Ted Barris has accepted a return invitation (his third visit) to speak to the Buttonville Flying Club, on Wednesday, April 13, 2011. He will speak to members about the job of getting veterans to speak about their experiences; his talk is based on his bestselling book “Breaking the Silence: Veterans’ Untold Stories from the Great War to Afghanistan.”
When: Wednesday, April 13, 2011.
Where: Buttonville Flying Club hangar, Buttonville Airport
Contact: Paul Hayes, 905-201-0232, aerocan@rogers.com
At this year’s Vimy Dinner, held at Branch 67 of the Royal Canadian Legion in Lindsday, Ted Barris offers a unique telling of the famous WWI battle at Vimy Ridge, that, he says, gave birth to the country’s nationhood. Barris will offer insights and images gleaned from some of the individual accounts – old interviews, memoirs, letters and diaries of the Canadian Corps troops – he assembled in the research/writing of his book “Victory at Vimy: Canada Comes of Age, April 9-12, 1917.”
When: Wednesday, April 6, 2011.
Where: Branch 67, Royal Canadian Legion, Lindsay, Ont.
Contact: John Sherman, president, sirsamhughes@bellnet.ca
They issue tickets on the internet now. Unlike at the airport, there’s no window overlooking the tracks to see the trains arriving and departing. In fact, even at Union Station in Toronto – perhaps the busiest passenger rail terminal in the country – you can barely hear the clatter of wheels on steel or feel the rumble of the locomotive in the station. They don’t even blow a whistle on departure anymore. And yet VIA Rail’s slogan still reads:
“There is nothing quite like seeing Canada by rail.”
I recently took a call from a Humber College student. She asked if I was a working journalist. When I informed her that I both wrote and taught, she asked if I could help her with an essay she was researching. In her studies, one of her instructors had directed her to answer this question:
“Can public relations people get along with journalists? And conversely, can journalists get along with PR people?”
“It depends,” I told her on the phone.
All last week, they remembered his 50th. Hockey commentators waxed eloquent. His on-ice peers remembered their brushes with him as teammates or opponents. Most columnists had at plenty of anecdotes about his goal-scoring prowess, his record number of records and his so-called sixth sense on skates. Well, I was there for his 50th too. Not his 50th birthday. I was there to witness the final seconds of the game of games:
“Anderson gets it to Gretzky. He’s got the open net!” shouted Rod Phillips, the Oilers’ play-by-play announcer that night. “Will he shoot? He does. He scores! He has broken the record. Wayne Gretzky’s 50th goal in 39 games. Gretzky has done the unbelievable.”
In most parts of Canada, they’re located in the suburbs where the lots are larger. In downtown areas they’re called mansions. In some older communities they’re found on former estates. In fact, out in the country, they’re described as estate homes. A few weeks ago, we were driving past a group of them north of Stouffville and an older passenger in our car gasped.
“Unbelievable aren’t they,” I said.
She nodded and reacted with an unexpected comment: “How on earth would anybody clean something like that?” she said.
Ted Barris addresses the Canadian Aviation Historical Society in Toronto on Saturday, April 9, 2011. Barris spoke to CAHS members about the D-Day operation during his last visit in 2004. On this occasion he speaks about perhaps the least known military aviation heroism of the Second World War. When Britain and free-Europe cried out for help to defend themselves against the German Luftwaffe, Canada responded by launching the largest, wartime, military air training scheme in history. It was known as the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan – created 72 years ago this year – and its heroes are the subject of Ted Barris’s bestselling book “Behind the Glory.”
When: Saturday, April 9, 2011.
Where: Royal Canadian Legion, Branch #527 (948 Sheppard Ave. W.) Toronto.
Contact: Bob Winson, rwinson@sympatico.ca
Like many, I found myself drawn to the real-life drama of two families coping. In the aftermath of Sgt. Ryan Russell’s senseless death in the streets of Toronto, last Wednesday morning, I watched the policing family try to come to terms with the loss of one of its own. Then, on Tuesday afternoon, I listened and watched his widow Christine Russell put her mourning into words in front of 12,000 people.
“Ryan always put others before him,” she said at the Toronto Convention Centre funeral Tuesday. “On Jan. 12, it cost him his life.”
Our family enjoyed a once-in-a-lifetime moment last weekend. It was one of those events that almost always happens in this country. You can bet on it each winter when snow falls, ponds freeze and community recreation centres shift to wintertime activities. This rite of passage began a few weeks ago – at Christmas – when it was agreed our granddaughter would take her first skate this winter.
“I’ve got the bob skates,” my daughter told me last week. “Let’s take in a pleasure skate at the arena.”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
It happened one day last summer. I think I had just finished mowing the lawn, when a police cruiser motored up the driveway. A couple of Durham Regional Police officers stepped out. My wife and I exchanged a surprised glance.
“Are you Ted Barris?” one of the officers asked.
“Yes…” I answered a little nervously.
“I have a summons here for you,” he continued, “in connection with an automobile collision last year.”