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Barris Beat

For want of a Saturday donut

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Saturday shoppers lined up for a first taste of Little Thief baked goods.

Grand openings haven’t happened much during the past few years around here. The pandemic has made certain of that. So, when we learned that the former Bredin’s Bakery location would reopen last Saturday morning at 10, as the new donut specialty shop – Little Thief Bakery Co. – scores of us lined up outside to buy our weekend supply of fresh bread and pastry.

When I arrived about 9:45, there were probably 50 or 60 people ahead of me. For most of the next hour those of us in line saw happy customers departing the store with their bags and boxes of goodies.

“Did you leave us anything?” we kept asking. (more…)

Barris Beat

The Order of things

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Charley Fox and I enjoying each other’s company at a regimental dinner in 2006.

The man told me my future. It happened back in the 1980s. But back then, Charley Fox, my oldest and dearest veteran friend, looked me straight in the eye and told me what I ought to be doing with the rest of my life.

“It’s your job to tell our stories,” he said. And each time we’d meet – usually every month or so at the Husky truck stop on Hwy 401 just east of London, Ont. – Charley would remind me with a “to-do list,” exactly how I was to research famous battles, conduct first-hand interviews and then write and publish the eye-witness stories of Canadian veterans’ experiences. Forty years and a dozen published books later, I realize Charley was right. History storytelling has become the centre of my life. (more…)

Barris Beat

Getting the Handel on Christmas

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Uxbridge Messiah Singers at the Baptist church, Dec. 19, 2022. John Cavers.

About 90 minutes into the Christmas concert at the Baptist Church on Monday night, the conductor signalled his entire choir and solo performers to stand, his musicians to be at the ready. Instinctively, those who knew the music stood in the pews. Then, Tom Baker brought down his baton for the climax of the composition.

“Hallelujah!” the audience and choir sang in celebration together. “King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. Hallelujah!”

I am not a church-goer. But I still love Christmas traditions, and they include attending performances of George Frideric Handel’s masterpiece, the Messiah, presented every few years by our own Uxbridge Messiah Singers. (more…)

Barris Beat

Getting close to a prime minister

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John Turner when justice minister in Pierre Trudeau cabinet

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…)

Barris Beat

Gender equality still three centuries away

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The “marriage bar” forced women in Canadian schools to retire when married or pregnant. The Atlantic.

During a visit to Sarnia, on Monday, conversation around the dinner party table gravitated to the state of women’s rights past and present. One of the women I met at the partly recalled that back in the 1950s, an Ontario board of education had forced her mother, a teacher – the moment she got married – to resign from her position at the school.

My mother, an American immigrant to Canada at the time, expressed her disgust at such discriminatory rules at the time.

“What makes a wife or mother less effective as a teacher?” I remember my mother saying. (more…)

Barris Beat

Hands off our Greenbelt!

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Where development and Greenbelt collide. #ONGreenbelt

On a recent nighttime flight home from a trip out West, I looked out the passenger jet window. Our landing approach toward Pearson took the flight across terrain northeast of the GTA. In the darkness, I spotted a cluster of lights I knew to be Uxbridge. A calmness came over me. The darkness around that cluster of lights reassured me that our Greenbelt looked safe. Untouched. Protected.

Then this week, I heard the municipal affairs minister at Queen’s Park describe a land swap to reporters.

“It’s a bold action to ensure that we meet our housing target,” Steve Clark said.

Bold indeed. But in my view not in a positive way. (more…)

Barris Beat

A Frightenstein who done it

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The reporter had asked her final question about my appearance at a regional theatre in Alberta that afternoon. Jana Semeniuk turned her camera off. But she gestured for me to stay put for a second. She had one more question to ask, but she wanted to be sure it was OK to ask it on camera. I nodded.

“Have you ever heard of the TV show The Hilarious House of Frightenstein?” she asked. I nodded again. “Is it true you wrote that show?”

“Half true,” I said. “I co-created it with my writing partner Ross Perigoe. Want to know more? Roll your camera and I’ll tell you.” (more…)

Barris Beat

A true victim of our times

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Waiting on every table in a restaurant these days is common.

My friend and I arrived at the hotel restaurant last Saturday morning at the same time as a large family did. The waitress – who was doubling as the hostess – asked how many in the family party. And one of the women in the group began counting out loud the people they expected to join the group for breakfast. First it was six, then eight, and finally a dozen people. I watched the waitress’s eyes roll. She wasn’t happy.

“I’d have thought the waitress would be delighted having to serve a large group,” I mentioned to my breakfast partner, and I added, “Bigger tip.” When the waitress came back to seat my friend and me in another booth, I mentioned that to her. “Doesn’t serving a bigger group make you happy?”

“Not when I’m the only one serving the entire restaurant,” she said. “They just can’t find people to fill service jobs.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Truly unsung Canadian heroism

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On his own initiative, RCAF pilot Norville Everett Small, quietly made Air Force anti-submarine attacks more effective.

His first job in the RCAF in the Second World War was training young military aircrew for combat. U-boats, the submarines of the German Kriegsmarine (war navy), had descended like wolf packs on merchant shipping off the coast of Nova Scotia since 1940 – sinking upwards of 300,000 tons of freight destined for Britain each month.

So, Canadian bomber pilot Norville Everett (Molly) Small had to teach his green bomber crews not only how to handle their aircraft, but also how to surprise and try to sink U-boats on the Atlantic. He and his Canso (flying boat) crew got their first opportunity on April 28, 1942. They attempted to drop bombs on an unsuspecting U-boat. The bombs exploded, but wide of the target.

“The captain of the aircraft,” Molly Small later reported drily of his attack, “feels though the possibility of a clean kill is not very strong, he is certain that he made their back teeth rattle. He’ll do better next time.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Off-leash going a bit off-base

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Rare moment when Jazz took a break from running at the off-leash park.

I generally arrive there about sunrise and make a second trip there about sundown. As usual, I have to restrain my four-legged pal each time I get there; my English springer spaniel knows we’re going to the off-leash park. With varying levels of success, I try to keep my dog Jazz leashed and at the heel until we get inside the entry area. Then, when he’s relatively still, I open the main gate and give him his release command.

“Go free,” I tell him. And away he runs and runs. Almost without exception, it’s only a matter of moments before he defecates. And even in the gloom of the dawn or the dusk, I make sure that I follow him closely, so that when he crouches I’m there to stoop and scoop. (more…)