As apparently improbable as Truman defeating Dewey in the 1948 U.S. presidential race, was the realization that 80 million children would be born between 1946 and 1964.

It was the month that the longest serving Prime Minister – not just in Canada, but across the British Commonwealth – Mackenzie King retired after 21 years of service. The Communists officially took over East Berlin; the Wall soon followed. Democrat Harry Truman confounded the political pundits by defeating Republican Thomas E. Dewey and became president of the United States. For the first time TV cameras captured a production (of “Othello”) on the Metropolitan Opera stage in New York.

Oh yes, and sometime during November 1948, I was conceived.

But back then that wasn’t unusual. Between 1946 and 1964 it happened more than 80 million times. It was immediately after the Second World War. Millions of adults, who had endured both a 10-year depression and then a six-year global war, turned their attention back to civilian life. They got dressed in civilian clothes again, went searching for work, fell in love, got married, established new homes and conceived a post-war generation of children. They (myself included) became the largest population explosion the planet has witnessed to date. If you believe North American economists, they also initiated the largest inter-generational transfer of wealth. This week, the Toronto Star quoted a CIBC economist.

“The parents of baby boomers … went through difficult times,” Benjamin Tal said, “(so) their propensity to save was much higher.”

According to those economists, the baby-boomer generation has or is about to inherit as much as $1 trillion from its quickly disappearing parents. Some reports suggest more than half the boomers surveyed expect an inheritance of more than $100,000. (Interestingly, the survey noted that 25 per cent of the survey expected less than $5,000.) Naturally, on Bay and Wall streets, the bankers, financial analysts and investment advisors expect to get their hands on some of that so-called “tidal wave of wealth.” So do the cruise ship operators, high-end car dealers, jewellers and condo real estate agents.

Sure, as a baby boomer myself, I am intrigued by my generation’s apparent good fortune to be the beneficiaries of the wealth our parents generated. But I think I’m more struck by what they did to accumulate it. First, I recall the stories of their scrimping and saving through the Dirty Thirties.

Theirs was a generation (whose parents comprised the massive immigration boom from Europe between 1890 and 1914) surviving on hand-me-down clothes, two meals a day at best, childhood labour that augmented their parents’ wages and survival in a North American workplace without the safety net of union contracts or universal social security. I can remember well into my teenage years that my mother never threw away a paper bag, untouched food or threadbare clothing. Like so many of her generation, she darned holes in socks, rolled pennies from her purse for her savings account, and, if there was enough left at the end of the day, she even reheated yesterday’s coffee for today’s breakfast.

It’s startling to think that from those humble moments of sacrifice and saving may come the substantial investment portfolios, the Snowbird condos, the Mediterranean cruises and precious metals stowed in safety deposit boxes of today and tomorrow. Perhaps even happier than the boomers who inherited that wealth, may be those who help now aging beneficiaries invest and grow that $1 trillion in found wealth.

I have two notable memories of the thrift that built the inheritance my parents bestowed upon their children and grandchildren. After my father died, I purchased his Corolla from my mother (living alone and within walking distance of services, she’d decided to stop driving). As I drove the car away, I thought I had cleared out all their belongings, when my knee accidentally bumped into a small pop-out door on the Toyota’s dashboard. In the hidden compartment, I found a film canister full of Loonies and Toonies. There must have been $30 in coins my father had saved for road and bridge tolls while driving in the U.S. I’ve never been able to bring myself to spending all those coins.

Several years later, when my mother died, the family went through her belongings to pass along heirlooms to her granddaughters and one great granddaughter. The final repository of her personal wealth was an ancient travel trunk, itself a family hand-me-down. Among many personal belongings inside, it contained her wedding dress, my baby shoes, and delicate linens her mother had embroidered. As we peeled away each layer of the trunk’s contents, we found yet another, long forgotten stash of coins and folded bills. I guess it had been her just-in-case fund. I don’t know how many rainy days her secret savings had fended off. But I’ve never had the heart to spend those coins or bills either.

Maybe that bit of thrift was my real inheritance as a baby boomer.

With all that celebrity around, it's possible nobody noticed the football game that took place in Indianapolis.

I don’t know which was worse: the hype over last weekend’s so-called sporting match in Indianapolis, the anticipation over the new 30-second commercials (reportedly costing US$3.6 million each for the airtime), or the guessing about what Madonna would do during her half-time show at the Super Bowl. The newspapers, magazines and TV commentators were all atwitter all week.

“Would she employ her thin veneer English accent?” one asked.

“Would she be naked?” hoped another.

My answer was a resounding: “Who cares?”

That’s just one example. You don’t have to look far, to see “celebrity” eclipsing real issues, real information or real stories, just because a so-called star’s involved. This week, the show-biz tabloids speculated about Jennifer Aniston’s unborn twins. The stargazing paparazzi caught Elvis Costello and Willem Dafoe carrying shopping bags in the fashion district. Fashion wags stewed over Karl Lagerfeld’s accusation that singing star Adele “is a little too fat.” And after the Super Bowl, it was more about M.I.A.’s finger flip than even Madonna’s show or New York’s victory.

