara,” or “Eaglehawk,” label produce annually. And he has been applauded constantly: the International Winemaker of the Year trophy (1992), the Maurice O’Shea Award (2000), three Jimmy Watson trophies, and the Order of Australia (2001), for service to the development of the Australian wine industry.

We learned during the podium conversation, however, that Blass began his career, selling product from the boot of his Volkswagen bug. At that time he was marketing a rather modest wine known as “Pineapple Pearl,” or as critic Crosariol was quick to point out, “the Australian equivalent of Baby Duck.”

Above and beyond his wine-making prowess, I thought, were some noteworthy observations from a seasoned entrepreneur. Among other things he has learned about his industry – and I didn’t know this – is that the table-wine business did not exist until he and others targeted women. When he chose the label colour yellow and focused on women as consumers, his cabernet sauvignons became nearly a staple with dinner.

In a biography of the celebrated man, Blass has also talked about the problems winemakers, and all modern businesses face, particularly in the marketing of product. He couldn’t understand why so many of the young marketers – even in his enterprize – are so adverse to getting out of the office to meet customers, clients and distributors.

“Even my young sales staff have their hands so attached to computers or their heads so buried in their cell phones, that they’ve failed to recognize the most basic form of selling – face-to-face,” he said.

He even cited a specific example of the need to reach out to his consumer. He recalled a time in the company’s past, when some suggested that his product had a short shelf life, in other words, that his wines didn’t maintain their quality if left unopened for a long time. Blass said the critics’ comment shook his company to its roots, until he personally invited a cross-section of the wine world’s most respected reviewers, consumers and even competitors to prove that the opposite was true.

“Face-to-face contact,” he repeated, “did the trick.”

As I said, the man and his life’s work are recognized around the world today – his wines have racked up over 3,000 international awards. But one of those at the luncheon asked which award meant the most to him. I was fascinated with his answer. Blass said his father’s generation was populated by academics, but during the Second World War in Germany there was no school; consequently, Blass never earned a degree.

“That’s why the Honorary Doctorate of Applied Science [from Charles Sturt University] was so important to me,’ he said. “My father would have been proud.”

Awards mean a great deal to anybody investing one’s life in the creation of something unique, sure. But I was most impressed by so much contemporary understanding coming from someone with such a long history in business. He’s proof that a master entrepreneur is one who knows his product, his buyer, his own sales force and how to deal with adversity.

Experience is his ultimate taste test.

Sis-boom-bah!

2009-05-20T14:09:00.000-07:00

About 5 o’clock last Saturday night, I stepped into 1962.

I didn’t feel any different at that moment. I don’t think I looked any different. Neither did my wife. Except that for her, last Saturday night brought together alumni of Ancaster High School (in Ontario). And for her it was a chance to see and hear the impact of nearly 50 years on some of her former classmates, as more than 400 ex-students and faculty gathered to celebrate the school’s golden anniversary. At one point, one of her former classmates summed up the general feeling of the reunion.

“Too little time,” she said, “to remember so much.”

The weekend-long gathering actually attracted about 2,000 former students of the school. And the organizers of the 50th anniversary celebration kept those attending busy with the kind of fare that’s often associated with events such as these – a golf tournament, a reception of current and former staff members, several pub events and a fun run led by some of the school’s former athletic coaches and encouraged from the sidelines by, you guessed it, some of the school’s former cheerleaders shouting some “Sis-boom-bah!”

But the high note of the weekend was a dinner and dance inside the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum at Hamilton Airport.

“At the very least, you’ll feel very much at home next to all those vintage aircraft,” my wife kidded me.

Actually, I found the people-watching much more interesting (at least on this occasion) than the airplane watching. There was a former high school football star, his former girlfriend (they had different spouses), a high school thespian who went on to become a doctor, a number business course grads who built enterprizes with their names on them, and a woman who became an ER nurse. There were guys who had no doubt been nerdy back then, and gals who were had no doubt been knockouts in those yearbook photos. And then there was the high school’s perennial gym teacher, who my wife suggested “hadn’t changed a bit.”

I remember my own high school reunion from a number of years ago. My former secondary school was Agincourt Collegiate Institute (outside Toronto). As I recall, the reunion took place during the school’s 75th anniversary celebrations. So, the reunion weekend re-assembled men and women who had graduated from the place as early as the 1930s, and others as recently as the ’80s. Naturally every grad gravitated to his/her own time period, looking, listening and wondering “if that’s who I think it is.”

I had actually become involved in the event planning, volunteer recruiting and display set-up at my reunion. Because it seemed appropriate back then, I sat with as many graduates as were willing to be interviewed and video-taped their recollections and reminiscences of life at ACI.

I think what struck me most about the recorded comments was the angst most felt about being in high school: What would my peers think of me? Would I be considered cool or uncool? How would I ever survive frosh year? How well would I do in this or that subject? Would I make Ontario scholarship? I hadn’t expected to find as much uptight-ness among my fellow students as I did.

I certainly felt that kind of tension in my first year of high school – Grade 9. But after that, I managed to make friends with peers who had many of the same interests and aspirations as I did. We turned out to be the school’s “artsy” types. We staged variety shows. We pushed for annual school musicals. We incorporated cheering the school teams from the sidelines into nearly Vaudevillian entertainment for all.

To placate some of the school’s stuffed-shirt administrators, we even volunteered to turn the daily school announcements into recorded skits with a cast of zany characters with lots of inside humour thrown in. It was a perfect arrangement: The vice-principal and teachers weren’t burdened with the humdrum of the announcements. And we got our kicks performing blackouts and radio sketches on the school’s PA system every day!

And when we got together at our 75th school reunion, we discovered that our old PA sketch group had become teachers, professors, lawyers, doctors, politicians, ad executives … and yes, the parents of another generation of high school students. But attending my wife’s high school reunion allowed me the luxury of taking in the festivities from a distance. I enjoyed stepping back into 1962 with her.

And just in case you were wondering, I don’t think she ran into any old flames, last Saturday night at the dance. Thankfully, none of them showed up.

Pushing back "the entitled"

2009-05-06T09:31:00.000-07:00

These spring evenings have enticed me and my trusty Kerry blue terrier walking partner to the park more often.

On Monday, we arrived just as the sun was setting and the Canada geese were settling on the pond. Two young women runners approached going the opposite way. They sported headbands, high-end runners and plenty of spandex. As she jogged past, one woman took a long last drink of water from a plastic bottle. Then, she tossed it on the grass and jogged on.

“Excuse me,” I shouted toward the two women. They slowed and turned to look at me. “Who do you think is going to pick that up?” I said gesturing to the discarded bottle.

She turned back muttering, “I didn’t realize…”

“This is everybody’s park,” I added, “not your private dump.”

If I had thought more carefully about my outburst, I might have put more bite into my criticism of the woman’s thoughtless behaviour. I might even have challenged her with the township’s anti-littering bylaw. That way I could actually have threatened the woman with something more serious than just my rant about preserving the parks for the public good.

Somehow, however, I sensed even embarrassing her with the threat of citizen’s arrest or potential legal challenge and/or a fine, might not have fizzed on her. My guess is that plastic bottle was not the first one she’s tossed in a public place. Nor will it be her last.

I think it was a day or so later that I encountered the same attitude on the road. I’m sure this is no surprise to anybody, but I was just a few kilometres from home. As I crossed some railwway tracks – used essentially only by the York-Durham Heritage Railway from spring to fall – I slowed partly because the road’s been heaving, but also because it actually requires cars to “stop before crossing.”

As I slowed to a rolling stop, a guy in a two-door sports car blew past me as if I were standing still. For a second I thought he was going to hit my car. I’m not exactly a poky driver. I stay with the flow most of the time. But clearly this guy had no regard for anybody or anything, but himself.

I think there’s a generational thing happening out there that makes people of a certain age feel as if they are entitled to act this way. Whether spoken or unspoken they say with their actions and attitude that they have inherited all of society’s problems and so are therefore perfectly within their rights to react in kind. Or, at least, they think they’re entitled to act with immunity because they sense they are now custodians of the world’s future and can do with it as they please.

It doesn’t end in the park or on the roads either. I’ve encountered it waiting in line – at the bank, the grocery store, the self-service gas bar or the airport baggage check – where they drift past me because they’re in a hurry. And, of course, I’m not allowed to be in a hurry. They won’t hold a door for somebody in need. They talk on their cell phones almost as loudly as I do projecting my voice to a lecture hall full of students. Or, they’ll text message under the table right in front of you when you think they’re absorbed in the conversation. I’m afraid “the Me Generation” is back and it has little or no regard for anyone or anything in its path. So, get out of the way!

By the way, I called the town office to find out how much power the township has to prosecute individuals who litter in a park, for example. The bylaw prohibits “the throwing, placing or depositing of refuse or debris on private property (and) municipal property." According to the bylaw, refuse can mean “rubbish, garbage, domestic or commercial liquid or solid waste.” And here’s the best part: anyone found guilty could be liable to a $2,000 fine.

When I checked with the mayor about actually prosecuting somebody under the bylaw, he said, “You’ve got to catch them in the act … fill out a complaint and take them to court … an onerous process at the very least.”

Onerous? Yes. But one day it just might be worth the trouble to make the point. Bottle-tossing joggers, be warned!

A Canadian in need

2009-04-28T14:59:00.000-07:00

A student of mine sent me a distressing e-mail this week.

In it, Caroline George apologized for her absence. She said she’d been distracted. She explained that her sister had been vacationing in Mexico where she was stricken with an asthmatic attack. But because of the apparent outbreak of the so-called swine flu there, the family couldn’t get her sister, Victoria George-Pazzano, onto an air ambulance to fly her home to Canada.

“I was hoping you might be able to help,” Caroline George said.

Naturally, a number of us have investigated what could be done. It appeared the family had sufficient health insurance coverage to secure an air ambulance to get her home, but there didn’t seem to be either the awareness or the will on the part of authorities to release Caroline George’s sister from Mexico, nor receive her at an intensive care unit back here in Canada.

Help, these days, seems in short supply. Unless, of course, the plea has clout.

I’ve watched these past weeks, as the major North American automobile manufacturing companies have played hardball with their workers. General Motors, for example, faced with apparent bankruptcy, gave federal governments here and in the U.S. an ultimatum – bankroll us or we’ll go under. Then, when the billions of dollars came from federal finance departments, the same companies told their workers to take wage and pension cuts or they’d close their businesses for good. Next, the auto-makers brow beat the workers into accepting pension cuts. This week, despite the workers’ concessions, GM said it’s still going to cut thousands more jobs. I can almost hear the cries anew coming the Detroit and Oshawa head offices:

“Save us. Save us. Or we’ll go under.”

I’ve been watching the same dance of death, along with feigned predictions of doom and disaster, in the broadcasting world recently too. This week, the CRTC invited the major Canadian private networks to Ottawa for licence renewal hearings. It seems the private broadcasters have their hands out too. At the head of the line was CTV executive Ivan Fecan.

“If we can’t make money, we have no reason to exist,” he told the CRTC.

It seems the private networks have their own ultimatum. Among other things the private networks want Canadian content quotas reduced and to be able to charge cable and satellite delivery systems “fees for carriage.” Fecan said those carriers are amassing tremendous profits while the stations that make the programs are losing money. The broadcasters want the CRTC to save them. Or else. The history of the CRTC has been to cave in to the private broadcasters’ pleas.

It’s not just the private corporations crying for help these days. For the past month, demonstrators from the south-Asian island nation of Sri Lanka have periodically filled Toronto streets. While most are orderly and peaceful, demonstrators have marched, created kilometre-long human chains, and called upon the Canadian government to intervene in the civil war on the island to prevent civilian loss of life.

“We want the Canadian government involved,” a demonstrator told reporters.

To be fair, the Canadian government has its hands tied. In April 2006, the newly elected Harper government officially outlawed the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization. So, expecting the Canadian government to intervene may be a pipe dream.

But that’s where the case of my student’s critically ill sister comes back into the picture. Remember the case of Brenda Martin? It was about a year ago, that efforts by Canadian and Mexican officials cut through red tape to spring the Trenton woman from a Mexican jail to have Canadian authorities return her to Canada to deal with her case.

What makes the case of a woman in a Mexican jail any higher priority than a woman sick in a Mexican hospital?

At this writing, the Peterborough Regional Health Centre has made a bed available for Victoria George-Pazzano’s return. Full marks to that health facility, its staff and administrators.

A dropped thread of diplomacy and priority, I think, remains.

If governments are truly designed to serve their people, here must certainly be a case. According to Dylan Pazzano, Victoria’s husband, on radio this week, the asthmatic condition that felled her in Mexico had nothing to do with the swine flu problem.

The unfortunate predicament of the George-Pazzano family is that Victoria’s plight is not a corporate collapse. It’s not jeopardizing the jobs or pensions of thousands of workers. It’s not placing the profits of the private Canadian broadcasting industry in peril. Hers is not the survival of innocents in a civil war on the other side of the globe.

No. Hers is just the cry of an ordinary citizen for help from Canada.

A spot for a friend

2009-04-17T06:31:00.000-07:00

There’s a spot on the calendar that belongs to a friend of mine.

Every year, on a day late in the summer, he and I usually get together to remember how he once spent that day. I remember out of homage. He recalls the horrors of August 19, 1942, the day he landed on the chert-rock beach of a seaport in France during the Second World War. One year, I phoned ahead to his home to make sure he was up for my visit. When he remembered it was the anniversary of the Dieppe raid, he said:

“That’s right. By this time on that day I had about 23 chunks of shrapnel in me and I was the unexpected guest of the Fuhrer.”

Stephen Bell arrived at Dieppe during low tide that morning after an all-night crossing of the English Channel aboard a tank landing-craft. Just 19, he was a wireless radio operator with the Calgary Tanks Regiment and at Dieppe he and his tank squadron were supposed to land before daylight and provide simultaneous support for Canadian infantry.

Instead, the landing craft were late and his armoured assault up the beach only lasted a few minutes. Bell’s tank got bogged down in the chert rock leaving him and his crew immobile and an easy target for German gunners occupying the cliffs and fortifications in front of Dieppe.

“We were hit on the turret just coming down the ramp,” Steve told me in our first interview in 1993. “The shell hit the top of it. Just blew the tank lids right off.”

And so, there was a spot in Canadian history for my friend. A dubious one he’d quickly remind me. By 11 a.m. that day, Germans had captured Stephen Bell – one of 100 tank troopers taken prisoners – and for the next four years he became a POW. In a way, Steve was one of the fortunate ones. Of the nearly 5,000 Canadians who embarked from England that day, 3,367 became casualties. More that 900 of those were killed, in the bloodiest nine hours in Canadian military history.

There’s a spot in my backyard where Steve and I regularly sat and talked.

Some years after I had asked him all the questions I could think of about his Second World War experiences (and published some of them in my books), Steve and I struck up a friendship. We shared favourite books and recommended others. It turned out that he loved cooking sauces and he regularly dropped by my home with an armful of preserve jars containing his latest batch of spicy chili. During those summertime or autumn visits, I would pull a couple of lawn chairs into the shade. He would roll a few of his filterless cigarettes. And we would talk, not just about the war and his five escapes from German POW camps, but about returning to civilian life and getting his first job.

“I was so happy about having a job, being able to work again,” he said, “that it didn’t bother me that my pension was cut off. I could make it on my own.”

There truly was a spot for him to “make it on his own.”

Steve told me he worked for the post office, the railway, as a pressman at the Toronto Telegram newspaper and eventually establishing his own landscaping business. He married right after the war, but later married his true life partner, Marilyn Dobie, with whom he shared retirement. He often spoke of his and Marilyn’s childhood home at Govan, Saskatchewan. He told me the latest about his four children and his numerous grandchildren. He was proud of them all.

In retirement, the wounds of his wartime mistreatment in German POW camps came back to haunt him – bleeding in his ears, back aches from the concussion shells and shrapnel he endured on the beach at Dieppe, swollen hands and wrists from being bound and shackled, and arthritis in every joint that was exposed to the cold and damp during three years of abusive imprisonment.

In 2003, the Royal Regiment of Canada – not the Government of Canada mind you – struck and awarded a medallion to honour Dieppe vets, among them Stephen Bell. The same year, doctors diagnosed him with cancer of the lungs, liver and spleen. They gave him months to live. Steve, given his constitution, defied their predictions…

Until early Tuesday morning, when he died with Marilyn at his side.

Now there’s a spot in her life and mine that’s empty. But I’ll ever be thankful that he more than filled that spot as a courageous citizen soldier, strong family man, giving neighbour and loyal friend.

Making the grade

2009-04-08T06:08:00.000-07:00

The line between teaching and learning grew more blurry this week.

On Monday, I read a story in the National Post about the University of Ottawa firing a controversial professor. The report recounted the stormy relationship between advanced physics instructor Denis Rancourt and the U. of O. Board of Governors. The two sides had collided over Prof. Rancourt’s controversial grading system. Instead of evaluating each student’s work individually, he chose to award all of them an A+. He said by giving them all an A+, his fourth-year students would stop worrying about grades and concentrate on learning the concepts of advanced physics.

During a discussion of the day’s news in a college reporting class, this week, I put the question to my first-year journalism students.

“If I gave everybody an A+ would that inspire you to greater learning?” I asked.

The discussion that ensued I found both disturbing and edifying. The answers divided the class nearly in half. Those who nodded, that yes, getting a free A+ would give them a reason to perform better, admitted they sometimes bend and break under the pressure to achieve higher grades during the 15-week semester. They claimed an automatic A+ would improve their attendance.

“I’d be here all the time if all I had to do was concentrate on content,” one student said.

On the other side, students shook their heads. They said they needed the challenge of knowing where they stood – with either a passing or a failing evaluation – on every single assignment. They felt that a more direct response to their reporting and writing helped them build on their strengths and deal with their weaknesses.

“How would we know if we’re doing it right, if we always got an A?” the student said.

I tried not to let my relief at that remark show. Instead, I went on to quote the National Post story further, by explaining Prof. Rancourt’s position. He contended that his objective with the universal A+ grading would drive his students to more critical and independent thinking. He criticized the carrot-and-stick method, contending that students tend to concentrate more on regurgitating the information, than on using their freedom from grades to encourage learning.

“Well, that’s more important in a course like advanced physics,” said one of my students who supported the free A+ scheme.

“For sure,” added another. “It’s really important if you’re working in science.”

“Of course,” I said. “And in our line of work, all we have to cope with is discovering and reporting the truth.”

Coincidentally, this week, another group of educators released a study of its own. The Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations had conducted an online survey of about 2,000 professors and librarians. Its assessment of frosh students pointed to a lack of maturity and a nearly universal expectation of “success without the requisite effort.”

The study found first-year students (not unlike my own) addicted to Wikipedia and feeling as if they had the right to pass their courses without breaking a sweat. It seemed to me the study was further evidence of a generation of learners that feels it’s owed most everything – fingertip access, instant gratification and universal success – a generation of entitlement.

Who’s to blame? Those who abolished Grade 13, sending 17-year-old high school grads into post-secondary institutions. Those who have handed over adolescent supervision to the boob-tube and cyberspace. Those who have eliminated constructive competition from life and work. Those who have told young people “the future is yours” no matter what.

In other words, all of us are to blame – parents, peers, supervisors, spiritual leaders, mentors and educators. As a mea culpa, I should also point out that of the registered 32 students in that news reporting class where I raised the automatic A+ issue, I have regularly instructed about 20 or 25. Had I given the other half-dozen or so an A+, might they have come to my classes more regularly? Hard to say.

However, I do take some salvation in this. The story about Prof. Rancourt, originally published in the National Post last Monday … It was written by a senior Centennial College student, one I’ve had the privilege of teaching. Currently on placement at the Post, Michael McKiernan will graduate this spring. As a student and as a working journalist, he is an achiever. Quiet, attentive, self-motivated and creative, he has delighted his supervisors on placement at the Post with his work ethic. I suspect he’ll complete our course with an A.

One achieved not by attendance, but by action.

Red Eye black eye

2009-03-25T18:14:00.000-07:00

On Monday afternoon, I met members of the Imperial Oil Annuitant Club for the first time.

