Posts in the Barris Beat category:

Barris Beat

Don’t know what we’ve got, ’til it’s gone

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Uxbridge Post Office, a symbol of what community can lose without a fight.

I’d overlooked it for years. I think it was back 2006 when a number of us organized a weekend to celebrate the township’s anniversary. We were artists, shop owners, civic workers and town boosters volunteering our time. Leading up to the event, we’d looked for a place to meet. That’s when financial specialist Brian Evans offered us a room at his Toronto Street office. I stepped into his board room for that first meeting and noticed a collage of photographs of a turn-of-the-century building framed on the wall. I’d never seen that Edwardian-era building before.

“What and where was that?” I asked.

“Don’t you know?” someone responded. “That was our original post office.” And when I asked where, they all said right where the new post office is today. “They knocked down the old one and threw up that new one.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Putting a face on The Rock

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Geraldine Hibbs illustrates how deep into the Bell Island iron ore mine our tour will go.

We met a hundred feet underground. The walls around us consisted of a seam of iron ore. It was about six degrees Celsius in there, but she said the temperature never changed year-round. At one point, when she turned out the lights and lit a single candle, she explained that was all the light miners had during their digging shifts – 10 hours a day, six days a week – year after year.

Then, she made the whole place human. She said her dad had worked there in the 1950s, lost the lower part of his leg in a mining accident, but was able to joke about it.

“He wagered strangers, he could put a foot down in one spot and his other 25 feet away,” she said. “When they bet he couldn’t, he took off his prosthetic foot and tossed it 25 feet away.” (more…)

Barris Beat

What-ifs of Canadian warriors

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Veteran Bill Novick offering reflections on his role in D-Day operations 75 years ago.

He sat down to rest. He sighed a long, audible sigh. And he smiled with a touch of satisfaction. Around Bill Novick, sat family and some of his fellow travellers gathered, this spring day, at a museum in Normandy, France. They all sensed that Bill had a story to tell: the time, just before D-Day, when his Halifax bomber was coned.

“Enemy gunners at Cologne (Germany) put up a box barrage (concentrated anti-aircraft fire) 3,000 feet high, two miles wide by 10 miles long,” he said. “Searchlights moved all over the sky … and we were coned by the lights. That required evasive action called a corkscrew.” That meant Pilot Officer Novick put the 18-tonne bomber into a violent dive one way, then another, at speeds up to 250 miles per hour to escape the lights and the anti-aircraft fire.

“It was four minutes of sheer terror,” he concluded. “If we were scared, it never entered my mind that I wasn’t going to make it.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Fred Barnard’s gift to town and country

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Fred Barnard as member of the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada in WWII.

I know this sounds like a cliché, but I remember the day as if it were yesterday. It was 16 years ago, in the summer of 2003. I was standing in line at a bank in town waiting to pay my credit card bill. Ahead of me were an older man and, at the head of the line a friend of mine. My friend asked what I was doing these days.

“I’m writing a book about Canadians on D-Day,” I said.

“Big anniversary coming up,” my friend commented.

“Yes,” I said.

Then it was my friend’s turn for service at the teller’s wicket and he turned to the counter to do his banking. That left only the older man and me in the queue. That’s when the older fellow slowly turned to me and spoke.

“I was there,” he said quietly.

“A veteran, are you?”

“I was there,” he repeated and then continued, “on D-Day.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Flights of fancy

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Barn silos on McGill University campus at Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue hide Montreal tourist attraction.

At first, it didn’t look like much. From a distance the building looked, well, like a barn. It even had a silo. But on closer examination, I could see signage and some outdoor exhibits. No animals. No straw bales. In fact, when I looked up inside the silo, there was no silage, but a scale model of a vintage airplane.

“There are artefacts in here that you’ve never seen before,” said John Lawson, the chair of the Montreal Aviation Museum. “Welcome to my second home.” (more…)

Barris Beat

The art and science of getting it

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Ontario Legislature at Queen’s Park. tvo.org

It took Opposition pressure at Queen’s Park, it took outspoken professional staff at libraries across the province, and it took members of a book club staging a read-in at the constituency office of MPP Sam Oosterhoff (Niagara West), but it appears as if some saner thinking has prevailed inside Doug Ford’s PC caucus. A clearly re-educated minister of tourism, culture and sport, has backed down on his planned 50 per cent cuts to Ontario Library Service-North.

“OLS-N will be reinstating their interlibrary loan program as of June 1, 2019,” Michael Tibollo said late last week. (more…)

Barris Beat

Superlatives if necessary…

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Yes, Kawhi Leonard’s buzzer-beater was great, but for legendary, how about Bill Barilko’s Cup-winning goal?

He took the pass. He moved around the arc on the floor around the basket. There were four seconds left in regulation time. And all spectators in the building were on their feet, leaping and screaming. At the corner of the offensive end, he turned, jumped and launched the ball.

“Is this the dagger?” one commentator shouted into a mike.

Then, with the ball in the air, the final buzzer blared. The ball landed on one side of the rim, then bounced to the other side, bounced a third time, dribbled a fourth, and then dropped through the hoop. “Yesssssss! Game! Series! Toronto Raptors have won!” the announcer screamed finally. (more…)

Barris Beat

The clarity of piles

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Back workshop of “The Artisan’s Gallery” in Muskoka.

From the highway, it looked like any other country shop. A big hand-made sign greeted us. Sculpture and other folk art dotted the grounds outside the building. Wrought-iron decorations covered the façade of the gallery. We met the proprietor at the door and he invited us in, through the showroom and into his workshop in the back.

“Be careful,” he said. “There’s stuff everywhere.” (more…)

Barris Beat

An inconvenient truth

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Uxbridge Mechanic’s Institute (Library)

It served working people. It informed the middle class. It was founded on the notion that acquiring knowledge should not have a price tag, that books and periodicals and public lectures ought to be universal. And its sister facilities functioned successfully all across Canada. But then, came an administration that did not think so highly of this public service.

“The public library has less relevance,” its then administrator seemed to be saying. “It’s an inconvenience.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Call of a fund and a friend

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Gord Kidder, at the memorial to the 50 murdered Great Escape air officers, including his uncle.

Returning home from a recent tour of European battlefields with students, I opened my phone to clear a backlog of emails. There was the usual collection of greetings, ads and enticements. Then, a subject line caught my eye.

“Bring Gord Kidder home!” it said.

Because it had an advertisement feeling to it, I got irritated. Why was my friend Gord Kidder being used in some sort of pitch?

“While Gord Kidder was in Europe recently to take part in ceremonies to honour his uncle, who was a POW in WWII,” the content continued, “he suffered a cerebral haemorrhage…” (more…)