Barris Beat

Peek-a-boo election campaign

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More election signs in front of the arena than candidates inside at the forum.

At about 6 o’clock, last Wednesday night, my Cosmos editorial cohabitant, Roger Varley, and I arrived at the Uxbridge arena and began setting up chairs. It was the night of the election debate that the newspaper had organized. And, as usual, it was an all-hands-on-deck effort. By about 6:30, Roger and I had pulled about 50 or 60 seats from the storage closet out onto the floor. We paused a moment, each scanning the arrangement as if to say:

“Do you think that’s enough? How many people do you think will show up?”

During most federal, provincial and municipal elections over the past 20 years or so, our all-candidates forums here in town, have indeed reflected the title. All the candidates (and sometimes more than we expected) have arrived and joined the discussions. (more…)

Barris Beat

A stage without Kenneth…

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The look Ken Welsh often brought to his December readings of A Child’s Christmas in Wales. Photo  – Charlotte Hale.

I can think of all kinds of memorable spoken quotations. Winston Churchill’s wartime proclamation, “We will fight them on the beaches…” Oprah Winfrey’s motto, “Think like a queen.” Danny Gallivan’s “Savardian Spin-o-rama” on Hockey Night in Canada. Not only are the words etched in my memory, so are their voices. But there’s another memorable voice I’ve always heard around Christmastime offering these memorable words:

“I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was 12, or whether it snowed for 12 days and 12 nights when I was six.” Of course, those are words of Dylan Thomas, from the opening of A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

But I have only ever heard one voice associated with those lines, that of Kenneth Welsh. (more…)

Barris Beat

Warriors’ invisible battles

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Anita Anand, stressing the important role family plays in treating PTSD.

It was a morning dedicated to dealing with invisible wounds among veterans. It brought together former soldiers and first responders who are coping with trauma, support groups trying to help them, and politicians finding workable solutions to post-traumatic stress disorder in Canada.

Among the first to speak, Anita Anand, the minister of national defence, climbed the podium steps on Tuesday to address the gathering. She paused, scanned the faces of those present and offered a personal note.

“This is a difficult time for the military community,” she said. “I wish to recognize and remember officer cadets Jack Hogarth, Andrei Honciu, Broden Murphy and Andres Salek.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Adapting to saving the planet

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Since the time of Lenoir’s “hippomobile,” it’s taken us 150 years to wean ourselves off combustion engines.

I’ve never been afraid to seek advice, particularly when it comes to legal matters, health care or buying a car. Several weeks ago, I raised the challenge of buying an electric or hybrid car in front of some knowledgeable friends. I play summer hockey with a group of men almost all of whom have worked in the automobile industry all their lives. When I asked what make and model of electric or hybrid car I should consider, just about all of them had the same answer:

“Within a year or 18 months,” they said, “they’ll all be making EVs (electric vehicles) of some sort. Not just Tesla, Toyota and Hyundai. Everybody.” (more…)

Barris Beat

“Sprinter” in April

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Hopes for an early patio gathering in Manitoba disappeared under a spring snowstorm. CJRB Radio.

It’s my fault. I admit it. I changed my car tires over from winters to summers last week. And that’s why we got whacked by a snow storm on Monday night. I tempted fate – figuring that mid-April wasn’t too early to switch over – and I caused all this rotten winter weather three weeks into spring. Mind you, I did hear Ed Lawrence say on the radio this week that if one wants to be brave planting some hardy trees and bushes early, it’s OK.

“Go for it,” said Lawrence, the former Globe and Mail columnist and chief horticulturist to six governors-general and seven prime ministers. And he was speaking on CBC Radio’s Radio Noon program just as winds and sleet were blowing past both his Almonte, Ont., home and mine here in Uxbridge. (more…)

Barris Beat

The case against hoarding history

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RCAF wireless radio operator Cobby Engelberg, during training in Canada in WWII. Photo courtesy Harvey Engelberg.

