Barris Beat Archives • Page 68 of 86 • Ted Barris

Victory at Vimy nominated by Blue Heron – Up to you to vote!

Written by Ted Barris on October 10th, 2011October 19th, 2011. Leave a comment

Victory at Vimy nominated by Blue Heron Books. Now it needs the popular vote - You!

Voting ends tomorrow – Tuesday, October 11!

An extraordinary thing has just happened. Canada Reads, CBC Radio’s popular “battle of the books” competition, has announced for the first time, this year it will honour an author and book of non-fiction. As many know, the final stage of this competition features five personalities championing five different books. This year, the competition is subtitled “True Stories,” so the five celebrities will trumpet a favourite non-fiction Canadian title.

I need your help. The proprietor of Blue Heron Books in Uxbridge, Shelley Macbeth, has nominated my book VICTORY AT VIMY, published in 2007 on the 90th anniversary of the battle; indeed 2012 marks the 95th anniversary, so all next year we will pay even closer attention to this compelling Canadian story. Shelley’s recommendation has sway at the CBC; the Corporation recognized Blue Heron Books as one of this country’s best-loved bookshops.

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Roundabout rules

Written by Ted Barris on October 6th, 2011October 6th, 2011. Leave a comment

Colorado Springs, Colorado, has fallen in love with the roundabout... 68 times.

Last summer, I made an interesting discovery. Not surprising, since I was conducting research. But what I found wasn’t quite what I expected. Although it was actually quite close to home. I happened to be researching in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where, I discovered, they’ve been experimenting with something relatively new in their part of the world. What’s more, they’ve made a YouTube video about it.

“All about roundabouts,” the video says. “Getting in and getting out…”

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Politicians are people too

Written by Ted Barris on September 29th, 2011. Leave a comment

They’ve been polar opposites in front of the public for at least four years, through at least two campaigns. They’ve been bitter ideological enemies. Neither, it would seem, could have anything in common with the other. Neither could ever imagine sending the other a Christmas card. And yet, at the height of a heated political discussion, the other night, there was a pause.

“My opponent makes a good point,” he said. “I can agree with that.”

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Acknowledging musical gifts

Written by Ted Barris on September 20th, 2011September 20th, 2011. Leave a comment

The Town Tavern (at Queen and Yonge streets) was Archie Alleyne's home club from the mid-1950s until 1970.

The star attraction was not in the house that night. While many others were present – the luminaries of the Canadian jazz scene – perhaps the country’s best studio and jazz concert drummer of the day was absent. In fact, it was because he was absent, that all the stars came out. It was 45 years ago that Toronto-born drummer Archie Alleyne suffered serious injuries in a car accident. He was not able to work … at either of his jobs.

“I didn’t have a car, so I had to carry my drum kit on streetcars and the subway,” he told my father, Alex Barris, back then. “I’d play from nine at night to one a.m., get home with my drums by three a.m. and be up four hours later to go to my day job.”

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Days that change us

Written by Ted Barris on September 15th, 2011September 17th, 2011. Leave a comment

President Roosevelt signs declaration of war on Dec. 8, 1941.

There was a day in my parents’ lives that changed everything. It happened in 1941. My father was 19 that September. My mother was a year younger. They both had grown up and gone to school in New York City. But events that day just before Christmas, meant that my mother would see her brother-in-law and her future husband, my father, go off to war. My parents were both U.S.-born and their American president described the change that day indelibly.

“December 7, 1941, is a date which will live in infamy,” Franklin D. Roosevelt said.

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Three-generation learning curve

Written by Ted Barris on September 13th, 2011September 13th, 2011. Leave a comment

They were a long way from our consciousness in the dying days of spring. Nobody in our family had even thought of them back then. There was too much summer holiday ahead, too many barbeques, too many long weekends, for us to ever worry about them. But about two weeks ago – I think it was the Friday the CNE opened, the same day the advertisements began ganging up on us on TV and radio – suddenly, they were back in our faces: the three most important words of September.

“Back to school.”

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Trusted anchor

Written by Ted Barris on August 30th, 2011August 31st, 2011. Leave a comment

CTV News anchor Lloyd Robertson speaking at Centennial College in 2006.

It seems commonplace now, but for a long time those working in the media were not considered able, nor in some cases were they allowed, to do two things at the same time. Today it’s called multi-tasking. Thirty-five years ago, it was considered a violation of the working agreement between workers and managers in the media. The first person to break that barrier in Canadian news media will leave his revered spot on the air later this week.

“Unions were so powerful [when I worked] at the CBC,” Lloyd Robertson told a group of journalists a few years ago. “As an announcer there, all I was allowed to do was pick up news copy and read it on the air.”

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Citizen Jack

Written by Ted Barris on August 23rd, 2011August 27th, 2011. 1 Comment

Jack Layton (left) in a media scrum during the 2006 federal election. Toronto Observer photo.

Jack Layton gave me and my teaching colleagues a gift we shall always cherish. It was a political gift, yes. It actually took place in front of news cameras – during the 2006 federal election – so it was also a public gift. It was a gift that probably wasn’t appreciated by the mainstream media reporters present that day. That’s because, for a few moments, he ignored the big-name reporters from CTV, CBC and Global Television in Toronto in favour of the lesser known, less experienced and less jaded reporters – some of our first-year journalism students.

“I’ll take questions first from the Centennial College journalists,” Jack Layton said during the press conference that day.

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Strangers in the night

Written by Ted Barris on August 17th, 2011August 17th, 2011. Leave a comment

A reel-to-reel tape machine, the likes of which we used to record, playback and edit content for radio.

It’s always wonderful to be recognized for your work. It’s even better when people spot your work and recognize it as being yours. I mean, everybody knows what an Armani suit is. Or a Picasso painting. Most cinema buffs know what to expect from a Marilyn Monroe movie. Or a coffee at Tim Hortons. There was a time, when I produced radio shows in Saskatchewan, that my broadcasting colleagues might see me working late into the night and comment:

“Oh-oh, Barris is in the studio. I wonder who died?”

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When all about you are losing their heads…

Written by Ted Barris on August 9th, 2011August 9th, 2011. Leave a comment

Sturm und drang over pennies and dollars.

Here we go again. The past few days all I’ve been hearing is doom and gloom about the economy. Everywhere I look and listen – in the papers and on radio and TV mostly – I see and hear people running around shouting the modern equivalent of Chicken Little’s “The sky is falling. The sky is falling!” Only the 2011 version is:

“My stocks are falling! My stocks are falling!”

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