Of course, the big buzz this week, on the eve of the annual music hype-fest, the Grammy Awards, was Whitney Houston’s death. The police spokesman’s statement was barely out of his mouth, last Saturday afternoon, when the spin for attention began. Was it drugs that killed her? Did she drown in her bathtub? And perhaps saddest of all: How much will her music be worth now that she’s dead?

The question I regularly ask myself and (these days) my news reporting students, at Centennial College, is: Why is that stuff news? I often tell them they need to use the filter of their training to decide whether a story deserves to be published/aired. I ask them to determine if a story meets certain criteria that consumers demand when they read, listen or view the results of their work. Is the story timely? Does it have relevance? What is the story’s magnitude or impact on the community or the world? How unexpected is it the event? Is there conflict? Does the story affect us emotionally? Based on that last criterion probably rests my entire argument, because if reporters and editors really believe Houston’s death affects us, then I guess that’s why it’s news.

Over the years, I have openly criticized fellow journalists and editors who, like the paparazzi, follow their sources as if they were prey. When I see poor judgement in “celebrity” stories, I shake the newspaper, bang the dashboard of my car above my radio or shout at the TV. I continue to expect reporters to use those filtering criteria before they publish/broadcast the drivel they call news.

To be fair, when I began reporting for radio and magazines in the late 1960s, I did my fair share of celebrity chasing too. I had stars in my eyes whenever I got the chance to interview, some of my entertainment and sports heroes too – people such as B.B. King, Wayne Gretzky, Maureen Forrester, Billy Harris, Burton Cummings, Bob Feller and Kris Kristofferson, among others. I admit, in those formative years of my career, that I often did not ask tough, risky and sometimes provocative questions.

"There will never be a nuclear war," Zappa once said; "there's too much real estate involved." And that's news!

There was one exception. It was about 1970, during the period when the Masonic Temple in Toronto doubled as a rock music concert hall, called The Rockpile. Trying to break into underground radio at the time, I talked my way past a security guard at The Rockpile door and chased down rock musician Frank Zappa between sets in his dressing room. When I found him, he was clothed in a terry-towel robe, seated in a wing-backed chair with a gaggle of reporters poking microphones at him and asking him such mundane questions as: “What do you think of Toronto, Frank?” And “tell us about your latest album, Frank.”

I had prepared myself for this moment. I knew Zappa was full of vitriol about U.S. politics and foreign policy. The trick was to provoke him with just the right question. I waited patiently for the paparazzi and dumb reporters to finish. Then I stabbed my mike at Zappa and gave it my best shot.

“Why do you believe that Sacco and Vanzetti were scapegoats and railroaded to the electric chair in the 1920s?” I asked. I knew he felt the two known U.S. anarchists got the death penalty because they were immigrants and some American officials wanted to make an example of their radical sentiment. Well, Zappa took the bait and gave me five solid minutes of the best political commentary I think I’d ever heard. Unfortunately, the interview never got published or went to air. Nobody cared about Frank Zappa’s view of corruption in U.S. politics and jurisprudence.

Still I would put my amateur Q & A with Frank Zappa next to a discussion of M.I.A.’s finger flip at the Super Bowl any day of the week.

Queen Elizabeth II in open car during 1959 Royal Tour (notice kids with cameras).

Buried away in a dusty, old photo album somewhere, a photograph I took with my Kodak Brownie “Holiday Flash” camera sits mounted in those black, triangular photo corners. There might actually be two or three photos in that series. But the best of them – if you look very closely at the snapshot – shows a long limousine carrying an apparently important person who is waving in the middle of the picture. The only sound I remember – above the nearly deafening cheering around me as I framed the shot – was my mother entreating me.

“Take it now, Ted,” she said. “There she is!”

The problem, you see, was that by the time Queen Elizabeth’s limousine passed our location – somewhere in east-end Toronto that morning in 1959 – we had been pushed back by the police so far from the roadway and people nearby had crowded in so densely in front of me that all I had in my Brownie viewfinder was a sliver of space in the middle of my shot and a split second to click the shutter in order to capture the image.

Today, during the 60th anniversary observances of Elizabeth’s accession to the thrown (her father George VI died on Feb. 6, 1952), one would be hard pressed to prove that the picture I snapped back in 1959 showed Queen Elizabeth II during her official tour of Canada.

Perhaps that unsatisfying experience explains why – ever since – I have never really become a Royal watcher. Just like my Brownie camera photograph I’ve always felt distant from the Queen and her family. In fact, ironically, it was prior to that 1959 visit, which Buckingham Palace and the Diefenbaker government preferred to call a “Royal tour,” that at least one other Canadian wasn’t particularly impressed. Just before the Queen arrived, NBC’s “Today Show” interviewed CBC personality Joyce Davidson, who is reported to have commented that as “an average Canadian” she was “indifferent” to Elizabeth’s upcoming tour. If they’d interviewed me with my box camera photo of the Queen in a distant cavalcade, I think I would have agreed with Ms. Davidson.

