Posts in the Barris Beat category:

Barris Beat

Paying the piper

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A 25th anniversary celebration of Public Lending Rights for writers. PLR campaigners (l to r) Ken McGoogan, Andreas Schroeder, Anna Porter and Alan Cumyn (chair of The Writers' Union of Canada posed Thursday, May 26, 2011, at the Toronto Reference Library.
A 25th anniversary celebration of Public Lending Rights for authors. PLR campaigners (l to r) Ken McGoogan, Andreas Schroeder, Anna Porter and Alan Cumyn (chair of The Writers' Union of Canada) posed Thursday, May 26, 2011, at the Toronto Reference Library. (Photo courtesy Michelle Legault.)

Imagine for a moment, a shopper comes into your retail store. The shopper browses along a couple of aisles, pulls a few items from the shelves or the racks, puts them in a shopping basket. Then he leaves your store without paying a penny. Or, imagine a client enters your office. You’re a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer, an accountant or anyone offering a professional service. How likely is it that client will leave your office without squaring his account? Not very likely.

If the shopper or client did, you’d consider it shoplifting or theft and you’d probably call the police.

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Barris Beat

Aid, not Apolcalyptic nonsense

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The hospital at Sylmar, California, had to be demolished following the Feb. 9, 1971, earthquake.
The hospital at Sylmar, California, had to be demolished following the Feb. 9, 1971, earthquake.

The only time I came close to experiencing a natural disaster first-hand was in 1971. I landed in Los Angeles a few weeks after the 6.6 magnitude Sylmar earthquake rattled the San Fernando Valley. At the time, my parents and sister lived in the valley suburb known as Tarzana (where MGM studios shot all those movies with Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan back in the 1930s). I remember sitting in my folks’ living room a few nights after I’d arrived when I felt a faint vibration beneath me. I looked at my sister.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” she said casually. “Just an after shock.”

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Barris Beat

Keepers of the shelves

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School librarians give students more than a Library of Congress number and a table of contents.

I think I remembered discovering it when I was about 11 years old. Until then, I had kind of dismissed it as a remote corner in my life. I think because I happened to be in a brand new school – in a village northeast of Toronto – there were lots of other places I chose to explore first: the baseball diamond, the cafeteria and gymnasium. Then, Mike Malott, my Grade 5 teacher, challenged us.

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Barris Beat

Impatient to get on with life

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J.M. Barrie wrote
Reading from J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan"

I received a photograph online from my son-in-law this week. It shows his wife – our daughter Whitney – holding two very precious creations. One is a copy of the play/book “Peter Pan.” The second is her recently delivered son – Coen George Ross-Barris. The picture shows Whitney reading from the J.M. Barrie book in a hospital.

“All children, except one, grow up,” author Barrie writes in Peter Pan.

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Barris Beat

Keys to a musical life

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Susan Sparks (now Hall) at the time of her graduation from University of Western Ontario in 1967.
Susan Sparks (now Hall) at the time of her graduation from University of Western Ontario in 1967.

A few months ago now, our daughter performed a gig at a popular Toronto jazz nightclub called the Reservoir Lounge. Nothing particularly special about the venue. But when Whitney brought her piano, sax and bass combo on stage, the place just seemed to jump with the energy and interpretation of her music. Not so long ago, she and I talked about where that all came from.

“I always credit my being able to connect emotionally with expressing myself musically to Susan Hall,” Whitney said. “It’s not just that I’m telling the story with the lyrics, but it’s the story of the melody that a lot of singers don’t think about … It’s because of what I learned playing with her.”

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Barris Beat

Remembrance and the vote

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"The Canadians held on and won at Kapyong because they believed they were the best men on the hill that night," author Dan Bjarnason writes in his book. "And they were right."
"The Canadians held on and won at Kapyong because they believed they were the best men on the hill that night," author Dan Bjarnason writes in his book. "And they were right."

It was just over a decade ago, as I recall. We were on the eve of a different federal election. The membership of the local Royal Canadian Legion had asked me to address the Remembrance Day banquet. I chose to acknowledge veterans of a forgotten war for a forgotten principle. At the branch, that night, was friend and veteran Bud Doucette. I recognized him and those other Canadian volunteers who fought in the Korean War to uphold the peace charter of the United Nations.

“I felt very proud,” former Lance/Corporal Doucette told me that night. “The war and our service have gone pretty much unnoticed.”

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Barris Beat

On being a debate moderator

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Everything was going as planned, last Sunday afternoon. I had some errands to complete, my students’ news copy to edit. Then, I planned to wash and dress to be at the Durham riding debate venue half an hour before things got started. When I arrived and saw all the parked cars and not a soul outside, my heart sank. I realized the debate was scheduled for 7 not 7:30. I’d arrived just as the main event was about to begin.

It’s the first time in all the years I’ve done these things, that I’ve ever been late for an MC gig. (more…)

Barris Beat

Week of space shots

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I think after the assassination of JFK, it’s the most significant “Where were you when…?” event in our lifetimes. It was the time – as baby-boom teenagers and their parents – we stayed glued to our TV sets all night on July 20, 1969, to watch U.S. astronauts land their Apollo 11 module on the moon and then watched former test pilot Neil Armstrong take those famous steps and speak to the world.

“That’s one small step for a man,” he said. “One giant leap for mankind.”

Yuri Gagarin remarked in space " God"
Yuri Gagarin remarked in space, "I don't see any God up here."

In truth, however, the race for space began 50 years ago this week when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to be catapulted into Earth orbit aboard Vostok 1, a space capsule about as big as the Russian-built Lada.

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Barris Beat

Victories of heart and territory

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Mother Canada mourns her dead: key element of Walter Allward sculpture at Vimy Ridge memorial in France.
Mother Canada mourns her dead atop Vimy Ridge memorial in France.

It’s not often a person walks in the footsteps of an ancestor. Nor are there many opportunities to sense the sights, sounds and smells that someone who lived nearly a century ago experienced.

Recently, I read about such an experience when I was asked to endorse an application by a member of our community for the Beaverbrook Vimy Prize. As part of her application, Rebecca MacDonald, 17, wrote about her great-grandfather, Walter James MacDonald, an engineer in the 13th Canadian Mounted Police who served at the Battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917.

“Standing in the trenches and the fields of Vimy Ridge, I could feel his spirit,” she wrote.

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