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Barris Beat

Remembering a JFK moment

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President John F. Kennedy asked everyone to contribute, serve and accommodate.

Like many, I have watched the retrospectives on TV and read the features in the weekend papers about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 50 years ago this week. I can remember where I was and how devastated I felt. But, while most are focusing on the tragedy of Nov. 22, 1963, I prefer to look at the triumph of Sept. 26, 1960. There on our modest black-and-white TV screen appeared the two giants of American politics in a Chicago studio with moderator Howard K. Smith in between.

“The television and radio stations of the United States,” Smith began the evening telecast, “are proud to provide a forum for discussion of issues in the campaign between the two major candidates for President of the United States.”

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Barris Beat

Physics and history

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Pilot Officer Frank Sorensen, 1942, served in the RCAF, including several years inside the Stalag Luft III POW camp in Poland.

I’m sure my teachers taught it during a day I was absent from high school. But somewhere in there I missed that important life lesson that came from physics class.

“For every action in the universe,” Isaac Newton said around 1687, “there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

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Barris Beat

Creating for nothing. Not!

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Magazine publisher Ritchie Yorke, left, hobnobbed with the biggest rock stars, including John Lennon of the Beatles. He wasn’t nearly as friendly with his writer-contributors.

I’m often asked what it’s like being a freelancer – someone who creates often without knowing whether the work will ever be published. Suffice to say, it’s a speculative jungle out there. I know. As a newspaper and magazine writer for some 40 years, I’ve been eaten alive whole more than a few times. A bit of background:

In the late 1960s, I enrolled at Ryerson (before it was a university) in the Radio and Television Arts program. While working towards my diploma (1968-1971) I craved a taste of the real writing world, so I began submitting ideas for features to magazines and newspapers.

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Barris Beat

When flood waters recede

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A Bow River bridge nearly submerged during the June 2013 flood in Calgary (National Post photo).

On the third floor of a building in the southwestern quadrant of this major city on the Prairies, sits a non-discript office. Nothing special about its look or identification. Just another downtown Calgary workplace. However, inside resides one of the most precious resources, the city discovered last summer, that helped thousands of its citizens weather perhaps the city’s least predicted natural disaster – the 2013 flood of the Bow River.

“[As many as] 2,159 free counselling sessions were delivered,” the Distress Centre in that Calgary office reported. “Online crisis chats increased 739 per cent,” during the flood.

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Barris Beat

Pre-Remembrance forgetfulness

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Landing craft from the troopship circle en route to Normandy beaches – June 6, 1944.

The conversation began much the way many of my chats with men of a certain age do. I got his birth date. The man told me he was born in January 1923. He quickly pointed out he’ll be 91 in the New Year.

Next, I asked about where he’d grown up and because he’d lived through the Second World War, where he’d served. He explained he’d been with the East Yorkshire Regiment on D-Day as part of the Operation Overlord invasion force.

I asked Geoff Leeming if he would be our honorary veteran at the Uxbridge Oilies Remembrance Tournament on Nov. 9 at the arena.

“Fine,” he said, “but you know I didn’t serve in the Canadian Army. It was the British Army.”

“Doesn’t matter to me,” I said. “You’re a veteran in my books.”

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Barris Beat

Closest to the premiers

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A few weeks ago, as I showered, shaved and made my way to work, CBC Radio’s local Toronto morning show invited audience comment. Host Matt Galloway wondered: “Where do Torontonians go, to find absolute silence?”

In a matter of a few seconds, I had an answer and texted it to him: “Sealed inside the rare books section at the Robarts Library, right down to the white gloves so your hands don’t rustle pages.”

I hadn’t thought about Ontario’s 17th premier in a long time. But when Galloway posed the question, I quickly remembered research I had conducted back in the early 1970s. I needed to find excerpts from particularly rare books and the only source was the then brand new John P. Robarts Research Library at the University of Toronto. By coincidence, this past week, I’ve been reading my colleague Steve Paikin’s new book, “Paikin and the Premiers.” Among other things, Paikin reminded me that Premier Robarts gave this province much more than a quiet research library.

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Barris Beat

Taking their marbles home

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Photo courtesy parentdish.co.uk

What’s with these guys? This week, Stephen Harper, the leader of the largest dominion in the 64-year-old, 53-member Commonwealth – covering a quarter of the world’s total land mass and including a third of the world’s total population – told fellow members he’d decided not to attend the upcoming meeting of the community in Sri Lanka. He said he wasn’t happy with the human rights record of the host nation’s president. So, in a desire to protect what he felt are the values of Canadians, he’s decided not to show up. It was the prime ministerial equivalent of a schoolyard child’s pout:

“Nya, nya, na-nya nya!”

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Barris Beat

Gifts of a fill-in mom

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There’s generally at least one of these in every neighbourhood. This person is most often extremely well grounded in the community or has lived there for years. People next door or down the block all feel they could trust this individual with their mother or their kids. I had a proxy parent like this. Only I didn’t realize I needed her as a surrogate until I was a young adult.

I knew her as “Ma Ross.”

Dick and Betty Ross met on the dance floor at the Palais Royale during the Second World War.

Actually her name was Betty Ross. She was born Helen Elizabeth Watson on July 11, 1920, in Toronto. When she was four, her father died. So, she was raised by a caring brother. Betty came of age during the Second World War, fell in love with an RCAF Spitfire pilot – when they danced on terrace of the Palais Royale on a night in 1940 – and waited for her beau, Richard Ross, to come home safely from the air war overseas. In the 1950s, I met Betty through her son, David, who’d become my closest friend in elementary school in Agincourt, Ont. But that’s not when she became my fill-in mom.

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Barris Beat

The face of writing

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WCDR volunteers at the “Word on the Street” booth last Sunday afternoon in Toronto”s Queen’s Park Circle. (l-r) Ted Barris, Deepam Wadds, Donna Thompson & Adele Simmons.

The man approached us with plenty of confidence. He seemed self-assured, but had an inquisitive look on his face too. He pulled out a pen and paper ready to make some notes about who we were. One of us at our booth, on Wellesley Street in Toronto, asked him the burning question of the day:

“Are you a writer?”

“Sure am, “ he said. “I’m a poet. Have been all my life.”

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Barris Beat

Going off half-cocked

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I remember it like yesterday. Students in my broadcasting class seemed particularly rowdy that morning. They didn’t appear to want to calm down to take in the lecture. I’d had an unusually difficult commute to the campus. I began the prerequisite attendance check, couldn’t get the students to respond and came to a name on the attendance list I sensed had been a regular absentee. She bore the brunt of my frustration.

“You know, you should pay more attention when I call your name,” I said to the young woman. “If you paid more attention, perhaps your grades would be better.”

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