Ted Barris

A few weeks ago, in a letter to the editor a woman in my community took the township council to task over budget accountability. Another reader of the local newspaper commented that a story about the war in Gaza lacked fairness and balance.

On Monday, I met a journalist from Afghanistan. As recently as 2001, if he had criticized his government or commented on any current events, he might not have lived to see another day. Today, Ahmad Zia is editor of international news for Kabul Weekly, a newspaper based in the Afghan capital with a circulation of 10,000.

“Even today you have to put your life on the line to criticize,” he said.

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They were perhaps the quickest 90 seconds in Canada’s history.

On a frozen bay, near the Nova Scotia community of Baddeck – about midday on Feb. 23, 1909 – a group of avid young scientists and engineers gathered, they hoped, to make history. Under the direction of perhaps Canada’s greatest inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, the men fired up a small engine attached to a Bell-designed glider. J.A.D. McCurdy, the son of Bell’s secretary, climbed into the open cockpit, eased the throttle powering the propeller and guided Bell’s “Silver Dart” across the ice at increasing speed. Then, in front nearly 150 witnesses, the flying machine left the ice surface and remained airborne for perhaps a minute and a half.

“Canada’s first heavier-than-air machine,” reports said, had been flown by “the bold aeronaut Douglas McCurdy, a Baddeck boy born and bred.”

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What is it about February and Canada?

It’s certainly a month that defines this country. Whether it’s the frigid temperatures and snow we’ve endured or the national symbol we sort of celebrate (it was on Feb. 15, 1965, that officials raised the Maple Leaf flag on Parliament Hill for the very first time), this month makes most people between Bonavista and Vancouver Island express their distinctiveness. But in February we have another aspect of Canadiana to celebrate. It was 30 years ago this month that Canadians acknowledged Black History Month for the first time.

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The other day on the radio, somebody mentioned that a person over the age of 18 loses about a thousand brain cells a day. Yikes!

First, I worried about the impact that might have on my memory. Then, I recalled that somebody else had told me that a full grown adult has over a hundred billion brain cells in there to begin with. I did the math (I had to use a calculator, however, not my brain) and I figured out – at that loss rate – it would take about 300,000 years for my brain to run out of cells. Still, I think the most dreaded question in the English language is:

“Can you remember…?”

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My mother would have made a great finance minister.

She had a knack for survival. The same way many men and women of her generation – those who survived the Great Depression – understand such things, she practised the rules of sustainability (reduce, reuse, recycle) throughout her life. She saved autumn seeds for the spring garden. She continued to use every piece of clothing in her wardrobe until its threadbare areas overtook those parts that were intact. She never dumped the last of the morning coffee, preferring instead to reheat it with her lunch or an afternoon snack. And she saved her pennies for the things her husband or children wanted, but maybe couldn’t afford. Why?

“Always saving for that rainy day,” she would say.

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I met Barack Obama in the Washington, D.C., area 44 years ago.

Yes, I know, you’re already doing the math. The newly inaugurated 44th president of the United States of America was only three years old in 1965. Obama’s parents had just recently divorced by that time. And shortly thereafter the young son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father found himself in Jakarta, Indonesia, attending grade school. How could Barris have met the man who – on Tuesday at midday – became America’s first ever African-American president?

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In my lifetime, I’ve heralded the new year on the Pacific coast, the Atlantic coast and even the Gulf coast. I’ve watched Dick Clark count it down at Times Square. I’ve counted the seconds down myself, hosting my own radio show. On Y2K, we stayed up most of the night watching TV coverage of the new millennium arriving in Sydney, London and New York. I’ve brought in the new year alone, at parties with total strangers, but most often with members of my immediate family.

I observed the passing of 2008 a bit differently. Actually, it was the day before New Year’s Eve. I stood on the Wynford Drive bridge late last Tuesday afternoon in a biting north wind, waiting for the hearses carrying the bodies of the three latest Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan to pass.

“I suddenly felt the urge,” I told a fellow who arrived shortly after I did with a Canadian flag tucked under his arm.

“I live nearby,” the flag-bearer told me. “I try to be here each time they go by.”

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In spite of the snow and wind that heralded the first day of the winter season, on Monday, I wasn’t disappointed to see an end to the autumn of 2008.

In addition to all the ills that last fall bestowed upon us – principally an oncoming recession – these past months have delivered a series of emotional setbacks my family won’t soon forget. That’s why an e-mail from a friend in Saskatoon seemed yet another blow.

“I have sorrowful news about a feisty newsman,” Dennis Fisher wrote.

