Barris Beat

Celebrity, thy name is Uxbridge

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You probably missed it. You can be forgiven because I missed it too. But last Monday the Internet was all a twitter (yes, pun intended) about a birthday event. It’s one that your teeny-bopper kids (or grandkids) probably noticed. It appears that music heart-throb Justin Bieber celebrated his 16th birthday by visiting the Son of a Gun Tattoo and Barbershop in Toronto. There he had a tattoo of a seagull inked onto his left hip.

“That’s a bad area,” the tattoo artist told MTV News. “Justin was nervous, but then he got into it and it was done. It’s very tiny.”

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Barris Beat

Walking back to history

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Veteran Barclay Craig celebrates a birthday and a victory
Barclay Craig (waving from truck) celebrates a victory and a birthday during VE Day parade in Apeldoorn, May 9, 2010.

Canadians were featured prominently that day. Grateful Netherlanders lined the streets, at first, in an orderly fashion. They waved, cheered and tossed tulips – the first blossoms of that bittersweet springtime when six long years of war came to an end. They celebrated the end of Nazi occupation in their country and embraced their liberators. It was May 8, 1945, Victory in Europe (VE) Day. Among those liberators marching in the Apeldoorn parade on the receiving end of all that adoration was a young lieutenant from Arnprior, Ontario. Barclay Craig remembered being told it would be a half-hour parade.

“It was actually the eve of my 25th birthday,” he told me this week. “The Dutch were so excited to be free again, they crushed in around us in the parade. I never shook so many hands in my life.”

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Barris Beat

Youth, the cost of war

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Dutch liberation vet Ron Charland (left) is joined by air cadet Bo Gibbons during VE Day parade in Apeldoorn, May 9, 2010.
Dutch liberation vet Ron Charland (left) is joined by air cadet Bo Gibbons during VE Day parade in Apeldoorn, May 9, 2010.

As a boy, not surprisingly, he joined the scout movement. He loved to listen to the wireless radio broadcasts that came all the way from the BBC in England. But in every other way Jan Van Hoof was an ordinary Dutch boy during the Second World War. That is, until Sept. 17, 1944. During the next 24 hours, as Allied paratroops descended through the skies over his hometown of Nijmegen, Van Hoof left his youth behind. And it was summed up in what he said to his parents that day.

“The bridge is safe,” he said.

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Barris Beat

Teacher as student of living history

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It was probably the final phone call she made last Sunday night. I’m sure that she had been dealing with a myriad of errands. I imagine that she’d probably checked her to-do list a hundred times. I know for a fact that she had responded to a long list of messages from fellow teachers, her principal and concerned parents. After all, she was about to lead more than 60 students from Uxbridge Secondary School on a 10-day-long trip into history. Nevertheless, U.S.S. instructor Tish MacDonald phoned me.

“Just wanted to say thanks,” she said on the phone. “We’re down to the last few hours before we take off for Holland. Everybody’s all fired up.”

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Features

Keeping pace

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ZOOMER_PACEThe 90-minute hockey scrimmage at our local arena was over. In the dressing room, everybody peeled off skates, pads and sweaty long johns, baring egos and scars. We forwards called the goaltenders sieves, while they took verbal shots at us forwards for not backchecking. But one defenceman really had it in for me. “I’d ask for your money back, Ted,” he said. “That new pacemaker doesn’t have any goals in it.”

For the full story, click here.

Barris Beat

Stressing the big stuff

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For much of the last week, I’ve had my eyes cast eastward to the mid-Atlantic. In about 10 days, I’m supposed to lead a tour of veterans and other travellers to Holland to take in an event there. It’s been 65 years since the liberation of the Netherlands. The Dutch have a big party planned and we’re invited.

Problem is, smoke and ash from that unpronounceable volcano in Iceland have thrown up a barrier – literally and figuratively. Air travel may not be possible come May 1 when we’re supposed to fly to Amsterdam. I have not been a happy camper.

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Barris Beat

Dot.coms bearing gifts

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There’s a story I learned back at school. It tells the tale of an extraordinary deception. Two civilizations, the story goes, were at war – one inside a fortified area, the other outside it. The siege between the two had gone for years, without a victor. Then, those outside the walls withdrew, leaving behind a relic of war – a wooden horse. Rejoicing at their apparent victory, the people inside the walls, pulled the relic into their midst. That night, spies hidden inside the wooden horse crept out, opened the gates and allowed the outside army inside the walls.

“Trust not their presents,” the Trojan priest Laocoon had cried. “Is surely designed by fraud.” But his countrymen had ignored him. And victory belonged to the Greek outsiders.

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Barris Beat

Publish or perish

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It must have been an extraordinary moment. A 40-year-old inventor in the 15th century city of Mainz, Germany, had experimented with metal alloys, molds, a pressing machine and oil-based ink. He took handmade paper, placed it in his press and moved the letters of the alphabet into position to print a 42-line piece of writing. He repeated the process 30 times to create a book. The book was a short Bible. The inventor was Johann Gutenberg. And the invention was history’s first mass printing of the world’s first published book.

“Incomparably the greatest event in the history of the world,” Mark Twain wrote 400 years later.

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Barris Beat

Aunts and uncles that are not

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T&J_RENTABUG-1It happened during my first great adventure as a writer. It was in the spring of 1973. Jayne and I packed up an orange VW bug with all our travel and camping gear and headed west on a 20,000-kilometre odyssey. We were beginning our summer-long journey to gather research and personal accounts for my first book of popular history. Two friends – brothers Hal and Jim Sorrenti – suggested when we arrived in Winnipeg that we drop in on a relative.

“Be sure to stop and see our Auntie Marg,” they said. “She’ll help you out.”

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Barris Beat

Growing into quality time

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There used to be a public service announcement on TV. The first scenario showed an adult hurrying his child into the car. The parent then raced away to a local arena. There, in a moment of false sincerity, Dad smiled, opened the door, nudged his son out the door, waved goodbye and zoomed away. The voice-over announcer scolded the parent. Then, in the second positive scenario, Dad helps his son gather his hockey gear, parks the car at the arena and joins others in the stands watching his son play.

“Don’t just drop your son at the rink,” the voice-over announcer says. “Take your son to the rink.”

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