When I got there, members of our organization, including myself, clustered the meeting chairs into a smaller grouping. It appeared there would be fewer people coming today. Indeed, the president pushed the lectern closer to the chairs since there wouldn’t be as large an audience.
“Not very many here today,” one man said.
“Getting worse too,” said another, noting the recent passing of a friend and regular member. (more…)
As I recall, it was a summer morning. It might have been around the July 1 anniversary. It didn’t matter. That whole summer of 1967 had had a birthday feeling to it. In any case, I was just rising from a rare sleep-in. But even in my half-conscious state I remember hearing a sound in the distance. It was the diesel whistle of a locomotive approaching the level crossing in Pontypool, Ont., just south of where I was rising from bed.
“Daa. Daa. Da-da,” the diesel horn announced.
“What the heck is that?” I called out to my folks. And just as quickly as I asked, I realized that it was the first four notes of “O Canada” coming from that train whistle. About 15 minutes later, when I’d arrived at the station, where coincidentally the train stopped for a visit, I discovered it was the Confederation Train. (more…)
Her mother told me that she was shy. Kervinya Driscoll said that when her daughter Lovinya was young, she didn’t like speaking in front of other people. She was quite content to stay at home because it was out of the limelight and safe from the rest of the world.
“As a child my daughter was painfully shy,” Kervinya Driscoll told me the other night. “But then suddenly she came out of herself … and her world got very busy.”
On Tuesday night this week, I presented an annual scholarship to Lovinya Reid for both her academic excellence as a student at Centennial College and her activity as a volunteer making a difference. The June Callwood Scholarship is the college’s way of recognizing a student’s initiative both in the classroom and in the community. (As full disclosure here, I’d point out that I am on the faculty of Centennial and while I sponsor the June Callwood Scholarship, I have no hand in choosing the student who wins it.) (more…)
I’ve seen the ones with the blinds closed tight. There are others where the lights are clearly on night and day. And then there are the telltale driveways – particularly after snowstorms – that haven’t seen a car tire or truck tire tread since New Year’s. Their occupants won’t be back until April at the earliest. And they might as well have posted a sign on their houses:
“Gone to Florida for the winter!”
I don’t know whether it’s because the weather has suddenly been normal and delivered us the snow, wind and cold that February and March are generally supposed to. Or, maybe it’s because the March break is just around the corner. But a lot of my friends, neighbours, some of hockey buddies, a few members of my family and a number of my working colleagues have all bailed and gone south. I can almost hear them testing their snorkels or whipping their golf drivers in practice swings. They’re into escape mode. (more…)
I remember the moment, yes, as if it were yesterday. Those of us who were Edmonton Oilers fans back then will always remember. It was early in the third period in Game 7 of the Smyth Division final between arch Alberta rivals – the Calgary Flames and the Edmonton Oilers – in the 1985-86 season. And I remember stalwart CBC TV play-by-play announcer Don Whitman’s call vividly. His surprise and shock spoke for us all.
“Grant Fuhr clears, behind his own net,” he described rather calmly. But then, reacting to Oilers’ defenceman Steve Smith taking the puck, looking up ice and attempting a pass, Whitman continued, “They scored! Oh! Steve Smith, attempting to clear the puck out of his own zone, put it in his own net.” (more…)
In 1942, 19-year-old Ronnie Egan read an advertisement that said, “You too can free a man to serve at sea,” and she knew the Royal Canadian Navy was the right place for her. She served in wartime Halifax and left an indelible mark on the city and the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service there. Historian and Centennial College professor Ted Barris offers a wartime glimpse of Wren Ronnie Egan.
The full tribute to Ronnie Egan appeared in the Jan. 22, 2016, edition of the National Post.
I had worked late into this particular winter’s night. I could have stayed in the city overnight. But I felt I should try to get home through the snowstorm. In Saskatchewan, that wasn’t a smart idea. And when I left the highway that February night, I encountered snowdrifts too deep and broad for my 1967 Valiant to penetrate. It was 3 a.m. and I was stuck in a snow bank miles from anybody. (And this in a day with no cell phones).
“Never abandon your car in a snowstorm,” I recall all of my experienced prairie friends telling me. And yet that’s exactly what I did to try to get help. I managed to reach a farmhouse, call my brother-in-law and he roared down the grid road in his four-wheel-drive truck and pulled me out.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he scolded me.
“Except, I know you’ll rescue me,” I joked. He wasn’t amused.
Winter weather is not to be trifled with, whether in the middle of a frozen prairie or on a frigid downtown street. (more…)
We’re turning the clock back to the Second World War again this year. Only this time we’re returning to the centre of the war effort in Britain between 1939 and 1945.
As we did back in 2006, we will visit some of the most secretive locations in and around London, England, when wartimes in the British Isles were at their darkest and when people, places and events on the home front were turning the tide.
Among our stops this trip will be the D-Day Museum in Portsmouth, Winston Churchill’s war cabinet rooms under London, the Imperial War Museum, Bletchley Park where the Allies decoded the Germans’ Enigma transmissions, and the RAF Duxford Aerodrome home of the U.K.’s largest military aviation museum.
Other attractions included on this trip: Stonehenge, a Shakespearean play at London’t Globe Theatre, Lady Diana’s Memorial, Westminster Abbey, and the secret wartime tunnels under Dover Castle. Not to mention a traditional pub meal, visits to wartime haunts of spies and on and on.
For the full itinerary, accommodation, travel details and pricing, visit the Merit Travel website http://www.merittravel.com/product/the-secret-war-tour-to-britain/
Or call Georgia Kourakos, Senior Manager, Product Development & Groups, Merit Travel, 416-366-5268 x4259, or 1-866-341-1777.
Fire Canoe
Dundurn Press
Fall 2015
ISBN 978-1-4597-3208-7
How The West Was Won…
With Canada’s sesquicentennial (the 150th anniversary of Confederation) coming in 2017, Canadians will be reflecting on how their nation was born. At the middle of the 19th century, as the fathers of Confederation cobbled together a nation of four English- and French-speaking settlements in the eastern half of North America, what would eventually become the Canadian West looked remote and unavailable. So then, what sparked Canada’s rapid expansion from coast to coast?
Steamboats, that’s what! Or “fire canoes,” as aboriginal people called them. In large measure, the national dream of a Canada that stretched from sea to sea was realized aboard the large, Mississippi-style paddlewheel steamers that began plying western waterways on the eve of Canadian Confederation. In Fire Canoe, historian Ted Barris describes how and why this happened:
Fire Canoe brings the first-hand accounts of the steamboat packet owners, captains, stevedores, engineers, firemen, immigrants, soldiers, and carpetbaggers who travelled the inland waterways of the West between 1859 and the turn of the 19th century. The Mark Twain−like tales of their sudden arrival, the exploits of the people they carried, the impact of their regularly scheduled trips on waterways across the prairies, all come alive in Barris’s unique, you-are-there storytelling.
Critics’ praise for Fire Canoe:
“Ted Barris has done for the steamboat what Pierre Berton did for the railway…” – Globe and Mail.
“[This book] will surprise Canadians who weren’t aware that on the bald plains, riverboats once turned cities like Winnipeg, Prince Albert, and Edmonton into thriving ports.” – Toronto Sun.
“Barris’s best subjects are the personalities of the era – those adventurous and eccentric steamboat captains, traders and pioneers…” – Canadian Press.
“The book deserves a place in the library of those interested in the history and development of western Canada.” – Alberta History.
“An exciting narrative of the extension of the Canadian frontier across the prairies … with stories of over 100 steamboats that have never appeared in any other book.” – Steamboat Bill magazine.