About 70 of them had invited me to speak about the significance of remembrance during this the 90th anniversary of the signing of the 1919 Peace Treaty following the Great War. Among the retirees were no fewer than eight Second World War veterans and the widow of a ninth. Over lunch I spoke with one of the vets - 85-year-old Gerry O’Neill - who had left work and school in 1943 to serve in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

“No questions asked,” he said at one point. “Britain and Europe needed us.”

It was about that time the same day, a television host’s mindless comments began surfacing in the media. Greg Gutfeld, former editor of the men’s magazine Maxim, and now a high-profile personality on the late-night television show Red Eye, had decided to lampoon the Canadian military. Lt. Gen. Andrew Leslie, of the Canadian Forces, had recently suggested after seven years in Afghanistan, that this country’s national army needed a one-year “operational break.”

“The Canadian military wants to take a breather,” Gutfeld ridiculed on his March 17 broadcast. “To do some yoga, paint landscapes or run on the beach in gorgeous white capri pants.”

Not that Gutfeld, the ill-informed ringleader of a middle-of-the-night gossip show on Fox News, would understand such things, but Leslie added that the constant wear-and-tear of the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan had taken its toll. The Canadian chief-of-land-staff indicated that in February one-third of all light-armoured vehicles had broken down, and that three-quarters of the army’s reconnaissance Coyotes, 73 per cent of its Bisons, 71 per cent of its Leopard tanks and all its tracked light-armoured vehicles (LAVs) were not in service. Leslie suggested that his research – a concept probably foreign to the producers of Red Eye – indicated it was all due to lack of money and a dwindling supply of trained mechanics and technicians.

“A hiatus is needed to get their armoured act together,” Gutfeld jibed. Then, he turned to one of his equally air-headed panellists and chortled, “Isn’t this the perfect time to invade this ridiculous country?”

Now I don’t claim to have either the wit or wisdom of such high-priced U.S. TV talent. I don’t command nearly the attention that a nation-wide broadcast network, such as Fox, does. But I do have a little common sense. One would think if Gutfeld and his shoot-from-the-lip quipsters had taken even a single New York minute, they would have recognized the stupidity of their satire. They would have remembered that this country was the first to offer assistance to the U.S. in its war on terror in Afghanistan. They would have known that for seven years, Canadian troops have fought and died to maintain some order in the most hostile area of the country.

In addition, if he had a memory longer than his 60-minute telecast, Gutfeld would have noticed that Andrew Leslie has lineage in the preservation of freedom going back to his grandfather – Andrew McNaughton – who helped win the pivotal battle at Vimy Ridge in 1917, when U.S. troops hadn’t even begun training to assist German-occupied countries in the Great War.

What’s more, if Gutfeld had any command of basic arithmetic, he would understand that 116 soldiers killed from a country with a population of 35 million, has a greater per capita impact than the losses sustained by the U.S. with a population 10 times greater.

My conversation over lunch with Second World War air force veteran Gerry O’Neill, the other day, brought us to the recent deaths of Canadian soldiers Jack Bouthillier, Tyler Crooks, Corey Hayes, and Scott Vernelli in Afghanistan. O’Neill explained that a number of the retirees, that day, had planned to hear and see my presentation as a prologue to their departure for bridge locations along Hwy. 401 east of Toronto. Many had packed Canadian flags, red shirts and (in the case of the veterans) their medals for display when the bodies of the four young casualties travelled along the Highway of Heroes en route to the coroner’s office in Toronto.

“We owe them a great deal,” he said to me.

I hesitate to think how O’Neill and the seven other veterans gathered around those luncheon tables might have reacted had they heard Gutfeld’s sophomore satire later that day. They would most certainly have given even New York gossip circles something to buzz about.

Then again, I suspect their Canadian sense of decency might well have exceeded Gutfeld’s utter lack of tact and dismissed him like the fluff he is.

What winter breaks are for

2009-03-21T09:44:00.000-07:00

I’ve never really understood the significance or relevance of this so-called “March Break” week.

It’s not quite the end of winter. It’s not quite the beginning of spring. It rarely coincides with any religious holiday – Easter, Passover, etc. Parents with school-aged kids get excited about it – especially if they have access to a sun-belt or ski resort time-share condominium. And of course, college and university students think it’s the highlight of the school year. They all dream of escaping to the Florida beaches for sun, fun and libation, etc. I remember one of the campus slogans invented during the time I was at university:

“Come on down to Fort ‘Liquordale’ for fun in the sun,” it said.

The spring bacchanal (or booze up) was more myth than reality. It actually began in the mid-1930s, when members of the men’s swimming team at Colgate University in New York State went to Fort Lauderdale’s beaches to train and allegedly ended tearing up the town in search of young co-eds. The whole thing became even more silly with the likes of Connie Francis and George Hamilton when Hollywood immortalized the entire affair on film in the 1960 movie “Where the Boys Are.” (The 1984 re-make was even more tacky than the original.)

As a reaction (and act of wishful thinking), most colleges and universities now refer to the March break as “Reading Week” or “Study Week,” but it’s a pretty safe bet, even if under-graduate students don’t make it to Florida, neither do they make it to their books and assignments. Having taught at the college level for nearly 10 years now, I speak from some experience. As their instructors, we can encourage, organize and schedule as many reading/study week assignments as we like. The reality is that most students won’t begin to deal with those assignments until sometime next Sunday afternoon.

March, thy name is still procrastination.

Nevertheless, I admit, I did manage to work in a bit of rest and relaxation time during this mythical hiatus week. Over last weekend, my wife and I didn’t go south. We went north. Not to ski, snowshoe or skidoo. No. We met some Ottawa friends, who’ve recently purchased a summer cottage on a lake up in an Ottawa Valley district known as the Lanark Highlands. The place wasn’t winterized. In fact, it was still all boarded up. We just drove cross-country, parked at the end of their road and trekked through the remaining snow drifts of winter to have a peek and to do a little dreaming of summertime.

It was a gorgeous spot, nestled next to some Crown land, on a secluded inlet of the lake. Our friends showed us around the cottage lot – through nearly century-old pine trees and rock-strewn waterfront, along well worn foot paths, to the boathouse full of water toys (kayaks, canoes and paddleboats) to a short sandy beach still frozen beneath the lake’s winter covering.

From the cottage deck, we could imagine surveying afternoon games of horseshoes, blazing summer sunsets, reading the books we’ve neglected and campfires to while away the long summer evenings. Of course, as with any summer getaway spot, there will be chores to take care – launching the floating dock, painting the deck, cutting firewood for the wood stove and sweeping away the cobwebs of a year gone by.

“Those are the chores we look forward to,” our friends said.

Eventually, standing in the snow that remained nearly a foot deep on parts of the lot and staring at ice on the lake that’s still a long way from breaking up, it was soon time to head back to reality and leave the daydreaming of summer behind.

At any rate, here it is – the ides of March. We’ve got this so-called break in our lives. For those who will enjoy this week as a holiday, there will soon be plenty of reality to face when it’s over. There will probably be a municipal tax hike to contemplate. The Ontario budget arrives in about a week. The global economic downturn remains unresolved. Oh, and there are about six weeks to go before federal income tax returns are due.

Come to think of it, with all the potential bad news that remains on the horizon, maybe that’s why they scheduled the “March Break.” If we don’t take advantage of a pause in the action now, there won’t be another chance before the May 24 weekend. And a little of that Fort Lauderdale diversion might not be such a bad idea after all, whether Hollywood myth-makers or the Colgate University men’s swimming team invented it or not.

As close as the backyard

2009-03-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

It was getting down to the wire.

I was running out of time and options. I had to get that special something – a small gift – and my search was yielding nothing. At the time – the middle of last month – I happened to be travelling out of Toronto en route to my small home town and I sensed my gift-search mission was going to fail. Within the hour, I reached town and turned onto the main street. That’s when it hit me. Stores in town were still open. I dashed into one shop and bought some flowers, then into another for my card. Mission accomplished.

And I thought of Dorothy’s epilogue in The Wizard of Oz: “There’s no place like home.”
The truth was, however, I hadn’t needed either Dorothy’s ruby slippers or Good Witch Glinda’s magic wand to get what I needed. Just a little common sense. Until I walked into the flower shop and and the card store, that evening, I hadn’t realized I had committed the age-old sin. I had assumed the only place to find what I need was to look outside town.

There once was a time when so much of what we consider essential products and services could only be found somewhere else – cars, appliances, furniture, clothing, books, hardware, gifts and a hundred different household services. But that vacuum has long since been filled by creative merchants taking the initiative to bring those necessities to our main streets.

And now may be the most important moment to remember that. At perhaps no other time in our history has there emerged such a strong need to support local enterprize. Few of us have the power to alter the big issues at stake in this economic climate. House prices, interest rates, investment portfolios and employment statistics – they all seem out of our hands. Not even banks and politicians can affect change that great overnight. As it often has, the true test of people’s fabric may ultimately come down to community. And when it comes to the economy, that current axiom may ultimately be the way.

“Think globally, act locally,” is the phrase that many environmentalists have used in recent years to motivate community action. The phrase actually originates in the social activist movement right after the First World War, when economies everywhere searched for a way to bounce back from four years of destruction and depression. Maybe it’s time to borrow its message and to encourage each other to “buy locally.”

Recently, I read with some dismay about a town resident’s disenchantment with a local merchant. The resident had chosen to buy a household appliance from a downtown store, rather than from one of the larger retail outlets. She even pointed out that her initiative would cost her a few dollars extra. Nevertheless, she wanted to support the local business. She explained, however, that she was met with what she called a “snippy” attitude from the store operator. If her story was true, it illustrates that the need for local merchants to take the initiative too. A thriving local economy relies as much on downtown store operators cultivating business as it does on shoppers spending their dollars close to home.

When the idea of writing about “buying locally” in this week’s column occurred to me, I wondered if I had addressed this theme before. I checked my clippings file and I had. It was 1992. At the time, I had been searching for a particular kind of stationery, without any luck. I had mistakenly assumed I could only find it in the big box stores in Toronto.

“Not a problem,” the local merchant had told me. “I can order it for you.”

Just because we’re an hour from the heart of downtown Toronto, I wrote back then, doesn’t mean we’re cut off from civilization. Of course, the stationer could get the product for me. And I felt really embarrassed. My habit of buying merchandise in the city had not only proved my assumption incorrect, it had also deprived my town of some vital business, in times when every sale counted. As I recall, in response to my column and local merchants’ concern for the local economy, business groups in town initiated a billboard and shopping bag promotion:

“We’ve got what you want,” the slogan said.

Maybe it’s time to use a few tried-and-true methods to combat this recession. As consumers we need to shift our glance from the horizon to what’s right in front of us. And as merchants, we need to remember that every sale big or small is a step closer to a better bottom line.

Words we take for granted

2009-03-01T17:56:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, in a letter to the editor a woman in my community took the township council to task over budget accountability. Another reader of the local newspaper commented that a story about the war in Gaza lacked fairness and balance.

On Monday, I met a journalist from Afghanistan. As recently as 2001, if he had criticized his government or commented on any current events, he might not have lived to see another day. Today, Ahmad Zia is editor of international news for Kabul Weekly, a newspaper based in the Afghan capital with a circulation of 10,000.

“Even today you have to put your life on the line to criticize,” he said.

The Taliban regime fell in 2002, when NATO forces – including troops from Canada – invaded the country in a so-called war on terror. Since that time, Hamid Karzai was installed as president, elections are scheduled this year, much reconstruction is underway, women may now attend school and Canadians might think a region that has only known a few decades of stability in its 2,000-year history is finally recovering.

Journalist Zia still has doubts. Several years ago, the fledgling Kabul Weekly began giving Afghans their own voice in three languages. It offered national news, politics, business and commentary. But the newspaper’s freedoms were not, Zia discovered, unfettered. Recently, Kabul Weekly reporters heard a rumour that the president’s touring car had been stolen. (The armoured Mercedes 600 was reported to be worth $1 million). They approached the Karzai administration for a comment. They were refused. Was the rumour true? No, said president’s officials. Could the paper come to photograph the car to dispel the rumours?

“The car is here,” they said, “but you are not allowed to take a picture of it.”

Freedom of speech in theory, but not necessarily in practice. By comparison, the weekly paper in my community has a circulation of 8,600 and enjoys freedom of speech without question. Rights of the media are enshrined in the Canadian constitution. Its provisions give Canadian reporters public access. They allow journalists the flexibility (through freedom of information legislation) to investigate if they suspect interference. And each week, those provisions grant editorialists such as myself the right to satirize, advise, advocate, oppose or criticize everything from the prime minister’s policies to a neighbour’s noisy dog.

In order to survive financially, my newspaper, like hundreds of daily and weekly newspapers across the country, enjoys access to the marketplace offering advertising space to pay its bills. In contrast, the Kabul Weekly must seek funding, usually through UNESCO or other non-government organizations, such as Journalists Without Borders. At that, the paper had to shut down for a few months in 2007 when it ran out of money. It then received an offer of $1 million to cover its expenses for a year. The offer came from the U.S. embassy in Kabul. The Kabul Weekly ultimately turned the money down.

“The Americans insisted on their right to preview anything the paper wrote before it was published,” Zia said. “We must defend our independence.”

At 41, Ahmad Zia doesn’t just spout his philosophical beliefs. He appears to live by them. Trained as a lawyer and fluent in five languages, in 1999 he evacuated his family to Canada, where he drove cab and took other jobs to support wife and children while he studied for a broadcasting degree at a Toronto college.

This week, he returns to Afghanistan to carry on his work with his brother, Faheem Dashty, at the newspaper and to pursue another objective. He plans to build a central public library in Kabul (the last one functioning was built 50 years ago and has no books). When it’s completed, he hopes in 2011, Zia said he will name it after the founder of the Kabul Weekly, Ahmad Shah Masoud, who was assassinated two days before the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

“It is my dream,” he said, “to promote freedom of speech in my country.”

Zia was asked by journalists at a Toronto press conference if he feared for his own life. He shook his head and said he didn’t. But he pointed out that last week, a suicide bomber set off an explosive outside the Afghan Ministry of Justice, located right beside the Kabul Weekly offices. The explosion killed 20 people.

“We trust in God,” he said, “and continue.”

Those magnificent men in their flying machines

2009-02-19T18:54:00.000-08:00

They were perhaps the quickest 90 seconds in Canada’s history.

On a frozen bay, near the Nova Scotia community of Baddeck – about midday on Feb. 23, 1909 – a group of avid young scientists and engineers gathered, they hoped, to make history. Under the direction of perhaps Canada’s greatest inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, the men fired up a small engine attached to a Bell-designed glider. J.A.D. McCurdy, the son of Bell’s secretary, climbed into the open cockpit, eased the throttle powering the propeller and guided Bell’s “Silver Dart” across the ice at increasing speed. Then, in front nearly 150 witnesses, the flying machine left the ice surface and remained airborne for perhaps a minute and a half.

“Canada’s first heavier-than-air machine,” reports said, had been flown by “the bold aeronaut Douglas McCurdy, a Baddeck boy born and bred.”

That was a hundred years ago next Monday.

Since then, Canada’s love affair with flight has not waned. Consider such aviation milestones as the mass production of Fleet Finch biplanes at Fort Erie, Ont.; the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan in the Second World War; the test flight of the world’s first jet fighter, the Avro Arrow; the development of Snowbird aerobatic team, not to mention such space-age innovations as remote sensing and Canadarm. They didn’t get the attention of Orville and Wilbur’s “Wright Flyer” in 1903, but Canada’s aviation pioneers nevertheless lifted a young nation into the age of flight.

And the aviation bug has affected our community too. Most recently, Uxbridge and area witnessed such touchstone moments as Micky Jovkovic’s singular efforts in making the Greenbank airport a small-town flying hub in central Ontario. In 2007, one of Uxbridge’s own – Captain Jack Wesselo – made the landing and display of his Gryphon military helicopter a highlight of the year. Today he serves Canadian Forces in the skies over Afghanistan.

What has always amazed me, as I’ve studied this century-long Canadian love affair with flying, is the romance of it all. While McCurdy and the Silver Dart flew over a wintry scene in Nova Scotia, it was the heroes and heroines of the 1920s and ’30s who drew spectators and reporters by the score to witness and record the wonder of it all. Of course, Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Wiley Post and countless others on their quests to fly non-stop across the globe, captured most attention. But there was also the British dirigible R100 that floated majestically from Ottawa over small-town Ontario to Toronto in 1930, the Ontario flypast of seaplanes piloted by General Italo Balbo to celebrate Italian aviation prowess in 1933, and the Royal Air Force demonstration team of Hawker Furies hop-scotching across Ontario in 1934.

“Five silver aeroplanes came zooming out of the sun,” said an old friend of mine who witnessed the RAF fighters. “Then swoosh…they were gone. But I never forgot it.”

Among the strangest aviation tales associated with our community, involved a group of New Zealand pilot trainees who befriended Pearl Webster and her two daughters – Marjorie and Helen – during the Second World War. Because of their eagerness to help the war effort, the Webster farm family regularly invited the Kiwi cadets to spend weekends on leave enjoying country air and home cooking away from their pilot instruction at Dunnville, Ont. To acknowledge the Websters’ goodwill, one afternoon in 1944, one of the young pilots – Noel Wood – offered an impromptu aerobatics demonstration over the Webster farm house with his Harvard trainer. Something went amiss. Wood miscalculated and crashed up the hill behind the barn off Reach Street.

“Someone got a truck, put a mattress in it to lay him on, because there was no ambulance in those days,” Helen Webster (Barnett) told me. “We took him to Dr. Wilson’s place, but his head was badly injured,” and he died in surgery that afternoon.

There were many in this town smitten by that romantic era of flying. Not the least of them was former CBC broadcaster Cliff Robb. Trained as a ground crewman – also during the war – he worked around the clock in France maintaining Spitfires and Hurricanes as Allied airmen pressed inland after D-Day. Sometimes referred to as “penguins,” because they were airmen who didn’t actually fly, ground crew dedicated themselves to the science of flying the same way pilots or navigators did.

“We were the men behind the men behind the guns,” Robb said. “But we loved the kites” as much as any man in the cockpit.

They proved – then as now – that attraction to fly is as Canadian as any earthly pursuit.

Knowing where Point A is

2009-02-13T19:21:00.000-08:00

What is it about February and Canada?

It’s certainly a month that defines this country. Whether it’s the frigid temperatures and snow we’ve endured or the national symbol we sort of celebrate (it was on Feb. 15, 1965, that officials raised the Maple Leaf flag on Parliament Hill for the very first time), this month makes most people between Bonavista and Vancouver Island express their distinctiveness. But in February we have another aspect of Canadiana to celebrate. It was 30 years ago this month that Canadians acknowledged Black History Month for the first time.

What makes Black History Month distinctively Canadian? Well, to my knowledge, it’s not celebrated anywhere else in the world. What’s more, I met an African-Canadian man, this week, who stopped me in my tracks.

“My family is older than Canada,” he told me.

David Watkins is absolutely right. Born in Windsor, Ont., in 1964, Watkins is a seventh generation Canadian. His father’s ancestors escaped slavery in Virginia in the late 1700s. His mother, from Arkansas, emigrated to the Detroit area in the 1940s; she became one of the first black nurses in the region, while Watkins’ father became Canada’s second black police officer. One of his relatives – a runaway black slave from Milwaukee – used the Underground Railroad (hiding beneath a false floor in a buckboard) to escape her American slave masters.

“We were the first United Empire Loyalists,” Watkins said. “The idea of being Canadian is who I am.”

What makes David Watkins even more Canadian than that, is that he teaches history in a downtown Toronto high school, in fact, in one of those so-called “at risk” neighbourhoods. He doesn’t teach the kind of Canadian history you and I might remember – the BNA Act, the War of 1812, the rebellion of 1837, the great Depression or even the Avro Arrow, the Summit Series and the invention of the Blackberry. No. Watkins teaches African-Canadian Studies to Grade 11 classes at Weston Collegiate Institute. He teaches mostly black students how African history relates to Canada, how the young people in his classrooms should connect to the past, present and future of their country.

“Why study black culture as a key Canadian history?” he asks rhetorically. “You can’t go from point A to point B unless you know what your point A is.”