Oh, there are plenty of reasons why I might have become an avid fan of the Royals. During a family trip to Europe in 1964 to visit relatives in Greece, we stopped for two weeks of holidays in Britain. I loved the U.K. Whether it was Soho, Oxford or the Shakespearian theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, I fit right in. I think I felt more at home seeing Lord Elgin’s marbles from the Greek Acropolis in the British Museum than I did visiting the actual Parthenon where they’d come from in Athens.

Add to that, my mother-in-law (a Scot from Nova Scotia) never missed the Queen’s Christmas message; nor, consequently did my wife or I. So, there is every reason I should have become a dedicated fan of the Royals, if not a monarchist. But I never did.

Dame Vera Lynn in the Cabinet War Rooms autographs copy of her book, "We'll Meet Again," in 1995.

Despite my disconnect with the House of Windsor, I have had a soft spot for another unofficial member of British royalty. Always a student of history, I grew up reading about, watching film of and listening to recordings of Dame Vera Lynn singing all those wartime chestnuts – “White Cliffs of Dover,” “When the Lights go on Again,” “There’ll Always be an England” and “We’ll Meet Again.” I had often been fascinated by the way the British songstress seemed to embody the spirit of England – its indomitable optimism, quiet courage, patience and even its sense of humour – during the Second World War. Then, in 1995 we had a chance meeting.

My wife and I were enjoying an anniversary present from my parents – a week’s travel in the U.K. My sister and cousins had joined us and, on our second day holidaying in London, they noticed that Dame Vera was about to announce a fundraising and awareness-raising campaign to assist veterans in need. It was to take place in the historic Cabinet War Rooms under London, where Winston Churchill had endured the darkest days of the Battle of Britain and the Blitz during the war.

Armed with a copy of a book my father and I had co-authored, “Days of Victory,” I asked if I could meet the lady and give her a signed copy of our book. Dame Vera’s handlers agreed and there I was in front of lights, mikes and news cameras presenting “the Forces’ Sweetheart” with Dad’s and my co-authored book.

“To Dame Vera Lynn,” I inscribed on the title page, “who made the lights go on again all over the world.”

Whereupon she took a copy of her latest book, “We’ll Meet Again,” and signed it:

“To Alex and Ted. Yours, Vera Lynn.” And then she added a hug for emphasis (and the news cameras still clicking and rolling on the entire spontaneous moment).

Now that was a picture of royalty worth cherishing.

Geoffrey Chaucer wrote "let sleeping dogs lie" in the 17th century with implications for 21st century politicians.

When my younger sister and I were growing up, our Greek-born American grandparents visited our home once a year. They came from the U.S. to stay during warm Canadian summer months. While visiting, my grandfather generally tolerated anything my sister and I did or said, with a few exceptions. We could never swear in front of him. We were never to call wrestling a “fixed” sport. And under no circumstances were we to criticize the U.S. president – in those years Richard Nixon – or the U.S. Vice-President (of Greek origin), Spiro Agnew.

“Let sleeping dogs lie,” my mother would warn us. By that, she meant that unless we really wanted to face my grandfather’s wrath, we should just avoid any discussion of Nixon’s near impeachment and Agnew’s resignation over tax evasion.

It occurred to me this week, as we watched the Prime Minister’s statements at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, that Stephen Harper probably never had a Greek grandfather in his life. After all, it was there, in Davos, that Mr. Harper suggested Canada’s retirement benefits for seniors might not be sustainable and that he might have to make changes to the Old Age Security (OAS) system to help reduce the deficit. And as the PM alluded to the possibility of increasing the age when seniors become eligible for pensions or the possibility of limiting seniors’ accessibility to their CPP, I figured there probably was no one there to offer that warning from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde:

“It is not good, a sleeping hound to wake.”

By all interpretations of his Davos statements, the Prime Minister seems to feel that in order to keep retirement income programs afloat, he has to keep baby boomers’ hands off their pensions for at least another two years. In other words, the Conservatives might conceivably move the age of retirement from 65 to 67 to reduce the drain on CPP cash. Critics say that could leave seniors out of pocket by about $12,192 (which normally pays someone 65+ about $6,000 per year). But the PM isn’t the only one sounding the cutbacks alarm. Even before Harper returned from Switzerland, his human resources minister, Diane Finley, said Old Age Security (OAS) is not sustainable and PC House Leader Peter Van Loan said changes would likely be phased in over the next five to 10 years. It appears the Conservatives are eyeing retirement benefits as a way to bail out the economy. I suggest they’re waking Chaucer’s dogs.

Need we remind the PM of events on Parliament Hill a quarter century ago when yet another Conservative prime minister tested these same waters. In 1985, then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney faced a similar rising deficit and considered ending the automatic indexing of old-age pensions to the inflation rate. He suggested out loud the he might limit the annual increases to seniors’ pensions to three per cent. He didn’t anticipate the outrage of Canadian pensioners. Almost overnight, seniors’ groups across the country organized their members, collected thousands of petition signatures and organized “grey power” protests on Parliament Hill. One protestor was heard to say, “Cut our benefits and it’s ‘Good-bye, Charlie Brown.’”

