Posts with the John Diefenbaker tag

Barris Beat

Canada’s nuclear legacy

Written by Ted Barris on . 2 Comments
Outside Nelson’s former post office…
… and down an alley way.

The archivist at the museum had no idea it was there. In fact, when Jean-Phillippe Stienne applied for and landed the job as new archivist and collections manager of the museum, archives and art gallery in Nelson, B.C., back in 2017, he knew nothing about the explosive history buried beneath his new office.

“I came here because it’s a beautiful part of the world,” Steinne, 43, told me during a speaking stop I made in British Columbia last week. “I’d actually been working here a few years before I knew about the mystery under the museum.”

When I asked what he was talking about, Stienne, or “J.P.” as everybody calls him, walked me out the front door of his museum (formerly the Nelson post office) and down a back alley to an adjacent building. He unlocked an exterior door, which revealed an inner door with a thick circular porthole window and a black-lettered sign that read, “Nelson’s Cold War Bunker.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Getting the message through

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment

This week, we have witnessed two sides of the coming Donald Trump administration and its method of information distribution.

On Monday, the president-elect invited former opponents, friends seeking roles in his transition team and even TV executives to his New York White House, the Trump Tower in Manhattan. Nobody was allowed to report on the meetings. Everything, by agreement with Trump, was off the record.

The next day, Tuesday, the president-elect travelled across town to the offices of the New York Times, tweeting, “I have great respect for the New York Times. I have tremendous respect…” (more…)

Barris Beat

Tunnel in a teapot

Written by Ted Barris on . 2 Comments
Toronto Police Services' Mark Saunders addresses media about tunnel discovery (courtesy CBC).
Toronto Police Services’ Mark Saunders addresses media about tunnel discovery (courtesy CBC).

Radio, television, the newspapers and most of social media were all buzzing, Monday night, because Toronto Police had found a tunnel a stone’s throw from an indoor tennis court facility in northwest Toronto. It wasn’t just any tennis court. It wasn’t just any tunnel. The tunnel was big enough to live in and apparently pointed in the direction of the Toronto Pan-American Games tennis venue – the Rexall Centre. But when asked at a press conference if he thought the tunnel was part of a terrorist plot, Deputy Chief Mark Saunders had a simple response:

“There’s no criminal offence for digging a hole,” he said. (more…)

Barris Beat

A voice of unity

Written by Ted Barris on . 3 Comments

He helped save Canada.

Aside from times during the two world wars, I think some of this country’s darkest days occurred in the years immediately following the Centennial in 1967. First with the St-Jean-Baptiste riots and bombings in Montreal (1968), then during the October crisis (1970), when the FLQ kidnapped and killed cabinet minister Pierre Laporte in Quebec City, hope for maintaining a united Canada seemed bleakest in those early 1970s.

Then, in November 1976, the Parti Quebecois came to power on a platform that included Quebec’s separation from Canada. I worked as a radio producer/host for CFQC in Saskatoon in those years. Our morning program was heard all over the three Prairie provinces. And I remember our station manager, Dennis Fisher, calling us together soon after the PQ’s historic victory that autumn.

“The nation has never been so threatened,” he said. “It’s up to us to do something.”

(more…)