Watkins has been a proponent of the planned African-centric schools in Toronto. He teaches his students that studying history is the key to self-determination and self-awareness. Once they see their own experiences – not those of black Americans – reflected in their nation’s history, then African-Canadian students, he says, can begin to have a vested interest in their surroundings. They break the U.S. stereotypes (depicted in some degrading hip-hop lyrics and so-called “gangsta” accessories) and realize their home is unique. In other words, they find their point A and are comfortable with it.

Educator Watkins also acknowledges the tougher side of his existence – including racial profiling. On one occasion, he said, he returned to his home in middle-class Toronto, stopped in front of his house, jumped out of his car and ran across the lawn to the front door of his house. Within seconds, he said, there was police car with emergency light flashing checking out his identity. And he says, on several occasions he’s been stopped for no other reason than the colour of his skin. He called it “DWB…Driving while black.” Incidents such as that motivate him all the more.

He teaches his history students to ask themselves three questions about their history: What was? What happened to change it? And, what was the result? Answering those questions inevitably takes them back to their roots in Africa or the Caribbean. Not to America, where, he says, young blacks tend to “emulate desperation.” But Watkins doesn’t shy away from those negative images he senses his students are attracted to. He fights the negative stereotypes of black culture as much as anybody, including the dark side of hip-hop culture.

“If you’re one of these cats that’s just talking smack, saying ‘I do this’ and ‘I do that,’ for the sake of a buck,” he told one news reporter, “you’re part of the problem.”

By the way, David Watkins’ technique is working. Today, the Toronto District School Board has him teaching other teachers, so that they can inspire that many more African-Canadian students at Ontario schools. And this past year he caught the attention of the Governor General. Michaelle Jean presented him with the Award of Excellence in Teaching.

And that’s a piece of Canadian history worth celebrating any month of the year.

Withdrawals from the memory bank

2009-02-11T11:22:00.000-08:00

The other day on the radio, somebody mentioned that a person over the age of 18 loses about a thousand brain cells a day. Yikes!

First, I worried about the impact that might have on my memory. Then, I recalled that somebody else had told me that a full grown adult has over a hundred billion brain cells in there to begin with. I did the math (I had to use a calculator, however, not my brain) and I figured out – at that loss rate – it would take about 300,000 years for my brain to run out of cells. Still, I think the most dreaded question in the English language is:

“Can you remember…?”

Memory can be the most precious gift. It can also be among the most frustrating faculties of the brain to activate – trying to remember a telephone number, a street name, an e-mail address or just a piece of trivia in a conversation. When we were younger, it seemed, remembering things was never a problem. We could recite “by heart” the capitals of the 10 provinces and those of all 50 states. We remembered the names of all seven dwarfs without prompting. I worked in television with a co-host – Lee Mackenzie – who took great pride in reciting the name of that Welsh town purported to be the world’s longest place name:

“Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch,” she would spit out without the slightest hesitation. And we would all stand there stunned that she had memorized every last syllable. I wondered later how many brain cells she’d killed doing it.

Long place names aside, memory can be a blessing and a curse. I cannot sit through a play at the Shaw or Stratford festivals without imagining the extraordinary memorizing powers the actors exhibit each night on stage. I mean, we recited bits of poetry, you know, a line or two from “Ode on a Grecian Urn” or excerpts from the “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” and thought we were pretty good. But watching a William Hutt or a Frances Hyland deliver pages of dialogue, made our memorizing exploits seem pretty pedestrian.

On the lighter side, years ago, my sister memorized the children’s bedtime story of “Little Red Riding Hood,” as interpreted by a professor of French named Howard L. Chace. In Chace’s version – which my sister memorized verbatim – the phrases in the story descend into a ridiculous sounding vocabulary in which all words of the original story line are replaced by other, actual English words, but which have nothing to do with the original meaning.

So, “Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived with her mother in a little cottage on the edge of a large, dark forest,” became “Wants pawn term, dare worsted ladle gull hoe lift wetter inner ladle cordage honour itch of lodge, dock florist…” To this day, I don’t know how she managed to commit Dr. Chace’s “Anguish Languish” version so flawlessly to memory.

Even more amazing was the memorizing dexterity of the 1970s singing star Bobby Gentry (remember the American chanteuse who penned the hit song “Ode to Billy Joe.”) Anyway, on one occasion back then, I managed to talk my way into a recording company reception for her; there had to be 150 people in the room, all eager to have a word with the talented and stunning Ms. Gentry. Over the course of an hour or so, a record label flak circulated through the room with Gentry on his arm introducing her to each cluster of cocktail-drinking, enamoured media types.

It took some time before she and the CEO got to the little cluster of four people in my group. I introduced myself to her. She nodded dutifully, moved to the next guy and the next and nodded to them too. Then, taking advantage of the short lull in the conversation, I thought I’d ask her if she’d consent to an interview.

“Excuse me, Ms. Gentry,” I said…

And before I could blurt out my request, she turned back to me and said, “Yes, Ted, what was it you wanted?”

I was dumbstruck. I couldn’t believe it. Despite being inundated for an hour by a stream of names during her walk-about, she had miraculously remembered mine. She either had a photographic memory or she was such a pro at this meet-and-greet routine that she could pull off that kind of instant recall effortlessly. If I never remember another thing, I’ll not forget that Bobby Gentry – for a few fleeting moments – remembered my name amid that sea of media faces and names.

Made my day, no matter how many brain cells I’d lost that day.

Nuts and bolts of fixing the economy

2009-01-28T07:24:00.000-08:00

My mother would have made a great finance minister.

She had a knack for survival. The same way many men and women of her generation – those who survived the Great Depression – understand such things, she practised the rules of sustainability (reduce, reuse, recycle) throughout her life. She saved autumn seeds for the spring garden. She continued to use every piece of clothing in her wardrobe until its threadbare areas overtook those parts that were intact. She never dumped the last of the morning coffee, preferring instead to reheat it with her lunch or an afternoon snack. And she saved her pennies for the things her husband or children wanted, but maybe couldn’t afford. Why?

“Always saving for that rainy day,” she would say.

If her thrift didn’t make her a candidate for the finance minister’s job, then certainly her foresight would. Anybody with a pinch of intuition could have predicted the financial implosion of 2008. But apparently, nobody – not Harper, not Flaherty, not even Ignatieff, Layton, May or Duceppe – saw this downturn in the economy coming, or else they would have made it an election issue last fall. None of them did, so for the past three months they’ve all been scrambling to save face and – each according to his/her political philosophy – to save jobs and consumer confidence.

Consequently, I don’t think the political stripe of the federal government matters today. It’s clear that every one of the Canadian federal party leaders would have opted for deficit budgeting the way the Conservatives have this week. Ottawa plans to spend its way out of recession to the tune of $64 billion over the next two years.

“Getting money in consumers’ pockets,” the prime minister said, for the long term.

As I see it, there’s some of my mother’s and her generation’s wisdom inadvertently hidden inside this budget. And I truly believe the federal finance gurus have stumbled into it entirely by accident. It’s the idea of giving tax breaks for home renovations.

For the past three months, all we’ve been hearing from Ottawa and Queen’s Park is the need to spend billions on the country’s deteriorating infrastructure, to invest tax dollars in “shovel-ready” projects, such as roads, bridges, water mains and sewers. But to most politicians that also means throwing money at relatively high-profile structures – what they refer to as “the biggest bang for the buck.”

To most Canadians, however, the closest form of infrastructure is the family home, the sidewalk and driveway or the garage. What ultimately could save this sinking economy is average Canadians deciding to take what savings they have to patch and repair. All it may take to get people manufacturing, buying and selling again is a broken window, an unfinished basement, a leaky roof, a dilapidated backyard garage or a fallen down fence. In other words, maybe the key to digging ourselves out of this recession is digging into our own yards and homes to fix instead of replace. You see, maybe our politicians can’t see the forest for the trees, or, more appropriately, they can’t see the infrastructure for the nuts and bolts.

Which reminds me of a golden rule of economics I learned from my semi-retired brother-in-law. Years ago, Bill and his father ran an industrial supply store in Saskatoon. They sold hardware fasteners – of every shape and variety – to mechanics, builders, farmers and anybody involved in repair. Bill often pointed out to me a rather interesting axiom about their nuts and bolts business. It appeared to him that the business did most poorly when the prairie economy was robust and vice versa.

In other words, when times were good, everybody threw away the old gear and bought new. When times were tough and the economy was in recession, they made do with the old and/or they repaired it to make it last until the good times returned.

“As far as our business was concerned, it made me hope for the bad times,” he admitted.

So you see, there’s a lesson in all this from my mother, the household finance minister, and my brother-in-law, the former nuts-and-bolts economist. It’s maybe not the big issues that influence the economy or people’s attitudes about it. Perhaps the tipping point in restoring the economy to realistic levels of buying and selling is not about financing mega-projects, but about the infrastructure under your own roof.

The face of change in America

2009-01-21T06:21:00.000-08:00

I met Barack Obama in the Washington, D.C., area 44 years ago.

Yes, I know, you’re already doing the math. The newly inaugurated 44th president of the United States of America was only three years old in 1965. Obama’s parents had just recently divorced by that time. And shortly thereafter the young son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father found himself in Jakarta, Indonesia, attending grade school. How could Barris have met the man who – on Tuesday at midday – became America’s first ever African-American president?

Well, you see, I encountered the spirit of Obama in 1965, the summer I worked in my uncle’s restaurant in nearby Baltimore, Maryland. I knew him as Mr. Beale. And he knew me as the kid from Canada. He was a dishwasher and I was a busboy. That was his permanent job; mine was a way to raise spending money on my vacation. He taught me a lot that summer, not about dishwashing, but about America, life, persistence and hope.

“We shall overcome,” he would often say to explain things.

Those words weren’t original to Mr. Beale. They were, of course, adopted by a generation of Americans who witnessed a beloved president assassinated, astronauts land on the moon, an unpopular foreign war, the desegregation of U.S. schools and the martyrdom of their nation’s greatest civil rights leader, all in the same decade.

But I remember Mr. Beale using them whenever I asked him about the apparent injustice of life for blacks in America. When I wondered why a middle-aged black man hadn’t managed to get ahead in life, he said he was content to have a job that provided for his family. When I asked if he was angry at a society for treating him as a second-class citizen, he applauded the freedom for which his country’s constitution stood. If I questioned his apparent calm in the face of blatant racism, he smiled and assured me that change would happen.

There were many other African-Americans working in my uncle’s Baltimore diner that summer. Most were younger men and women. Most were angrier and more frustrated. And rightly so. I probably picked up on their state of mind more than I understood Mr. Beale’s. I became more politically active after that summer. I studied history and politics and wrote about them. I learned about inequity and injustice and campaigned against them. I witnessed revolutionary thought and action in the 1960s and mimicked them, because I sensed they would bring change. But ultimately I rediscovered the lessons that Mr. Beale had so gently offered in that restaurant kitchen.

“I never get angry,” he told me. “But I never give up either.”

On Tuesday morning, I lectured to a college classroom about the early history of broadcasting. By coincidence, the period of that history I chose to describe was the time when a new president was sworn into office just as the invention of radio was coming into its own and when the world seemed lost. It was 1933 and Franklin Delano Roosevelt used radio during his inauguration speech to help pull his fellow citizens out of the Great Depression.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” FDR said.

When the lesson was over, I brought up the video streaming of the inauguration ceremony on a video screen for all to watch. My classroom of African-Canadians and Asian-Canadians, as well as Canadians with South American, European and even First Nations background, watched the proceedings intently. They recognized the history. They acknowledged the precedent. But I’m not sure they understood the power of the moment.

I don’t think Mr. Beale was still alive on Tuesday to hear Barack Obama redefine the essence of U.S. citizenship and restate the hope of the world’s citizens.

“This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed,” the new president said. “why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent Mall, and why a man whose father, less than 60 years ago, might not have been served at a local restaurant, can stand before you to take a most sacred oath.”

My middle-aged co-worker with his hands in restaurant dish water all those years ago, might not have put it quite so eloquently, but Mr. Beale would have assured me that such things were possible. He might also have assured me in Barack Obama-like terms too.

Several times, during Tuesday’s inauguration, I could almost hear Mr. Beale comment, “Yes we can.”

A solemn New Year's Eve

2009-01-01T15:10:00.000-08:00

In my lifetime, I’ve heralded the new year on the Pacific coast, the Atlantic coast and even the Gulf coast. I’ve watched Dick Clark count it down at Times Square. I’ve counted the seconds down myself, hosting my own radio show. On Y2K, we stayed up most of the night watching TV coverage of the new millennium arriving in Sydney, London and New York. I’ve brought in the new year alone, at parties with total strangers, but most often with members of my immediate family.

I observed the passing of 2008 a bit differently. Actually, it was the day before New Year’s Eve. I stood on the Wynford Drive bridge late last Tuesday afternoon in a biting north wind, waiting for the hearses carrying the bodies of the three latest Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan to pass.

“I suddenly felt the urge,” I told a fellow who arrived shortly after I did with a Canadian flag tucked under his arm.

“I live nearby,” the flag-bearer told me. “I try to be here each time they go by.”

At first, we two were the only ones on the bridge. Soon after, a brigade or four or five firefighters and two ambulance crews stopped on the bridge and turned on all their flashers. Within the hour, many more adults had emerged from their cars, walking their dogs and, like my friend with the flag, from nearby residential buildings. One man arrived holding his two young children. For a while, the little ones seemed more interested in the firefighters and flashing lights than anything else. Then, their father calmed them and focused them on the Don Valley Parkway beneath the bridge.

“I don’t even know the men’s names,” said a teacher standing next to me.

“Michael Freeman, last Friday,” I mentioned to her. “Then, Gregory Kruse and Gaetan Roberge on Saturday, I think.”

I mused about the significance of these quiet vigils that have gone on spontaneously in recent months. The practice dates back to at least July 2007, when the body of 27-year-old Captain Matthew Dawe was returned by air force transport to Trenton. Then, when his body and family were transported via Hwy. 401 between Trenton and Toronto (later named “the Highway of Heroes”) to the coroner’s office in the city, people gathered along the route to pay their respects.

What occurred to me about these impromptu tributes is that they bring the deaths of Canadian servicemen and women closer to us than at any time in our history. In both the World Wars and the Korean War, fallen Canadian troops were eulogized and buried where they fell – at Beny-sur-Mer in France, Groesbeek in Holland or Pusan in South Korea. To my knowledge, only from the Afghanistan mission have war dead been retrieved and physically returned to their families. In front of our eyes too.

It was almost 5 o’clock. An air force vet suddenly appeared among those gathering around me on the bridge over the DVP. He wore his blazer, beret and medals. He didn’t know Freeman, Kruse or Roberge either, but he understood their families’ pain. Like the men he’d known and lost a generation ago, he felt the three men deserved his presence, “because Canada needs to respect what they’ve done,” he said.

Within minutes of his arrival, the traffic on the southbound DVP quickly thinned. The late afternoon sky and empty roadway seemed to blend together in darkness. Then, from the distance came the flashing police cruiser lights and close behind three stretch limos and three darkened hearses. The assembly on the bridge and even the flags strung along its railing fell silent as the cavalcade approached. Someone in the passenger seat of one limo waved back in gratitude. The entourage disappeared beneath us. And almost as quickly, the southbound traffic resumed its rush-hour density.

Most of us stood quietly for a few more seconds, a minute maybe. A young radio news reporter who’d been standing with us on the bridge recorded comments. She spoke to my friend with the flag. She talked to the dad and kids. Then she asked me why I’d come.

“It’s something I’ve never done before,” I admitted. “I’ve written books based on soldiers’ stories. I’ve delivered eulogies for elderly veterans who’ve passed on in old age. But I’ve never personally paid my respects to young Canadian servicemen so soon after their deaths.”

Somehow it seemed fitting that I do it on the eve of 2009 – a year those three Canadians won’t experience. The cold, the strangers who’d also taken time to pay homage, and the sacrifice those three men had made – humbled me.

It seemed an appropriate way to clear my head and bring things into perspective at New Year’s.

No bows or wrapping paper required

2008-12-23T10:15:00.000-08:00

In spite of the snow and wind that heralded the first day of the winter season, on Monday, I wasn’t disappointed to see an end to the autumn of 2008.

In addition to all the ills that last fall bestowed upon us – principally an oncoming recession – these past months have delivered a series of emotional setbacks my family won’t soon forget. That’s why an e-mail from a friend in Saskatoon seemed yet another blow.

“I have sorrowful news about a feisty newsman,” Dennis Fisher wrote.

The note went on to explain that Jim Mattern – that feisty newsman, with whom I had worked in the 1970s at a Saskatoon radio station – had suffered what appeared to be a debilitating stroke. What was worse, according to Fisher, the e-mail writer, it had happened while Jim and his wife Gail were on a winter holiday in Puerto Rico. Mattern was in a coma. Medical authorities apparently had decided he should be kept in hospital there, indefinitely.

“I don’t know what we can do,” Fisher signed off.

As often occurs when critical information remains at arm’s length, in the days that followed, we received conflicting reports – from the family, some of whom had rushed to the Caribbean island to be with Jim, and other reports through well-intentioned friends. We learned that the attack had come on suddenly, that some medical officials had recommended brain surgery right away, and that Mattern was on a respirator, which seemed to indicate the worst – he couldn’t breathe on his own. Added to the medical problems, were the logistical ones. Medical insurers in Canada were at odds about whether Mattern could be airlifted home. And even if they sorted that out, there was some question whether airborne cabin pressure mightn’t do more damage than good en route home.

“Our feisty friend will have lots to talk about when he recovers,” wrote Dennis Fisher in another e-mail. “I only hope he does.”

These days of waiting for word naturally unleashed a flood of memories from the times I remembered working with that “feisty friend” 30 years ago now. Jim Mattern and I both worked the early morning shift at CFQC Radio in Saskatoon – I as on-air interviewer, he as morning news reporter. I don’t think anybody loved news gathering, writing or broadcasting more than Mattern. It didn’t matter whether it was the high stakes world of Saskatchewan agri-business, the provocative nature of provincial and municipal politics or just the latest stories from Saskatoon’s crime beat. Mattern treated every shift as if the world depended on his getting the news, and getting it right.

But Jim Mattern loved practical jokes too. On one occasion, when roasting the station’s long-time morning news anchor, Mattern took his cue from the man and began reporting on the apparent drunken and disorderly conduct of that same news anchor the night before. The man was horrified this apparently defamatory story was going live over the station’s airwaves. It wasn’t. Mattern had arranged for a perfectly harmless news report to actually be aired simultaneously.

It was perhaps the best “gotcha” in broadcasting I’d ever witnessed.

More important to Jim Mattern, however, was the thoroughness and accuracy of his real reporting. Anybody who had anything to do with news at that station – either the radio or TV side – checked with Mattern to be sure. His take on news was ever reliable. I remember, years afterward, when the international Radio and Television News Directors Association recognized him for lifetime achievement, it called him one of those “pure newspeople.”

As discouraging as the reports from Puerto Rico about Jim Mattern’s well-being seemed last week, there suddenly appeared one positive sign. We’d heard from a family member, by week’s end, that he was off the respirator and breathing on his own. Even better, though he was still in a coma-like state, when his wife asked him to squeeze her hand, he did.

Meanwhile, my e-mailing friend had discovered via Facebook that the insurers had stopped bickering over the possible flight home. It was beginning to look as if they might arrange the airlift after all. Then, Sunday morning brought another e-mail.

“Mattern’s coming home!” was all it said.

Then later that day, more messages arrived and even a cluster of e-mailed photographs of the jet on a frigid Saskatoon tarmac and of the sign welcoming Jim and his wife home. What had just days before seemed another personal disaster, had reversed. My friend Jim Mattern’s return home seemed to me a “Christmas Carol” turnaround.

With some hope restored, I look to better days for my friend – and for all.

Bailing out the big three

2008-12-19T13:21:00.000-08:00

My gaze met a familiar face the other day at the grocery story. Head tilted against her violin and eyes focused on her sheet music, my neighbour, Cynthia Nidd, sailed through a Christmas carol or two serenading nearby shoppers. Not surprisingly, she was supporting an important charity in town – the Salvation Army. Beside her, the signature Sally Ann Christmas Kettle waited expectantly for donations. I chatted with one of this community’s most reliable volunteers, stuffed a few dollars into the collection ball and left the store thinking about how little there seemed to be in that kettle.

“Who’s going to bail out the big three?” I wondered to myself. “Not Chrysler, G.M. and Ford … but chronic hunger, general homelessness and the food deprived.”

