Posts in the Barris Beat category:

Barris Beat

Flying emblems for good and evil

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New flag for a coming Canada Day.

A few weeks after the storm, amid our yard debris, I found the tattered remains of the Canadian flag that had hung over the entrance to our house for a number of years. The state of the cloth – shredded and torn by the fury of the storm – inspired me to buy a new Red Maple Leaf (albeit a smaller one than usual) and hang it outside our home. One of my neighbours noticed that the replacement flag looked a bit different.

“Your other one was a lot bigger,” he pointed out. “Why a smaller Maple Leaf?”

I shrugged and said, “For the moment, that was the only size I could find.” But what I didn’t say to my neighbour at the time was that these days I’m a bit conflicted about displaying national emblems, and in particular the Canadian flag in anything that looks like a grandiose statement. (more…)

Barris Beat

Tony Mellaci – first responder for two generations

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Sergeant medic Tony Mellaci overseas 1945.

He saved my father. Then, he saved me. In fact, he saved both of us multiple times. The first instance occurred 80 years ago this December. Just before Christmas of 1942, both Tony Mellaci and my father, Alex Barris, arrived at Camp Phillips – a U.S. Army training facility in Kansas. The army had posted them there to train as medics in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. Then, something happened Christmas Eve.

“They told me to go to the headquarters barracks and pick up a soldier who was sick, and deliver him to the hospital. So, I and another ambulance driver picked up your father (although I didn’t know him at the time) and we took him to the hospital,” Mellaci told me. “But we never saw the sick soldier. We stayed in the cab while other medics loaded him into the ambulance.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Only as strong as the weakest link

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Tool hooks salvaged from May 21 tornado that hit Uxbridge.

In our quest for some normalcy around the house, my wife and I are still trying to sort and reorganize stuff after the windstorm on May 21. As a consequence, our back porch (whose screened-in space we normally enjoy on summer evenings) has become a repository for salvage from the garage, tool shed and dishevelled yard. The other day, for example, I came across a bunch of short 2X4s with tool holders attached. They’d bounced loose when the garage was crushed. So, I began prying the holders from the wood.

“If I salvage the tool holders now, I won’t have to track them down when we restore the garage at some point,” I thought. “Who knows whether they’ll even be available down the road?” (more…)

Barris Beat

Steps to recovery

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What is now wreckage was once a garage of tools, nuts and bolts and sports gear.

It’s funny what the eye never sees or what’s in plain sight, but not noticed. A week or so into the aftermath of the derecho – that’s now part of our weather history – I attempted some clean-up around our yard. A piece of chrome in the grass caught my eye. When I brushed off the dirt and shingle debris it’d been hidden under, I realized it was a tightly coiled spring. It was so clean and shiny, it could’ve come right out of a hardware store bin. Then (as I’ve found myself doing a lot the last couple of weeks) I put the spring in my pocket and asked myself:

“Where did that come from?”

I don’t think I’m alone when I suggest Uxbridge residents have experienced scenes like those we’ve watched for years on CNN of Americans in tornado alley sifting through the debris of their decimated homes after the twister went through. They were trying to salvage something of what was, a morsel of the normalcy from just hours before. (more…)

Barris Beat

Where have all our sentries gone?

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Spruces, pines, basswoods and maples were Ronnie’s sentry trees on our street.

I remember a sultry afternoon in the 1990s, a few years after my wife and I and our two daughters had arrived and put down roots here in Uxbridge. I was sitting on our neighbour’s porch. The July sunshine beat down on Balsam Street North with all the intensity of a mid-summer heat wave. My neighbour, Ronnie Egan, had invited me to sit for a few minutes’ rest from cutting grass. We were both enjoying the shady respite, when she pointed to the Manitoba maple trees that deflected the intense rays of the afternoon sun from both her house and mine.

“Sentries,” she said. “They’re like sentries up and down our street.”

I noted her military terminology referring to the trees – she being a Second World War veteran of the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service – and wondered why she’d chosen that word to describe the mature trees along our street. (more…)

Barris Beat

Not quite Oz

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Victoria Day weekend storm came right up my street in Uxbridge.

About midday on Sunday, nearly 24 hours after the storm that hit south-central Ontario, a cluster of people came walking down Balsam Street North toward us. My wife and I were piling a wall of tree debris in front of our home. We must’ve looked like zombies dragging branches and brush to and fro. We suddenly realized the cluster of people was our three grandsons, our daughter and son-in-law from a few blocks away in Uxbridge. My grandson ran up and embraced me.

“Just wanted to hug you,” he said.

“Me too,” I said and for the first time in hours I felt human again. (more…)

Barris Beat

Peek-a-boo election campaign

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More election signs in front of the arena than candidates inside at the forum.

At about 6 o’clock, last Wednesday night, my Cosmos editorial cohabitant, Roger Varley, and I arrived at the Uxbridge arena and began setting up chairs. It was the night of the election debate that the newspaper had organized. And, as usual, it was an all-hands-on-deck effort. By about 6:30, Roger and I had pulled about 50 or 60 seats from the storage closet out onto the floor. We paused a moment, each scanning the arrangement as if to say:

“Do you think that’s enough? How many people do you think will show up?”

During most federal, provincial and municipal elections over the past 20 years or so, our all-candidates forums here in town, have indeed reflected the title. All the candidates (and sometimes more than we expected) have arrived and joined the discussions. (more…)

Barris Beat

A stage without Kenneth…

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The look Ken Welsh often brought to his December readings of A Child’s Christmas in Wales. Photo  – Charlotte Hale.

I can think of all kinds of memorable spoken quotations. Winston Churchill’s wartime proclamation, “We will fight them on the beaches…” Oprah Winfrey’s motto, “Think like a queen.” Danny Gallivan’s “Savardian Spin-o-rama” on Hockey Night in Canada. Not only are the words etched in my memory, so are their voices. But there’s another memorable voice I’ve always heard around Christmastime offering these memorable words:

“I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was 12, or whether it snowed for 12 days and 12 nights when I was six.” Of course, those are words of Dylan Thomas, from the opening of A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

But I have only ever heard one voice associated with those lines, that of Kenneth Welsh. (more…)

Barris Beat

Warriors’ invisible battles

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Anita Anand, stressing the important role family plays in treating PTSD.

It was a morning dedicated to dealing with invisible wounds among veterans. It brought together former soldiers and first responders who are coping with trauma, support groups trying to help them, and politicians finding workable solutions to post-traumatic stress disorder in Canada.

Among the first to speak, Anita Anand, the minister of national defence, climbed the podium steps on Tuesday to address the gathering. She paused, scanned the faces of those present and offered a personal note.

“This is a difficult time for the military community,” she said. “I wish to recognize and remember officer cadets Jack Hogarth, Andrei Honciu, Broden Murphy and Andres Salek.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Adapting to saving the planet

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Since the time of Lenoir’s “hippomobile,” it’s taken us 150 years to wean ourselves off combustion engines.

I’ve never been afraid to seek advice, particularly when it comes to legal matters, health care or buying a car. Several weeks ago, I raised the challenge of buying an electric or hybrid car in front of some knowledgeable friends. I play summer hockey with a group of men almost all of whom have worked in the automobile industry all their lives. When I asked what make and model of electric or hybrid car I should consider, just about all of them had the same answer:

“Within a year or 18 months,” they said, “they’ll all be making EVs (electric vehicles) of some sort. Not just Tesla, Toyota and Hyundai. Everybody.” (more…)