Barris Beat

Including all ‘the few’

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F/L William Nelson, a Canadian of Jewish faith,  who served with distinction in the Battle of Britain. Photo – Canadian Jewish Heritage Network.

“We are all in this together.”

It’s a phrase often repeated in times of crisis, a common call to arms or for popular solidarity, that leaders have adapted in so many different ways. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s told Americans (at his inauguration in 1933) to pull together since, “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.”

In October 1970, after the FLQ kidnapping of a politician and a trade diplomat, Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act, encouraging Canadians, “If we stand firm, this current situation will soon pass.” (more…)

Barris Beat

The edu-clock is ticking

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Potential new-look classrooms.

It was a gathering – yes, a gathering – we’d anticipated since the first days of the province-wide shutdown back in March. Monday night, we entertained half of the family – one daughter and her three sons – at dinner on our back porch. We actually sat together at the table. And we hugged the grandkids for the first time in four months. It felt wonderful. But the next morning, as we smiled in the afterglow, my wife observed:

“You know, once they’re back at school, we’re going to have to be extra careful.” (more…)

Barris Beat

State of Statues

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Down a country road, stands a stone marker, remembering Canadians in the Great War.

It stands about three feet tall. It looks like a stone pedestal, but it has no statue on it. It’s not located in an obvious public square or along a busy thoroughfare. It’s a war memorial, but it doesn’t glorify a victory, nor mourn a defeat, even though for Canadians it signifies tremendous loss.

When I’ve taken fellow Canadians there, I’ve always been struck by its simplicity, modesty and basic message. Its only identification is a brass plaque across one side of the pedestal with an inscription:

“Here, 8 May 1915, the ‘Originals’ of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, commanded by their founder Maj. A. Hamilton Gault, DSO, held firm and counted not the cost,” is all it says. (more…)

Barris Beat

New Normal or B-Western

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What normal looks like now. cbc.ca

Some friends and I got together this week. We were abiding by the no-more-than-10-in-a-bubble rule. Actually, there were only about five of us, and we weren’t even in the same neighbourhood. We’d gathered – as so many of us do these days – for a Zoom chat. After we’d caught up on all the latest, somebody sighed and wondered when we might all gather at a favourite watering hole again. There was a pause.

“Geez, I wish things were back to normal,” one friend said.

There was general agreement that sitting face-to-face, having the chance to give hugs to family and good friends, or enjoy a cool one on a patio together really would be great to have back. Later, however, I concluded there’s a great deal about the old normal I’d rather not return to. (more…)

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Canadians and a Dame

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Handshake with a Dame. London, 1995.

The occasion was our 20th wedding anniversary. As a gift to my wife Jayne and me, that spring of 1995, my parents had bestowed airfare to the U.K. We’d barely unpacked in London, when we saw on the news that one of our planned tourist destinations – Winston Churchill’s underground Cabinet War Rooms – was the to be visited by Dame Vera Lynn the next morning.

At a press conference, she’d be launching a fundraiser to assist needy veterans. Jayne and I decided to try to “accidentally” arrive there about the same time. I think we were first in line to tour the site the next morning.

“We understand that Dame Vera will be here,” I shared with the commissionaire at the ticket wicket.

“Oh, really?” the commissionaire kidded. “And who might you be?”

“Just a couple of curious Canadians,” I offered.

“Well, how appropriate. Today, Canadians get in free,” and he directed us – stunned but delighted – directly in. (more…)

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Zoomageddon

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The new normal.

All right. It’s time to take stock. I’m sure you are as sick of this lockdown as I am. Like you, I’m fed up not being able to hug members of my family. I’m frustrated each time I walk that I have to avoid friends and strangers on the sidewalk. I’m tired of sanitizing, distancing, minimizing, and washing my hands ’til they’re raw. And if I have to watch one more public service announcement or insurance ad on TV that ends with the same cliché, I may implode.

“It’s unprecedented times,” they say. “And we’re here for you.” (more…)

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The will that sparks change

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Double T Diner, where I worked and learned in 1965.

I should have recognized the prophetic nature of his view of life. I could have understood it, if I’d experienced as much living as he had. But when I met him, he was a 50-year-old dishwasher in the back of the Double T Diner, a popular roadside diner near Baltimore, Maryland, and I was a 16-year-old bussing tables and stocking shelves in the same restaurant, owned and operated by my uncle. I worked many a hot night side-by-side with Mr. Beale (as we all knew him) back in the summer of 1965. And early on in our kitchen co-worker relationship, I naively asked him what life as an African American had taught him.

“We shall overcome,” he said. (more…)

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With title comes responsibility

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Gen. Eisenhower encourages U.S. airborne members on eve of D-Day, June 5, 1944.

Conditions gave him little cause for optimism. A large low-pressure weather cell had socked-in England and occupied France. Low clouds and high winds portended the worst circumstances for a crossing of the English Channel. The Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces commander chain-smoked his Camel cigarettes and shared stiff drinks with other SHAEF members at the back of the Red Lion public house in Southwick, England, waiting for better news.

It came on June 5, 1944. The rain let up. Winds abated. The Channel calmed. And Gen. Dwight Eisenhower reclaimed the element of surprise and unleashed “Operation Overlord” against Nazi-occupied Europe on June 6, 1944.

“You are about to embark upon a great crusade,” he wrote to Allied troops on the eve of D-Day. “The eyes of the world are upon you…” (more…)

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A war hero who knew the limits of invincibility

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Pilot Officer Albert Wallace wearing his air gunner’s brevet.

A boy who’d become a man by joining the Royal Canadian Air Force and graduating as an air gunner (second highest marks in his class), marched to the harbourfront in Halifax on a fall day in 1942. Albert Wallace boarded the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth – transformed by the war into a troopship – and prepared for the transatlantic crossing to Britain to join the Allied air war effort over Europe. He figured the Queen E couldn’t be hit by U-boat torpedoes. She was a lucky ship.

“I know luck,” he wrote in his diary that day, Oct. 27, 1942. “I’ll never forget the close call I had trying to stop my CCM (bike) by jamming my foot against the front tire. I ended up flying ass-over-teakettle over the handlebars onto the streetcar tracks (in Toronto).” (more…)

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‘Backyarding’ – the new normal

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Flying squirrel – one of first attractions we noticed in our backyard this pandemic spring.

I needed the contact, the conversation. Anything. So, I stopped at his front walk, so that a friend and I could talk – keeping physical distance – about how each other’s family was faring. We moaned about the weather and the isolation. We tried to stretch the human connection as long as possible. But all too soon, we had to bring our chat to an end. I wished him well.

“It’s back to the garden,” he said.

I smiled and nodded as I left, because he like I has found himself spending a lot of this spring’s lockdown time in his backyard. (more…)