All this month, stories have surfaced about the dramatic decline in charitable donations and sponsorship across the country. As mentioned, the Salvation Army has witnessed a slower donation flow. United Way campaigns have yielded less so far this year. And social agencies struggle to keep up. The local Fishes and Loaves food bank has seen a one-third increase in demand. And this week, a Children’s Aid Society office in the GTA reported a nearly 60 per cent increase in child poverty.

In other words, the 905 area and Greater Toronto Area – considered the region of relative luxury – has now joined the ranks of the have-nots. And because of the disastrous downloading of services during the Harris years, it appears that only citizens in the 905 will be able to help the less fortunate in the 905.

“The infrastructure to assist the needy outside Toronto doesn’t exist,” a CAS worker said on CBC Radio this week.

To amplify the point, CBC Radio’s annual “Sounds of the Season” broadcast, a week ago, rallied Torontonians in support of their Daily Bread Food Bank. The day-long combination of current affairs shows and Christmas entertainment yielded about 8,000 pounds of non-perishable foods as well as $150,000 for the food bank. But again, Toronto services cannot accommodate those in need north of Steeles Avenue.

Last weekend, I joined the annual “Christmas Carol” reading at Christ Church Anglican in Stouffville. It’s a charity event assisting the York Durham Aphasia Centre that I’ve supported since my father died of the stroke-induced disorder in 2004. It was nearly a full house that Sunday afternoon. And this year I read the section of Charles Dickens’ classic in which the two charitably minded gentlemen visit Ebenezer Scrooge at his counting shop.

“‘At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,’ said the one gentleman, taking up a pen, ‘it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute… A few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy some meat and drink and means of warmth… What shall I put you down for?’

“‘Nothing!’” Scrooge thunders. “‘I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry.’”

Of course, most people in the 905 have more empathy and sensitivity than Ebenezer Scrooge. And there haven’t been workhouses or prisons full of debtors since Charles Dickens’ England. But one has to wonder. With 30 or more clients visiting the Fishes and Loaves food bank each time the local facility opens these days and with some municipal support agencies trying to cope with child poverty up more than half from last year, it appears there is nowhere to go, but to the community for help.

So, this time of year, listen closely if a friend sounds on edge. Pay attention to a neighbour’s not-so-obvious needs. And, if possible, be generous to the causes that this year have become less invisible and more desperate.

Yes, I’m all for the federal and provincial governments considering major bailouts for large industrial corporations – the so-called Big Three. Everyone recognizes that auto manufacturers, their parts suppliers, as well as lumber and mining firms, and countless other major employers across Ontario, may need a helping hand. Everyone knows that they in turn keep bread-winners able to keep roofs over their families’ heads and food on their tables. But such corporations have a bad habit of paying dividends to shareholders and bonuses to CEOs before preserving plant jobs.

Meantime, it appears the spirit of giving to those most in need nearby may have to rely on the love of families, the caring of neighbours and the goodness of strangers. But if not that, what is a Christmas for?

Nonplussed capital

2008-12-12T07:52:00.000-08:00

It seemed awfully quiet when I got there. I arrived in the middle of the evening, so some of the downtown streets still had shops open. I guess they were hoping for some early December Christmas sales. But there didn’t seem to be much pedestrian traffic where I was. Wind blew snow into drifts as if the place were some forgotten ghost town. The streets were barely ploughed. At any rate, I asked the cabby why things seemed so quiet.

“Harper prorogued Parliament,” he said. “The place is dead.”

I arrived at the scene of the crime – Ottawa – Sunday night, in order to MC an event the following morning at the Canadian War Museum. Unlike the rest of Ontario, the cold along the Ottawa River seemed even chillier than the reading on the thermometer, minus 20. The prime minister had suspended the business of the country and so, it seemed, everybody had gone away. Not on holidays. Not in search of Christmas cheer. The National Capital just seemed to have closed down … indefinitely.

Monday morning, I was up early to get ready for my appointment. I dashed across Dalhousie Street to Dunn’s café, a 24-hour delicatessen in the old Bytown tourist area of downtown Ottawa. Even though the hour was early, I figured this popular eatery would be humming at the beginning of another work week. It wasn’t. The place probably had seating for 300 people, but I might have managed to organize a game of pick-up baseball with the number of patrons present Monday morning. The waiter made the point.

“If they’re not on the Hill, they’re not in here,” he said.

Outside, around downtown Ottawa, I noticed the flags on all government buildings flying at half-staff. At least the city had recognized Pte. Dmetrios Diplaros, Cpl. Mark McLaren and W.O. Robert Wilson – the three Canadian troops killed Friday in Afghanistan. But like the lowered flags, it seemed the entire city had ceased functioning. No street traffic. Half-full buses. Empty sidewalks. We went by Parliament Hill on Confederation Boulevard and not a light, not a footprint, nary a person in sight. I thought of the three men lost overseas and of a House of Commons prorogued, come to a grinding stop, dysfunctional to the point of inaction. What an insult to three men who, I’m sure, never considered abrogating their responsibilities in the face of adversity.

I made my way west of downtown Ottawa and arrived at the Canadian War Museum in anticipation of the event I was invited to MC. Oddly, the museum was actually closed to the public that day too. An employee on duty told me the slowing economy and the present situation in Ottawa had dictated the facility be closed on Mondays, at least for the time being.

Inside the museum at the appointed hour of the press conference, I invited the Dutch ambassador, Wim Geerts, to address a group of students, teachers, veterans and the media present. The ambassador announced that in May 2010, Holland would once again roll out the welcome mat for thousands of Canadians as his homeland will celebrate the 65th anniversary of liberation from German occupation. Joining the ambassador on the podium was retired Port Perry High School history teacher Dave Robinson.

“More than 42,000 Canadian soldiers lost their lives in the Second World War,” he said, “including 7,600 liberating the Netherlands.”

Robinson turned to three students beside him at the lectern and asked them to show the press conference the newly created symbol for the upcoming EF Education tour. The three students each put a hand forward – palm to the audience – and the three hands side-by-side with fingers splayed created a maple leaf configuration. Robinson, who has organized student tours to Juno Beach, Hong Kong, Vimy Ridge and Ortona, Italy, explained that he hoped more than 5,000 Canadian students would take up the challenge and travel to Holland “as a gesture of remembrance.”

When it came time for MP Rick Dykstra (joined by House Speaker Peter Milliken, the only two politicians choosing to attend the event) to speak, he told the story of his own parents emigrating from Holland after the war to Canada. He echoed his parents’ gratitude for Canadians liberating their country in 1945 and hoped “the torch of freedom…be passed from one generation to another.”

He also felt compelled to address the events of the past week in Ottawa. He suggested they were not the norm and hoped more appropriate behaviour would come to the Commons in 2009.

For the sake of the national economy, the reputation of Parliamentarians, not to mention the (now dormant) city of Ottawa, I hope he’s right.

Condemned to make history

2008-12-03T05:13:00.000-08:00

I remember as if it were yesterday.

It was coming down to the wire in the Quebec referendum that fall of 1995. “Oui” supporters campaigned for the latest version of Quebec separation, called “sovereignty association.” Meanwhile, “Non” supporters seemed equally strong, preferring to keep Quebec within Confederation. Suddenly that autumn, however, it seemed the “Oui” forces had pulled into the lead. A pro-Canada rally (four days before the referendum on Oct. 30) invited citizens from across the country to come to Montreal’s Place du Canada to show their support. Our younger daughter asked if we would drive her to Montreal to be part of the rally.

“I want to be part of history,” Whitney told us.

We went. We rallied. We cheered for unity. Fortunately for Canada, the “Non” side won in a squeaker with just 50.6 per cent of the Quebec vote. For a few days that fall of 1995, at least, it seemed that the future governance of Canada had become our national passion. Then, after the vote, we all went home and promptly let our interest in Canadian politics slip into its usual condition – a state of hibernation and apathy.

Well, it appears that’s about to change.

For whatever reason, this past week, I’ve fielded a number of calls about the so-called crisis in Parliament. People seem captivated by reaction to the Conservatives “economic statement” and the potential for an Opposition group of Liberal, NDP and Bloc Quebecois MPs to throw out the sitting government in a non-confidence vote and form a coalition government as early as next Monday. People have called, e-mailed and approached me with concern in their voices. “What’s going to happen up there?” they ask. One man even called to ask me if there was a public gallery in the House of Commons; he’s so angry with federal politicians, he plans to drive to Ottawa when the Conservatives’ economic package comes to a vote, to see what happens first-hand.

Most agree the whole mess seems unnecessary. Meeting with Opposition leaders after the Oct. 14 federal election, the prime minister seemed to suggest a kinder, gentler Parliament. Then, the global economic crisis began worrying Canadians and undermining the prime minister’s confidence in so-called “sound fundamentals.” For whatever reason, the finance minister’s announcement to axe federal party subsidies, federal civil servants’ right to strike and pay equity commitments for women, seemed to undo that political truce in Ottawa. Whatever your political stripe, Jim Flaherty’s words in the House of Commons last week struck a nerve. And by Monday, Messieurs Dion, Layton and Duceppe had signed a coalition agreement for Governor General Michaelle Jean the moment the Conservatives next lose a vote of confidence.

So, how radical is this Opposition proposal? How precedent-setting? Not at all.

In the Great Coalition of 1864, a Liberal-Conservative détente overcame the deadlock between forces in the province of Canada (Quebec and Ontario) and led to Confederation three years later. During the First World War, the federal Union government brought together Liberals, Conservatives and independents to deal with wartime conscription; the coalition lasted from 1917-20. In 1941, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (later the NDP) co-operated with the Liberals in B.C. and the resulting coalition survived a decade. And following a virtual tie in the 1985 provincial election, Bob Rae’s New Democrats and David Peterson’s Liberals formed a coalition which served the people of Ontario for two years.

Whether the federal Conservatives put Flaherty’s economic statement to a vote in the House next Monday or (if the prime minister prorogues Parliament) shut down the House until January, it seems the entire affair will grab our collective attention. It will also catapult an unlikely Canadian into the limelight. With an otherwise uneventful term as Governor General behind her, next week Michaelle Jean could face three historic choices: accept the prime minister’s decision to prorogue the session; dissolve Parliament and call a new federal election; or, accept the signed agreement of Dion, Layton and Duceppe to govern in a coalition until at least the summer of 2010.

“In any case,” a Canadian Press reporter said on CBC radio, “she is condemned to make history.”

If nothing else the GG and federal politicians have now rocketed onto the public’s collective radar screen. People are either furious or consumed by curiosity. Whether we like it or not – either next week or next month – Canadians are going to witness history. Where a multi-million-dollar federal election campaign, just two months ago, failed to get more than 59.1 per cent of the eligible population to go to the polls, it seems today the whole country is buzzing about “those politicians up in Ottawa.”

They now have our undivided attention.

Of fists and fables

2008-11-26T21:09:00.000-08:00

It proved to be one of those rare moments of enlightenment.

Some time ago, a woman friend, who had no real concept of adult recreational hockey, wondered why I chose to play such a violent sport. She said she considered it ostensibly a game for young people. I agreed, since that’s when must of us learned to play it, but I insisted our brand of the game was gentlemanly and perfectly safe. She said the game was inherently violent. Well, I suggested, for those of us who really loved the game, the real attraction was the skating and stick-handling.

“Oh,” she said, “A game with two blades on your feet and a piece of wood in your hands, doesn’t suggest violence.”

That was the moment of enlightenment. I agreed that hockey was violent if a player chose to play it that way. As a retort, however, I suggested a number of sports that I considered much more violent than hockey. Lacrosse and rugby, for example. And the athletes playing in those sports wore even less protective gear than we do in rec hockey. It occurred to me that perhaps the violence in sport was proportional to the attitude of the players. If we used the two blades on our feet or the stick in our hands to try to hurt an opponent, then, yes, hockey becomes unnecessarily violent.

I guess the other quotient to consider here is the danger involved. Hang gliding came to mind as a sport that could be more lethal than no-slapshot, no-body-checking hockey. Driving in a demolition derby or snowboarding down a nearly vertical mountainside, I consider more life-threatening than a collision in the corner of a hockey arena. I can remember watching the mountain biking marathon at the Beijing Olympics, last summer, and that sport had more potentially life-ending thrills and spills than anything I’ve witnessed in a game of shinny.

When I did a little research the other night, I found plenty of sports I would never try. If the sport demands that you have to leave the ground without a parachute or go into a ring without a helmet, I consider it dangerous, unnecessary, and, yes, too violent. I’m thinking of such activities as climbing up a frozen waterfall or windsurfing in a gale. I remember the first time I saw luge and later skeleton racing at the Olympics, I considered them to have more of a death-wish component than anything on two skate blades.

Of course, some have taken the word sports to new lengths. Bungee jumping from downtown buildings. Motor bike racing on water. Riding on the backs of dolphins. High jumping over barbed-wire prison fences. Lawn mower jumping across ravines. Shooting rapids without a canoe or kayak. Chasing tornadoes. There’s even something called extreme zorbing. The so-called zorber climbs inside a large plastic ball that’s rolling uncontrollably down a mountainside.

Participants have given these pursuits the title: Extreme Sports. They have their own magazines, websites and competitions. Extreme ironing, reports its official website, challenges competitors to haul an ironing board to the most unlikely places on Earth to produce the best pressed shirt. Some extreme ironing contestants have ironed in a jungle, in a canoe, underwater, while snowboarding and even seated atop a statue.

I guess it’s all about one’s 15 seconds of fame on the Internet.

The cyber generation cannot lay claim to originating this stuff, however. A little research reveals something called bare-knuckle or fisticuffs – boxing without gloves or head gear – which dates back to 18th and 19th century England. Among its heroes was a man named Jem Belcher. Born in Bristol, Belcher at the age of 18 challenged reigning champion Jack Bartholomew. In their first title match, in 1799, the two bare-knucklers went an incredible 51 rounds and fought to a draw. In a rematch Jem Belcher won the Champion of All England title and held it until 1805. He lost an eye, not boxing, but playing fives (barehanded racquet ball). Despite the disability, in 1807, he attempted to defend his title in a 31-round match, losing to Tom Cribb, who later became world champion bare-knuckle boxer.

All of which makes our Sunday oldtimers’ hockey games seem pretty tame by comparison. Unless, of course, a hockey player such as yours truly, accidentally becomes airborne during one of last Sunday morning’s SOFA games and meets the corner boards unceremoniously back first. Then I’d have concede to my female friend, not withstanding Don Cherry’s “Knock ’em Sock ’em” videos, that (occasionally) our sport can be violent.

No damage, just a moment of enlightenment.

Tarnished maple leaf

2008-11-19T18:16:00.000-08:00

I lost one of my closest veteran friends, recently. When the Second World War began, Charley Fox left Guelph, Ont., and enlisted in the RCAF. At age 20, he got his wings and then instructed in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan until 1943. Overseas, he served as a Spitfire pilot from D-Day to V-E Day. He was twice decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross. Then, in his retirement years, he quietly fought to have fellow veterans recognized for their service. Last month, he died in a car crash. He was 88.

“Canada and its veterans,” I wrote then, “had no greater friend than Charley Fox.”

Canadian Forces invited me to deliver a eulogy to Charley Fox during a large, public ceremony in Ottawa on Nov. 2. A friend, who had Air Canada passes, booked us on a flight that Sunday morning. Suddenly, however, we learned that Air Canada had cancelled our 11:10 a.m. flight, so we rushed to Pearson International in an attempt to make the earlier 10:10 a.m. flight. We arrived at 9:30 and joined the queue in front of Air Canada ticket wickets. As we stood there, two of the four agents departed (I guess on breaks) which slowed our progress. At 9:44, we finally reached the head of the line, stepped up to an agent and requested booking on the 10:10 flight.

“The gate’s closed,” she said. “You’re four minutes too late.”

I explained that I was expected to speak at the memorial of a close veteran friend in Ottawa. Could she not see how important it was that I get there? “Surely, the airline has compassion for this kind of situation,” I pleaded.

“You’re late. The gate’s closed. You can’t board this flight,” she said definitively.

I wish I’d had the presence of mind to point out that we had stood in line prior to the 9:40 gate closure for nearly 10 minutes, and that our delay was extended not because of our tardiness, but because half the Air Canada agent staff at that counter had departed while we waited. But in my disappointment and anger that explanation didn’t occur to me.

At any rate, my friend and I decided to try to make the 12:10 p.m. flight. If we did, we could still make the memorial in time. We went to the back of the line and waited again. As we stood there, the remainder of the agent staff all went on break. There were now NO ticket agents available at the counter. When a customer service representative near the kiosks realized the problem, she moved into a ticket position and – Horatio at the bridge – began processing passengers. She informed us that the 12:10 flight was overbooked, but that our standby chances were good.
We entered our names for the 12:10 flight. I had three small boxes needed at the memorial and booked them aboard the 12:10 plane.

“If I don’t make it on that flight, what happens to the boxes?” I asked.

“If you don’t get aboard, they won’t be put on the plane,” she said.

Then, my friend and I sat and waited anxiously for two hours. All the while, I kept thinking about the Canadian Forces people expecting my participation in the ceremony. I thought of Charley Fox’s family, anticipating my arrival to join in the tribute to a true Canadian hero, a man who’d thought little of himself – in wartime or in peace – but of serving his King, his country and his comrades-in-arms. Of course, when it came time for the 12:10 passengers to board the plane, my friend and I were not among them. We would not be going to Ottawa this day.

When I recovered from the disappointment of missing yet another flight, I retreated to the baggage claim area to retrieve my boxes. A younger agent called upon an Air Canada supervisory person to help find them. She arrived moments later.

“It’s a domestic flight. Baggage always goes through on a domestic flight,” she said. Then she added curtly, “You should know that.”

I stood there incredulous. Not only had Air Canada cancelled our flight. It had then prevented our taking an earlier plane because it claimed we were four minutes late when agent scheduling was responsible for our delay. Then it had bumped us from the last opportunity to get to my friend’s memorial. Then, insult to injury, Air Canada told me that I should know its domestic policy requires bags to fly even if their owners don’t.

No. I’m sorry, Air Canada, but your policy book needs rewriting. And right there, at the top – along with acknowledging the privilege of bearing our national symbol – its mission should state a belief in courtesy, compassion and consistency.

Charley Fox lived by such traits. Without men like him, Air Canada wouldn’t even exist.

Passchendaele - myth and reality

2008-11-13T19:23:00.000-08:00

Ninety-one years ago this week, the men of Zephyr, Sandford, Sunderland and Uxbridge came away from Passchendaele, Belgium.

In three and a half months of fighting that fall of 1917, Canadian troops – including members of the 116th Battalion from Ontario County – had managed to seize about six kilometres of ground from the occupying German army. Before the battle, the Canadian Corps commander, General Arthur Currie, had forecast to his British superiors that taking Passchendaele would cost 16,000 Canadian casualties. He was almost exactly correct; 15,654 Canadians died, were wounded or captured there.

“Passchendaele!” Currie had exclaimed before the battle. “What’s the good of it? Let the Germans have it – keep it – rot in the mud.”

“Passchendaele,” opened this week for movie-goers – three generations later – to learn what some of the men of Ontario County experienced in the Great War.

Among those who survived that bloody encounter 91 years ago, was a 19-year-old farm boy from Reach Township. Lyman Nicholls had played hooky one afternoon from Uxbridge Secondary School to join up. He’d received his uniform, boots and enlistment papers, but by nightfall his parents had un-enlisted him because he was underage. By that summer when he turned 18, however, Nicholls legally joined up and went to war. He survived a baptism of fire at Vimy Ridge and then Passchendaele.

“Some of us signallers acted as a stretcher party,” Nicholls later said.

An officer gave him a white flag to presumably protect him from enemy machine-gun fire as members of the 116th picked up Canadian wounded. Nicholls remembered walking along wooden duck boards to keep him from sinking in the muddy bog. He and his fellow stretcher bearers walked in single file toward two German pillboxes where the wounded men awaited their assistance. Among the wounded Nicholls brought back was a young German prisoner.

“I was last (man) behind those stretcher cases and I held the German prisoner by one arm and held up the white flag, as high as I could, expecting at any minute we might be killed…But we got back safely.”

