Ted Barris • Page 78 of 102 • author

Barris speaks to Canadian Club of Durham

Written by Ted Barris on January 21st, 2012January 21st, 2012. Leave a comment

Speaking at a November 2011 Remembrance event.

As part of its 2012 Speakers program, the Canadian Club of Durham Region has invited Ted Barris to address the membership on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012. He will speak about the job of getting veterans to speak about their experiences; his talk is based on one of his recent bestselling books, “Breaking the Silence: Veterans’ Untold Stories from the Great War to Afghanistan.” Copies of a number of Ted’s books will be on hand for sale and autographing.

When: 2 – 3 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012.

Where: 420 Wing RCAF Association, 1000 Stevenson Road (south end of Oshawa Airport).

Contact: Sandra Maackin, smackin6@gmail.com, 905-430-2695.

Two Teds talk

Written by Ted Barris on January 21st, 2012January 21st, 2012. Leave a comment

"Breaking the Silence" is Barris's sixth bestseller in a row.

As part of his NewsTalk Radio 1010 weekly program, on Saturday, January 28, 2012, Ted Woloshyn talks to Ted Barris about the subject matter of Barris’s latest book, “Breaking the Silence: Veterans’ Untold Stories from the Great War to Afghanistan.” In this, his latest bestseller, Barris addresses the great problem facing military historians – getting veterans to speak about their experiences. Listen in on Saturday as the two Teds talk.

Where: CFRB News Talk 1010 AM Radio

When: 1 p.m., Saturday, January 28, 2011.

Barris joins Alzheimer’s awareness event

Written by Ted Barris on January 21st, 2012January 26th, 2012. Leave a comment

Signing at a military aviation event in Quebec, 2010.

Responding to a request by author Joanne Elder, Ted Barris is joining 26 other writers in the “Authors Fight Alzheimer’s Book Signing Fundraiser” on Monday, Jan. 30, at the North York Central Library Auditorium. In the first event of its kind, Barris and 26 other authors will sell and sign copies of their books to raise funds for Alzheimer’s Awareness Month. He joins such authors as Sandra Clarke, Kevin Craig, Nancy Bell, Deron Douglas, Anne Grobbo, Doug Smith, Caitlin Sweet, Erik Buchanan, J.M. Frey, Karen Dales and others, selling their books and contributing proceeds to the Alzheimer’s Society of Canada.

Where: North York Central Library Auditorium, 5120 Yonge Street (between Sheppard and Finch on west side), Toronto.

When: 6:30 to 9 p.m., Monday, January 30, 2012.

Contact: Joanne Elder, 905-833-4377, jelder1@rogers.com

Hospitality in a strange place

Written by Ted Barris on January 18th, 2012January 21st, 2012. Leave a comment

The number and frequency of ambulance sirens dwindled. Fewer hospital staff passed the waiting area. I had been sitting there, waiting for nearly three hours. By 8:30 p.m. I was the only one around when a nurse who’d been in the operating room came out. She spotted me, changed direction and approached me.

“You the husband of the horse woman?”

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Speaking truth to power

Written by Ted Barris on January 10th, 2012January 10th, 2012. 1 Comment

Ross Perigoe criticizes a major Canadian newspaper for its commentary after the 9/11 attacks.

In the days following 9/11, the West had revenge top of mind. Within days of the terrorist attacks, U.S. President George Bush promised his armies would avenge the deaths of the 3,000 Americans killed, claiming that the perpetrators were “Islamists commanded to kill Christians and Jews” and that they were therefore “wanted dead or alive.” Most in North America accepted his Wild West form of justice.

At the time, however, a professor at Concordia University in Montreal did not. Almost at his peril, journalist and educator Ross Perigoe criticized the powers that be, in particular the Montreal Gazette, for what he called its racist response to 9/11.

“I am in the Place des Arts metro station,” Perigoe cited a Gazette editorialist on Sept. 19, 2011, “I see three men, one wearing a turban. I start to shake.”

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Maybe less is more

Written by Ted Barris on January 1st, 2012January 9th, 2012. Leave a comment

The other night, I listened to a couple of news stories on the radio. One noted that a locomotive manufacturing company in London, Ont., wanted its assembly line workers to take a 50 per cent cut in wages in order to keep the company in business. In the other news report, a study indicated that the top 100 CEOs in Canada make 189 times the income of the average worker in this country. The study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives said those CEOs each made on average $8.4 million in 2010.

“Canada’s CEO Elite 100 have left the rest of us behind in their gold dust,” the authors of the report concluded.

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With my $1 million…

Written by Ted Barris on December 24th, 2011December 28th, 2011. Leave a comment

Game of recreational hockey (c.1800s) from Art Gallery of Nova Scotia photo collection.

About 25 years ago, I travelled to the town of Windsor, in the Annapolis Valley region of Nova Scotia. I’d read about a local personality, a 19th century judge and member of the provincial legislature, Thomas Chandler Haliburton. Among other things, I’d learned that Haliburton had studied and grown up there, written local history and published under the nom de plume “Sam Slick.” But Haliburton had also kept a factual diary, which around 1803 had solved the great Canadian riddle: Where was the game of hockey first played in Canada?

“And boys let out racin’, yelpin’ hollerin’ and whoopin’ like mad with pleasure (on) the playground,” Haliburton had written as a student at King’s College, Windsor, “and (played) the game of hurley … on the ice.”

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Fighting humbug

Written by Ted Barris on December 15th, 2011December 17th, 2011. 1 Comment

No one owns Christmas — "...Christmas has done me good."

It’s been hard this year. Teaching and marking at the college – with a particularly challenging crop of journalism and broadcasting students – have nearly swamped me. Close friends have battled health problems, so I’ve spent what little time I had left trying to help. On top of that, I’ve found myself shouting at the radio in anger because the “the holiday season is here” advertisements began right after Halloween – they didn’t even wait for Remembrance Day to pass. Finding the Christmas spirit, this year, has proved tougher than usual.

I expect all that to change this Sunday, however, when I go to church.

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Building better citizens

Written by Ted Barris on December 7th, 2011December 7th, 2011. Leave a comment

Sgt. Isaac Ramos credits his years in Royal Canadian Air Cadets for his outlook and attitude about life. — Sgt. Isaac Ramos credits his years in Royal Canadian Air Cadets for his outlook on life.

The young man stole the show, when it was my job to do it. I had just finished a 30-minute talk at a military dinner in Etobicoke. There were about a hundred young people in the audience, members of the Royal Canadian Air Cadets (RCAC) No. 700 Squadron. I thought my talk – about the romance of aviation and the roots of national service – had gone well. I had managed to capture and keep the attention 12- to 18-year-olds. The end of my talk brought a genuine thank-you from a young warrant officer. Then a young man with sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve rose to speak.

“Four years ago, I was an irresponsible kid. I didn’t get along with my parents. I bad-mouthed everybody,” he said. “But today in the cadets it’s just the opposite.”

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Making memory permanent

Written by Ted Barris on November 30th, 2011November 30th, 2011. 1 Comment

Today a tourist trap, Checkpoint Charlie between 1961 and 1989 trapped East Berliners inside the Iron Curtain.

During a college class the other day, I wanted to give my broadcasting students a sense of the power of television as tool of influence in the 20th century. I chose something in their lifetime – the fall of the Berlin Wall – in 1989. That’s when the Western media began covering the activities of dissidents in East Germany, I said. And that sparked the popular uprising that pressured the Communist regime to open crossing points at the Wall. To make sure my students understood the context, I asked if everybody knew the basis of the Cold War.

“Was Canada involved?” one of my students asked.

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