My checked luggage as a profit centre for long-suffering airlines.
It was just past 6 a.m. I was rushing through the Calgary airport to catch a flight to the U.S. a few weeks ago. I was relieved when I found nobody in front of me at the United Airlines check-in. I rustled up my passport and sighed with relief that I’d probably get to the gate in plenty of time. The ticket agent scanned my credentials and took out a tag for my one piece of luggage to be checked to the airplane’s baggage compartment.
Laurie Laychak simply identified herself as “a volunteer.”
It was the tail end of a travel junket. By that I mean I was touring parts of Virginia (near Washington, D.C.) with several other writers and broadcasters. We had been invited there by a state tourism consortium in hopes we would write glowing stories about such tourist spots as Alexandria, former stomping grounds of George Washington; Manassas, with its showcase U.S. Marine Corps Museum; and Arlington, home of the Arlington National Cemetery.
But, on the last day, our guides took us to the west side of the U.S. Pentagon just across the Potomac River from D.C. There we entered a park area, with benches and stunted trees. A woman approached us.
“Are you the Canadian writers?” she asked. Then, she introduced herself. “I’m a volunteer. My name is Laurie Laychak.”
I still didn’t get it. “Volunteer?” I asked. And I looked around at the stainless steel benches inlaid with granite and the Crape Myrtle trees.
“Welcome to the Pentagon 9/11 Memorial… I lost my husband David Laychak, here in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.” (more…)
Laurie Laychak seated on the bench dedicated to her husband David Laychak, who was killed in the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon’s southwest wall (pictured behind her).
One day last summer, Laurie Laychak came back to the place where her husband David died. She visits the recently inaugurated cantilevered benches, Crape Myrtle trees and light pools of the Pentagon Memorial several times a month. Yes, it’s a pilgrimage. But she’s also on a mission. This day, the Laychaks’ daughter Jennifer has joined Laurie for the drive over. Just before her mother meets a group of travel journalists from Canada, Jennifer makes a painful admission to her mom.
“I can’t remember Dad’s voice,” the 20-year-old said. (more…)
In late August 2014, members of the Stalag Luft III Prisoners of War Association in the U.S. presented Ted Barris with a “Certificate of Honor” for his work on The Great Escape: A Canadian Story, the historical account of the famous 1944 breakout in the Second World War.
The Great Escape: A Canadian Story has received its first recognition in the United States. In late August 2014, members of the Stalag Luft III Prisoners of War Association in the U.S. presented Ted Barris with a “Certificate of Honor” for his work on publishing the historical account of the famous 1944 breakout in the Second World War.
Barris delivered the keynote at the association’s annual reunion, this year in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Then, during the reunion’s formal banquet – featuring the parading of the colours, the lighting of candles in honour of the fallen, and recognition of service to the veterans – the U.S. reunion co-chairs Marilyn Walton and Mike Eberhardt (both the offspring of former Stalag Luft III POWs) presented Certificates of Honor for what the association called service above and beyond.
They recognized five civilians, including: Mary Elizabeth Ruwell, an archivist at the U.S. Air Force Academy; Ben van Drogenbroek, a Dutch researcher; Val Burgess, an American oral historian; Marek Lazarz, the director of the Stalag Luft III Museum in Poland; and a Canadian author/historian whose writing, they said, has brought valuable attention to the Stalag Luft III story… Ted Barris. They handed recipients only copies of the certificate, because the originals will be housed permanently at the U.S. Air Force Academy archives in Colorado Springs.
The Nanji twins are driven to contribute to their community.
The two young women stood together at the front of the hall, the former pharmacy on the main floor of the Toronto Street medical building. They couldn’t have been more alike. They wore the same T-shirts decorated in a blue and yellow logo. They wore their hair the same – shoulder-length – and they even looked, well, identical. And when they spoke – like a married couple – they finished each other’s sentences.
“I still remember a year ago, thinking this might not work,” one said.
“Yeah, we’ve grown so much,” the other said. “There were only 15 people attending this time last year…”
“This year, there are over 30,” the first added. (more…)
Howard Walker never considered himself a wartime hero. But he was to a lot of Centennial College students. (Photo courtesy Matthew Wocks.)
With some people I know, there are delicious rituals enjoyed when we meet after not seeing each other for a while. For some it’s a real bear hug or a genuine slap on the back. With others it’s a heart-felt handshake. Then, there is one friend with whom I’ve established a unique greeting, in this case an exchange on the telephone. Depending upon who’s calling whom, our phone conversations always began the same way.
“Is this the famous Ted Barris?” he would ask.
