Posts in the Barris Beat category:

Barris Beat

Committed to the sea

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Catherine Wilson, John Potter’s daughter, reads her father’s wartime biography aboard HMCS Sackville, as Rev. Andrew Cooke presides over the funeral at sea.

She clutched the folded papers in her hands for quite some time. When the officer on board HMCS Sackville called upon her, she knew it was her turn to speak. Then, though unaccustomed to public speaking, Catherine Wilson stepped forward in front of the warship’s company and other civilians assembled there, unfolded the speech, and began:

RCN telegraphist John Potter during WWII. Potter family photo.

“My father, John Wallace Potter – better known as Potts – was born on March 10, 1922, in Toronto,” she said. “It took him three attempts to enlist before the Royal Canadian Navy finally accepted him in May 1941.” (more…)

Barris Beat

So what, if it’s only the first round!

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Joe Bowen never holds back his emotions during Leafs play-by-play.

For me, Saturday night was one of those “Where were you?” moments. I’d spent the day travelling to and from Brantford and made it home just in time to plunk myself down in front of the TV for part of game six of the Leafs-Lightning first-round Stanley Cup playoff.

I caught the end of regulation time with the score tied 1-1. Finally (because I sometimes watch games on CBC and listen to them on radio simultaneously), I heard Joe Bowen’s call as John Tavares’s shot trickled past Tampa netminder Andrei Vasilevskiy at 4:35 of overtime:

“They scored! They scored! Holy Mackinaw, they scored!” he shouted. “The Leafs are going to the second round!” (more…)

Barris Beat

A town hall to remember The Storm

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A derecho has wind gusts of a tornado, but not an organized funnel like a tornado.

It came out of a conversation my daughter and I had a couple of months ago. Whitney explained that one of her children’s teachers had commented about a little-known after-effect of last year’s tornado. She said teachers at the public school from time to time have to calm down their young students when rain pelts the building’s roof or winds moan outside their classroom windows.

“Some of the kids react badly when stormy weather hits town,” she said. “And they wonder if we’re about to get hit by another tornado.”

I admit that many such winds and rainstorms over the eleven months since the derecho whipped through Uxbridge on May 21 last year, have given me pause. (more…)

Barris Beat

Broadcasting 101, Mr. Poilievre

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We had worked for a number of months researching a documentary to air on CBC television in Edmonton. Back in the early 1980s, several of us freelance broadcasters had crafted a story about what would happen in Alberta when the oil ran dry. One can imagine the volatility of such a subject given Alberta’s economic dependence on fossil fuel production, not to mention hostility in the oil patch over the National Energy Program at the time.

“Before the documentary goes to air,” a CBC producer told those of us writing the documentary, “the content has to be lawyered.”

“Lawyered? Isn’t the CBC arm’s-length from politics?” asked one of my colleagues.

“That’s exactly why it has to be vetted,” the producer said. “It’s got to be fair to both sides of the debate.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Thank you, Your Majesty

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She’s gone now. Queen Elizabeth II died last Sept. 8, and was eulogized at Westminster Abbey 11 days later. Her son, the Prince of Wales, immediately acceded to the British throne as King Charles III.

“We mourn profoundly the passing of a cherished Sovereign and a much-loved Mother,” Charles said the day she died. “I know her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country … and by countless people around the world.”

While I’ve never considered myself a monarchist, I nevertheless do owe Her Majesty a debt of gratitude. (more…)

Barris Beat

When Canada’s sovereignty was young

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Arctic ice pack. carbon brief

Seventeen years ago, a number of Canadian and American scientists set off on a unique voyage – sailing the Bellot Strait, a narrow channel in the Arctic Ocean that separates the most northerly point of North American mainland from Somerset Island in Canada’s Far North.

For the first time in history their vessel crossed the strait in October (when typically it would be frozen). One of the scientists on the trip in 2006 noted that Canadian Coast Guard officials aboard the ship all had the same reaction.

“They were collectively terrified,” explained Michael Byers then director of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC. Terrified that the strait was entirely ice-free during the voyage, and therefore open to passage. (more…)

Barris Beat

Wonders need a Canadian update

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Locomotives crossed the Koksilah River gorge atop the Kinsol Trestle for 60 years.

Nobody told him to go looking for a wonder of the modern world. But about 30 years ago, when he moved from Calgary to Vancouver Island, model-train buff Ken Ortwein kept hearing about an architectural treasure not far from where he now lived.

He took his son and grandsons up the island on the Trans-Canada Highway, then into the remote Cowichan Valley. There, across a deep river gorge near Shawnigan Lake, he saw the Kinsol Trestle for the first time.

“I fell in love with the crazy thing,” he told a local news reporter. Then, as he noted in his diary, “I thought I ought to build a scale model of it. And so, it began.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Canada’s nuclear legacy

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Outside Nelson’s former post office…
… and down an alley way.

The archivist at the museum had no idea it was there. In fact, when Jean-Phillippe Stienne applied for and landed the job as new archivist and collections manager of the museum, archives and art gallery in Nelson, B.C., back in 2017, he knew nothing about the explosive history buried beneath his new office.

“I came here because it’s a beautiful part of the world,” Steinne, 43, told me during a speaking stop I made in British Columbia last week. “I’d actually been working here a few years before I knew about the mystery under the museum.”

When I asked what he was talking about, Stienne, or “J.P.” as everybody calls him, walked me out the front door of his museum (formerly the Nelson post office) and down a back alley to an adjacent building. He unlocked an exterior door, which revealed an inner door with a thick circular porthole window and a black-lettered sign that read, “Nelson’s Cold War Bunker.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Retail life cycle

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Dominion Dry Goods served Uxbridge for 42 years until this “goingout of business” sale in 1961.

One day last summer, I shared a walk with several of my grandsons. They wondered about an empty storefront on Toronto Street. “What did it used to be?” they asked.

“Ballinger’s store used to be there,” I told them. “You could buy clothes and shoes and all sorts of dry goods there,” I said.

“What’s dry goods?” one of them asked.

“Just about everything you’d ever want to buy that’s not food,” I said.

“You mean like on the internet?”

Well, you can imagine where the conversation went after that. (more…)

Barris Beat

Drinking, more or less

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My wife queued up at the grocery store the other day, she told me. The cashier began tallying her purchases, but then hesitated. She said she wasn’t qualified to process the purchase of beer and had to call on another cashier qualified to check through beer and wine.

“Does it matter that the beer is zero alcohol?” my wife asked.

“Oh, I see,” the cashier said.

And the person next in line at the cash behind my wife piped up, “Mine are zero-alcohol too,” he said.

Is it just our imagination, or has all this talk about the link between alcohol and cancer sparked a sea change in the habits of casual drinkers? (more…)