Posts with the Afghanistan tag

Barris Beat

Sounds like discrimination

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Frank Shuster, left, and Johnny Wayne were comedy stars on CBC Radio during the golden age of radio. Women singers, dancers and comedians shared the limelight on their shows as equals. And audiences – rich and poor – could enjoy their weekly shows.

Earlier this fall, I challenged students in my college History of Broadcasting course. I asked them to find elderly residents in the GTA to talk about their memories of what is known as “the golden age of radio.” Not surprisingly, some of them went to seniors’ residences to find their sources. Others called on grandparents who had grown up in the 1930s and ’40s to recall the radio broadcasts that shaped their childhood. What I didn’t expect was a history lesson back from my own students. One group played a recording of their interview with an immigrant woman who was 90 years old.

“When I was a girl of 17 in Afghanistan,” the woman on the recording said, “I was never allowed to listen to the radio. It was something only men could hear.”

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Barris Beat

Cannot tell a book…

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When I met CBC Commissionaire Don Nelson, I had no idea he had been a commando (much like these Canadian troops) during the Korean War.

The first time I went to the local chiropractor’s office, I arrived early and got caught up on some National Geographic stories. Then it was time for my session and I prepared myself with excuses. I expected a barrage of questions, such as, how long had my shoulder been bothering me, what previous treatment had I undergone, and why had I waited so long to deal with it. But that wasn’t the first thing Dr. Peter Begg asked me.

“Where did you get all your research for that Vimy book of yours?” he said.

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Barris Beat

No life like it

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Canadian troops in Afghanistan had to deal with the climate, the combat and the loss. Photo by Stefano Rellandini.

I had a chance encounter with a member of the Wounded Warriors the other night. I had just completed a presentation about the battle at Vimy Ridge at the Whitby Public Library. On our way out of the library, he gave me an update on plans the group has to take about 30 younger Canadian vets on a bicycle tour of Normandy later this spring. (By the way, they’re doing it entirely on private donations. No government funding.) He recounted a recent exchange between his group and a Veterans Affairs Canada committee reviewing the needs Canada’s latest vets – those returning from Afghanistan. He was encouraging greater support for vets with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Give them time,” the VAC rep apparently said. “They’ll get over it.”

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Barris Beat

Making memory permanent

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Today a tourist trap, Checkpoint Charlie between 1961 and 1989 trapped East Berliners inside the Iron Curtain.
Today a tourist trap, Checkpoint Charlie between 1961 and 1989 trapped East Berliners inside the Iron Curtain.

During a college class the other day, I wanted to give my broadcasting students a sense of the power of television as tool of influence in the 20th century. I chose something in their lifetime – the fall of the Berlin Wall – in 1989. That’s when the Western media began covering the activities of dissidents in East Germany, I said. And that sparked the popular uprising that pressured the Communist regime to open crossing points at the Wall. To make sure my students understood the context, I asked if everybody knew the basis of the Cold War.

“Was Canada involved?” one of my students asked.

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Barris Beat

Views from a bridge

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Pete Fisher began photographing along the Highway of Heroes, before it official earned that title.
Pete Fisher began photographing along the Highway of Heroes, before it officially earned that title.

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.

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Barris Beat

Days that change us

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President Roosevelt signs declaration of war on Dec. 8, 1941.
President Roosevelt signs declaration of war on Dec. 8, 1941.

There was a day in my parents’ lives that changed everything. It happened in 1941. My father was 19 that September. My mother was a year younger. They both had grown up and gone to school in New York City. But events that day just before Christmas, meant that my mother would see her brother-in-law and her future husband, my father, go off to war. My parents were both U.S.-born and their American president described the change that day indelibly.

“December 7, 1941, is a date which will live in infamy,” Franklin D. Roosevelt said.

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Barris Beat

Supporting those behind the troops

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Pte. Demetrios Deplaros
Pte. Demetrios Deplaros

Last Saturday night, during a fundraising event at the McLaughlin Armoury, in Oshawa, Ont., I met the mother of Demetrios Diplaros. Her son, a 24-year-old private in the third battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment, was killed on Dec. 5, 2008, when the armoured vehicle in which he was travelling hit an improvised explosive device near Kandahar, Afghanistan. Mrs. Diplaros and I spoke for a few minutes during the event, but mostly I just looked sympathetically into her still hurting face. As our conversation wound up, she thanked me for listening.

“I don’t know what I would have done without the support of friends and the military family,” she said, as she held on to me for dear life.

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Barris Beat

Remembrance and the vote

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"The Canadians held on and won at Kapyong because they believed they were the best men on the hill that night," author Dan Bjarnason writes in his book. "And they were right."
"The Canadians held on and won at Kapyong because they believed they were the best men on the hill that night," author Dan Bjarnason writes in his book. "And they were right."

It was just over a decade ago, as I recall. We were on the eve of a different federal election. The membership of the local Royal Canadian Legion had asked me to address the Remembrance Day banquet. I chose to acknowledge veterans of a forgotten war for a forgotten principle. At the branch, that night, was friend and veteran Bud Doucette. I recognized him and those other Canadian volunteers who fought in the Korean War to uphold the peace charter of the United Nations.

“I felt very proud,” former Lance/Corporal Doucette told me that night. “The war and our service have gone pretty much unnoticed.”

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Barris Beat

Promises, promises

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Making political promises stick.
Making political promises stick.

It didn’t take long to determine whether Canadians would be going to the polls this spring or not. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty hadn’t even begun to introduce the 2011 federal budget in the House of Commons, Tuesday afternoon, when we knew that two of the three Opposition leaders – Gilles Duceppe and Michael Ignatieff – would not support it. Only Jack Layton kept the country in suspense until the end of the budget speech. And within minutes of Flaherty’s concluding remarks, the other shoe dropped.

“Mr. Harper had an opportunity to address the needs of hard-working, middle class Canadians and families,” Layton said to CBC microphones, “and he missed that opportunity… New Democrats will not support the budget as presented.”

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