Posts with the Congress tag

Barris Beat

Silence is not an option

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, March 26, 2024. India TV.

Instincts cannot be unlearned. Early last Tuesday morning (March 26), a retired chief of the Baltimore fire department was wakened when he heard rumbling and felt his house shake. He lives a short distance from the Patapsco River. He said the experience “felt like an earthquake.”

Interviewed by The Associated Press in the U.S., former firefighter Donald Heinbuch explained that instinct told him to drive to toward the unearthly sound. Then, he described what he saw. “The (container) ship was there, and the bridge was in the water – like it was blown up.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Attitude for a new decade

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Team Canada celebrates gold-medal victory at 2020 world junior hockey championship in Czech Republic. dailyhive.com

I was heading home from the city, the other night. I dashed up the escalator from the TTC subway, and spotted the coach I had to catch sitting outside the bus station. I sprinted across the platform and landed just inside the front doors of the bus. The bus driver wasn’t pulling out right away, so I caught my breath and moved down the centre aisle of the bus to make room for others.

“Don’t crowd me, man,” said a young commuter next to me. “Keep the f___ away!” And I stepped back and apologized.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” said another man to the guy spouting the profanity.

And on it went. More expletives. More intensity. Back and forth between the two young strangers on the bus. So, before the bus left the station, I asked the driver to open the door and, as he did, I thanked him and said, “I think I’ll catch the next bus.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Owning gun violence

Written by Ted Barris on . 1 Comment
Najma Ahmed, trauma surgeon and founder of Canadian Doctors for Protection from Guns. CBC.ca

They call it “code orange” in Toronto hospitals. And trauma surgeon Najma Ahmed found herself in the middle of it late one night in July last summer. When she received the code signal, she said she dashed to St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto in minutes. She passed a long line of ambulances on her way to the emergency ward and immediately began conducting triage of injured civilians.

“There was a sense of shock,” she told the CBC. “We’re Canada. This does not happen here.” (more…)