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My gaze met a familiar face the other day at the grocery story. Head tilted against her violin and eyes focused on her sheet music, my neighbour, Cynthia Nidd, sailed through a Christmas carol or two serenading nearby shoppers. Not surprisingly, she was supporting an important charity in town – the Salvation Army. Beside her, the signature Sally Ann Christmas Kettle waited expectantly for donations. I chatted with one of this community’s most reliable volunteers, stuffed a few dollars into the collection ball and left the store thinking about how little there seemed to be in that kettle.

“Who’s going to bail out the big three?” I wondered to myself. “Not Chrysler, G.M. and Ford … but chronic hunger, general homelessness and the food deprived.”

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It seemed awfully quiet when I got there. I arrived in the middle of the evening, so some of the downtown streets still had shops open. I guess they were hoping for some early December Christmas sales. But there didn’t seem to be much pedestrian traffic where I was. Wind blew snow into drifts as if the place were some forgotten ghost town. The streets were barely ploughed. At any rate, I asked the cabby why things seemed so quiet.

“Harper prorogued Parliament,” he said. “The place is dead.”

I arrived at the scene of the crime – Ottawa – Sunday night, in order to MC an event the following morning at the Canadian War Museum. Unlike the rest of Ontario, the cold along the Ottawa River seemed even chillier than the reading on the thermometer, minus 20. The prime minister had suspended the business of the country and so, it seemed, everybody had gone away. Not on holidays. Not in search of Christmas cheer. The National Capital just seemed to have closed down … indefinitely.

Monday morning, I was up early to get ready for my appointment. I dashed across Dalhousie Street to Dunn’s café, a 24-hour delicatessen in the old Bytown tourist area of downtown Ottawa. Even though the hour was early, I figured this popular eatery would be humming at the beginning of another work week. It wasn’t. The place probably had seating for 300 people, but I might have managed to organize a game of pick-up baseball with the number of patrons present Monday morning. The waiter made the point.

“If they’re not on the Hill, they’re not in here,” he said.

Outside, around downtown Ottawa, I noticed the flags on all government buildings flying at half-staff. At least the city had recognized Pte. Dmetrios Diplaros, Cpl. Mark McLaren and W.O. Robert Wilson – the three Canadian troops killed Friday in Afghanistan. But like the lowered flags, it seemed the entire city had ceased functioning. No street traffic. Half-full buses. Empty sidewalks. We went by Parliament Hill on Confederation Boulevard and not a light, not a footprint, nary a person in sight. I thought of the three men lost overseas and of a House of Commons prorogued, come to a grinding stop, dysfunctional to the point of inaction. What an insult to three men who, I’m sure, never considered abrogating their responsibilities in the face of adversity.

I made my way west of downtown Ottawa and arrived at the Canadian War Museum in anticipation of the event I was invited to MC. Oddly, the museum was actually closed to the public that day too. An employee on duty told me the slowing economy and the present situation in Ottawa had dictated the facility be closed on Mondays, at least for the time being.

Inside the museum at the appointed hour of the press conference, I invited the Dutch ambassador, Wim Geerts, to address a group of students, teachers, veterans and the media present. The ambassador announced that in May 2010, Holland would once again roll out the welcome mat for thousands of Canadians as his homeland will celebrate the 65th anniversary of liberation from German occupation. Joining the ambassador on the podium was retired Port Perry High School history teacher Dave Robinson.

“More than 42,000 Canadian soldiers lost their lives in the Second World War,” he said, “including 7,600 liberating the Netherlands.”

Robinson turned to three students beside him at the lectern and asked them to show the press conference the newly created symbol for the upcoming EF Education tour. The three students each put a hand forward – palm to the audience – and the three hands side-by-side with fingers splayed created a maple leaf configuration. Robinson, who has organized student tours to Juno Beach, Hong Kong, Vimy Ridge and Ortona, Italy, explained that he hoped more than 5,000 Canadian students would take up the challenge and travel to Holland “as a gesture of remembrance.”

When it came time for MP Rick Dykstra (joined by House Speaker Peter Milliken, the only two politicians choosing to attend the event) to speak, he told the story of his own parents emigrating from Holland after the war to Canada. He echoed his parents’ gratitude for Canadians liberating their country in 1945 and hoped “the torch of freedom…be passed from one generation to another.”

He also felt compelled to address the events of the past week in Ottawa. He suggested they were not the norm and hoped more appropriate behaviour would come to the Commons in 2009.

For the sake of the national economy, the reputation of Parliamentarians, not to mention the (now dormant) city of Ottawa, I hope he’s right.