Last Monday’s Candidate Forum in Uxbridge featured those vying for Mayor’s, Regional Councillor’s and Regional Chair’s positions. Photo John Cavers.
They’d just turned off the lights and cameras. The Rogers on-air microphones had gone silent. I’d finished my wrap-up of the second candidates’ forum over at the Uxbridge arena on Monday night. But we still had people standing in line at the floor mike eager to pose a few last questions. Then, with the broadcast done, a woman stepped to the mike and began to describe an eye-sore – a grain elevator – in her part of town. I wanted her to bring her concern to a question for the candidates, so I butted in.
“And the problem?” I said, expecting her to pose a question to one of the mayoral or councillor candidates.
A note popped up on my laptop one evening recently. It was from our younger daughter. She’d been going through some things in the latest phase of moving into her new house and she’d stumbled across an old black-and-white photograph. It was a portrait of a middle-aged man with a smile and a Stetson. Scrawled over the photo was an incomplete inscription:
“For ?” In other words, the photo was for some unnamed person. Then there was a sign off. “Come fly with me! Sky King. 11/21/79.”
As well as sending the digital copy of the photo, our daughter wrote, “Any idea who this is?” (more…)
Flag-draped casket of Sen. John McCain at Washington’s National Cathedral.
About halfway through Meghan McCain’s tribute to her father last Saturday in Washington, D.C, the director of TV coverage of Sen. John McCain’s funeral cut away to a shot of the middle rows of mourners in the National Cathedral.
Beyond the three former U.S. presidents – Obama, Bush and Clinton – and past the Republicans who wereinvited, sat row on row of American military people. They didn’t appear to be military brass, but relatively young Marine, Army, Navy and Air Force veterans seated in solemn tribute to their hero.
“Look at the military ribbons across those chests,” I thought, and then mused, “what a powerful statement of the man, the politician, the real state of America.” (more…)
Ted Barris brings lives of 30 Canadians in the Dam Buster raid centre-stage at Alberta war museum. (Richard de Boer photo)
It seemed all the world came to Nanton, Alberta, on the August 24-25, 2018 weekend. This small southern Alberta town – home to about 2,000 people under normal circumstances – played host to a special late summer event. People travelled from across Canada and the U.S. to attend the 75th anniversary commemoration of Bomber Command’s famous Dam Buster raid of 1943.
“They breached the dams,” author Ted Barris said, “and turned the tide of the Second World War.”
Sons, daughters and other relatives of the Canadian Dam Busters pose in front of museum Lancaster.
HarperCollins publishers and author Ted Barris joined the Bomber Command Museum of Canada, at Nanton, in a pre-publication date launch of Dam Busters: Canadian Airmen and the Secret Raid Against Nazi Germany, Ted Barris’s 18th non-fiction book. The official publication date is Sept. 11, 2018.
In addition to regular patrons of the museum, event organizers managed to attract the members of families representing 16 of the 30 Canadians who participated in the famous raid on the Ruhr River dams on May 16-17, 1943.
In the Second World War, when Nazi Germany threatened the very existence of Britain, the Royal Air Force called on its military aviators, and thousands more from around the Commonwealth, to take the war to its enemies. Under Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, Bomber Command often put a thousand aircraft per night in the air against Nazi targets. More than 55,000 aircrew died in those actions, 10,000 of them Canadians. Perhaps the most daring bombing attack happened after weeks of secret training of the Lancaster crews to conduct a low-level raid on the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams; the crews breached the first two dams, damaged the third, and crippled production in the Ruhr valley substantially. But the cost was dear; 53 of the 133 airmen died in the raid.
An evening for the Dam Buster families at Nanton. (Richard de Boer photo)
On Friday night, the BCMC hosted a meet-and-greet with just the 50-or-so members of the families of the Canadian airmen who participated in the raid. Nearly half of the 30 Canadians who flew from England that night, did not survive this hi-risk mission. Barris spoke to the families at the Friday social, applauding their commitment to come from so far to pay tribute to their fathers, uncles or grandfathers who’d served in Operation Chastise, which unleashed the famous bouncing bomb against the hydo-electirc dams of industrialized Nazi Germany.
