In 1964, I remember U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) uttering these words: “We’re not about to send American boys … 10,000 miles away from home … to war.”
Johnson was promising to keep U.S. troops out of the war in Vietnam. In fact, his administration and the one following it sent more than 3 million American soldiers into an unwinable war. Nearly 60,000 of those young men died. They died of a broken promise. (more…)
When they talk about brushes with fame, I consider a morning at Sidney Airport on Vancouver Island, among them. It happened in the early 2000s. I’d arrived for my flight to Toronto early. I’d gone through security and arrived at my gate, when there sat John Turner, the former prime minister of Canada, reading a newspaper and waiting for the same flight.
Never intimidated by celebrity and always attracted to political figures, I sat down near him and said something like, “I’ll bet, since your retirement, trips back East are a whole lot less stressful than when you were prime minister.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Turner said with a smile. He turned to me and added, “but they’re still awfully long.” (more…)
The sign always hung in my father’s office, right over the spot where he worked. That happened to be just above his typewriter (in a time before computers) where Dad pumped out many millions of words in a life-long writing career. But Dad had installed this sign over his work space for those days at his office in the basement of our house when maybe the spirit to actually put fingers on keys occasionally eluded him or when he periodically felt unmotivated.
“There’s only one way to become a writer,” the sign read, “by applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”
My father, Alex Barris, wrote probably a thousand radio, television and movie scripts, hundreds of columns for newspapers and periodicals, scores of screenplays and at least half a dozen books at that typewriter in his basement office. And I frankly doubt that he ever needed encouragement, coaxing or cajoling to put the seat of his pants on the seat of his chair. (more…)
For about a year now, I’ve received packages in the mail from a friend in southwestern Ontario. He’s a military-history enthusiast. So, we have much to share in telephone conversations, letters, emails and the periodic packages he posts to me. But when the pandemic hit, suddenly the packages began to increase in number and frequency.
Not just once a week, but several times, his packages (many of them two and three kilograms in weight) would arrive jammed with clippings, magazines and books. And most of his mailings include cryptic notes.
“Two light, two-pound envelopes are on the way,” he wrote last week. “Probably the last of my house cleaning.” (more…)
It took fluid in glass vials, monkey tissue and a gentle rocking motion to make a Canadian research scientist a heroine and put her laboratory on the international pharmaceutical map.
It 1952 the worst polio epidemic was spreading across North America. In Canada, the disease peaked in 1953 with 9,000 cases and 500 deaths, the worst national epidemic since the 1918 influenza pandemic.
However, Dr. Jonas Salk, an American biologist and physician specializing in the study of virology, experimented with inactivated poliovirus cells to generate the first successful killed-virus polio vaccine.
Salk’s dilemma? How to mass produce the vaccine. Tucked inside the Department of Hygiene at the University of Toronto, a small lab had discovered that the polio virus grew rapidly on monkey kidney tissue in a synthetic liquid form. A PhD fungus specialist named Leone Farrell managed to adhere the tissue to the inside surface of a five-litre bottle. Then, she continuously agitated the bottles to allow the medium to generate cell production.
Dr. Farrell’s system became known as “the Toronto technique.” (more…)
I have a memory from the fall of 1973. At the time I was working part-time as a professor’s assistant in the broadcast faculty at Ryerson University. I had one eye on the students’ work I was editing, and the other on a TV monitor of the news. Suddenly, I saw the face of U.S. Vice-President Spiro Agnew. Of all things he was standing with Frank Sinatra at a golf course in Los Angeles. A member of the media scrum asked Agnew about charges of tax fraud recently levelled at him.
“Malicious leaks,” Agnew spewed. “I will not resign if indicted,” and he repeated it. And the audience of well-wishers applauded. (more…)
The new year brings annual habits. Some of my friends are already eating crow about their promises to eat less, workout more and save somewhere in between. Others are still writing cheques (remember them?) with 2017 in the date box. Me? Well, I ran into my annual problem, especially at the franchise stationery shop.
“Do you have any ledgers?” I asked the clerk.
“You mean like lined-paper ledgers?” she said as if I had just asked her to fix my typewriter, give me a roll of pennies or fill ’er up. Then, she shook her head unsympathetically and I realized this was a no-go. (more…)
The occasion was a municipal debate at Toronto City Hall, that I witnessed some months ago. The issue arose over the purchase of a small, insignificant piece of land by the municipality for the expansion of a city service. And before the debate even began, the city clerk called for city councillors to declare. Then, several stood up and did.
“In accordance with the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act,” one councillor said, “I excuse myself from the debate.” (more…)
The first he knew of the story, came from a phone call early one Sunday morning in 1985. His producers at CBC told him to get on a passenger jet bound for Shannon Airport in Ireland and then to travel south along the Irish coast to where families from India were assembling.
Actually, they were scrambling to the coastline where they hoped they might find their relatives from Canada. CBC reporter Terry Milewski had been assigned to find these families and report on them.
“It was just a bizarre and horrifying situation,” Milewski wrote. “Most of the bodies (of their loved-ones) were never found. Most of the bodies went to the bottom of the sea still strapped in their seats.” (more…)
The morning the world changed, I had tumbled from my warm bed, found a cup of coffee to help me on my way and driven from the countryside to the old CBC Radio building on Jarvis Street, next to CBC corporate head offices in downtown Toronto. By 5 a.m. I had cleared my head and my throat to deliver one of my first newscasts for the CBC Network that morning. Little did I know within the first hours of my shift, I would be part of something momentous.
“Here is the CBC News,” I said at the top of each hour that morning to begin the five-minute hourly newscast. But that day I also got the chance to announce repeatedly as the top story, “Nelson Mandela, the black African leader imprisoned for treason since 1963, has this morning left notorious Robben Island prison, a free man.”