As military decision-makers often do, British Field Marshal Douglas Haig sensed the battle for Passchendaele would become the greatest victory of the 1914-1918 war. Haig himself described the place as little more than “valleys with overflowing streams…speedily transformed into long stretches of bog, impassable except by a few well-defined tracks.” Still, the final push to capture this strip of land from the German army in central Belgium, fell to the Canadians.

Another Uxbridge man who served at Passchendaele in 1917 was the commander of the 116th Battalion. It was Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Sharpe who had proposed, recruited, underwritten and trained the 1,100 volunteers from Ontario County to go to war. He and his adjutant had written of their citizen army that each man had nothing but “an ardent desire to get through the baptism of fire with as much glory and as few casualties as possible.”

But by the time the 116th got to Passchendaele, about a year later, the night raids across No Man’s Land, the frontal attacks behind creeping barrages, the repeated counterattacks of German gas, artillery and infantry, had worn the battalion down. Not in spirit, but in cumulative losses. The first seven months of service on the Western Front had killed or put out of action nearly a third of the battalion’s strength. Then, anticipating Passchendaele, Lt. Col. Sharpe wrote a letter home to Uxbridge.

“We have very little protection there and I may not pull through,” he wrote his wife, Mabel. The letter came across as a kind of last will and testament. “If it should be my fate to be among those who fall, I wish to say I have no regrets to offer. I have done my duty … I die without any fears as to the ultimate destiny of all that is immortal within me.”

Passchendaele all but destroyed the 116th. Of the 1,100 men who had volunteered in 1915-16, only 160 would come home. Lyman Nicholls, the signaller from Reach Township, survived his stretcher bearer duties there, but was wounded soon after at Cambrai. Lt. Col. Sharpe was less fortunate. A man broken by the fatigue of battle and the decimation of his battalion, never got home to Uxbridge; he committed suicide at a Montreal hospital in the spring of 1918.

Passchendaele, the battle, symbolized the war’s futility. The movie that arrives here tomorrow will remind this community – and any others that supplied citizen soldiers to the Great War – of the human cost.

The Torch Bearer

2008-10-25T08:36:00.000-07:00

In the fall of 1945, a train carrying wartime troops from the campaign to liberate Europe, delivered a 25-year-old air force veteran to the platform in Guelph, Ont. Flush with victory over the Luftwaffe, Charley Fox came home with one of the most distinguished air combat records of the Second World War – 222 operational missions, two full tours and two Distinguished Flying Crosses as well as the credit for taking Germany’s most celebrated officer out of the war. He returned to his wife Helen (whom he’d married in 1942), his two-year-old son Jim, and the job he expected his Walker Store employers would hold for him. What he didn’t expect at the department store was a visit from the mother of one of his childhood chums, Andy Howden, killed in the air war overseas. The distraught woman grabbed Fox by the shoulders and shook him right there in the store.

“Why my Andy?” she cried, “and not you!”

“Mrs. Howden, I don’t know why not me,” he replied trying to console the woman.

So deep was the effect of the apparent contradiction that he should survive the war and not his chum, that Fox committed himself – quietly at first and then later as a retired businessman and honorary colonel of No. 412 Fighter Squadron – to recounting the stories of fellow Canadian veterans. Eventually, his crusade to inform school children, historical societies, service clubs and even serving troops became known as Torchbearers Canada.

His sporty, red Saab with flaming torch emblem on its bumpers has zigzagged across the province constantly delivering him to more speaking engagements than he flew sorties. He has arrived and spoken from the heart without fanfare and without a speaking fee. He has never stopped answering Mrs. Howden.

Over the weekend, his “why not me” mission came to an end. Last Saturday, Charley Fox had just left a one-room portable at the Tillsonburg airstrip, where the Canadian Harvard Aircraft Association held its monthly meetings. Since 1985, when CHAA was created to restore and return to the air some of the Harvard trainer aircraft used to train thousands of pilots during the war, Charley had been an active volunteer. Following Saturday’s meeting, he drove from the airstrip to join fellow CHAA members for brunch in Tillsonburg. He never made it. He died in a car crash just south of the airport.

“He lived a very full 88 years,” wrote Sandra Sparkes of CHAA, “and had such plans for so many more.”

Charley Fox’s teenage plans had never included flying. He never built airplane models. He even refused a flight over Hamilton once for fear he’d be airsick. But on a summer day in 1934, when he was 14, he watched a touring flight of RAF Hawker Fury fighter aircraft swoop low and fast over his home in Guelph.

“They were silver-coloured fighter biplanes,” Fox said. “Five (of them) came zooming over the top of College Hill, glinting in the sunlight. Then swoosh. They were gone. But I never forgot it.”

Like so many smitten by the romance of mid-Depression aviation, when war broke out in 1939, Fox left his retail job in Guelph and enlisted in the RCAF. He’d set his sights on flying only the fastest fighter aircraft of the day – the Spitfire. Because he graduated second in his class of July 1941, however, Fox was told he would train military pilots in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan; it was Canada’s largest wartime investment ($1.5 billion) teaching men from across the empire to become military pilots, navigators, wireless radio operators, gunners, bomb-aimers and flight engineers. From October 1941 to May 1943, at No. 6 Service Flying Training School, in Dunnville, Ont., instructor Fox trained hundreds of pilots.

To illustrate his career in the BCATP, at his Torchbearers talks, Fox would extract from the trunk of his Saab a seemingly endless supply of easels and display boards full of runway diagrams, excerpts from his flight logs, and photographs of Harvard trainers lined up on the flight line, taking off in formation or crumpled by training accidents. One photo depicted a noseless Harvard downed in the woods near Bagotville, Que.

“That’s when I had my mid-air collision,” he would tell his audiences. “I was leading a section of three Harvards. Three Hurricanes came along. One did a mock attack from below. He must have blacked out, hit me, tore out my engine right to the fire wall. He spun in and was killed…I opened the coop top, stood on the seat and went over the side…and parachuted from 300 feet.”

If, in his hospital bed, young fighter pilot Fox figured he’d proven himself, he was mistaken. As a result of his two years of instructing, Fox had accumulated 1,500 flying hours (most front-line fighter pilots might have 200 hours). He still flew tail-end-Charlie (last man in a group of four Spitfires) when he joined fighter command at Tangmere on the south coast of England in 1944. On his first combat sortie over the English Channel with Canadian fighter ace Buzz Beurling leading, Fox over-compensated during a formation takeoff and accidentally allowed his propeller tips to scrape the tarmac. Later that night, Charley remembered Beurling disciplining him over a game of billiards.

“Shoot, Charley, that was a stupid thing to do,” Beurling said. “The prudent thing would have been to turn back.”

“That would make me look yellow,” Fox protested.

Just then, Tangmere station came under bombing attack. The two Spitfire pilots dove under the pool table for cover. Fox turned to his squadron leader for a final word. “Consider yourself told off,” Beurling said finally. Initiation complete.

Charley Fox’s brushes with history only began with Beurling. He scrambled numerous times from that storied Battle of Britain aerodrome in the lead-up to D-Day. As the June 6, 1944 invasion began on the beach, Fox and his RCAF 412 Squadron flew three operational trips over Normandy protecting thousands of ships and landing craft (one bringing Charley’s younger brother Ted ashore with the Royal Canadian Artillery).

“Nervous? No,” Fox said, “but I felt very much alive that morning…For some reason, everything was so much more intensified at the moment – our smell, sight, everything. We were living on the edge.”

Throughout that summer Fox and his squadron mates dive-bombed German rocket sites that began launching V-1 and V-2 rockets at English civilian centres. And as the Germans fell back in France, Allied Spitfires hastened the retreat by chasing German locomotives, tanks and truck convoys, all considered “targets of opportunity.”

Fox’s greatest “opportunity” appeared on the afternoon of July 17, 1944. He and his wing-mate Steve Randall spotted a German staff car racing along an avenue of trees. While Randall protected his quick descent, Fox swooped in out of the sun, strafed the vehicle and drove it off the road.

“I timed the shots so that I was able to fire and get him as the car came through a small opening in the trees…I got him on that pass. We were moving pretty fast, but I knew I got him.”

By the time Randall and Fox had landed back at their base, the radio buzzed with exciting news. An Allied pilot had shot up a Horch convertible containing a driver, three German officers and none other than the Desert Fox himself, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. By nightfall an American Thunderbolt pilot, a Spitfire pilot from No. 411 Squadron and several others in the air about the same time all claimed the score on Rommel.

Charley Fox never talked about it, “but it’s always been sitting in my log book,” he said. In April 2004, nearing the 60th anniversary of the famous strafing, Quebec historian Michel Lavigne announced he’d compared official RCAF and German military records to confirm the time, location and aircraft involved. Charley Fox had put the Desert Fox out of the war.

Victory was relative for Charley Fox. More important than the nearly 2,000 hours he’d flown between January 1944 and May 1945, more important than the 361 enemy aircraft, 493 locomotives and 1,569 enemy railcars his RCAF Wing had destroyed, and perhaps more important than his Distinguished Flying Cross and Bar the military had awarded him, was his wartime family.

Rigger Monty Montgomery and fitter Danny Daniels – Charley’s ground crew – had remained with him throughout the liberation campaign. He recalled their loyalty and professionalism.

“One time I came in to land, near Nijmegen (Holland),” Fox said. “I couldn’t get the under-carriage down. I elected to put the Spitfire down on grass beside the runway. It didn’t do too much damage, (but) I remember Monty crying at the end of the runway, wondering what he’d done wrong.”

Charley wrote his wife Helen back in Canada to buy two cigarette lighters and engrave them with their names. Knowing Daniels and Montgomery had completed their tours by the time the squadron reached France that summer of 1944, Fox presented them with the lighters as they were about to return home.

“Charley Fox,” the two ground crewmen announced, “when you finish your tour, that’s when we go home.”

His air force family remained with him until his final operational sortie in 1945.

Charley Fox had more families than most: his wartime air force comrades, his workplace colleagues before and after the war, the thousands of youngsters he met and inspired with the stories of Canadian service, countless journalists and broadcasters who relied on him for that perfect Remembrance Day observation.

As busy as his Torchbearers schedule proved (Fox had appearance bookings lined up through 2010), the man always made time for his blood family. Following a speaking engagement two weeks ago in London, he turned down several offers to retire to a restaurant for refreshment; he’d promised to deliver some groceries to his daughter Sue down the road in Thamesford.

“Family comes first,” he said.

“It’s the kind of man he was,” Sue Beckett said. “A man of compassion and integrity.”

Battle-free political wars

2008-10-09T10:19:00.000-07:00

Normally, I wouldn’t have to encourage them. Under regular circumstances they would be at each other’s throats. In fact, the conditions of their workplace would have insisted upon it. Their philosophical and political differences would certainly have dictated it. And yet, there I sat among four people so diametrically opposed to each other’s views, I couldn’t believe what wasn’t happening. At one point, I even encouraged their wrath.

“Would you please debate each other?” I asked.

I moderated a candidates' debate the other night. It featured the four remaining contestants for the Durham riding in the Oct. 14 federal vote. With former NDP candidate Andrew McKeever bowing out late last week, our debate left Henry Zekveld (of the Christian Heritage Party), Stephen Leahy (with the Green Party), Bryan Ransom (of the Liberal Party), debating with Bev Oda (the Conservative incumbent).

But do you think I could get these four people to confront each other? Nope.

That’s not to say there weren’t any dramatic moments. But they were mostly provided by citizens posing questions from the floor. A woman passionately criticized candidate Oda about the government’s decision to eliminate income trusts. Another questioner couldn’t believe the Green’s Leahy hadn’t championed solar power as a viable alternative. And several members of the audience challenged the Liberals’ Ransom to prove that a carbon tax wouldn’t come from taxpayers’ pockets. Perhaps the most articulate question raised the issue of accountability with incumbent Oda.

“Demonstrate the art of the possible,” he said. “Give us an example of something your party, if elected, would do to deal with the economy.”

Witnessing the fashion in which the man posed the question and the exuberance he used making his point, I wanted him to be the next Member of Parliament for the riding of Durham.
I’m not ridiculing the woman and three men who faced their electorate the other night. Not for all the gold in the Canadian Mint would I attempt to do what candidates in any election do.

Presenting one’s point-of-view so quickly and glibly. Laying both private and public reputations on the line every day of the election. Not to mention investing one’s energy, time and resources so totally in the campaign. None of that has ever appealed to me. And I have utmost respect for all political candidates – no matter what their political stripe – for so completely competing for the right to serve in public office.

And yet, I couldn’t get those four folks to take the bait and debate!

At one point, I even stopped the parade of prepared statements and pleaded with them to put the rhetoric aside. The topic was the environment, in particular, the impact of global warming on the far North. I implored them to put their notes aside and give us – their willing and able constituents – some idea, any idea, how we as individuals in faraway Durham might affect the slightest change in our habits and attitudes to bring about a halt to the disintegration of the polar ice cap. As impassioned as I posed the question (I think I even stood up at that point) and as honestly as I hoped a verbal slug-fest might break out, I was disappointed. Nothing happened.

The political debating format is as old as the hills. In fact, among the most historic verbal battles in North America took place exactly 150 years ago. It was just before the U.S. Civil War (1858) when two giants of American oratory – Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas – debated seven times on the issue of slavery and statehood. That debate precipitated Lincoln’s comment that truth is “the electric cord that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together.” In 1960, exactly 48 years ago last week, the so-called Great Debates took place. U.S. presidential candidates John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon went head to head on Sept. 26 in front of 77 million TV viewers. That night Kennedy said the question of the presidency was “whether this nation could exist half slave or half free…”

In Canadian debating history, we had Brian Mulroney’s “You had an option, sir” retort to John Turner in the 1984 election campaign. And even more memorable was Pierre Trudeau’s defence of legislation protecting the rights of homosexuals; in the 1968 political debate he countered Raoul Couette with, “There is no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.”

I’m not suggesting that all our candidates in all ridings have to be Lincolns, Kennedys or Trudeaus. But I do expect my vote to be earned by heart-felt persuasion and healthy debate.

We didn’t have that this time ’round. I’ll have to try harder next time.

Who's he calling ordinary?

2008-09-30T13:06:00.000-07:00

It was about 8 o’clock last Thursday night, when I made my way to the microphone to begin festivities at this year’s Books & Authors Night in Uxbridge. It was the 23rd edition of interviews with, and readings from, Canadian authors. It is, of course, a cornerstone of the annual Celebration of the Arts festival in our community. Like the Studio Tour, the Art Show, the Gala and countless other Celebration events, the Books & Authors Night was nearly at capacity. The lights dimmed slightly in the Music Hall as I prepared to speak.

“Would anybody, who’s been subsidized to be here, please identify himself?” I asked.

It was a nice ice-breaker. But then I asked the more germane question: “Are there any ordinary Canadians here?”

I realize it was a somewhat partisan remark, but I believed it needed to be said. Just two days earlier, at a campaign stop in Saskatoon, the prime minister remarked that arts events tend to consist of “a bunch of people at, you know, a rich gala all subsidized by taxpayers” and that such phenomena do not “resonate with ordinary people.”

In all the years I have lived in Uxbridge, “ordinary people” are the only ones I’ve encountered in the arts. Those who’ve worked on and behind theatre productions, those designing and staging cultural events, those trying to build a true arts centre with theatre and gallery here, those teaching the arts in and out of class and those orchestrating concerts to raise funds for young musicians have all been extraordinarily ordinary.

Indeed the very creators of the original Celebration of the Arts, 23 years ago, were salt of the earth citizens – former pub operator Ron Tindley, filmmaker Christopher Chapman and organist/choir master Tom Baker. Now I’ve known those three gentlemen to enjoy expensive Scotch now and again, but “rich gala” types? Hardly.

By coincidence this week, friend and colleague in The Writers’ Circle of Durham Region, Ruth Walker offered her take on the prime minister’s view that “ordinary working people” don’t care about the arts.

“Just who does he think produced the art and culture in this country?” she asked in her open letter. “Who paints the theatre scenes?…Who organizes the thousands of grassroots festivals and community events on shoestring budgets or even less?…Who teaches our children to draw, act, sing, dance, film, photograph, paint and write?”

As a poet, playwright, instructor and editor, Ruth Walker subsidizes her own writing by working as a provincial civil servant. She’s been published in Canada, the U.S. and Britain and her short stories and poetry have earned her international awards and recognition. None of it has gone to her head. Ruth Walker is one of the hardest working writers I know (not to mention the first one to volunteer her time and expertise gratis to assist regional writing festivals, publications and community programs.) She concludes in her letter:

“The prime minister must be referring to those other ordinary Canadians…who are not arts or culture consumers and have no one in their family or social circle involved in the arts or culture…All three of them.”

But Ruth Walker isn’t the only main-street artist setting the prime minister straight on the relevance of the arts. This week, Margaret Atwood, writing in the Globe and Mail, referred to the prime minister’s own government statisticians for evidence. Rather than an insignificant sector of the Canadian economy, Atwood explained that “Canada’s cultural sector generated $46 million, or 3.8 per cent of Canada’s GDP in 2007.” She also noted that the arts and culture sector accounted for 600,000 jobs “the same as agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining, oil and gas and utilities combined.”

For the prime minister to say the arts are, in effect, elitist and have no resonance with ordinary people, is a little like saying Santa Claus doesn’t exist. And we all know how silly the prosecution looked trying to quash Santa, in the movie “Miracle on 34th Street.” Remember? Defence used the thousands of letters addressed to the U.S. Post Office as evidence that an official government body recognized Santa’s existence.

It appears the prime minister needs to be reminded how crucial and grassroots the arts are to Canadians. In a letter to the Toronto Star last week, Phillip Silver, of the Fine Arts Department at York University, pointed out that Manitoba author Gabrielle Roy once wrote:

“Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?”

Silver then suggested, if the prime minister needed verification of that fact in this country, he could find that very quotation inscribed on the back of every ordinary Canadian $20 bill.

Case closed.

Chicken Little on the hustings

2008-09-27T16:26:00.000-07:00

Returning from a family gathering in the U.S. on Monday morning, I flew into Pearson International Airport, gathered my baggage and headed for the parking facility to pick up my car. As we approached the lot, I was the only person left in the mini-bus. I was refocusing on being back home and asked the bus driver who she thought was winning the federal election.

“I don’t like any of them,” she said.

“OK, but what would you like to see from them?”

“I just want things to be the way they used to be,” she said. “No crime. No high gas prices. No problems. No fear.”

When I asked her what she was afraid of, she couldn’t really say. She just shrugged her shoulders as if to say she was fed up with what the politicians were passing off as platform policy, problem solving and a vision for the country. But that fear factor hung in my thoughts as I paid for my parking and headed for home. Where was that coming from? What was making us afraid? And what was the point of it? I concluded it’s coming from the politicians themselves.

Just look at the election advertising. The Conservatives warn us that the Liberals will increase taxes and drive the country into financial ruin. The New Democrats say the Liberals are wolves in sheep’s clothing. The Greens forecast Armageddon if global warming isn’t addressed right now. The Bloc warns of linguistic and cultural disintegration in Quebec without their strong voice in the House of Commons. And everybody claims the sky will fall if the Conservatives win a majority.

In short the campaign has – at least to this point – done nothing to but kindle our fear, not engender our confidence in politicians or the country’s future. I don’t get it. What’s the point of that kind of campaigning? Why have politics come to this? Where does all this come from?

Well, in part, it comes from the politics of our cousins to the south. It’s fair to say that the re-election campaign of the current president was based primarily on fear. His response to the attacks of 9/11 and his war on terrorism have kept all Americans – not to mention the rest of the world – on edge. But George W. Bush isn’t the only guilty party. U.S. politicians going back to Teddy Roosevelt preyed on the electorate’s apparent fears. Roosevelt told his countrymen to fear the Spanish in the Americas and went to war. Eisenhower and Kennedy had the West terrified of communism thus fuelling the cold war and the Vietnam War. And this year, candidate McCain has Americans fearing Obama’s “liberalness,” while candidate Obama has them afraid of an Alaska hockey mom.

“America is a country gripped by fear,” wrote Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at the University of California. His book The Culture of Fear declared, “These peddlers of fear – politicians, advocacy groups and TV newsmagazines – cost Americans dearly, weighing us down with needless worries and wasting billions of dollars.”

