Mark Bourrie, winner of 2020 Charles Taylor Prize, being interviewed March 2, in Toronto. Barris photo.
I don’t imagine it’s something you pay much attention to. When you rush into that well-known department store at Yonge and Bloor in Toronto to buy an umbrella or a birthday card or maybe even a coat with the store’s iconic green, red, yellow and blue stripes on it, maybe that’s when you stop to realize that the symbol is three and a half centuries old. Indeed, as we learned from a story published this week in the Toronto Star, the Hudson’s Bay Company store will be 350 years old come this May 2, 2020.
“What’s more, the history of the Bay and the history of Canada are interconnected,” says Mark Bourrie, long-time journalist, historian and author of Bush Runner, a book about Pierre-Esprit Radisson, the acknowledged founder of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). (more…)
As a diplomat in the 1950s, Lester Pearson earned the Nobel Peace Prize for a unique response to conflict.
On Feb. 24, after he learned that Teck Resources Ltd. had decided to withdraw its application to build a multi-billion-dollar oil-sands development project in northern Alberta, the premier of that province stepped to a microphone in Edmonton to express his displeasure with Ottawa.
“The federal government’s inability … let us down,” Jason Kenney told the audience. Then, the premier continued with an oft-employed threat he’s used lately, that he will now seek “greater autonomy for Alberta (using) every tool available.” (more…)
WWII glider pilot, Martin Maxwell, attending Dutch Liberation observance, in 2015.
Early in May, almost 75 years ago, a Second World War glider pilot named Martin Maxwell tasted freedom for the first time in nearly eight months. On Sept. 17, 1944, during his second airborne operation, he had delivered British soldiers and equipment in a controlled crash landing near Arnhem, Holland, during Operation Market Garden, only to be wounded and captured days later. But on May 1, 1945, with the Germans surrendering all over Europe, Maxwell regained his freedom.
“A British tank came into our POW camp,” he said, “and we were liberated.”
This May of 2020, Martin Maxwell, a 96-year-old WWII veteran, will relive that moment, three-quarters of a century ago, as he re-joins me and our Merit Travel group for a 12-day tour marking the 75th anniversary of the Allies’ liberation of the Netherlands in 1944-45.
You can join us. Our tour plans include visiting the place where Maxwell was captured at the “Bridge Too Far” site in Arnhem. We’ll participate in the emotional “Silent March.” And we’ll tour the Scheldt estuary where 5,000 Canadians died clearing the way to the port of Antwerp and the final push against German Armies to liberate Europe.
Canadian vet Martin Maxwell receives adoring cheers and handshakes in VE Day parade at Apeldoorn, in 2015.
To this day, Martin Maxwell recalls every moment of liberation. Even with the war officially over after May 8, 1945, and now freed by advancing Allied armies, pilot Maxwell found ways to assist the oppressed people he encountered in former Nazi-occupied Europe. To speed their way home, he and a friend traded a navigation watch to a Russian officer for a jeep and six containers of fuel. They packed the jeep with biscuits and cheese and soon came upon Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
“In a small corner of the camp, called Kinder Heim (children’s home,) we found dozens of children dead and dying. A little girl ran up to my friend, threw her arms around his leg and called out, ‘Papa! Papa!’”
A woman in the home informed Maxwell that Hannah, this little girl, thought anyone in uniform was her father. Maxwell promised to return the next day with food and provisions for the children. He even traded four cigarettes for a doll he planned to give to little Hannah.
“The next day, we handed out the food and water,” Maxwell said. “And I searched for the little girl to receive this precious doll. A woman emerged shaking her head. Hannah had died in the night.”
The Second World War left deep scars on civilians and soldiers. That’s why veteran Martin Maxwell, at 96, insists that neither the freedom he and his comrades restored, nor the sacrifice Canadians made for peace, can be forgotten. If you’d like to join Martin and me – May 1-12, 2020 – seats on our Dutch Liberation Tour are still available.
In 1951 film A Christmas Carol, Scrooge (Alastair Sim) ridicules Cratchit (Mervyn Johns) about expecting both a day off and full-day’s pay.