To which I’d respond, “Is this the famous Howard Walker?” (more…)
It began rather innocently as a group of students naively wanting change. It was the ninth year of the war in Vietnam. I was in my second year at Ryerson. The U.S. National Guard shootings of four students at Kent State had just happened. On University Avenue in Toronto, we joined others whose agendas were wide-ranging. Some wanted world anarchy. Others were Americans burning their draft notices. Most were like us, just students wanting to change things for the better. Then, things went haywire.
“The police are on horses,” somebody shouted, “and they’re coming at us.” (more…)
Sunrise at St. Mark’s Square in Venice, where neither the hustle of tourists or tour boats have stirred the city.
We arrived before the city was awake. The sun had just slipped above the eastern entrance to the lagoons of Venice, where our cruise ship was met by a speedboat bringing the required harbour pilot to guide us into port. Minutes later, we passed some of the historic sites of the city – the Grand Canal, St. Mark’s Basilica and the Doge’s Palace. Someone beside me on deck noticed how few people there seemed to be walking along the canals or through the campos (squares).
“Seems so peaceful and untouched,” he said.
“The really big cruise ships haven’t arrived yet,” another traveller commented sarcastically.
Skyscrapers of the sea loom over the Venice skyline.
He was right. Our ship, M/V Aegean Odyssey with a modest complement of perhaps 300 passengers, hadn’t been moored at the Marittima Pier at the western edge of the city more than a couple of hours, when suddenly it became surrounded by a fleet of recently arrived cruise ships – Silver Wind, Celebrity Sihouette and Sovereign Pullmantur, to name a few. With lengths as great as that of Titanic and a passenger capacity of 4,000-plus, these floating hotels at first seemed the lifeblood of the city’s vital tourism industry. But according to a lecturer aboard Aegean Odyssey, the large ships may ultimately be contributing to Venice’s demise.
“Venice is now attracting as many as 30 million tourists a year,” said Gregory Dowling, a professor at the University of Venice. “The city has the highest tourist-to-resident ratio in Europe.”
Once the cruise ships discharge their passengers, St. Mark’s Square becomes a mob scene.
Why is that such a bad thing in a Europe struggling to right itself after the economic crash of 2008? Well, among other things, the rising tourism in Venice, Dowling pointed out, has overwhelmed services (including such basics as public toilets), closed schools and driven residents from the city.
In 1951 Venice was home to 175,000 permanent citizens; in 2012, that number had shrunk to 58,000. That’s not to say that the trend has gone unnoticed; last year, local demonstrators swam in the canals and marched on city squares protesting cruise ships using the historic Giudecca Canal as a highway. The city responded in January, reducing by 20 per cent the number of ships weighing more than 40,000 tonnes.
But the invasion of Venetian canals by so-called “skyscrapers of the sea” is not the only assault on Europe’s antiquities.
Earlier during our recent tour to the eastern Mediterranean, we visited the Acropolis. The iconic mountain top above Athens has stood since the 5th century BC as a symbol of Greece’s “golden age” of enlightenment, democracy and architecture. But it too has suffered from centuries of popularity. As recently as when I was a teenager, in the 1960s, my parents took my sister and me to visit relatives in Athens, where my dad’s cousin led us throughout the Acropolis; back then, we were allowed to wander among the ruins of the Temple of Athena, the Porch of Caryatids and every metre of the Parthenon itself. Not today.
Tourists by the millions have worn the marble path atop the Acropolis to nothing.
“We are restricted to stay within the fenced pathway,” our Athenian guide told us on our recent visit. “They are very serious about this.”
Indeed, when I ventured to the top of an ancient stone piece to photograph our group (seen here), one of the volunteer guardians of the Acropolis blew a whistle at me shouting at me to get down. As I walked the marble pathway, which I remember being jagged and coarse in 1964, I realized the surface is now worn so smooth as to nearly shine in the Athenian sun. And all around the ancient Grecian ruins are cranes and artisans working to repair and restore some of the Acropolis’s former glory.
“The Parthenon took six years to build [in 5th C BC],” our guide informed us. “Restoration has been going on for 80 years; there are still 40 more years to go before it’s complete.”
The Parthenon took six years to build, but will need 120 to be restored.
The restorers of Europe’s antiquities are serious in every respect. As well as restricting movement among the ruins, in most basilicas, churches and mausoleums we explored recently, there were prohibitive signs posted everywhere. Visitors cannot touch, lean on or photograph with flash any of the religious icons and frescos. Clearly the free-access attitudes of the past are gone. Exhibitors, guides and museum curators all fear the damaging potential effects of their attractions’ popularity.