Only one American president, a man who really did have to face global holocaust, understood the problem. Franklin Roosevelt announced at his inauguration in 1933, “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.”

And that’s where 21st century politicians have to go to win my vote. I think all of us should demand it – whether it’s during the national debates on TV or in local candidates debates. Enough with the fear-mongering. Get on with crafting a vision for this country. We have the greatest natural wealth on the planet. We have the widest diversity and skills reservoir. We have the most space and the greatest potential. It’s about time political leadership recognized our strengths and stopped preying on our weaknesses, principally our fears.

In that respect, my acquaintance driving the mini-bus had it right. We need to go back to the vision of a John A. Macdonald who built a railway and a national dream, back to a Wilfrid Laurier who encouraged us to embrace the 20th century as our own, back to the populist notions of a John Diefenbaker who crafted our bill of rights, and back to the exuberance of a Pierre Trudeau who patriated our constitution and trumpeted our multi-cultural makeup. Where are the dreamers? Where are the visionaries? Where are the leaders of hope and innovation? So far, none of them are on my TV screen or at the candidates debates.

Therefore, I echo the concern of my bus driver acquaintance and of my fellow constituents. I challenge the candidates: Stem the fear mongering and inspire our future.

One cool life

2008-09-15T14:03:00.000-07:00

My sister Kate, my wife Jayne and I sat at her bedside, the same way we have almost daily these past six months. That day, last Thursday, the world was acknowledging the tragic loss of many lives on Sept. 11, 2001. We were marking the loss of one life. My mother – Kay Barris – had died minutes before we arrived about midday. We felt myriad emotions. Sadness. Loss. Some relief that the pain in her weary and withering body had ended. Then, a hospital social worker appeared, passed on condolences, smiled and offered an epitaph of my mother.

“She was one, cool chick,” Brenda Stein said.

In 85 years of life, my mother had been so many things – loving daughter to immigrant parents from Greece, studious pupil, hard-working retail worker in New York, adoring wife to a man she’d known since their childhood, gentle and ever-giving parent, wise and eagerly involved Yiayia (grandmother) to our two daughters, and even in her declining years a bright, well-read and perceptive mind, with so much more to offer than time or her physical body would allow.
But my mother “a cool chick?" That made me think.

Well, she was born in Bethlehem…in Pennsylvania, that is. My father used to say, “The two most important people were born in Bethlehem.” As a young woman, she worked at Macy’s in New York City, but clearly her intellect pointed beyond the retail counter. Her lowest mark at high school was a 75 in music; however, in commercial law, civics, English, science, bookkeeping and stenography she scored no less than mid-to-high-90s. In 1941, at commencement exercises my mother – Koula Kontozoglus as she was known then – was seventh in a graduating class of over 300. She also received the school Thrift Award of Merit. That’s pretty impressive!

She courted my father from the time they met. We have a picture of a community picnic in 1936, when she was 13 and he was 14. Amid hundreds of New York picnickers they’re standing side-by-side; my mother had made the choice of her life’s soul mate. Despite the fact Dad served overseas for nearly three years, she wrote him regularly. They married soon after his repatriation. And like so many wives, no doubt her shoulder bore the brunt of his post-war trauma.

Partly because Dad worked as a newspaper columnist and broadcaster, covering disparate events at all hours, Mom chose to be a homemaker. How wonderfully my sister and I benefited from Mom’s presence at home. She taught me how to weed and plant a garden. She helped me flood the backyard for my first ice rink. She listened and understood the first time I fell in love…and the first time my heart was broken. In the 1960s, when most teenagers sneaked away from home to party with friends, my mother made our downstairs recreation room available to us.

The kids all said, “Geez, your parents are cool!”

They didn’t know the half of it. In the late ’60s my folks moved back to the U.S. so my father could pursue writing for TV in Hollywood. Then, my sister returned to Toronto for her writing career. I moved West. So, with the family – all writers and all scattered – Mom, who never craved the limelight, wrote and telephoned and cleared the way for any and every family reunion possible. She was the glue in our far-flung family – there whenever any of us needed her. And we often did. When I took radical positions politically, she listened. When Jayne and I chose to live together before marriage, she opened her door, her arms and her heart to us. And whenever I struggled to find creative direction, she applauded my every success and consoled any failure.

Following Mom’s hospitalization at Bridgepoint Hospital in Toronto back in the spring, my sister and I began writing a bedside diary of activity, wishes and reflections. The notebook became a daily registry of Kate’s and my observations, a means of passing messages when necessary, a shopping list of Mom’s needs. Mostly Kate and I wrote in it, but on several occasions, we arrived to find Mom’s thoughts jotted down.

“April 13. Tell Kate to bring me a back scratcher. I need it.”

“July 18. Today is my anniversary. Married in New York at St. Eleftarius, July 18, 1948.”

Then, following a visit from our infant granddaughter, Layne. “What a pleasure to hold your great granddaughter in your arms. Not many people get that, in a hospital bed. How lovely. She can’t imagine how happy that made me. I have a lovely, caring family. How lucky I’ve been.”

No, Mom. We are the fortunate ones to have shared life with “one, cool chick.”

Dysfunctional family values

2008-09-10T17:17:00.000-07:00

About a week before Stephen Harper went to visit the Governor General, television stations began running the Conservative Party’s campaign advertisements.

As I recall, the TV ads showed a farmer, a student, a veteran, a homemaker and others. They all had comments about this “straight ahead” guy, who “looked out for our interests.” One said he was “approachable.” And they all seemed to agree on one important asset he possessed above all else.

They told viewers the Prime Minister is a “real family man.”

With the federal election now in full swing and with the five party leaders leapfrogging across Canada to promote their parties’ policies, I certainly expect to see plenty of photo opportunities about the economy, the environment, the Afghanistan mission and even leadership capabilities. But family? Since when does having a family make one a better prime minister?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never considered someone’s family status as a reason for voting a politician into or out of office. I’m not electing a family! I’m electing a candidate who represents my concerns about national issues, who considers my constituency’s interests and who most closely espouses my philosophy of governance. Frankly, a candidate’s family should have little or nothing to do with my decision in the voting booth on Oct. 14.

The history of Canadian prime ministers illustrates the point. William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada’s longest serving prime minister, didn’t rely on family for votes. He had no wife in the limelight. No kids. In fact, the only family member we came to know was his long dead mother, with whom he is alleged to have made spiritual contact in her afterlife. And for nearly as long, Canada’s 15th serving prime minister was a swinging single. Pierre Trudeau seemed all the more attractive for his lack of family. In fact, he generated plenty of excitement – or so-called “Trudeau-mania” – as a bachelor until Margaret Sinclair came into his life in 1971. Family had little or nothing to do with electing a Canadian prime minister in the 1940s or the 1970s.

No. I’m afraid this focus on the family is just another example of the Canadian spin doctors taking a page out of the American political playbook. Look at the two federal circuses we endured on TV during the summer leadership conventions. First it was the Democrats’ Barack Obama parading out his picture-perfect wife and family in Denver. The next week in Minneapolis, it was the Republicans’ Sarah Palin and the endless showcasing of her hockey-mom kids and her NRA-loving husband, not to mention her about-to-be son-in-law for her 17-year-old pregnant daughter. By the end of those two weeks, I had so severely overdosed on “family values,” that I was nearly ready for an episode of Ozzy Osbourne’s dysfunctional TV family.

The worst part of this “family man” campaign is that it’s contagious. On Monday night, it was Olivia Chow strolling on camera with husband Jack Layton to illustrate how much a family guy the NDP leader is. Then, in the Tuesday newspapers, it was the Liberals’ turn to remind us how lovable Stéphane Dion is. Out came the Internet website – “This is Dion” – designed to offset the Conservatives’ peek inside 24 Sussex. The Internet site shows the Opposition leader skiing, fishing, snowshoeing and enjoying quality time with his wife and daughter, and, oh yes, his faithful dog Kyoto.

Let’s get real here, folks. This election is not about how wholesome we expect our politicians to be. It’s about salvaging manufacturing in Ontario, preventing the total disintegration of the polar ice cap, repairing the country’s worn-out infrastructure, bringing Canada’s soldiers home after serving with valour and distinction in Afghanistan, and yes, helping to serve Canadian families – not the leaders’ families – with improved health care, quality education, opportunities for the best jobs and a cleaner environment.

By the way, if all this country’s prime-ministers-in-waiting are such wonderful family men, why can’t they give every member of the federal political family an equal say? Apparently, three of the mainstream party leaders – all men – have determined that Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party, shouldn’t be allowed to participate in the TV debates in October. I would have thought Canadian leaders had gotten past male chauvinism by now. I would have thought their sense of family and democracy included all views reflected in the House of Commons.

Or are their true family values stuck in the dark ages?

Minding our p's and q's

2008-08-21T05:06:00.000-07:00

Just for fun, try reading this quickly:

“I cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to a rsceearchr at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a word are. The olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it wouthit a porbelm. And I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.”

This is part of an e-mail I received from a student in one of my copy editing classes at Centennial College last year. At the time, the exercise of reading this e-mail – in the context of a class to improve grammar, writing style and spelling – seemed hilarious. I have to admit my laughter was restrained. Why? Well, the truth is that all too often I receive e-mails with equally appalling spelling mistakes in them for real. And just because they’re e-mails, somehow I’m supposed to overlook the errors.

Sorry, but I refuse to accept laziness just because cyberspace is a free and unbridled toy. Call me old fashioned, but I think it’s a slippery slope.

I recognize that the English language has its shortcomings. As recently as this week, I was reminded that even George Bernard Shaw loved to take playful pokes at his native tongue. The brilliant Irish playwright, novelist and essayist pointed out, for example, that the word spelled “ghoti” might just as easily be pronounced as “fish.” Employing the idiosyncrasies of English, he pronounced “gh” as in “tough,” “o” as heard in the word “women” and “ti” as it’s understood in our pronunciation of “nation.” But my guess is that even the man who earned both the Nobel prize for literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938) would be spinning in his grave over the latest suggested changes to English.

A criminology lecturer at the university level suggests it’s about time we accept, what he calls “variant spellings” in our daily usage of English. According to the story from the Reuters news agency, Prof. Ken Smith thinks the English-speaking world should accept such errors as: “twelth,” “ignor,” “thier,” “speach” and “truely.” (I’d like to point out that thanks to my computer, I’ve had to go back and un-fix the misspelled words my computer corrected; even new technology doesn’t like misspellings.)

Those are infuriating enough. But then the noted criminologist suggests we give up on misguided spellings of the second month of the year and the third day of the week. Smith says it’s OK with him if we spell them “Febuary” and “Wensday.” I know, I know, Walter Cronkite made it all right to mangle February since he admitted he couldn’t pronounce it on the air the way it was spelled. But I’m also astounded that the criminologist with the “variant spelling” proposal isn’t an American (where they still can’t spell honour or defence). The man teaches at Bucks New University in the U.K.!

“University teachers should simply accept…those words our students most commonly misspell,” Prof. Smith says in the Reuters story.

I can remember my father – born an American, but a Canadian citizen as an adult – correcting my bad grammar in conversation at the dinner table and my misspellings in essays and letters. And when I asked him to tell me the correct spelling, he inevitably told me to look it up in a dictionary. At the time, I couldn’t understand why he was such a taskmaster when it came to correct English.

“How could a little mistake hurt?” I complained.

“Go tell Shakespeare. Or, go tell your first prospective employer,” he would admonish me.

And at the college level, that’s what I try to communicate to my students. If they’re trying to make a positive impression on a prospective employer, the last thing they need is a publisher, editor, producer or even an online boss having to face an e-mail application with these so-called variant spellings.

Which brings me back to the e-mail brainteaser my student provided. It’s back to school time. Allowing such abbreviated, sometimes unintelligible spelling and short-form hybrids into everyday language may be an expression of independence. But if the message gets lost in the medium, what’s the point? I hasten to add that Lynne Truss, bestselling author of “Eats, Shoots and Leaves,” pointed out that the war in South Africa (1899) began as a result of a grammatical mistake in a quickly composed telegram.

While I’m not so naïve to draw a line in the sand on variant spelling, I “truly” believe we shouldn’t “ignore” proper “speech” and spelling.

Yes, Virginia, there is a rainbow!

2008-08-13T14:19:00.000-07:00

Anyone standing on the Uxbridge museum grounds late last Friday afternoon in the wake of that downpour of rain would have seen it. About 80 of us, gathered outside at the museum gazebo for my daughter Whitney’s wedding ceremony, spotted it right away. Most of us would have recalled our high school physics to explain it – white light being refracted through airborne water droplets forming the optical illusion of a red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet arch in the sky – a rainbow. My aunt Virginia would argue, however, that it was no illusion and had nothing to do with science at all.

“I predicted it,” she said later that evening at the wedding reception. “I knew the rain would pass, the skies would clear and there would be a rainbow.”

Virginia Nopulos never claimed the power of clairvoyance. Despite being a religious woman, she probably wouldn’t credit her spiritualism for the sudden break in the bad weather last Friday, allowing the marriage of her great niece, Whitney and fiancé Ian, to proceed as planned outdoors at the museum. My sense is that she would credit the assembly of her immediate family – some 28 of us – and the power of their love for each other as the reason for the sudden appearance of brilliant late afternoon sunshine and a perfectly timed rainbow.

“There is nothing more important than a loving family,” she often said.

I write this slightly ironically – only predicting the way Aunt Virginia might explain the miraculous turnaround of the weather last Friday afternoon – because later, following a sumptuous meal, much music and dancing, many speeches and toasts to the wedding couple during the reception at our local Music Hall, Virginia awoke in the night in great pain. She was rushed to hospital in Toronto and died of a heart attack with much of that loving family stunned and heartbroken at her side.

“Why now, at the end of such a glorious day?” we asked ourselves. “How devastating to face grieving in the wake of such celebrating,” we thought.

It took us, as a family, some time to find some answers to these anguished questions. We knew that Virginia, 86, like her younger sister Kay (my mother), had battled through a number of recent illnesses of ageing to make it to this wedding. In fact, because my mother knew Virginia was coming all the way from her home in Baltimore, Maryland, that seemed to rally her strength enough to leave hospital and join her sister at the wedding. They both seemed buoyant, even youthful, watching their family gather and celebrate the occasion, even dancing to the Greek music with their younger brother George. It was as if Virginia knew her time was extremely short.

“It wouldn’t be right for my younger sister to pass away before I do,” she told several family members during the wedding day.

Perhaps she also knew, if her time should suddenly come, that this might be the best time, with the family all in one place, or as we often said, “Angaze!” “Together!” We all knew that Virginia lived for such moments. Whenever the family reunited for Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries or summer holidays, she would be the first to announce how grateful she was that her family had given her a lifetime of memories. In fact, we all recently learned that a family reunion last year in Baltimore had inspired her to finally jot down on paper the way she felt about her family. She had those thoughts put to paper by a calligrapher. She made copies and planned to present them to the family the day after Friday’s marriage celebration when we planned to assemble again for a post-wedding picnic in Uxbridge.

After she died Saturday, it rained all day. Nevertheless, we all decided that Virginia would have wanted us to get together no matter what. We did. We gathered for an indoor picnic at our house. And together we read – on the very day she died – her page-long tribute called, “What My Family Means to Me,” in which the attributes of her family spelled out the phrase: “A L-O-V-I-N-G F-A-M-I-L-Y.” Among the qualities she considered was:

“L is for Life … a book of memories that each one of you has written in … beautiful and rich memories … bad times, sad times, happy times … smiles, laughter and tears shared.”

Today, instead of basking in the warmth of such memories as the wedding celebration of her great niece and nephew-in-law, our aunt will be buried at a cemetery in Baltimore. But those of her family who shared her last day with us here will be recalling the science of water droplets in sunshine.

We will never forget our Aunt Virginia’s rainbow.

A man's high flight

2008-08-10T16:34:00.000-07:00

The day proved to be a milestone in a man’s life.

It’s exactly a year ago. Most of the community where I live - Uxbridge, Ontario - had plenty on its plate. But for anyone who happened by the Greenbank Airport, that day, the visit of a Canadian Forces Griffon helicopter crew en route to the Arctic for manoeuvers, was a spectacle. For the man who had been preparing the airport facility for this day, the visit of Capt. Jack Wesselo and his military crew proved a shining example of his efforts rewarded.

“Nobody’s prouder of this moment than Micky Jovkovic,” his wife Dorothy said.

Micky Jovkovic died last Friday in the crash of his ultra-light aircraft, not far from the airport he loved.

Anyone even moderately knowledgeable of Uxbridge, its welcoming attitude, its enthusiasm for commerce, its unique volunteer spirit, its respect for spirituality and environment and, more recently, its enthusiasm for embracing the future, would have encountered Micky Jovkovic. He helped nurture all of those positive elements in this community. But, in the last few years, it was his love of flying and for the potential a modern, community airport, that brought out the best in him.

“It’ll be Greenbank International before long,” he told me, only half kidding, one day at his Uxbridge Travel office.

Micky Jovkovic and I met walking down an aisle, many years ago. Quite literally. During the many years I emceed the Uxbridge Fair Ambassador pageant, it would always be my job to introduce the candidates and their escorts. Nearly every year, Micky escorted one or another of the young women into the evening along with other town representatives. Micky never missed that evening, helping support youth in this community. Then, as always, he contributed a travel package as a featured prize for the winner.

Certainly, he gave in such visible ways. But Micky also contributed in less visible, but equally vital ways. He regularly offered spiritual support behind the scenes at the St. John’s facility. He proved an active member of Rotary; whenever I happened to visit the club’s Thursday breakfasts as guest speaker, I recall Micky being among those eager to volunteer for the club’s community projects and to offer a “happy buck” story (telling a good-news story and contributing a dollar to the club) at every meeting. But he could imagine no greater gift to this region, than a fully operational airport with all the modern requirements.

I have had the good fortune to meet and befriend many people with that singular passion to fly. And while I’ve never had the inclination to learn to fly myself, I’ve had the great fortune to interview and write about some of this country’s most celebrated aviators – Max Ward, Punch Dickins, Wop May, Jan Zurakowski, Shirley Render, Chris Hadfield and countless military pilots Charley Fox, Russ Bannock, Marion Orr, Richard Rohmer to name a few. Those with a passion to fly are a breed apart in the tradition of the Wright brothers, and John McCurdy of Canada’s Silver Dart fame.

They all live to fly and fly to live.

Not one visit to Micky’s travel agency went by, when he didn’t invite me out to Greenbank to join him on a flight. In fact, every time I booked a commercial flight and Micky wasn’t on the phone with an airline, he and I generally took the time to discuss local news, national politics and the state of the world. He was nothing if not engaging with his customers and his friends. He was a great listener and, when it came to showcasing Greenbank Airport to the world, its greatest booster.

That’s why last summer’s visit of Capt. Jack Weselow and his chopper crew proved such a triumphant moment for Micky. His facility had all the required technology and services to receive, maintain and return to the air, such important flyers. It was a first for Greenbank and its proud owner.

Over the years, my research has put me in touch with another legendary flyer, whose contribution Micky Jovkovic would understand. Though he died during the Second World War, John Gillespie Magee’s legacy has survived because of his passion for flight and his ability to express it in a unique poem, “High Flight.” These are words of flight with which Micky, I’m sure, would feel right at home. A deserving tribute:

“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings…”

Implements of destruction

2008-08-01T05:32:00.000-07:00

Most people missed my high-wire act a few weeks ago.

My neighbours – smart people they are – went indoors when the lightning and torrential rains came down. I, on the other hand, grabbed the extension ladder. You see, I never got around to cleaning my eaves trough last fall, nor this spring, nor on any dry day this summer. Consequently, when heavy rain came recently, the water poured off my roof, swamped the eaves and cascaded down the walls of our house. I finally got the message. The eaves needed to be cleaned out. So, I climbed the ladder to the roof and emptied it. All in the pouring rain! That adage Mom used to tell us never even crossed my mind:

“If there’s lightning, don’t go near trees, towers or elevated places!”

The truth of the matter is that I’m terrified of rooftops and other high places, including tree houses, Ferris wheels, helicopter rides and fire escapes. I even get woozy in open elevators. I mean, to most people the recent addition of the glass-bottomed elevator at the CN Tower has been a real draw. Not for me. In the 32 years that the tallest, free standing structure has stood on Toronto’s waterfront, I haven’t once taken the elevator to the top.