History tells us that the Conservative government, fearing it would alienate a significant number of Canadian voters and jeopardize its re-election in 1985, backed down and cancelled the plan. The Mulroney Conservatives learned quickly, as Chantal Hébert pointed out in the Toronto Star this week, that during elections 50+ voters turn out in greater numbers than any other age group, that (since the Mulroney years) the seniors have consistently had their voices heard, and that traditionally its older members make up a significant portion of the Conservative Party’s membership base.

“Any party that antagonizes older Canadians,” Hébert wrote, “does so at its peril.”

One would think the Prime Minister is a better student of history than his premature comments in Davos illustrate. And even if he chooses to ignore his history, Harper would be wise not to ignore such organizations as the Canadian Association of Retired Persons, a seniors’ lobby group with 300,000 members. Susan Eng, CARP’s vice-president for advocacy, spoke to CBC News this week. She complained that the Conservatives’ arithmetic doesn’t consider people.

“A lot of Canadians are very worried about their future,” she said. “They’re very unhappy that they paid into the system through their entire working careers, and now they’re going to see an important part of their safety-net eroded.”

Even if the Prime Minister genuinely believes he can reduce the nation’s deficit by increasing the age of retirement and reducing the size of their CPP take, he would be wise to consider the ire of my Greek-born grandfather defending his president and the sport of wrestling.

He should beware those sleeping dogs, the ones with the grey hair and lots of time on their hands.

"I just gotta know."

Earlier this week, in a news-reporting course I teach at Centennial College, something suddenly interrupted the classroom discussion. It was just after 8:30 on Tuesday morning and a number of my students had their heads down. I recognized the posture. They were texting on their smartphones beneath their desks. I was about to call them on it, when I realized the source of the distraction.

“Oscar nominations just out,” one of them admitted to me.

I knew there was no point trying to compete with Best Actor, Best Actress or Best Picture nominations. So I joined in, “War Horse get nominated?” I asked.

“Yup, along with ‘Moneyball,’ ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’ and ‘The Help.’”

Ultimately, the interruption didn’t particularly bother me. Frankly, I was just as curious about the nominations. I’m also not so arbitrary that I don’t allow cellphones in my classes; some of my students are single parents who need immediate access to their child-care providers, so I try to accommodate them, in case of emergencies. But I later asked another student why the announcement of the Academy Awards nominations was so important. It didn’t strike me as their kind of priority.

She rolled her eyes at the question, as if to say: “Don’t be silly. I just gotta know!”

Isn’t it odd that getting the information, even if it isn’t your style, may have become even more important than the information itself. Not only that, but getting the information first has also become so vital, even some sort of status symbol. Once upon a time, in newsrooms a teletype machine, a fax or a telephone seemed fast enough. Today, however, not only is access vital, but instant access is also mandatory, to the point of embarrassment if one’s smartphone, service provider or application doesn’t deliver it instantly.

I don’t have a problem with that get-it-first emphasis provided there’s some maturity thrown in. I just think that with speed of access comes a lot of additional baggage that some people – particularly young people – don’t handle very well. In recent weeks, a number of friends and I have talked about increased stress, mental depression and even self-doubt among youth in our community. In our search for answers, some of us have talked about the prevalence of social media and the need for speed among those same young people.

For sure, high-speed information technology and networks make elementary and high school students more competitive when used positively. On the other hand, when Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, Flikr and Kaboodle are used to compete purely for social status or to bully others, they become destructive tools. I mean I’ve heard Twitter users say:

“I’ve got hundreds following my tweets.” Of course, the implication is “And you don’t.” Or, “How many friends do you have on Facebook?” As if to say, “You’re a loser.”

The Fraser Valley gang rape and subsequent video release on Facebook in 2010, not to mention the video self-portraits posted on the web by Vancouver Stanley Cup rioters last spring further illustrate the abuse of cellphones in immature hands. That’s when the need for speed hurts. That’s the way smartphones spawn dumb use. And that’s when “I just gotta know” runs amuck.

Greenwood College School and "digital detox"

But if you think our discussion of the harmful impact of these technologies is little more than fear-mongering, read on.

The other day, on CBC Radio, I heard several students talking about a unique experiment. They all described abandoning their smartphones, ear buds, email accounts and texting screens for a full week. No. It wasn’t punishment for getting caught in the classroom. In fact, it was just the opposite. About 20 Grade 11 and 12 students at Greenwood College School in Toronto volunteered for what their teacher Garth Nichols called “digital detox,” to help put their dependence on smartphone technology into perspective.

“Students are invited to choose a meaningful piece of technology and give it up … from Friday to Friday,” he said. “They keep a journal by commenting on their reactions to living without their devices.”

Nichols explained the “technoses check” is part of the school’s Challenge and Change in Society curriculum that helps students examine the psychology, sociology and anthropology of their world; in other words, he said, the forced deprivation of their tech toys helps them understand phenomena that are bigger than they are.

"Digital detox puts dependence on smartphones into perspective.

He said the concept came from a book, “Hyperculture: The Human Cost of Speed,” by Canadian author, Dr. Stephen Bertman, who writes that society’s dependence on technology can cause unbridled commercialism, the degradation of the environment and even the disintegration of the family. The week-long techno-fast wasn’t mandatory; some students admitted they couldn’t last seven days and opted out.