In the canon of English literature, it’s not the zenith of composition. It doesn’t resonate like a Shakespearean soliloquy, or crackle like Jane Austen dialogue, or whisk you away like a magical J.K. Rowling passage. But, for my money, the exchange between Scrooge and Bob Cratchit, in A Christmas Carol, says everything about our times.
“You’ll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?” whines Scrooge, anticipating his clerk’s desire to have Christmas Day off.
“If quite convenient, sir,” pleads Cratchit.
“It’s not convenient and not fair,” snorts Scrooge, “You don’t think me ill-used, when I pay a day’s wages for no work.” (more…)
They are few, but this Facebook posting inviting readers to send veteran Fred Arsenault a birthday card, was a redeeming use of social media.
It’s just over a year now – Feb. 9, 2019 – that a young woman produced a video that showed her pitching a patio chair from a balcony 45 floors above the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto. Her stunt on Snapchat got thousands of social media hits. Instagram later picked it up and carried her response to the resulting charges of mischief endangering life.
“Chair girl wants charge dropped,” social media outlets said. (more…)
Alex Barris, my father, told stories as a career – via his typewriter or at a microphone.
He had a knack. Whenever he launched into an introduction, even if we were familiar with every word that followed, we knew we were in for a treat. My father, Alex Barris, had a unique talent for telling stories. And even if we knew it was a shaggy-dog story (one artificially stretched-out to build the suspense), we never tired of his telling it.
“Ever heard the story about the famous piano tuner?” he might begin. (more…)
I met a couple of teachers, a few years ago. At least, I came to know a little of their lives. There’s not much I can relate. They were both Polish. One was named Jan Ciechanowski, born in March 1882. And Jerzy Brem was born in September 1914, as the Great War began. They both came to the area of Poland, around Krakow, in 1941. Or, more correctly, they were brought there, to the small town of Oswiecim, which elite German armies then occupied. The Nazis renamed the place, Auschwitz. And here’s the way the Nazis’ records summed up those two teachers:
Jan Ciechanowski, teacher.Jerzy Brem, teacher.
“Jan, number 11193, executed Oct. 29, 1941” and “Jerzy, number 10190, executed August 19, 1942.” (more…)
Join historian Ted Barris and be a part of history! It’s Merit’s Dutch Liberation Tour 2020, commemorating the 75th anniversary of Canada’s role in securing victory over Germany’s occupation army and liberating the citizens of the Netherlands.
The tour includes visits to historic sites and attendance at commemorative events, including: “Bridge Too Far” site at Arnhem, National Liberation Museum and cemetery at Groesbeek, participation in Holland’s annual “Silent March,” attending Canadian commemorations of the surrender at Wageningen,travelling to Walcheren Island where Canadians completed the liberation of the Scheldt Estuary, and joining annual VE Day festivities at Apeldoorn… with lodgings in Amsterdam.
It’s a springtime journey when tulips bloom and the Dutch pay homage to their Canadian liberators. For more detail, go to:
An Ontario community pays the price for deregulation.
Anyone younger than 20 or 25 will not know this, but two decades ago this spring, the hospital in a small Ontario town suddenly faced a crisis. On May 17, 2000, seven children from a town school arrived at the hospital complaining of cramps and diarrhoea. The next day, 20 students were reported absent from another school in the same town, and on the day following, 33 more youngsters were absent from class.
It didn’t take long for area hospitals to see a trend of patients suffering from gastroenteritis symptoms. When townspeople suggested that the local public utilities commission (PUC) water protection system might be the cause, they got a terse response.
“The town’s drinking water is okay,” said two PUC officials. (more…)
Ontario teachers on picket lines. Owen Sound Sun Times.
It was one of those re-inventing-the-wheel sessions. Neither I nor my fellow professors at the college, where I taught journalism from 1999 to 2017, sensed we were having problems getting through to our students at that moment. Nevertheless, college decision-makers called a meeting for some PD (professional development) training, this particular day. They said they had great news!
“We’re going to make teaching easier for you,” the experts informed us that day. “Online teaching is the new wave in education.”
I think I turned to one of my colleagues and whispered in Doubting-Thomas fashion, “It may just be the wave that wipes us all out, or at least leaves us sputtering for our lives.” (more…)