As far as preserving the Venetian canals, I noticed the day after we left the city once dominated only by gondolas, that Italy’s transport minister has clamped down even more.
Are these the last of the “skyscrapers of the sea” to visit Venice?
After civic petitions and celebrity press conferences (involving Michael Douglas and Cate Blanchett), Maurizio Lupi, announced further restrictions on the mega cruise ship invasion. Soon, no ocean liners over 96,000 tonnes will be allowed to sail the Giudecca Canal in front of St. Mark’s Basilica.
“[It’s] our duty to remove the skyscrapers of the sea from the canals of Venice,” he said, “safeguarding a world heritage city … [while] protecting the city’s economy so linked to cruise tourism.”
Tour guide Ertan Sandikcioglu led us through the streets of Istanbul and several thousand years of religious history.
They say if you want to keep a conversation from getting out of hand, it’s best to avoid any reference to religion, politics or sex. And you’d think particularly in the Middle East that would be so. Still, a couple of days into my recent visit to Istanbul, I broke that convention and asked my guide if he was a practising Muslim. Ertan Sandikcioglu flicked his eyes skyward a quick second and offered his answer.
“I hope God will forgive me,” he said. “I am a Muslim, but I don’t pray five times a day.”
During my stay in Istanbul, I heard the traditional call to prayer, it seemed, every other minute. But with so many mosques in the city – Ertan said there were 1,800 of them – and loudspeakers in hundreds of minarets calling the faithful on most corners, it’s not difficult to see why some Muslims, including a tour guide, might find it difficult to earn a living if he was devout. So talking religion isn’t a taboo in Istanbul.
Of the 17 million people who live in Istanbul today, my guide explained, about 40 per cent live on the Asia (or eastern) side of the city and the other 60 per cent live on the European (or western) side. The story of Istanbul (or Constantinople) is a struggle between Asia and Europe, between rural and urban lifestyle, and between Islam and Christianity.
The Santa Sophia basilica illustrates the point. Built in 325 by Emperor Constantine, the church was converted to a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of 1453. After Turkey’s war of independence in the 1920s, however, the first president Ataturk determined the religious building’s fate. “He decided to separate church and state in Turkey,” Ertan said. “And he turned Hagia Sophia into a permanent museum.”
The ancient Roman arch built by Emperor Galereus across from apartments whose tenants pay rent on time.
So much for religion. How about the second taboo, politics? A few days after my tour of Istanbul, I travelled into eastern Greece to Thessalonica, a city second only in importance (for Byzantine emperors) to Constantinople, but also said to be one of the first bases for the spread of Christianity beginning in 395 AD.
Never mind that, my guide, a very proud Greek Orthodox Christian woman named Varvara Chatzivakaleli felt compelled to offer her feelings about the political and economic state of modern Greece.
“Life is impossible in our country these days,” she said, lamenting the austerity measures that have left many fellow citizens out of work. “Well over 85,000 of people under the age of 30 have gone to Australia to find work.”
During a delay in traffic, at one point, Varvara pointed to what looked like empty apartments in downtown Thessalonica. She explained that most citizens in those addresses were likely unemployed, had no money for furnishings and were paying for rent on credit. She quite unashamedly blamed neighbouring lower-income Eastern Europeans for invading her city, in her opinion, a totally irresponsible Greek government, and unfair taxation.
“Most (apartment dwellers) are paying as much as 500 euros ($635) in taxes,” she said. “Who can live like that?”
Tour guide Vera Sakka believes her work is not only an occupation, but a mission as well.
And now you’re wondering about the sex taboo, I mentioned at the beginning. Well, it came up indirectly. Of course, one doesn’t have to dig too deeply into either religion or politics to find sex. Religious icons in Turkey and Greece constantly deal with the Virgin Mary or the symbolism of religious crusaders destroying their enemies by raping and pillaging.
Indeed, one of my stops this week included a cave on the Greek island of Patmos. Christians believe that the voice of God broke through the stone of the cave to deliver to St. John such images for the biblical Book of Revelations as a prostitute “drunk on the blood of saints.”
My guide during this particular tour was a vivacious and religious woman named Maria Vera Sakka, who went out of her way to point out she was named after the Virgin Mary, that she lived on Virgin Street in Athens, and that among her chosen careers in life had once been as a midwife assisting pregnant women with birth.
“I have other qualities of Artemis (the goddess of virginity),” she said. “I never got married and I never had children… but I feel a special relationship with God.”
Political posters hang as prominently as the Turkish flag above the streets in Istanbul.
I know that’s not the sexual content you were expecting. But here was a woman with very clear impressions of her spirituality, passionately involved with the creation of the Book of the Apocalypse in all its depravity, and unafraid to expose her deepest feelings about the content of her work.
