Barris Beat Archives • Page 74 of 86 • Ted Barris

Making census of the data

Written by Ted Barris on August 11th, 2010August 11th, 2010. Leave a comment

On a hypothetical day, responding to downtown apathy, the township votes against redeveloping the main street. Or, guessing about a population shift, the public school board makes plans to dismantle one of the town’s elementary schools. And then, wildly projecting buyer trends, several of the big-box stores in town decide to forgo sales for gardeners, truck enthusiasts or on Boxing Day.

In these make-believe scenarios, the municipality, the board and retailers are quite happy to ignore information readily and often freely provided by Statistics Canada in its regular written census. They would agree with the current Industry Minister’s perception that Canadians can do without the long-form census.

“The state has no right to demand intrusive information,” Tony Clement told reporters, and further that “up to 24 per cent of Canadians believe [they] should not be forced to answer it.”

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Cost of lighting the way

Written by Ted Barris on August 4th, 2010. Leave a comment

Courtesy Fisgard Lighthouse National Historic Site.

On Nov. 16, 1860, George Davies made history. The lighthouse keeper climbed the newly constructed, 15-metre-high, conical tower of Fisgard Lighthouse at the entrance to Esquimalt naval harbour on Vancouver Island. His appointment not only helped the British claim sovereignty of the Pacific Coast, it also made a statement about public investment in literacy. In addition to his salary for the nightly lamp lighting atop Fisgard, keeper Davies received a $150 stipend to purchase magazines and books.

“It is of the utmost importance to the interests of the Lighthouse Service,” the Governor of Vancouver Island stated at the time, “that the minds and intellects of the lighthouse keepers should not be allowed to stagnate in their isolated and … desolate stations.”

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Retreat, but write

Written by Ted Barris on July 26th, 2010July 27th, 2010. Leave a comment

At Sage Hill Writing Experience, writers (l-r) Shar Mitchell, Gayle Sacuta and Linda Killick, pose with Ted Barris in the Saskatchewan sunshine.

Shar Mitchell and I greeted each other like old friends. We are. But we haven’t seen each other in years. We exchanged smiles and a hug. We got caught up on spouses and kids. We reminisced about the 1970s when she – then Shar Lenz – felt disillusioned with nursing and expressed an interest in the media. I offered some leads and she landed a job in television. She never looked back. From TV producer to feature writer to actor to concert tour assistant for the ’70s band Seals and Crofts, Shar’s professional life has brimmed with travel and experience. But with pleasantries over, she asked for my help with her next challenge.

“For 10 years I’ve been carrying this story like a yoke,” she said to me this week.

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The spirit of writing

Written by Ted Barris on July 20th, 2010July 23rd, 2010. 1 Comment

It was a reverent moment. Our host entered. We had all enjoyed our first meal in the dining hall together, while on the wall over our shoulders a painting depicted Christ and the apostles at The Last Supper. Our host – a middle-aged monk – apologized that not all seven Franciscans normally resident there could be present; two of them – men in their late 80s – had recently been moved to hospital for elder care, he said. Nevertheless a younger 70-ish Brother Dominic bid us welcome.

“We are brothers of prayer,” he said. “But we welcome you here to St. Michael’s, your home away from home.”

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Food for thought

Written by Ted Barris on July 13th, 2010July 13th, 2010. Leave a comment

Post card of The Double T Diner in Baltimore, Maryland, c. 1960.

It’s kind of like breezing by Baked at Frankie’s on a summer morning. Frank and Donna Van Veghel are sitting on a bench out front taking a break, sharing a coffee and the day’s news. Or, it’s like arriving at The Tin Mill when Don Andrews is there at the door greeting his guests. My wife, my sister and I were travelling back from the U.S. through Pennsylvania last weekend. North of Harrisburg we stopped for breakfast at a roadside restaurant called Angie’s Diner.

“Is there really an Angie?” I asked the waitress.

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When walls come tumbling down

Written by Ted Barris on July 11th, 2010July 11th, 2010. Leave a comment

I’d been planning the demolition of my garage for a long time. Built sometime in the middle of the last century, my fast disintegrating, single-car enclosure – I had come to realize – had outlived its usefulness and had to go. So, over the weekend, I hired a friend and his future son-in-law to help me bring the old building down. But what the destruction of my old garage revealed as it came down was a great deal more than I expected. For example, as we three demolition types took a break last Saturday afternoon, I asked my longtime next-door neighbour, Ronnie Egan, when she thought the garage had been built.

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A voice of unity

Written by Ted Barris on June 29th, 2010June 30th, 2010. 3 Comments

He helped save Canada.

Aside from times during the two world wars, I think some of this country’s darkest days occurred in the years immediately following the Centennial in 1967. First with the St-Jean-Baptiste riots and bombings in Montreal (1968), then during the October crisis (1970), when the FLQ kidnapped and killed cabinet minister Pierre Laporte in Quebec City, hope for maintaining a united Canada seemed bleakest in those early 1970s.

Then, in November 1976, the Parti Quebecois came to power on a platform that included Quebec’s separation from Canada. I worked as a radio producer/host for CFQC in Saskatoon in those years. Our morning program was heard all over the three Prairie provinces. And I remember our station manager, Dennis Fisher, calling us together soon after the PQ’s historic victory that autumn.

“The nation has never been so threatened,” he said. “It’s up to us to do something.”

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Memorable but forgotten

Written by Ted Barris on June 25th, 2010June 30th, 2010. Leave a comment

The morning that 90,000 troops of the People’s Army of North Korea crossed the 38th Parallel to invade South Korea — June 25, 1950 — Don Hibbs was driving the first of his nighttime cab customers across town in Galt, Ont. If he’d turned on his car radio, Hibbs might also have heard that the five-year-old United Nations Security Council was then considering a resolution to “furnish assistance to [South Korea] to repel the armed attack and restore international peace and security in the area.” The resolution amounted to a declaration of war between the Koreas. And it changed Don Hibbs’ life.

To read more, click here for the full story.

A claim of security

Written by Ted Barris on June 23rd, 2010June 30th, 2010. Leave a comment

It was about 6:15 the other morning. Nothing was stirring outside. I happened to be out giving the dog one last run past the fire hydrant before leaving for the city. My wife had pulled the car into the street. I noticed her staring straight ahead with a look of total surprise on her face. I looked in the same direction.

There, about 20 metres away, a deer (I think it was a doe) dashed across the road, paused on a neighbour’s lawn, then just as quickly bounded several times into a backyard and disappeared over a fence.

“She looked petrified,” my wife commented.

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Just give it time

Written by Ted Barris on June 18th, 2010June 23rd, 2010. Leave a comment

We played the part of the cavalry last Friday night. You know, charging in at the last moment to save the day. Well, maybe it wasn’t quite that dramatic. But my wife and I provided our tag-team babysitting service to our daughter and son-in-law that evening. Of course, for us, the assignment was anything but a hardship. We revelled in the chance for quality time with our two-year-old granddaughter and nine-month-old grandson. And it turns out that’s exactly what our adult kids needed too.