Last week, I was heading out of town on one of the 400-series highways. It was a Friday afternoon. Traffic was slow. There were the usual volume holdups and the usual culprits – semis and commuter buses, but mostly cars towing boats, cars towing tent trailers, four-by-fours loaded to the gunwales with camping gear, and lots of RVs. One sported a bumper sticker that kind of summed up the moment.
“Don’t follow me,” it said. “I have no idea where I’m going.”
It was Sunday afternoon. Our writers’ conference was wrapping up. About 200 of this country’s most celebrated novelists, poets and non-fiction writers had gathered for the weekend at a Vancouver hotel to discuss writers’ issues. But before our annual general meeting of The Writers’ Union of Canada broke up, one of TWUC’s founding members, Andreas Schroeder, rose to read a motion put forward by B.C. members of the union.
“Whereas Bill 37-2012 (about to be passed in the B.C. Legislature) will make it an offence for anyone to disclose the presence of a reportable animal disease (in B.C.),” Schroeder said. “Be it resolved that the union opposes the muzzling of both the press and public discourse.”
The other day a canoeing partner of mine mentioned he’d faced a bit of dilemma. His cedar-strip canoe, which he and I had used one spring to paddle down the Black River in Muskoka, was in need of repair. Stored out in the open, the canoe had generally resisted the elements fairly well, except where the water had collected in the canoe gunwales and caused some of the wood to rot.
“I needed somebody to repair the damage,” he said. “Surprisingly, I found a guy near Huntsville. That’s what he did – repaired canoe gunwales.”
Some years ago, after presenting a talk on one of my books, I was setting copies of the book on a display table, in case someone wanted to buy one. A woman who’d been in the audience for this event – I think it was at a library – began flipping through a copy of the book. She asked me a couple of questions and then noticed the price on the flap of the dust jacket.
“Gee, that’s a lot… for a book,” she said.
On days such as Victoria Day, and its anachronistic connection to life in 2012, I wonder about how change happens. Is it just the passage of time that helps us recognize that monarchs are people too? Is it just greater access to information that brings down a Berlin Wall? Is it just mellowing that makes a Toronto mayor realize gay lifestyle is a fact of life? Well, yes, time, knowledge and acclimatizing help. But change happens because some push to make it happen. Or, as writer June Callwood observed during a 2002 lecture:
“The profession of journalism enjoys its finest moments when it speaks against oppression and greed.”
The day before the big opening the French police built a security fence around it. Workers set up wooden benches for an audience of 5,000. Rain left the glass and titanium-clad building on the Normandy beach glistening like a polished jewel. And inside the museum itself Canadian army cadets removed the pins from nearly 44,000 poppies – the pinless Remembrance symbols would be dropped from an aircraft during the ceremony – symbolizing the number of Canadians killed in the Second World War.
“I was on this beach 59 years ago,” Garth Webb said during the opening of the Juno Beach Centre on the D-Day anniversary in 2003. “And it’s just as big a thrill to be here today.”
The subject of Rob Ford’s reaction to reporter Daniel Dale’s investigation of land adjacent to the Toronto mayor’s property has come up in conversation a lot the past week. Some acquaintances of mine have described Dale’s poking around Ford’s backyard wall as provocative. Others find the Toronto mayor’s behaviour embarrassing. But I was taken aback by one friend’s criticism of Dale’s newspaper.
“That’s the ‘socialist’ Toronto Star for you,” he said.
Following his “Vimy Ridge” talk at the Richmond Hill Historical Society last fall, Ted Barris has been invited for a return visit to speak about his most recent book, “Breaking the Silence: Veterans’ Untold Stories from the Great War to Afghanistan.” Audiences continue to show great interest in Barris’s research into the effects of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and in particular its effects on Canadians returning from operations in Afghanistan. So, Ted will oblige by offering stories from his work in this sensitive area. Copies of his bestselling book will be available for purchase and autograph.
When: 7:30 p.m., Monday, November 19, 2012.
Where: Wallace Hall, Presbyterian Church, 10066 Yonge Street, Richmond Hill, Ontario.
Contact: Andrea Kulesh, president Richmond Hill Historical Society, r.hillhistsoc@hotmail.com
As we arrived, she emerged from the information pavilion. She wore her identifiable green uniform, complete with department identification and Maple Leaf insignia. She offered a warm welcome and explained she would be our guide for the next half-hour. She was a long way from home, but made us feel as if we had never left Canada.
“Welcome to the Beaumont-Hamel National Historic Site,” the young woman said. I learned later her name was Sylvie, a student from Winnipeg, and that she was employed for several months by Parks Canada to guide visitors around the site.
It surfaced a few months ago. We found it along an old, stone foundation during some renovations at our house (built in the 1920s). And while this piece of history wasn’t nearly as old as the house, it dated back nearly that far. It was an empty Coca-Cola bottle. You know, those short, stubby ones, sometimes made of blue-green glass, but more often clear – the ones that were a perfect fit in your hand. Our artefact came from an era when the Coke slogan (c. 1938) was: “The best friend thirst ever had.”