One other thought about my contact with the three taboos of civil conversation this week… After having broached the subject of religion and politics with my Turkish guide Ertan Sandikcioglu, eventually I asked him about upcoming elections in his country and the fate of the Islamic president.
“The government is working hard to get it right,” he said. “But for us (in Istanbul) the future is West, not East.”
Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, just before they were assassinated, sparking WWI.
It was a time when every man wore a hat, or as one historian described it, “silk toppers for the privileged, cloth caps for working men and straw boaters for the younger rakes.” It didn’t matter which one Canadians were wearing, 100 years ago this week, since most of them were airborne during the first week of August. Hats were in the air in celebration because Canadians had heard the news from Europe. Here’s the way the Toronto Telegram described it:
“A booming roar … rose and fell in the narrow canyon of streets,” the newspaper reported in August 1914. “It was the voice of Toronto carried away with patriotic enthusiasm. Britain had determined to give the bully of Europe a trouncing.”
In short, it was exactly a century ago that Canadians learned their nation of eight million citizens would follow Mother England into a war to end all wars against Germany. In fact, when I did some research for this column on the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, I learned a great deal. I discovered, for example, that instead of reporting events surrounding the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, the archduke and duchess of Austria-Hungary on June 28, 1914, Canadian newspapers quite unabashedly fomented public opinion in support the war.
Not only that, but the papers quite literally beat the drum of war in Canadian city streets. Pierre Berton noted in his book “Marching as to War” that in Hamilton, the Spectator newspaper projected slides on the exterior walls of its downtown building pointing out the good English King and the villainous German Kaiser. In Winnipeg, demonstrations resulted and they led young men to the local military barracks to enlist. And in Quebec, where I thought nobody wanted to fight in a war to defend the King of England, La Patrie, a Montreal newspaper, editorialized this way:
“There are no longer French Canadians and English Canadians. Only one race now exists, united by the closest bonds in a common cause.”
Col. Sam Sharpe campaigned for, financed and led the 116th Bn to war in 1916.
Strange too, since it had only been 15 years since 6,000 Canadians had served with distinction (four won the Victoria Cross) in the South African War. And by 1914, statistics showed that Canada’s regular army had shrunk to only 3,000 men. Still, in 1913, a full year before the assassinations in Sarajevo, Sam Hughes, the minister of militia, had invited Canadians to bolster the country’s militia. No fewer than 60,000 men showed up at training centres across the country to become so-called “weekend soldiers,” reservists preparing for what seemed an inevitable European war. Clearly the Canadian male population was either bored or eager for a fight.
Just look at this community as proof. As I discovered when I researched my book about the First World War battle at Vimy Ridge, (thanks to files at the Uxbridge Historical Centre) local lawyer and MP Samuel Sharpe had no trouble getting Parliament to give its blessing for the formation of the 116th (Ontario County) Battalion in 1916.
Lyman Nicholls, from Uxbridge, was one of the lucky ones in a lost generation.
And when Col. Sharpe took his message of serving King and Empire in the Great War to towns and villages across what is now Durham Region, he couldn’t keep up with the flood of enlistment. Typical was teenager Lyman Nicholls. In 1914 he’d responded to a couple of recruiting sergeants from the Mississauga Horse to become a boy soldier playing trumpet in the regimental band. But the next spring, in June 1915 while in class at Uxbridge Secondary School, he really got the bug.
“We were having a French lesson,” Nicholls said. “Our teacher went out of the classroom for a few minutes and I stood up and started for the window. I said, ‘This is our chance, fellows,’ and climbed out the window. Seven others followed me.”
At the Uxbridge post office they took medical exams, signed enlistment papers to join Col. Sharpe’s 116th and went to the quartermaster’s office to pick up boots and uniforms. And even though his parents withdrew him that night because he was underage, Nicholls joined legitimately that summer when he graduated from high school. Later that year, when Sharpe’s volunteers conducted target practice with Ross rifles on a shooting range (along what is now the Brookdale Road) and were photographed in Elgin Park during a drill demonstration, they were 1,100 strong.
As part of their formal send-off, Uxbridge residents erected arches and banners over the downtown streets with religious and patriotic slogans, including: “God bless our splendid men” and “Send them safe home again.” Except that the recruiting of young men, tossing of hats and shouting of slogans did NOT keep them safe. Of the 1,100 members of Col. Sharpe’s 116th Battalion only 160 returned alive. Sharpe himself committed suicide, it’s said, unable to face the families of his county.
The death of a generation began 100 years ago this week.