“I love my technology too,” Nichols admitted. “[But] by raising awareness of our addiction … [students] recognize we shape our tools and our tools shape us.”

Maybe that kind of acknowledgment belongs in every smartphone user manual.

Photo courtesy Lakeridge Health Oshawa

The number and frequency of ambulance sirens dwindled. Fewer hospital staff passed the waiting area. I had been sitting there, waiting for nearly three hours. By 8:30 p.m. I was the only one around when a nurse who’d been in the operating room came out. She spotted me, changed direction and approached me.

“You the husband of the horse woman?”

I nodded expectantly.

“She’s doing just fine,” the nurse said. “But don’t tell anybody I told you.” She knew I’d been waiting a long time and I sensed her telling me my wife Jayne’s condition was good, made us both feel better. And that had been the atmosphere at Lakeridge Health Centre in Oshawa nearly all that day. I say nearly, because things didn’t start out that way.

This is the story of a mishap, the kind many families have experienced and endured. On Tuesday evening after work, my wife Jayne made her way to a stable east of town to enjoy the relaxation and distraction of riding her young dressage horse. Part way through their workout, her horse was startled by something and bucked several times. Realizing she couldn’t get back into the saddle, Jayne jumped off the horse, but landed awkwardly on her shoulder.

When I arrived at Port Perry Hospital, an evening ER nurse was already questioning Jayne about the fall. Before too long, she’d been x-rayed and a doctor explained there was a fracture of her upper humerus bone; it appeared the ball portion of the bone was broken…badly. But only the sophistication of computerized axial tomography (a CAT scan) would reveal the specifics.

Problem was, the earliest she could get a CAT scan was Thursday, almost two days after the tumble. And, he said, the earliest Lakeridge Health Centre in Oshawa could see repairing the break would be the weekend. I’m not sure which hurt Jayne worse, the break or the prospect of a potential four-day delay of the surgery. Anyway, two days later, we dutifully arrived in Oshawa for the scan. When an orthopaedic surgeon we’d contacted looked at the scan, he calmly explained the fracture and the surgical alternatives.

“It will probably require a prosthesis,” Dr. Michael Martin said. He showed us computer images of a steel ball and shaft replacement for the shoulder joint and reassured us that Lakeridge performed a fair number of these procedures each year. The diagnosis and prognosis were grim. Even more grim, it seemed, was the likelihood she would have to endure another couple of days of pain before anything could be done – prosthesis or otherwise.

I think that’s when the surgeon in the doctor gave way to the humanity in the doctor. Indeed the humanity of the system. Within minutes, we felt, the health care monolith that seemed prepared to shuffle this accident and its misery off to a scheduling computer, took on a face and revealed its heart. Jayne needed a surgeon, a surgical team, an available OR and (perhaps most important) an admission bed. Things began looking up when a woman with a clipboard entered the cubicle where Jayne and I still stared at the computer images of the prosthesis.

“Hi. My name is Tracey,” she said. “I’m your ortho-nurse navigator.”

I’d never heard of that kind of nurse before. But despite her bureaucratic title, I kind of liked the idea that someone could lead us through this mess. Sure enough, through the midday, the afternoon and into the early evening, a steady stream of medical-care specialists paraded through our cubicle, doing EKGs, blood tests, and even osteoporosis-prevention planning. Most important of all, however, these hospital professionals all seemed focused on getting my wife to surgery…surgery that would not be delayed until Saturday, but would take place that night. Suddenly, it seemed, my wife had become the number one priority in the hospital. And that really lifted our spirits.

The rest went like clockwork. The anaesthetist explained what he would do. The chief surgeon, Dr. Samir Chhabra, explained what he would do. The nursing staff explained what they would do. And by 5 that afternoon, they started doing what they’d promised. And I just sat patiently in the waiting area. That’s why the sudden arrival of the nurse inquiring if I were “the husband of the horse woman” seemed so welcome.

By 9 p.m., the surgeons had both informed me that the prosthesis implant had not been necessary. Instead, they’d implanted a plate and screws into her upper humerus, they hoped, to salvage the natural bone. They even showed me a high-resolution image of the repaired shoulder. And by 10:30 Jayne was on antibiotics and painkillers, in a recovery bed and drifting into the most restful sleep she’d had in 72 hours.

A health facility, we feared had let us slip through the cracks, had shown genuine concern and given a family hope when it most needed it.

Ross Perigoe criticizes a major Canadian newspaper for its commentary after the 9/11 attacks.

In the days following 9/11, the West had revenge top of mind. Within days of the terrorist attacks, U.S. President George Bush promised his armies would avenge the deaths of the 3,000 Americans killed, claiming that the perpetrators were “Islamists commanded to kill Christians and Jews” and that they were therefore “wanted dead or alive.” Most in North America accepted his Wild West form of justice.

At the time, however, a professor at Concordia University in Montreal did not. Almost at his peril, journalist and educator Ross Perigoe criticized the powers that be, in particular the Montreal Gazette, for what he called its racist response to 9/11.

