Posts with the Collingwood tag

Barris Beat

The crisis is real on campus

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Dr. Craig Stephenson, president of Centennial College since August 2019.

The president contacted me this week. No, not that president. He’s an administrator of a large Toronto-area college. He addressed me by my first name, which caught my attention. Then, he offered some reflections on the pandemic, its impact on teaching, on learning and most assuredly on budgets. I sensed it was a pitch letter. But he wasn’t pitching me about hisbudget. He spoke about students’ budgets, or lack of them.

“It’s the beginning of a new order,” Craig Stephenson, president of Centennial College, said in a note, “full of uncertainty for our students…” (more…)

Barris Beat

What makes Canada, Canada

Written by Ted Barris on . 1 Comment
Aerial photo of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where the storage buildings of valuables stolen from Jewish prisoners were called "Canada" warehouses.
Aerial photo of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where the storage buildings of valuables stolen from Jewish prisoners were called "Canada" warehouses.

Seventy years ago, Hitler and his henchmen murdered civilian populations across occupied Europe: Jews, Roma, homosexuals, communists and thousands of other so-called enemies of the Third Reich. But before they did, they stripped them of every single personal possession – from heirlooms to clothing to gold fillings – and stockpiled them for exploitation by the Nazi regime. In an ironic twist of fate, I learned recently, the warehouses at Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp had an odd nickname.

“The Polish prisoners called the warehouses ‘Canada,’” our guide at the concentration camp museum told us, “after the faraway place they’d once heard contained riches and freedom.”

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