Earlier this week, in a news-reporting course I teach at Centennial College, something suddenly interrupted the classroom discussion. It was just after 8:30 on Tuesday morning and a number of my students had their heads down. I recognized the posture. They were texting on their smartphones beneath their desks. I was about to call them on it, when I realized the source of the distraction.
“Oscar nominations just out,” one of them admitted to me.
As part of its fall 2012 program, the Women’s Canadian Club of London has invited Ted Barris to address the membership on Thursday, November 8, 2012, at London’s Centennial Hall. 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 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 8, 2012.
Where: Centennial Hall, London, Ontario.
Contact: Allister Cameron, a.c.cameron@sympatico.ca
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.
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.
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
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?”
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.”
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.
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.”
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.