“I am in the Place des Arts metro station,” Perigoe cited a Gazette editorialist on Sept. 19, 2011, “I see three men, one wearing a turban. I start to shake.”

The commentary infuriated Prof. Perigoe. He reacted by researching, interviewing and then publishing his response as part of his PhD thesis in 2005. In part he wrote: “The courageous thing to do would have been to have fought the tendency to lash out at the nearest people – Muslims – who were completely blameless.” Remember, the culprits of the 9/11 attacks were not Afghans, nor Iraqis, nor in the truest sense Muslims, but Saudis bent on terrorism above all.

Last Thursday at Ross Perigoe’s funeral, the professor’s son, Evan Perigoe, a law school graduate, remembered his father’s commitment to speaking out for minorities. Ross Perigoe, 62, had died of cancer on Jan. 4.

“He taught me to work hard, have fun and speak truth to power,” Evan Perigoe said eulogizing his father. Coined by American Quakers, “speak truth to power” was the motto of outspoken liberals confronting conservative thinking in the U.S. in the 1950s. For Perigoe’s two sons – Evan and Clarke – the call to action half a century ago represented their father’s life-long raison d’etre.

“My father was uncompromising,” his younger son Clarke Perigoe said. “He led by example and for that he will never be forgotten.”

I will never forget Ross Perigoe because he was my oldest and closest friend. We met in 1956 when we were both seven and when my family moved next door to the Perigoes in Agincourt, Ont. After that, he and I did almost everything together – attended the same elementary and high schools, and then enrolled in the same Radio and TV Arts program at Ryerson in the 1960s. That’s where Ross Perigoe (and I) experimented with speaking truth to power. Among other projects, he and I co-produced a series of pointed documentaries for CBC Radio – on noise pollution, rock festivals and dishonesty in advertising. Remarkably, the CBC aired them and gave us an entrée to public affairs journalism.

Perigoe and Barris at the RTNDA Awards ceremony in 2009, when the Concordia University professor received the Michael Monty Memorial Award for broadcast teaching excellence.

But Perigoe never stopped advocating and broadcasting critically, especially when he began teaching journalism at Montreal’s Concordia University in 1985. Among other topics, he revealed the problem of journalists traumatized by violence; he examined the censorship of the Japanese-Canadian press during the Second World War; and, with his wife Christina Perigoe, he explored the special needs of children with hearing loss. In 2009, the Radio Television News Directors Association awarded Perigoe an award for excellence in broadcast teaching and mentorship. It was overdue recognition for a quarter century of teaching and inspiring up-and-coming TV anchors, investigative reporters and documentary makers to speak their truth.

But Perigoe also lived by that second ethic noted by his sons at the funeral – to have fun. In 1970, while still attending Ryerson, Perigoe and I responded to a call for freelance writers. We arrived at the rented Etobicoke mansion of Hamilton TV producer Randy Markowitz.

“Tonight,” he announced to us beside his indoor pool, “you guys are going to create a unique children’s program.”

Perigoe and I looked at each other and then improvised out loud for three hours while Markowitz’s secretary took notes. That night, we invented the pilot program for what would become a children’s cult TV show – “The Hilarious House of Frightenstein.” It had few redeeming qualities except, like everything Perigoe put his hand to, Frightenstein defied all the rules and yet proved magically palatable. It married a smattering of education with what kids loved – monsters, castles and corny jokes. It became a hit and – believe it or not – we earned our wages and were paid $3 a joke!

“Ross had a remarkable sense of humour,” said Marnie Malcolm, Perigoe’s sister, at his funeral. “He could captivate you with his stories.”

She noted that in 25 years of teaching at Concordia University, her brother had enriched the learning of hundreds of journalism students with his knowledge of the profession and his passion for telling true stories. “It’s a great gift,” she said.

With Ross Perigoe’s premature death at 62, future Concordia journalism students will never receive that lecture hall gift. Nor will tomorrow’s vulnerable Canadians benefit from his advocacy journalism – speaking truth to power.

“Canada’s CEO Elite 100 have left the rest of us behind in their gold dust,” the authors of the report concluded.

I contrasted the millions going to the senior executives with what might be the resulting incomes of those Electro-Motive Diesel workers in London – going from about $32 an hour to about $15.50 an hour. And I tried to rationalize all that in light of what many of us are doing this time of year. Traditionally, when New Year’s Day comes along, we think about the coming 12 months and plan important changes in our lives. We think about getting more fit, or losing more weight, or acquiring more of this or taking more of that. More, more, more, seems to be the common denominator here, when perhaps status quo – or keeping what we have – might be a better wish.

In the Christmas season just past, how many of us – whether six years old or 60 years old – thought about what more the traditional gift-giving might bring us? That bestselling book, that piece of clothing with the high-end designer label on it, or even that gift certificate from a favourite chain store.