Another phobia I admit to readily is one involving sharp instruments. Ice picks, steak knives, razor blades, exacto knives, some screw drivers and chainsaws have always given me the creeps. It has nothing to do with those murders in Texas, by the way. I think it’s just what most people might describe as a healthy respect for what Arlo Guthrie famously described as “implements of destruction.”

Crippled by two very palpable phobias – a fear of heights and a fear of sharp objects – and facing a common problem – towering tree branches overhanging our tiny house (and the soon to be used horseshoe pits), I therefore had no choice. I had to call in the experts … experts with apparently neither of those two psychological handicaps. That’s when I contacted my son-in-law J.D. and his dad Ron. Both, I understood, exhibited coolness in high places and dexterity with deadly chainsaws.

“No problem,” they said. “We’ll take care of it.”

And they did … sort of. The other day, my eager, willing and able assistants arrived replete with gear. J.D. wore work boots and long pants. And Ron, similarly dressed, brought in the heavy stuff – box of tools, gas can, and, oh yes, not one chainsaw, but two. Was I impressed. My troubles seemed over. Before long, my two guardian angels would be racing up that extension ladder and have those menacing tree limbs buzzed into saw dust.

As a symbol of my trust and respect, I handed them my neighbour’s extension ladder. I should have spotted a first sign of trouble. They couldn’t figure out how the ladder worked. OK, I admit, it’s an old ladder. The idea of its two sliding sections interlocking with antiquated snap devices was a bit complicated. I helped them sort that out. That solved, we extended the ladder up into the tree. I had one, small further suggestion – roping the top of the ladder to the tree limb to make sure it stayed put.

“Good idea,” they said.

“Why didn’t they think of that?” I asked myself.

No problem. Soon, I figured, the wood chips would be flying and almost as quickly as you can say “Paul Bunyan,” there’d be nothing but a pile of tree limbs, chainsawed into bite-sized pieces, ready for somebody’s fireplace. Well, not so fast. One of my able-bodied experts suggested he didn’t want the other wielding a chainsaw around at such heights. The other didn’t want the first doing it either. Next came the surprising question:

“Have you got a hand saw, Ted?” they asked. “Better not use the chainsaw up there, but cut slow and steady with a hand saw.”

OK. I got the hand saw and up they went safely (but tediously) cutting each limb by hand! Then, when we finally got to slicing all those limbs into firewood, Ron winced at the first cut. I looked inquisitively. “Chainsaw blade’s dull,” he said. I just chalked it up to the way the day was going.

To cut to the chase (as it were), I knew we’d get the job done. But not quite the way I envisioned it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m delighted. J.D. and Ron got the job I couldn’t do done. I’m eternally grateful that I didn’t have to climb up that ladder or wield that chainsaw.

But I learned an important lesson: Experts have healthy phobias too.

Of thunder, lightning and boom

2008-07-25T09:01:00.000-07:00

I spent last weekend in Saskatchewan, visiting family and friends while participating in the province’s annual writers’ gathering – Festival of Words – in Moose Jaw.

Between events at the festival, my niece’s husband Vern and I made our way through a prairie rain storm to Taylor Field in Regina. He had a pair of tickets to the Roughriders-Alouettes football game, but he’d packed the rain suits just in case. It’s a prairie trait, I think, hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. During the 1970s, when I worked in Saskatchewan, I learned an appropriate descriptive of the then ‘have-not’ prairie province:

“This is next year country,” they would say. “The best is yet to come.”

Well, it appears that some of the best has finally arrived. It’s apparent everywhere you look in the province. Wheat prices are climbing. Oil production is at its highest level in the province’s history. And Saskatchewan’s prevalent, pink-coloured, chalk-like mineral, potash is boosting the province’s economy like never before. Four years ago, for example, potash (the basic ingredient for fertilizer) was worth $100 a tonne; today it’s $1,000 a tonne. In the first five months of 2008, Saskatchewan’s wholesale trade totalled $8.1 billion, the highest in Canada.

Enough numbers. During the five days I visited, I spotted numerous indicators of prosperity and equally important stability. These were small things perhaps, but harbingers of an upbeat economy and an optimistic population. Bumper crops of flax and canola seemed to be on every farm field. I don’t remember ever seeing casinos in Saskatchewan when I was there; now the three major cities in the province – Saskatoon, Regina and Moose Jaw – all have them. Shops seemed extremely busy wherever I went. Malls were full, although I noticed some of the fast-food outlets had to close early because they were short-staffed. A Regina-based publication is apparently soliciting people over age 55 to help fill the gap.

People I met can’t get hired handiwork done around their homes; all the tradespeople have gone to the higher-paying jobs at construction sites and in the oil patch. Speaking of construction, I think I saw more cranes on the Regina and Moose Jaw skylines than some recent photographs of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. At the southwest corner of Regina, for example, outside the city’s outer ring road, earth-movers were clearing land for a new subdivision for up to 30,000 new residents. On CBC radio the other day, Saskatchewan’s premier encouraged former residents to come home for the good times; the province’s population is above 1 million for the first time since 2001. That’s a far cry from the days when editorials poked fun by saying:

“Would the last person to leave Saskatchewan, please turn out the light?”

All of this recent growth has not come without a price. In smaller communities around Saskatchewan, where the country’s pride and joy Medicare was born, there are doctor and nurse shortages. In the northeastern town of Nipawin, I read, community clinics generally housing three to five resident physicians, are typically seeing two or three move to more lucrative urban practices.

And as was the case when I was there in the 1970s, the aboriginal population doesn’t appear to be sharing in the new-found wealth. While a huge insert in the Regina Leader-Post applauded companies, schools and government departments for fostering First Nations’ involvement in a booming and bustling Saskatchewan, it doesn’t appear to be working. My niece’s husband, who works in house construction and repair across the province, said he wished more aboriginal workers would get involved.

“It would mean a lot more work and a huge improvement for their families’ living standard,” he said.

Meanwhile, at the Montreal-Saskatchewan CFL game Vern and I attended last Saturday, the threatening rain had cleared by kick-off. It didn’t matter to the full-house at Taylor field – the Roughriders’ 10th straight sell-out crowd of 28,800. They were there to see the best in the west take on the best in the east – the Montreal Alouettes. Fans weren’t disappointed.

The game proved a barn-burner. The teams battled back and forth all game long. Then, with just 2:30 left on the clock in the fourth quarter and the home side down two points, two massive rainbows appeared south of the football field. Some called it a sign. Saskatchewan kicked off, hoping against hope for a miracle turnover. It came when the Riders intercepted a Montreal pass, deep in Alouettes’ territory and then scored the winning touchdown with seconds remaining. Saskatchewan’s time had come.

Saskatchewan’s time has come. It appears “next year” is now.

Going to hell in a disposal bin

2008-07-08T18:10:00.000-07:00

I got talking to a friend in my small town the other day. She and her husband are about to refurbish an older downtown building for their business. She said she’d become a little frustrated, partly with the delays getting the project going. But she was also miffed at something she hadn’t expected. In anticipation of the refuse from the coming reno, she had hired a firm to drop off one of those large, industrial disposal containers. Not long after the bin arrived at the construction site, the contractor asked if she had dumped some garbage not associated with the planned business reno into the bin. She said no, she hadn’t.

“Well then what’s a sofa doing in the disposal bin?” he asked.

She was really perplexed. You mean, a stranger had simply dumped an unwanted piece of furniture – not a lamp or a card table, mind you, a sofa – into her large garbage container right on a main street? How bizarre is that?

I mean, most often, things work the other way, don’t they? I place a piece of old furniture, a busted lawn mower, a used bicycle or some potential firewood at the curb. I put a “free” sign next to it and almost immediately the stuff gets picked up and taken away by somebody who can make use of it. But here was a case of freeloading in reverse. Suddenly someone, who felt the world was his oyster, also considered somebody else’s garbage bin was his for the picking too. Heck, this wasn’t even freeloading. It was something completely new: Garbage entitlement.

What’s going on out there?

Granted garbage has become a sensitive subject lately (consider my “Garbage Police” column of May 2008). I’ve noticed, for example, that a lot of folks in Toronto have rebelled against the city’s new mega Blue Bin recycle boxes. My sister lives along Danforth Avenue and she points out that many of her elderly or disabled neighbours have a lot of trouble piling all their recyclables – paper, cans, glass and plastic – into this mother-of-all Blue Bins and muscling it to the curb.

I’ve also heard that some jurisdictions have already instituted pay-as-you-pitch fees; in other words, if you go beyond a certain number of garbage bags at the curb each pick-up day, you pay for each extra bag. So garbage has started hitting people in the pocketbook, a pretty sensitive spot. But dumping a sofa into an industrial garbage bin in broad daylight?

Pretty soon, we’re not only going to have security guards patrolling property and fence lines to keep valuables in. But we can probably look forward one day to a new brand of cop keeping other people’s former valuables out. A few months ago – back in that May column – I strongly criticized those who regularly spit gum on the sidewalk, chuck bottles by the side of the road or flick cigarette butts out car windows. During a break at Canada Day festivities, last week, I sat with journalism colleague Roger Varley. He was finishing a cigarette. He butted it out and (given my rant about cigarette flipping) he searched in vain for a place to toss the butt. I laughed. The guilt factor is finally working.

Not long after I began writing this column, about 20 years ago, I recall an incident involving disappearing copies of the paper. There was also the issue of waste involved. It turned out that one or a number of newspaper carriers were dumping bundles of undelivered copies of the newspaper in the park. The carriers claimed the newspapers had been delivered to the neighbourhood in question. Of course, they hadn’t. They had merely been delivered to the backside of a grove of trees to rot. And no doubt the carrier still collected the full fee for delivering those papers. I guess that was a case of commercial garbage entitlement.

Incidentally, I mentioned Toronto’s new larger Blue Bin campaign. Maybe it’s something we should consider. Despite expected complaints about wrestling the mega bins to the curb, the first indications are the plan is working. After only a few months of the program, city hall reports that Torontonians are recycling up to 10 or 15 per cent more garbage. In other words, Toronto’s Solid Waste Management Services says there’s up to 15 per cent less garbage going to landfill.

Maybe we should investigate the potential of introducing these mega Blue Bins here … as long as they’re large enough to take discarded sofas.

A Canada Day gift

2008-06-29T19:29:00.000-07:00

They didn’t realize that July 1 is Canada’s birthday.

That’s OK, because last month members of the Berardi family warmly welcomed a tour of Canadians (my wife and I were hosting) to their farm near Ortona, Italy. We Canadians had come to Ortona to revisit the site of the “Christmas battle” during the Second World War, when after a long siege, Canadians removed the occupying German army from that part of the Adriatic coastline. Sixty-five years after that historic battle, Lanfranco Berardi, who had survived wartime as a civilian, gave us visiting Canadians an early Canada Day present. First he reflected on the Canadian troops who in 1943 gave his starving family hot soup, medical attention, sweets and something more precious.

“The Berardi family was saved from German oppression by Canadians,” Signore Berardi told us. “Because of the Canadians, we found again a smile and humanity.”

Our tour bus arrived at Casa Berardi – the 36,000 square metres of olive groves and rows of grapevines perched on a valley, known as The Gully, several kilometres away from Ortona – about midday. Several members of the Berardi family, including Lanfranco’s older brother Fernando, strode out to meet us and direct us toward their famous house. There we gathered in the May sunshine to hear the Berardi story.

It was Fernando, Lanfranco explained in Italian as his daughter-in-law Rosella interpreted, who led him by the hand away from the battleground around Casa Berardi in mid-December 1943. As Canadian troops clawed their way across The Gully to hold ground around the Berardi farm, Lanfranco (then five) remembered eventually hiding in the stable with about 30 other people and several cattle.

He explained that members of Canada’s Royal 22nd Regiment struggled for nearly two days to liberate the farm. Of 81 Van Doos who began the siege, only Capt. Paul Triquet (VC) and 13 others survived the successful operation.

After the battle Lanfranco remembered the holes and pockmarks in Casa Berardi caused by machine-gun and artillery fire. He recalled the stable area of the house filling up with Canadian wounded, some of whom were given his father’s pyjamas and his mother’s night dresses as medical gowns in this makeshift first-aid station. Best of all, Lanfranco could almost taste again the chocolate that Canadian troops had shared with the Berardi children.

Eventually, in late December 1943, their liberators moved on to Ortona, an even greater crucible for Canadians fighting up the Adriatic coastline. It would take another two weeks, until New Year’s 1944, before it too was liberated.

“All my life I have asked one question,” Signore Berardi concluded. “Have we been worth their sacrifice? Are we yet worth it?”

No words needed to be spoken at that moment. But when Rosella completed the translation, many in the tour group sighed supportively. All of us were voicing the affirmation of the fathers and grandfathers who had served in Italy.

The cost had been dear. Of 92,757 Canadians who had served in the Italian theatre during the Second World War, 5,399 had been killed (more than 26,000 casualties over all). But the Berardis and thousands of families like them had returned safely to the lives they’d led before the war. And they had not forgotten the freedom Canadians had restored to them.

At the end of Signore Berardi’s walk and talk around the farm, our tour group presented him with a crisp, new Canadian maple leaf flag. We learned that a renovation of Casa Berardi, the wartime shrine for Canadians such as ourselves retracing the path of the liberation of Italy, was nearly complete. The Berardis, as well as running a productive olive- and grape-growing farm, now hope tourists will come and stay in the restored casa. They envision a bed and breakfast kind of facility, with completely refurbished apartments on the upper floors and a dining hall in what was the wartime stable and first-aid station on the lower level.

That’s where the Berardi’s had prepared lunch for us that midday last month. For an hour they served us fresh meats, cheeses, breads, pasta, salads and local wine. Laughter and wonderful conversation filled the room as we dug into this sumptuous meal laid out by our hosts. Then, the patriarch of the family rose from the table to speak one last time.

“You are making history today,” Lanfranco Berardi told us. “You are the first Canadians to eat in this room since the war. The last Canadians who ate here were wounded Canadian soldiers who gave us our freedom.”

We had shared a true celebration of Canada half a world away.

Wireless weirdness

2008-06-23T15:02:00.000-07:00

A few anxious moments preceded the opening ceremonies of the “100 Years of Anne/Tribute to Lucy Maud Montgomery” festivities in Uxbridge, Ontario, recently.

Our event chair, Coun. Pat Mikuse, got a distress call on her cellphone. The caller was Durham MPP John O’Toole, one of the dignitaries expected to speak at the event. As Coun. Mikuse explained to me later, our guest inquired: “Where are you?”

“I can’t hear you,” Coun. Mikuse said. “I’ll move away from the stage.”

“Where are you?” MPP O’Toole repeated.

“I’m behind the stage,” she answered. “Where are you?

“I’m in front of the stage.”

It turns out the two politicians, quite innocently, were mere metres apart. Each was on a cellphone. Neither could hear the other over the noise of the crowd. However, had either of two cellphone callers looked up, one would almost certainly have seen the other. And the momentary panic about whether they’d connect before it was time to go on stage during the opening ceremonies would never occurred. If ever there was one, here was an example of the cellphone exacerbating a problem, not solving it.

I tell this story not to ridicule either of the politicians in this case. For politicians, journalists, police, the military, from business moguls to cab drivers, indeed, from parents to their children, the cellphone has emerged as the world’s most precious communications tool. It’s today’s do-or-die sales vehicle. It’s become life’s conduit to information whether at work or at play. It’s now the most vital appliance in anybody’s pocket or purse. I guess what I don’t understand, however, is how we have allowed cellphones to become our modern-day umbilical cords. I had a meeting with an woman in an office the other day. She was in a real flap because she’d accidentally left her cellphone at home.

“I feel absolutely naked without it,” she said. I almost burst out laughing at the thought.

On a spring day in 1999, I remember walking in the streets of Oslo with the rest of my tourist family. It was Norway’s national holiday – May 17. The city was crammed with people and adorned with bunting and flags as far as the eye could see. All along the main thoroughfares of the city, groups of people – each with the distinctive colours and fashions of their home regions – moved towards the royal palace, where the King and Queen waved as a mammoth children’s parade passed before their reviewing stand. Clustered everywhere were youths strolling, laughing and talking. Not to each other, but into their cellphones.

At that time, Norway claimed to have the most cellphones per capita of any nation on the planet. I didn’t speak any Norwegian, but I could imagine the first words spoken each time one of those kids answered his/her cellphone.

“Where are you?” I’m sure they asked.

It’s the new way people greet each other on cellphones today. Not “Hello” or “Hi. How are you?” but “Where are you?” It’s a kind of 21st century affirmation of existence. I am here on a cellphone, therefore I am.

If I thought I’d seen the last of escalating cellphone madness in Norway, I was sadly mistaken. Earlier this month, the federal ministry known as Industry Canada announced something called “a spectrum auction.” In short, a whole array of wireless phone service providers have been invited to bid for space on 40 per cent of the national airwave space. They will challenge the so-called big three – Bell, Telus and Rogers – for your cell-phone business (and in so doing, probably increase Canada’s cellphone use to more than 90 per cent of the population).

They’ll be offering potential Canadian customers such new gadgets as dual-screen flip phones, handsets with 3D display, cellphones that replace laptops, and what are called “all-you-can-eat plans” offering unlimited local- and long-distance calling, voice mail, text messaging, picture messaging, Web access and e-mail access, not to mention the capability to download a gazillion songs, movies and GPS directions.

As the National Post reported last week, “such futuristic phones … (will) make Dick Tracy green with envy.”

The irony of cellphone mania, I guess, is that the more sophisticated and widespread this wireless technology becomes, the less effective the resulting communication. Like the two politicians trying to find each other in the crowded street by cellphone, when a simple glance around would have sufficed, we’ve become slaves to wireless telephony.

Can you imagine the original conversation between the telephone’s inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, and his loyal assistant, Thomas Watson, if they’d been experimenting with the world’s first cellphone?

“Watson, where are you?”

“In the next room. But my SIM card’s just expired. I’ll have to call you back.”

Service under fire

2008-06-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

I never met “the SARS lady,” but she met me through my fears.

Early in 2003, when a stroke debilitated my father, he was admitted to Scarborough Grace Hospital in east-end Toronto. Within days of his admission there, the first cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome popped up around him. His was the SARS ward. The resulting quarantine made it impossible for us to enter the hospital or see Dad. My family panicked. How could we be sure his aphasia would be adequately treated? We found some solace in the demeanour and words of then Medical Officer of Health for Toronto, Dr. Sheela Basrur. Responsibility for the city’s health recovery fell to her and nursing staffs across the Greater Toronto Area.

“If you’re sick, you should seek treatment,” she told a terrified GTA. “If you’re healthy you should live your life.”

I’ll admit it. At first I was not consoled. About the same time that Dr. Basrur began appearing on nightly newscasts, so did the municipal and provincial politicians, riding on her coattails. They, particularly then Ontario Health Minister Tony Clement, did very little to calm our fears for my father’s well-being. Indeed, at the height of the SARS panic, provincial ministry officials decided to move my father and others to an unopened hospital facility in Brampton. Now on the far side of the GTA and quarantined yet again, it seemed my father was totally isolated, in a holding pattern and cut off from his family.

“He will remain in quarantine,” Mr. Clement’s office informed us, “but you can communicate with him by fax, if you wish.”

Needless to say, the ministry did little to placate the Barris family. With his apparent aphasia, my father would barely be able to communicate his hunger or need to relieve himself, much less chat by fax about his prognosis. But I did find solace in the daily media appearances of Dr. Basrur. When we needed a dose of comfort most, she gave it to us.

You see, in that SARS crisis of 2003, not only did Dr. Basrur demonstrate the diligence of a beleaguered Toronto nursing corps, she also illustrated the efficacy of a publicly-focused health system. During the darkest moments of the SARS outbreak, when not even politicians could stem the fear factor with their rhetoric, there was this tiny, 46-year-old health specialist telling the city and the world, this horror would be beaten with appropriate medication, patience and community-based resolve. Funds were not the issue. Dr. Basrur proved that clarity and a health system attentive to the needs of its constituency were the best way to thwart a medical menace.