His original itinerary involved a flight from Canada to Israel, but when Harvey Engelberg received a letter of inquiry from France, a few weeks ago, his plans changed. Thérèse Férey and her husband, current owners of a farm in Normandy, wondered if Harvey was related to one Cobby Engelberg, a Canadian airman shot down in the early hours of June 6, 1944.

When Harvey explained that Cobby was his father, he changed his flight plans to include a side trip to Normandy.

“I own a farm in Bassenville,” Mme Férey wrote in her letter, “and we’ve found pieces of (your father’s) plane that crashed on our property. Would you like them?” (more…)

Barris Beat

When atrocity prompts profanity

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Civilian casualties in Ukraine. The Guardian.

For the past week, those of us trying to find words for the horrors of the Russian invasion of Ukraine have learned depravity has no end. First the invaders bombed apartment buildings and theatres indiscriminately. Then, they fired missiles specifically targeting civilian hospitals and schools.

Now Human Rights Watch has reported accounts of Russian occupiers raping women. Maria Mezentseva, an MP in Ukraine, reported one such case.

“There is one … scene when a civilian was shot dead in his house,” she told The Guardian, in the U.K. “His wife was raped several times in front of her underage child.” Added another Ukrainian MP, Lesia Vasylenko, “Most of these women have either been executed after the crime of rape, or they have taken their own lives.” (more…)

Barris Beat

What half the world is missing

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Physicist Chien-Shiung Wu (right) at Berkley in WWII.

One morning last week, our daughter called and asked if I would drive our granddaughter to high school. I eagerly took on the taxi duty, if only to help share the load of ferrying kids to school, but mostly for the chance to catch up with our granddaughter. During the trip to school that morning, I learned that she was enjoying her drama, phys ed and French classes. But our granddaughter’s favourite subject was science.

“I did an essay on Chien-Shiung Wu,” she said, “and got 100 per cent.”

“I’ve never heard of her,” I admitted.

“She was known as the ‘first lady of physics,’” she said proudly. (more…)

Barris Beat

Identity lost and found

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Uxbridge Oilies Oldtimers Hockey Club.

Last Sunday, about 1 o’clock in the afternoon, I disappeared. I wasn’t hiding. I wasn’t trying to escape. In fact, I’d just returned home from a getaway-weekend hockey tournament in Bancroft – an annual event my oldtimers teammates and I enjoy.

As I arrived home, however, I felt my pocket, noticed my wallet was missing. I began retracing my steps. One of my hockey buddies and I had stopped for coffee. I’d paid the cashier, picked up the coffee cups and pastry and promptly forgot my wallet at the cash.

“Did anybody turn in a wallet left on the counter?” I asked an employee over the phone.

“Not that I know of,” she said.

I asked her to check with a supervisor or manager. But the answer was the same. Nothing in the lost-and-found. Nothing on the counter, the floor, anywhere. The wallet I’d absentmindedly left behind was gone. (more…)

Barris Beat

A new assault up Juno Beach

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Cpl Fred Barnard of the Queen’s Own Rifles.

It’s just 20 years ago I learned about the toughest battle of Fred Barnard’s life. On a spring morning in 1944, our Uxbridge neighbour (then just 22) found himself on a landing craft with the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada about to storm the Normandy beach codenamed Juno. He had no family in France that needed saving. He knew none of the German soldiers occupying those Norman towns and seaports.

Rifleman Don Barnard of the Queen’s Own Rifles.

Still, he’d felt so compelled by the call for Canadians to help liberate the French from Nazi occupation that he and his brother Don travelled halfway around the globe to join the D-Day invasion on June 6.

“Give ’em hell,” Fred had yelled to his 20-year-old brother on the same landing craft.

Then, moments later, as he dashed for cover, among the first Canadians to penetrate Hitler’s Fortress Europe, Fred faced a horrific dilemma. There, in the sea water not yet ashore, he saw his brother with a bullet hole in his chest – dead before he’d even reached the sea wall. (more…)