Then, during whatever number of days we had of work-free lounging between Christmas and New Year’s, which of us wished we could have just one day more? I know I did. While many of my fellow instructors at colleges around Ontario had additional days off this week, I lamented that my faculty mates and I were back on the job bright and early Monday morning. In light of the December 2011 unemployment figures in Canada at 7.4 per cent and the potential plight of those locomotive workers, it made me feel awfully guilty I’d even thought of getting an extra day off.

And while I wasted time wishing for more time off, I should probably have felt thankful for the time I have. Just before Christmas, I visited a friend facing a catastrophic illness. Exactly my age and with a similar career path, this friend has given extraordinary talent and time to his family, his working colleagues and countless classes of aspiring journalism students. In other words, he has given back much more than he has ever taken from life. I know. I have watched him plan and care for his wife and sons, collaborate with those media co-workers and inspire students of his profession to greatness on their own terms. Now he faces the toughest battle of all – the battle for as many more days with those family members, co-workers and students as he possibly can, despite the odds against him. And I thought I deserved another day off.

I’ve also been watching with some concern the looming presidential election in the United States, a nation that in some ways invented the phenomenon of wanting and expecting “more.” President Barak Obama continues to grapple with the same crippling unemployment rates and just as sluggish an economy as other Western nations, but now he faces a growing chorus of naysayers who claim the American people can and should expect greater things from their president.

With half a dozen Republican candidates now jockeying for the GOP nomination, I listen to the rhetoric of a political battle that pits the philosophy of being a brother’s keeper against the philosophy of looking out for individual rights first. And while both political perspectives have merit, each promises to taking less and give more. How can either side be believed when Americans live and benefit from the wealthiest culture on planet? And how does that culture (or ours for that matter) rationalize demanding more, when so many cohabitants on the planet haven’t a roof over their heads, a full stomach most days of the year, or the freedom to elect those who govern them?

My New Year’s Day resolution list was shorter than my Christmas wish list, which was non-existent. It was just put into clearer perspective by the disparity between workers and executives I read about this week, the looming political battles I anticipate in the U.S., and witnessing a friend trying to hang on for one more day.

This year I resolve to be more thankful for what I have and to expect no more than my fair share.

Game of recreational hockey (c.1800s) from Art Gallery of Nova Scotia photo collection.

About 25 years ago, I travelled to the town of Windsor, in the Annapolis Valley region of Nova Scotia. I’d read about a local personality, a 19th century judge and member of the provincial legislature, Thomas Chandler Haliburton. Among other things, I’d learned that Haliburton had studied and grown up there, written local history and published under the nom de plume “Sam Slick.” But Haliburton had also kept a factual diary, which around 1803 had solved the great Canadian riddle: Where was the game of hockey first played in Canada?

“And boys let out racin’, yelpin’ hollerin’ and whoopin’ like mad with pleasure (on) the playground,” Haliburton had written as a student at King’s College, Windsor, “and (played) the game of hurley … on the ice.”

My world of writing depends largely on the hunt for facts. It’s based on the principles of research, discovery and verification. Had there not been a source for Judge Haliburton’s revelation, I would never have learned about the birthplace of hockey, nor included that story in my book “Playing Overtime.” My discovery very much depended on the facts as gathered by a local museum and a local neuro-surgeon and recreational hockey enthusiast named Garth Vaughan. The good doctor’s Windsor Hockey Heritage Society and the museum he founded had delivered to me the details of hockey played on Long Pond, in Nova Scotia, 200 years ago.

A number of us this week were wondering what we might do if we came into some great wealth – say $1 million. Well, as I say, I would probably bestow much of it upon museums such as this. Why? Principally because local museums and their artifacts represent the unofficial, but crucial foundation of Canada’s story. When fledgling communities took root in Nova Scotia and elsewhere in this country, there were no official recorders of events, no provincial archives, few newspapers or journalists.

The documenting of Canada’s history depended on handed down stories, folklore, diaries and local museums. They receive little or no official funding. They survive purely on volunteer contributions of dollars and hours. They survive on the goodwill of communities. That gift, I suggest, ought to be rewarded.

The mystery ship of prairie pioneer Tom Sukanen dominates the landscape just outside Moose Jaw, Sask.

Another chunk of my $1 million bequest might be to a small repository of local history in Saskatchewan. About a dozen kilometres outside the City of Moose Jaw, sits a 10-acre piece of prairie land that houses a pioneer museum. The land, and many of the pioneer implements, buildings and artifacts, were donated by long-time farmer and local historian Erald Jones. I met him in the early 1970s while researching a book about prairie steamboats.

Steamboats on the prairies? That’s right. Between 1859 and the mid-1950s, there were as many as 125 different steam-powered vessels plying the lakes and rivers of Saskatchewan. Among the boats’ human builders was a Finnish immigrant named Tom Sukanen, whose story I learned from Jones and his museum pals. Briefly, during the Depression, pioneer Sukanen lost nearly everything – his family, his crops, his desire to stay on the prairies. He concocted a plan to build a steamship in pieces, transport it via the Saskatchewan River to Hudson Bay and sail home to Finland. Sukanen’s bizarre story became a chapter in my 1977 book “Fire Canoe,” thanks to the Sukanen Ship Pioneer Village Museum. The completed Sukanen ship stands today like a sentinel just outside Moose Jaw.