Since Dr. Basrur’s death on Monday afternoon, I have read about and reflected on the woman’s character and dedication to public service. I’ve learned that she studied at Western and the U of T in the late 1970s, but that she entered the medical world running. In 1983, she practised social medicine with rural health projects in some of the poorest corners of India and Nepal. No wonder she seemed to have no fear of potentially pandemic medical crises.

Back in Canada, in 1998, she became the first medical officer for the amalgamated City of Toronto, turning her attention to community health. She spearheaded “DineSafe,” an inspection system that ensured cleanliness in Toronto restaurants. As Chief Medical Officer for Ontario, Dr. Basrur recommended a ban on non-essential pesticide use and precipitated Ontario’s first Smokefree legislation in enclosed public places. She even released a pivotal report on childhood obesity that has rekindled public funding for elementary school physical education and resurrected the nearly dead and gone Participaction initiative of the 1970s. The SARS crisis proved her toughest challenge, however. And the city’s mayor gave her full credit.

“She was professional, competent and calm,” David Miller said on CBC radio this week.

Sheela Basrur was all of that, for sure. In addition, I think she has become an example for us, perhaps passing along some of the courage she has exhibited in recent months battling to survive leiomyosarcoma – the fatal cancer in her body. During the time of my father’s demise, in the middle of the SARS outbreak, when even our American relatives refused to travel to Toronto to see him, for fear they’d be infected by the disease, that’s when I found something of a lifeline in Dr. Basrur.

Because even though my father did not survive his aphasia (he died the following year), I think I found some consolation in Dr. Basrur’s commitment to her community. She had shown by example, that public service belongs in and sustains this country’s health-care system.

The questions of remembrance

2008-05-25T08:18:00.000-07:00

On the seventh day of our trip along the path Canadians followed to liberate Italy, 65 years ago, I learned a valuable lesson of remembrance.

One of our tour guests, the mayor of Shelburne, Ont, asked if he could address the group of 50 Canadian travellers my wife and I are accompanying. Ed Crewson, 48, carefully unfolded several fragile-looking newspaper clippings that clearly meant a lot to him. He explained that the mementos came from the Second World War effects of his father – Pte. William Crewson of the Saskatoon Light Infantry.

“My dad got bone cancer when I was eight,” Ed Crewson told us. “I didn’t look through these wartime papers and read them until long after he was gone.”

William Crewson died five years later in 1973.

One of the clippings Crewson shared with our tour group came from the pages of the wartime army newspaper, The Maple Leaf. By coincidence, it described an incident on a battlefield just steps from where we were located that day – the Foglia River valley on the doorstep of the Germans’ northerly most defensive position – the Gothic Line. Headlined, “His Bren gun stuttered death. Nova Scotia youth dies a hero as he covers comrades’ withdrawal,” the story described the heroic actions of a single Canadian gunner serving with the Cape Breton Highlanders (sister regiment to William Crewson’s Saskatoon Light Infantry). The news article described combat at the Foglia River on August 30, 1944.

“The Cape Breton Highlanders … swept forward toward (on Hill 120)...ran into barbed wire entanglements and mines. ‘Things were getting pretty desperate, because (the Germans were) coming over the reverse slope and my sections were being cut to pieces,’” Capt. L.E. Brannen told The Maple Leaf reporter.

That’s when a young gunner named Alphonse Hickey – a 22-year-old private from Sydney, Nova Scotia – stepped forward.

“‘He volunteered to cover our retreat,’ Capt. Brannen continued. ‘He wasn’t asked to do it. We didn’t want him to, but he made up his mind knowing that it would mean certain death.’ (Hickey) was found the next day with four dead German soldiers in front of him … mute testimony to the accuracy of his aim and the stout heart that kept his hand squeezing the trigger until he died,” The Maple Leaf concluded.

The Highlanders lost 19 killed and 46 wounded that day.

On a day 65 years later, when the world still grappled with ways to negotiate aid workers into cyclone-stricken Burma and on the same afternoon that Italian soccer fans all around us were celebrating a huge victory by the team from Milan, Wendy Crewson, Ed Crewson’s wife, stepped from our tour bus and made her way to a cenotaph she’d never seen before. Somehow she sensed this was a place she had to visit. The tour had stopped at the Montecchio cemetery, where 582 Commonwealth soldiers, including 289 Canadians, were buried after the Italian campaign between 1943 and 1945.

In the graveyard registry (a location guide common to all Commonwealth War Grave Cemeteries around the world), Wendy Crewson found the name Pte. Alphonse Hickey, his regiment, his age (22) and his simple registration number: F32124. At his burial site – plot 1, row D, grave 13 – she stood a moment, placed a Canadian flag in the earth in front of the marble marker and recounted into her video camera how this grave had pulled her family to Italy.

“My husband, Ed, found the story of Alphonse Hickey in his father’s wartime papers,” she said. She went on to say that Mayor Crewson employed the heroic story in a Remembrance Day talk last year. “A friend in the audience, Don Stewart, said he had just booked passage on a tour to follow the route of the Canadians through Italy during the Second World War. He insisted that we join him.”

They did. Not just Mayor Crewson and his wife Wendy, but also their daughters Jennifer, 21, Brooke, 18, and their 15-year-old son, named after his veteran grandfather, William Crewson.
“The farthest we’ve ever travelled as a family is to Florida,” Ed Crewson admitted to me later. “This trip is important. It tells the vets’ stories. We need to understand the sacrifices they made.”

But Ed Crewson had a deeper message in his family’s pilgrimage to Italy and to Pte. Hickey’s grave. We have always complained to others that “Dad never talked about the war.” We have always blamed him for not sharing his experiences with us, his sons and daughters. We’ve never assumed any of the responsibility ourselves.

“We can’t understand who they were,” Ed Crewson said finally, “unless we go there,” not just to the battlefields and the grave sites, but to the memories – good and bad – they carried home with them.

The longest day - in Pachino

2008-05-25T08:03:00.000-07:00

If you asked young Valentina Distefano what life is like in her hometown, she’d probably tell you that nothing ever happens.

She’d probably add that most days she doesn’t meet many new people either. Midday on Tuesday, however, things changed dramatically at her high school – Instituto D’Istruzione Secondaria Superiore Michelangelo Bartolo – in the small Sicilian coastal town of Pachino, Italy. You see, during a special assembly at this school of 400, Valentina met 50 visiting Canadians. They (with my wife and I as hosts) had just begun retracing the trek of Canadian soldiers who liberated Italy 65 years ago this year. And the Sicilian teenager actually got the chance to interview one of those visiting Canadians, 88-year-old Gordon Major.

“What did you feel like after you landed?” Valentina asked.

“I was too young to feel anything,” Major said. “It’s a very long time ago.”

Major is actually one of six veterans of the Second World War on this trip. When Gordon was barely 20, he told me, he was eager to join up, to serve in the war. When his older brother finally told him the time was right, Gordon signed up in Guelph, Ont., and began training with the 29th Battery of the 11th Field Regiment of the Royal Canadian Artillery. Early in 1940 his unit sailed for England, where he trained for three years. Then in summer of 1943 the regiment joined the surprise attack on Sicily to begin the liberation of Europe.

When I sat with Major at breakfast the morning before we left for the visit to Pachino, he kept referring to Sicily as if it were half a world away. He’d forgotten he’d actually flown here to this island province of Italy, just the night before. It was his first ever return to Sicily since wading ashore 65 years ago to support the Canadians’ effort to first defeat the Italian armies of dictator Benito Mussolini and then drive occupying Nazi forces from Sicily forever. Major and his comrades liberated the home of Valentina Distefano’s great-grandparents in just 38 days.

But more than Valentina had prepared for this extraordinary day. Also asking questions were her cousin Corrado and her schoolmates Vanessa Vizzini and Giuseppe Carrubba. Two of their teachers, Rosalba Savarino and Sebastiano Minardi, guided their teenaged charges in the research and production of a nearly 80-minute DVD called “Lo Sbarco” or “The Landing,” which they proudly presented to their Canadian guests at the end of the ceremony. Through the early afternoon teacher Savarino and translator Rosie Scifo led the Canadian veterans and the rest of their tour to the very southeastern tip of Sicily.

There, in the early hours of July 10, 1943, along the beaches of Costa Dell Ambra, more than 25,000 1st Canadian Division troops joined nearly 450,000 other British and American soldiers in Operation Husky. It was, up to that time, the largest amphibious landing in history. On that first-ever D-Day landing site, the Canadian veterans from our tour strolled in quiet contemplation, pocketed grains of sand, photographed the vast stretches of beach and one – Jim Ronan from Kingston– even donned a bathing suit and dove into the chilly May surf in tribute to the so-called D-Day Dodgers.

“It feels great,” veteran Jim Ronan said. “It’s one way to remember.”

Naturally, on hand to join in the festivities were several politicians and administrators. They offered warm municipal greetings and the appropriate handshakes and smiles to make the event official. But clearly the Michelangelo Bartolo students were the stars of the day. The four young ambassadors of Pachino didn’t hesitate to ask another visiting Italian campaign veteran, Dan Wilkin of the Royal Canadian Dragoons, a challenging question in the school ceremony.

“Did you agree with the orders given?” Vanessa asked him.

“There wasn’t much choice,” Wilkin said. “After all, there was a war on.”

The tour ended with pictures in front of the school, along the beach and posed in front of the commemorative plaque and monument erected and maintained by the town and the school. But for Valentina Distefano the payoff came when the vets and their Canadian guests turned and applauded them and their hospitality.

It will be a long time before she ever suggests that nothing ever happens in Pachino again.

How things work

2008-05-03T12:53:00.000-07:00

During a recent editorial meeting with a class of journalism students, one young woman didn’t have a news story to offer. She asked if I could assign one to her, one that would offer her a challenge. I thought a second and suggested she cover the Ontario finance minister’s introduction of the provincial budget. She cringed at the thought and then looked to me as if to say, “Why would you choose that as an assignment?”

“It’s important that you learn how things work,” I said to her.

She nodded and said, “I’ll check the Queen’s Park website for the phone number of the Finance Minister’s office.”

“Well, the learning curve has just begun,” I said. “Have you ever tried using a telephone book?”

The rest of my students laughed at her expense. But I’m certain they would have jumped to the same conclusion – go the Internet to get a phone number. The exercize helped to illustrate how limited our understanding can be along paths we don’t normally travel or in worlds that are not our own. It’s a little like learning helpful street phrases in French before going to France, understanding corporation abbreviations at the TSX or being able to decipher the instructions for a model airplane before assembling it. You’ve got to know the rules before you can play the game.

I’m sure that must be among the greatest challenges immigrants face upon arrival in Canada. If there’s no one to explain it, how does a new Canadian learn the basic way things work? How does someone get health insurance or a bank account? What happens when you go into a voting booth? Who teaches the way to assemble a barbecue from scratch? When do you applaud and when do you cheer at an event? What’s the trick to knowing what does or does not go into a blue recycling box? See what I mean? For some, learning the right process must seem like getting used to reduced gravity on the Moon.

I remember an instructor back at broadcasting school (before Ryerson became a university). Andy Kufluk taught us fledgling disc jockeys all about radio technology. His job wasn’t so much to teach us the way to repair a broken microphone. He simply had to help us understand the way it functioned so that we could use it correctly and to its full potential. For most of us, including me however, he might as well have been instructing in Greek.

“I know none of you has the foggiest notion how a microphone really works,” Kufluk would say. “Here’s the deal. I’ll explain it once. I’ll explain it slower a second time. I’ll even go over it again one-on-one, if you like. But after that, just chalk it up to magic.” Not surprisingly, I came away thinking that most radio technology was just plain magic.

My brother-in-law has a unique way of dealing with the unknown in his world. If there’s ever something Bill doesn’t understand or has to find out, he always says, “You’ve just got to know the man.” Bill was born, raised and has lived in the same Canadian city most of his life. Experience has taught him to meet and befriend people who make his community tick. Consequently, he has never been at a loss for advice as to how to get things done whenever the need arises. He just calls on the man and finds out.

There are elements in my life I will never understand and probably don’t care to. I can’t play bridge. I’ve never been able to figure out how the Electoral College ultimately determines who gets elected president of the United States. I can’t explain how jumbo jets fly. I’ve never been very good at tying knots in rope. I don’t get cricket or Sudoku. And if a car is fuel-injected, as opposed to carburettor-fed, I’m lost the moment I raise the hood.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I don’t see it that way. I am selective, but I consider knowing a little bit about a lot of things an incentive. That’s why I’ll explore some things others might overlook or ignore. I’ll look a little longer at a road map to a better find way. I’ll pick up that ancient Popular Mechanics magazine while I’m waiting in the car repair shop. I’ll listen to an oldtimer with a story to tell. And I’ll sit through a lock-up at the Ontario Legislature to learn the way a provincial bill is prepared and released to the public.

It helps me understand how things work.

In sickness and in wealth

2008-04-14T19:15:00.000-07:00

I did something this week I don’t think I’ve done in years. Monday, I woke up hacking and sniffling. I battled through the day. I loaded my pockets with tissues and throat lozenges. All day long, I consciously sneezed into my sleeve and not my hands. I succeeded in getting through the workday with little or no damage to my routine. Still, by evening, I felt worse than in the morning. I woke up the next day feeling beaten and threw in the towel.

“A cold has me by the throat,” I wrote in my e-mail to the program co-ordinator at the college where I teach. “I don’t think anybody wants to share what I’ve got. I’m taking a sick day.”

As commonplace as such things seem, these days, as I say, it was the first time in a long time that I called in sick, told the college I wasn’t coming to work and asked somebody to fill in for me – for perhaps a day. To me the whole idea of missing a workday was odd. It’s partly because I’m the sort of person who fortunately doesn’t face too many such physical setbacks. I’m also the kind who feels awkward about missing obligations – such as teaching time, meetings or deadlines. Consequently, rather than give my body a rest, I’ll often fight through minor illness so that I don’t fall behind or miss those commitments.

Of course, I’ve learned over the years that sometimes you shouldn’t ignore Mother Nature. On more than a few occasions, I’ve decided to battle through a head cold, a bruise, an aching shoulder or swollen ankle only to discover I’ve neglected something serious – a flu or a broken bone. There was the time I ignored chest pains so long that the cold I’d contracted developed into pneumonia. I was literally laid-up in bed for a week as a result. Sometimes trying to fight through physical ailments amounts to little more than stupidity.

“Listen to your body,” my mother often said to us.

Of course, another issue to consider in the “take a sick day” debate is the impact of absenteeism on the rest of the society and the workplace. Particularly in the business world, being away from work is often measured in dollars and cents. Last year, for example, American Airlines reported that on an average day about five per cent of its workforce was off work; it said the absenteeism cost the airline more than $1 million a day. In Belfast, Northern Ireland, the average sick leave among some professionals was eight days in the 2004-5; it cost the city more than 50 million pounds.

A study, done by an American consulting firm and recently published in USA Today, showed that 70 per cent of employers considered absence costs as their top business priority. Not surprisingly, employers there have come up with a uniquely American way of combating the problem. Businesses reward good attendance. Some even pay employees in lieu of sick days. A company in Fort Lauderdale allows six sick days a year and pays $100 for each unclaimed sick day, which means an extra $600 a year if an employee makes it through the year in good health.

But the practice of specifically paying for sick-days-not-taken, triggers such aberrations as the case of Fred Weissmann. One weekend in 2000, the St. Louis construction worker had a heart attack. Apparently, he was extremely grateful that it had happened on a Sunday. He was back to work by Wednesday and relished the fact he would be docked only two days, not three, from his sick-leave pay. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that civic employees could bank all sick days not taken in exchange for lump sum payments or a higher pension when they retired. When Fred Weissmann hung up his work boots in 2007, the city issued him a cheque for more than $54,000 for those sick days not taken.

As legal as I’m sure that labour-management contract was, and as loyal as I may think I am to my work, I’m definitely not in favour of getting extra pay for sick days not taken. Incidentally, Statistics Canada says that work absences in this country have declined steadily since 1979. Even though the Canadian workforce grew from 10.6 million in 1987 to 13 million by 2002, workplace injuries or sickness increased only 1.4 per cent, down from 8 per cent a decade earlier.

But that’s all numbers. I was back at work Wednesday, like Bob Cratchit, “driving away with his pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine o’clock.”

For me, sickness doesn’t pay; I had two days’ work to catch up.

Faster, higher and more political

2008-03-18T18:48:00.000-07:00

While catching my breath between shovelfuls of snow, this past storm, I had a conversation with a neighbour.

She told me about her son was now studying at Dalhousie University and training in an elite swimming program. Naturally, she was proud of his accomplishments. She told me he currently ranks among the top swimmers in the country in the backstroke. In fact, in April he'll compete in Montreal at an Olympic qualifying event in hopes of going for a medal in Beijing or beyond. Then, I noticed the news from Tibet. Chinese authorities had cracked down on human rights demonstrators there. And the angry reaction of people, such as Australian senator Andrew Bartlett, could conceivably sink the Olympic dreams of my neighour’s son.

“I think we should boycott the Olympics,” Bartlett told reporters this week. “We can’t just turn a blind eye because we all love our sport.”

The Australian politician isn’t the only one calling on Olympic athletes and entire nations to pull out of this summer’s Games in Beijing. Last weekend, Tibetan sources claimed Chinese troops had killed as many as 80 demonstrators; in response, American actor Richard Gere claimed Chinese military police had driven Tibetans to “the edge of extinction” and he endorsed an Olympic boycott. Meanwhile, in the streets of New York, thousands of other sympathizers called on western nations to rethink their participation in the 2008 Games.

As well this week, 27 members of the European Union gathered in Slovenia to consider staying away from the Games. In particular, Christian Obergfoell, a javelin thrower and spokesman for German Olympians, spoke in favour of a boycott; he said he’d been asking himself, “why they gave the Olympics to China in the first place.” Not surprisingly, the Dalai Lama, in exile over China’s takeover of Tibet in 1951, announced that the Beijing Olympics offered the international community “a golden opportunity to reprimand China.”

Well and good. But amid the outrage against China, I could almost hear another generation of Canadian Olympic athletes lamenting, “Here we go again.” It was 1979, almost 30 years ago. The Olympic torch had travelled from Mt. Olympus across Europe to the steppes of Russia and Lord Killanin, the president of the International Olympic Committee, prepared to welcome the world to Moscow for the 1980 Games. Suddenly, the Russian Army invaded Afghanistan and an outraged U.S. Congress advocated retaliation: a boycott of the Moscow Olympics.

Sixty-five nations – including Canada – joined the U.S.-led boycott. And hundreds of lifelong athletic dreams were snuffed out faster than an Olympic flame on the Games’ final day.

Among them, the aspirations of a dear friend of mine. In 1979, Diane Jones Konihowski, a multi-event athlete from Saskatchewan, was peaking. First in high-school track and field days during the ’50s, then at national competitions, such as the Canada Games in the ’60s, the pentathlete showed great promise. At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, “carrying the weight of the home side on her shoulders,” she didn’t perform her best. Her sights set on the 1980 games and fully adapted to the changing nature of her event (now the heptathlon), Jonesy put aside everything – her education, her career and her family – to train ‘round the clock and bring home gold for Canada.

Then, in April 1980, Prime Minister Joe Clark announced Canada would follow the American lead and boycott the Moscow Olympics. Canada’s “golden girl” was devastated, enraged and confused. Everything Jonesy had worked for – athletic excellence, national pride and personal best performances – suddenly didn’t matter. Her country was striking a political blow against “the evil empire” with the only weapon at its disposal, the prowess of its Olympic youth. And Jonesy had no say in it. She even attempted to forfeit her Canadian citizenship to compete in Moscow as a citizen of the world. Her funding was withdrawn. She was stuck here with no means to get there. Hardly anyone noticed her Olympic dream die.

So what do boycotts accomplish? When China boycotted the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, the status of Taiwan didn’t change. The African boycott of the ’76 Games in Montreal didn’t undermine apartheid in South Africa. The Russians didn’t leave Afghanistan because Canada boycotted the ’80 Moscow Olympics (look who’s in Afghanistan now). And North Korea’s boycott of the Seoul Olympics in ’88 was hardly noticed.

I didn’t have the heart to raise any of this with my neighbour last week. It merely crossed my mind as she brimmed with pride at her son’s talent in the Olympic-sized swimming pools of university competition.

Like war on the battlefield, politics in the Olympic stadium mostly cripples the young.