Barris Beat

Cut college funding at your peril!

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Ontario Legislature shut down by winter election, in 2025

Like most, I received my “convincer cheque” from the provincial government a few days ago. It says it’s from the Ministry of Finance. But it couldn’t be plainer that its point of origin is Conservative Party HQ. It’s dated Jan. 29, 2025, exactly 24 hours after the premier visited Lt. Gov. Edith Dumont to dissolve Ontario’s 43rd Parliament for a general election Feb. 27, even though the premier doesn’t need to call an election until June 2026.

“Ontario Taxpayer Rebate,” the cheque is called.

Of greater importance to me that same week, however, I learned that Centennial College, where I instructed for 18 years, had permanently cancelled 49 programs, including 16 programs in its business school, seven at its engineering school and 14 communications courses at the Story Arts campus in East York. (more…)

Barris Beat

O say, can you see…

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They did it in Ottawa. They did it in Calgary. Then, in Toronto. And then Monday night, in Nashville, Americans did it back. First, Canadian spectators booed the The Star-Spangled Banner north of the border. And so American fans in Tennessee booed O Canada right back when the Ottawa Senators came to Nashville this week.

Shouted one irate Predators fan, “You gotta pay!”

Then, Nashville coach Andrew Brunette (who is a Canadian) told the U.S. Daily Mail. “I don’t like it. The NHL has been around 100 years and the U.S. and Canada both share this game. I don’t think there’s a place for booing the anthem.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Vigil over Pickering lands continues

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Brian Buckles speaks at Land Over Landings meeting in 2018.

Brian and Jane Buckles had only lived on their property in Pickering between Concession Roads 7 and 8 for about four years, when, in 1972, the federal government expropriated their land for the proposed Pickering Airport.

Overnight their country dream home – with an old Ontario farmhouse on 20 acres of land – became one of the hottest political potatoes in the GTA. Brian Buckles, however, would not go quietly.

“Days after the announcement, (farmer) Lorne Almack and I became the technical committee for People or Planes. I talked to officials with Air Canada and De Havilland preparing the technical case against the airport.” (more…)

Barris Beat

The gift I’ll never forget

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I had just completed my final public-speaking event of 2024. I had presented the same talk on my latest book nearly 70 times in three months, and that mid-December day I was looking forward to the holiday break.

The best present, I thought, would be a few days’ rest over Christmas and New Year’s. I was wrong. As I packed up my laptop, one of the aviation enthusiasts in my audience said he had something to give me.

“Come on over to the officers’ mess,” he said. “It’s there.”

After a short, chilly walk across the outdoor parade square at the Canadian Forces College in North York, I caught up with the man who’d invited me. “You might find this of interest,” he said and handed me a cardboard portfolio with red, white and blue lettering on the cover; it read: “RCAF: The War Years … Commemorating 40th Anniversary Battle of Britain.” (more…)

Barris Beat

“I swear allegiance…”

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Candidate Donald Trump in Orlando. Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Some say our current troubles with the U.S. can be traced back to 2016, during the presidential campaign of that year. It happened at a Republican rally in Orlando, Fla., where candidate Donald Trump called out to his supporters:

“Raise your right hand,” and then prodded them to recite, “I do solemnly swear that I … will vote on or before the 12 (of November) for Donald J. Trump for president.”

Candidate Trump didn’t describe it as such, but when critics chastised him for demanding unconditional allegiance to his campaign, that is, invoking a loyalty oath, he responded, “They started screaming at me, ‘Do the swearing!’ I mean, they’re having such a great time. … Honestly, I didn’t know it was a problem.” (more…)

Barris Beat

The first time

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Actor Cathy Wallace granted a first professional interview. 1968.

We sat backstage at the Playhouse Theatre in Toronto. A few years earlier, we’d attended the same high school, but by the time we met professionally 57 years ago, actor Cathy Wallace had trained at the Banff School of Fine Arts and appeared off-Broadway in Bye Bye Birdie and in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. And she was my first-ever professional interviewee. I pressed the record button on my reel-to-reel tape recorder and asked an obvious question.

“How do you feel about playing Lucy in an off-Broadway show?”

“It just goes to show that producers can’t resist a pretty face,” she quipped. Any tension I felt evaporated, and we were off on a fun chat. (more…)

Barris Beat

Twelve days of Christmas

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Uxbridge Messiah Singers at Uxbridge Baptist Church, 2022.

About an hour into the concert, we could feel the anticipation. The church fell silent for just a few seconds. Conductor Tom Baker, all 14 musicians in the orchestra and the 80-voices-strong choir seemed to collect themselves for the climax of their performance. The singers rose in unison. Then, so did the audience in rapt attention.

 “Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah,” the choir began to sing, somewhat muted at first. Then, their voices rising in crescendo, the mass choir filled the sanctuary with the final refrain: “And he shall reign forever and ever. King of kings. Lord of lords. Hallelujah!” (more…)

Barris Beat

For the love of cursive

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Sergeant medic Alex Barris in Czechoslovakia, 1945.

It was April 1945. The Second World War was just days from ending in Europe. My father’s medical battalion had received a few days’ leave in the then Allied-occupied German city of Düsseldorf.

There, Alex and his comrades enjoyed hot meals, hot showers, and billets with beds and clean sheets. Somewhere in the chaos, somehow in the uncertainty, my father found a place and some time to sit down and compose a letter.

“Dear Koula,” he wrote to a pen pal in New York City. “We have known each other so long, yet I never saw you very often after I finished school.”

Koula Kontozoglus, a pen pal worth writing to,

The words spoke to me deeply because Dad was expressing emotion in a war zone that allowed little room for feelings. He was admitting frailty – delinquency for not writing often enough. And his words flowed because they were written cursively. (more…)

Barris Beat

Surplus? Or plain neglect?

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Gerry OIdham in front of the “notice of meeting” sign posted in the King Street Parkette.

It only took a few minutes into Monday morning’s Planning Committee meeting at Uxbridghe Township offices to realize that no citizen’s protest versus the closing of the King Street Parkette had a chance of changing Council’s mind and that the outcome appeared predetermined.

Minutes into the planning meeting, Coun. Todd Snooks, the chair, called upon a township planning officer to review Council’s history with the park. She called for a slide on the screen.

“Here is the King Street Parkette timeline,” she said, and then indicated the single-lot-sized green space had first been deemed by Council “surplus in 1981.”

The slide showed type inside an information box with no identification, no source and no specific date. It just said, “Surplus 1981.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Blue Heron at 35

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Three extraordinary booksellers (l-r) Barbara Pratt, Marilyn Maher and Shelley Macbeth – who owned and operated Blue Heron Books over 35 years – celebrated the store’s 35th anniversary Nov. 23.

Recently, I dropped into one of my favourite haunts in Uxbridge and asked a member of the staff if she had a copy of the new book by Philippa Gregory. After a quick dash to the non-fiction section, she retrieved Normal Women: Nine Hundred Years of Making History. She recommended it, something I always appreciate from staff members at Blue Heron Books. In fact, as I left, I offered the best compliment I could think of at the time.

“Lots of women making history at this establishment,” I said. And I meant it.

In Dr. Gregory’s nearly 700-page treatise, the author doesn’t focus on the obvious handful of heroines in British history – Elizabeth I, Agatha Christie, Florence Nightingale or Margaret Thatcher – but rather the legions of women who competed in jousts, designed ships, mills and houses, or enlisted in the armed services. (more…)