Project Ojibwa, to bring the decommissioned Royal Canadian Navy sub to St. Thomas, is the latest Elgin Museum enterprize.

Perhaps another portion of any sudden $1 million bank account might go to the modest Elgin Military Museum in St. Thomas, Ont. Named after the fabled Elgin (Armoured) Regiment, whose honours in the Second World War include battlefields in Sicily, Italy and North-West Europe, the museum began in 1975. Not surprisingly it has assembled representative weaponry and souvenirs of those campaigns. But its members have consistently pursued history outside the box. Currently, museum volunteers have plans to salvage Royal Canadian Navy submarine, HMCS Ojibwa, and bring it to landlocked St. Thomas.

My research and writing changed when collector friend Blair Ferguson and the Elgin Military Museum gave me access to its human collection. In 2005, as I assembled my book “Victory at Vimy,” I learned the museum had recently acquired the letters home of Victoria Cross winner Ellis Sifton. With the museum’s permission, I was able to flesh out an otherwise clinical history of the man. In his final letter home to his sisters in Wallacetown, Ont., for example, Sifton wrote about the greatest challenge of the coming Vimy battle.

“(I wonder whether) courage will be mine at the right moment if I am called upon to stare death in the face,” Sifton wrote just before April 9, 1917. His VC proved it was. But only the local museum in St. Thomas had known his human condition at the time.

So if I won that elusive $1 million, I’d almost certainly help the greatest friends a non-fiction writer has, the keepers of a community’s heart and history.

"...Christmas has done me good."

It’s been hard this year. Teaching and marking at the college – with a particularly challenging crop of journalism and broadcasting students – have nearly swamped me. Close friends have battled health problems, so I’ve spent what little time I had left trying to help. On top of that, I’ve found myself shouting at the radio in anger because the “the holiday season is here” advertisements began right after Halloween – they didn’t even wait for Remembrance Day to pass. Finding the Christmas spirit, this year, has proved tougher than usual.

I expect all that to change this Sunday, however, when I go to church.

Don’t get excited, friends. I haven’t suddenly become a convert to any recognized religion. Nor have I had a mystical or overnight spiritual experience on a mountaintop somewhere. No. It’s an innocent bit of volunteer work that almost every year for the past 20 years has delivered Christmas spirit to me. And it makes perfect sense.

At 3 p.m. this Sunday a local group of volunteers as well as the Uxbridge Chamber Choir and the Uxbridge Youth Choir will join forces in the reading of “A Christmas Carol” at Trinity United Church. It’s billed as a dramatic reading of the abridged version of Dickens’ famous tale about the redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge.

Some of you know, these holiday presentations are the brainchild of a colleague of mine, broadcaster Judy Maddren, who until a few years ago regularly read the weekday morning newscasts on the CBC Radio network.

“When I first read this story to my four little children,” Judy Maddren said in 1990, “the oldest was eleven, the youngest three. It took a fair bit of patience to corral them. But once we all settled in, and shared the marvellous characters in this enduring story, no one budged…”

Nearly every year since, broadcaster Maddren has initiated public readings of the story to raise money for local charities, to bring CBC personalities to communities across Canada and to help inspire the spirit of Christmas at just the right time. Each year, there are probably a hundred such presentations of A Christmas Carol all across the country. I know. I’ve been part of them right from the beginning. And as much as I enjoy the fund-raising (this Sunday proceeds will assist the Uxbridge Cottage Hospital), I volunteer to be a reader for a very selfish reason. It’s how I find the Christmas spirit each year. In fact, I find it in one of Dickens’ characters – Scrooge’s nephew Fred – who explains in an early passage of the story the way he keeps Christmas.

“I have always thought of Christmastime as a good time – a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time,” Fred says in the story.

“The only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-travellers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys…

“And therefore Uncle Scrooge, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that Christmas has done me good, and will do me good…”

I started reading that part of the Dickens story a couple of weeks ago as I prepared for this Sunday’s recitation. And the words always stay with me. They’re the ones that grab me most each time I read them to myself or aloud. They reach out the most. They communicate the most to me about the essence of a human celebration that crosses all barriers and links all people. To me, Fred’s words are the essence of the holiday message, no matter your faith, belief or creed. They’re the basis of a universal peace.

As the story goes, Charles Dickens was in failing health and coping with a failing marriage at the time he composed these enduring lines in this historic story. And further, each December at that time (back in the 1880s), it’s said that Dickens recited A Christmas Carol publicly in England in order to help raise funds for schools and hospitals at that time. But it’s my guess, what those readings did most of all was help Charles Dickens – an otherwise ordinary man – rediscover the simple joy of Christmas each December.

It continues to do that for me too and I’m grateful for it.

If you need a bit of inspiration to find that Christmas spirit too, why not join us at 3 o’clock this Sunday at Trinity United Church. I’ll get another chance to read my favourite lines. What’s more, Judy Maddren, the driving force behind this wonderful phenomenon, will join me; and she gets to read those most famous Dickens lines of all:

“As Tiny Tim observed, ‘God bless us, every one.’”