Bomber Command Museum’s Lancaster with replica bouncing bomb in the aircraft’s bomb bay.
That evening members of the BCMC Lancaster crew brought out their prized Ian Bazelgette Memorial Lanc (altered temporarily to show the markings of one of the Dam Buster bombers – AJ-M). The crew not only fired up the Lancs Merlin engines, but spun a replica Upkeep bouncing bomb in the Lancs belly complete with aldis-lamp attitude lamps, while 200 museum visitors watched.
On Saturday afternoon, Barris presented a 70-minute talk/presentation to walk the audience – about 700 visitors in the BCMC hangar – through the details of the dams raid, but more importantly to tell the stories of the Canadian airmen who took part. With a number of Air Force personnel in the audience as well, Barris made sure nobody left the room without knowing just how powerful the Canadian role in the attack had been; he mimicked a line in the 1955 movie The Dam Busters, in which a British RAF officer notes in preparation for the raid, “We mustn’t forget the English.”
Barris pointed out emphatically, “No. We mustn’t forget the Canadians!”
Members of the BCATP Facebook group (l-r) Ken Meintzer, Les Mroz and Peter Whitfield at Nanton on Aug. 25, 2018.
I drove into the museum parking lot last Saturday morning. Leaning over the tailgate of the pickup parked next to me, several guys in ball caps and jeans surveyed their precious cargo. I peered into the back box of the pickup, but I couldn’t recognize the rusty tangle of metal and wires as anything I’d ever seen before.
“Can you believe it?” one of the guys said. “We salvaged it from a ditch just this morning.” (more…)
It just looked like a pile of paper from the outside. And I guess because it was paper, it sort of weighed a lot. But the plastic bag I used to haul all that paper to the curb had probably previously hauled groceries from a local store so it could take the weight. And if you looked inside that bag, you’d have seen a number of famous people – John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill and the Apollo 11 astronauts – all captured on the front pages of old newspapers with headlines such as:
“Kennedy Assassinated,” lamented the Globe and Mail in 1963.
“Churchill Mourned,” announced the Toronto Star in 1965.
“Man Steps On The Moon,” read the Toronto Telegram on July 21 1969. And the newsprint of the Tely, some of you will remember, was coloured pink! (more…)
In the 1950s, this is the kind of work ethic that got John Zentana and his family into Canada.
He was only 18, back in 1955. He didn’t speak a word of English when he and his parents arrived from Italy. And his skills were few; he knew how to sharpen knives, so his father could butcher what livestock the family had raised for food. But when John Zentana arrived in Canada, none of that mattered. The basic criterion for entry to this new country was simple.
“Are you all prepared to work?” immigration authorities asked.
A few months ago, you may recall, I was rationalizing walking my grandsons to school. I tried to make the point that it was both time and exercise from which both the boys and I could benefit. Well, this week those chickens came home to roost. I got the call.
“Need some summer escape time,” the daughters announced.
When I left on a short holiday, about 10 days ago, this fall’s municipal election in my home own looked rather dull. While the mayoral contest and the regional council races were shaping up to be competitive, the number of candidates running in our wards left several virtually uncontested and even on the verge of proclaimed winners. Within the span of my holiday, though, the picture changed radically. To quote a friend of mine:
World Daily News Report photograph, which the source readily admits is fictitious.
I think it was sometime last winter when one of my hockey buddies and I got talking about one of my favourite topics – history and history-making. He knew that I’ve always been curious to check out different, off-the-beaten-path stories. Suddenly, the latest one on his mind came to him and he blurted out the gist of it.
“Did you see the latest World War II story?” he asked. “They found a U-boat up the Niagara River near the Falls.”
I thought about it for a second, then said quietly, “I’ll bet you read that on the internet.”
“Yup. And there were pictures,” he added for verification. (more…)
