The comment was bold and brutal. The man on the other end of the phone was blunt and to the point. He pulled no punches. His voice was full of disgust.
“You’re lazy. You’re vagrants. You’re a bunch of hoodlums, drug addicts and anarchists” he said on the phone. “Get out of our park!”
Just before I delivered a Remembrance talk in the southwestern community of Shedden, Ont., last Sunday morning, I walked along the back wall of the Southwold Township Complex, where I was to speak. There were perhaps 500 people waiting for the township’s annual pre-Remembrance Day observance to begin.
And standing politely along that back wall, so that older citizens – principally veterans and their spouses – could have seats, were about 20 young army and air cadets. I made a point of introducing myself to them and learning who they were before I spoke.
“I’m 18 and in the Elgin Regiment,” one of them announced proudly.
“And why did you offer your part-time service?” I asked.
“I wanted to say something about my generation,” he said.
It was a Saturday in the spring of 2002. A photographer, who been born and raised and in fact had worked most of his professional life for newspapers in and around Cobourg, Ont., got a call from his father. Pete Fisher’s dad told him to keep an eye out for something happening on Highway 401. Four Canadian soldiers’ bodies had just arrived home from Afghanistan and it looked as if there would be a procession along the highway between CFB Trenton and Toronto, where the bodies would officially be released to the families.
“I didn’t know the soldiers’ names,” Fisher wrote later.
A surveyor friend of mine stopped by on the weekend. Actually, Reid Wilson asked if he could poke around the corner of my front yard last Saturday. I obliged, but wondered what it was all about. He said he was doing a quick unofficial survey looking for property lines, but he needed to find a key marker.
“Any idea where the corner survey stake is?” he asked me.
It was an act of blatant intolerance. Mia, a factory worker originally from Asia, had been warming her lunch-break meal in the microwave oven in the staff kitchen. It had been the only comfort she was allowed, since her factory job was menial and since she lived with a son who slept all day and stayed out all night. Suddenly, she faced a factory foreman, who found the aroma of her homemade food offensive and he posted a sign on the front of the microwave to point that out.
“No foul-smelling food allowed,” was all the note said.
I opened my email on Sunday morning. I was greeted by the usual prompt for my “username.” I keyed that in. Then I got the prompt for the “password.” I entered that. But then something odd happened. The Hotmail account I’ve used for at least six or seven years, disallowed my entry.
“You’re account has been blocked,” was all it said.
Voting ends tomorrow – Tuesday, October 11!
An extraordinary thing has just happened. Canada Reads, CBC Radio’s popular “battle of the books” competition, has announced for the first time, this year it will honour an author and book of non-fiction. As many know, the final stage of this competition features five personalities championing five different books. This year, the competition is subtitled “True Stories,” so the five celebrities will trumpet a favourite non-fiction Canadian title.
I need your help. The proprietor of Blue Heron Books in Uxbridge, Shelley Macbeth, has nominated my book VICTORY AT VIMY, published in 2007 on the 90th anniversary of the battle; indeed 2012 marks the 95th anniversary, so all next year we will pay even closer attention to this compelling Canadian story. Shelley’s recommendation has sway at the CBC; the Corporation recognized Blue Heron Books as one of this country’s best-loved bookshops.
Last summer, I made an interesting discovery. Not surprising, since I was conducting research. But what I found wasn’t quite what I expected. Although it was actually quite close to home. I happened to be researching in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where, I discovered, they’ve been experimenting with something relatively new in their part of the world. What’s more, they’ve made a YouTube video about it.
“All about roundabouts,” the video says. “Getting in and getting out…”
They’ve been polar opposites in front of the public for at least four years, through at least two campaigns. They’ve been bitter ideological enemies. Neither, it would seem, could have anything in common with the other. Neither could ever imagine sending the other a Christmas card. And yet, at the height of a heated political discussion, the other night, there was a pause.
“My opponent makes a good point,” he said. “I can agree with that.”
The star attraction was not in the house that night. While many others were present – the luminaries of the Canadian jazz scene – perhaps the country’s best studio and jazz concert drummer of the day was absent. In fact, it was because he was absent, that all the stars came out. It was 45 years ago that Toronto-born drummer Archie Alleyne suffered serious injuries in a car accident. He was not able to work … at either of his jobs.
“I didn’t have a car, so I had to carry my drum kit on streetcars and the subway,” he told my father, Alex Barris, back then. “I’d play from nine at night to one a.m., get home with my drums by three a.m. and be up four hours later to go to my day job.”