Barris Beat

Eyes and ears on crime

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My neighbour was out walking his dog, recently. We got talking and he asked me if I generally locked the doors on the family cars in the driveway overnight. I asked why. He said early one morning, recently, he opened his front door to let the dog out and saw several young people pulling on car doors across the street, testing to see if any of the cars had been left unlocked. I asked if the kids knew he was watching them.

“Sure,” he said. “I called out to them, and they stopped in their tracks.”

I should point out that my neighbour’s dog also noticed the youngsters fiddling with the car doors too. But my neighbour didn’t send his dog chasing after the intruders (although she might have licked them to death). He had a more valuable tool in his crime-fighting kit. (more…)

Barris Beat

Pros and Cons of Stay-cationing

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When the corn-on-the-cob disappears at the local grocer store, it can mean only one thing!

In recent weeks, I’ve taken to walking early in the morning. Every day. I follow a number of routes around town, each about five or six kilometres in length. The walks – sometimes I jog – remind me of the times back at high school when I would run 10 or 15 kilometres with the cross-country team, without even batting an eye. Anyway, one day last week, an acquaintance greeted me during my walk. “Why so early in the day?” he asked.

“Beat the heat, for one thing,” I said. “And because there’s nobody around.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Steve Oancia’s last flight

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Bernie Wyatt nearly fit perfectly into his cousin Stefan Oancia’s WWII RCAF tunic.

He took one last look. The transaction had transferred ownership of the property. The farm legally belonged to him now. But the old farmhouse had fallen into disrepair and would have to be demolished. So, Clarence Oancia made one last circuit around the house to see if there was anything worth salvaging. Then, Clarence remembered the attic, a loft in the top of the house, and thought he’d better check it too. He climbed the stairs, opened a closet door. And there it was.

“A World War II uniform jacket,” explained Bernie Wyatt, Clarence’s nephew. “[It was] in excellent condition.” (more…)

Barris Beat

The “just in time” mentality

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Where most busted washing machines end up – for pick-up at the curb.

Over coffee the other day, some friends shared an experience about modern-day delivery. A clothes washer had broken down at their house, so they weighed their options. Take the old one to the curb for pick-up and buy new, or try to extend the life of the old washer by attempting a repair.

Not surprisingly, my friend went online, learned about the problem and determined that a $10 part might repair the washer. The question was: How long would it take the part to arrive? It was a Saturday, but he ordered the part anyway.

“They guaranteed next-day delivery,” he said, then added sarcastically, “Sunday delivery? Not likely. Sure enough, though, next day we got back from church and this van pulled up to deliver the part. Couldn’t believe it!” (more…)

Barris Beat

In step with the environment

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The prairie dog that suddenly appeared.

It seemed an unspoken rule by the time I got there. Every step was deliberate, unobtrusive and (I hoped) non-destructive in this place of nature. I made my way through sage and other prairie grasses, closer to a mound where a couple of prairie dogs were playing. I didn’t want to scare them down their hole; I just wanted to get close enough to take a clear photograph. Then, I looked down and suddenly there it was.

A prairie dog emerged from a hole in the ground right at my feet. And he, or she, chirped at me, as much surprised to see me lording overtop, as I was to see an animal nearly under foot.

I aimed and fired my camera and got the picture. (more…)

Barris Beat

What makes a kid’s summer?

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My sister Kate  and I got an introduction to cottage life at the Globe and Mail cottages on Lake Erie in the mid-1950s.

I might have dismissed the email, but the subject line caught my attention. “A Quick Past Memory,” it said. A fellow named Bryan Graham contacted me this past week to remind me that his dad and mine had known each other on the job 60 years ago. He explained that he’d tripped over my name in a military newsletter and decided to get in touch to tell me about our families’ connection.

“My father, Al Graham, was a district manager in Waterloo for the Globe and Mail in the mid-1950s,” Bryan explained.

Of course, since my father Alex had worked as a reporter and then columnist for the Globe back then, I took a bit more time reading his note.

“The Globe and Mail owned a property on the shores of Lake Erie with 12 wooden, very basic cottages and a small recreation building,” Bryan continued. “I’m confident our families spent a summer or two there together in the ’50s.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Don’t know what we’ve got, ’til it’s gone

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Uxbridge Post Office, a symbol of what community can lose without a fight.

I’d overlooked it for years. I think it was back 2006 when a number of us organized a weekend to celebrate the township’s anniversary. We were artists, shop owners, civic workers and town boosters volunteering our time. Leading up to the event, we’d looked for a place to meet. That’s when financial specialist Brian Evans offered us a room at his Toronto Street office. I stepped into his board room for that first meeting and noticed a collage of photographs of a turn-of-the-century building framed on the wall. I’d never seen that Edwardian-era building before.

“What and where was that?” I asked.

“Don’t you know?” someone responded. “That was our original post office.” And when I asked where, they all said right where the new post office is today. “They knocked down the old one and threw up that new one.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Putting a face on The Rock

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Geraldine Hibbs illustrates how deep into the Bell Island iron ore mine our tour will go.

We met a hundred feet underground. The walls around us consisted of a seam of iron ore. It was about six degrees Celsius in there, but she said the temperature never changed year-round. At one point, when she turned out the lights and lit a single candle, she explained that was all the light miners had during their digging shifts – 10 hours a day, six days a week – year after year.

Then, she made the whole place human. She said her dad had worked there in the 1950s, lost the lower part of his leg in a mining accident, but was able to joke about it.

“He wagered strangers, he could put a foot down in one spot and his other 25 feet away,” she said. “When they bet he couldn’t, he took off his prosthetic foot and tossed it 25 feet away.” (more…)

Barris Beat

What-ifs of Canadian warriors

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Veteran Bill Novick offering reflections on his role in D-Day operations 75 years ago.

He sat down to rest. He sighed a long, audible sigh. And he smiled with a touch of satisfaction. Around Bill Novick, sat family and some of his fellow travellers gathered, this spring day, at a museum in Normandy, France. They all sensed that Bill had a story to tell: the time, just before D-Day, when his Halifax bomber was coned.

“Enemy gunners at Cologne (Germany) put up a box barrage (concentrated anti-aircraft fire) 3,000 feet high, two miles wide by 10 miles long,” he said. “Searchlights moved all over the sky … and we were coned by the lights. That required evasive action called a corkscrew.” That meant Pilot Officer Novick put the 18-tonne bomber into a violent dive one way, then another, at speeds up to 250 miles per hour to escape the lights and the anti-aircraft fire.

“It was four minutes of sheer terror,” he concluded. “If we were scared, it never entered my mind that I wasn’t going to make it.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Fred Barnard’s gift to town and country

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Fred Barnard as member of the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada in WWII.

I know this sounds like a cliché, but I remember the day as if it were yesterday. It was 16 years ago, in the summer of 2003. I was standing in line at a bank in town waiting to pay my credit card bill. Ahead of me were an older man and, at the head of the line a friend of mine. My friend asked what I was doing these days.

“I’m writing a book about Canadians on D-Day,” I said.

“Big anniversary coming up,” my friend commented.

“Yes,” I said.

Then it was my friend’s turn for service at the teller’s wicket and he turned to the counter to do his banking. That left only the older man and me in the queue. That’s when the older fellow slowly turned to me and spoke.

“I was there,” he said quietly.

“A veteran, are you?”

“I was there,” he repeated and then continued, “on D-Day.” (more…)