Posts with the featured tag

Barris Beat

History preservers

Written by Ted Barris on . 6 Comments
Hugh Halliday, centre, poses for photo with fellow recipients of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee Medal at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton.

I sat elbow-to-elbow with history last Sunday. Many seated around me had piloted military aircraft in hostile skies. Others had gone aloft as Royal Canadian Air Force navigators, radio operators, gunners and flight engineers. But just as many had made history in the ranks of the volunteer association that gathers, preserves and celebrates the romance of flight in peacetime – the Air Force Association of Canada. Closest to me (and equally close to that history) sat Hugh Halliday, eminent Canadian air historian. We talked about current writing projects. It turned out he had research I needed and he offered it to me without question, without thought of compensation.

“The best way to preserve history,” Halliday said, “is to share it.”

(more…)

Barris Beat

Harvest record

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
249 combines, 300 acres and seven minutes to a Guinness World Record. Courtesy Dennis Fisher.

We don’t very often get the chance to witness a world’s record. Oh, in the Toronto area, we used to be able to walk by the world’s tallest freestanding structure, the CN Tower, until they built one taller in Dubai a couple of years ago. I once stood within a metre of the world’s biggest gem, the Hope diamond, at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. And I’ve personally witnessed a bunch of The Great One’s goal-scoring feats, some of which are world’s records I guess (the 50 goals in 39 games, for example). But I’ve rarely associated the province of Saskatchewan (where I lived for a while) with any world’s records. Then, this week, I got a note from an old friend, Dennis Fisher, in Saskatoon.

“We watched 249 combines harvest a [half] section of land in seven minutes,” he wrote me. “It was a Guinness World Record.”

(more…)

Barris Beat

Call for honesty

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Margaret Wente says she is not a serial plagiarist.

My world of words has been turned upside down this week. One of our own has been accused of the worst sin in our profession – taking the ideas of another writer and presenting them as her own. According to Carol Wainio, an Ottawa-based blogger, in 2009 Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente wrote an editorial about something called enviro-romanticism. In her column, among other things, she wrote about non-governmental organizations.

“They believe traditional farming in Africa incorporates indigenous knowledge that shouldn’t be replaced by science-based knowledge introduced from the outside,” Wente wrote.

(more…)

Barris Beat

Canadian grooves

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Saturday morning mecca for LPs, Sam the Record Man, in Toronto.

Sam Sniderman changed my Saturdays forever. Back in the 1960s, instead of sleeping in, savouring my coffee, wasting my morning, I high-tailed it downtown to Yonge and Dundas streets, to the store under the spinning-record sign to spend my money on vinyl. Yes, every Saturday morning I raced to take advantage of Sam’s door-crasher specials.

“The best music and the best prices,” Sam Sniderman used to say in his advertisements. But more than that, he also said, “Buy Canadian music because it’s the best.”

(more…)

Barris Beat

Do not hurry autumn

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Plenty of autumn to soak up before we have to deal with the inevitable.

It didn’t take long. The trees have just started to turn. Outside town the low spots each morning are full of that chilly mist. The sandals have pretty much been moved to the back of the closet along with many of my short-sleeved shirts. But I wasn’t ready for this: I got a promotional circular from the place I usually take my car for oil changes.

“Get ready to winterize,” it said. “Cold weather’s just around the corner.”

(more…)

Barris Beat

Changing the landscape

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
The federal government’s view of the proposed “Haliburton-Uxbridge” constituency, does not include Uxbridge in the southwest corner of the map.

Ottawa, I have learned, has the power to do many things. The federal government can influence the nation’s economy, with Bank of Canada interest rates, stimulus funding and, of course, taxation. It can choose to send the country’s armed forces to war. Ultimately, it has the power to draft, debate and generate the laws that change the lives of all Canadians. But this week, when I opened up one of the Toronto daily newspapers, a special federal government insert dropped out. And I discovered the feds have even greater power than I thought.

“Canada’s electoral map is changing,” the cover of the insert said. “Read about the proposed new electoral map for Ontario.”

(more…)

Barris Beat

No place like home

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Uxbridge’s distinctive mini-Taj Mahal, erected by Thomas Foster in the 1935-36.

Over the weekend I travelled to Simcoe, Ont., to attend the 100th birthday of a veteran friend of mine. It was a wonderful celebration. Lots of friends and family dropped by to shake his hand, swap stories and enjoy his cake with a hundred candles on it. At some point during the afternoon, someone asked me where I was from.

“Uxbridge,” I said proudly.

“What’s Uxbridge like?” she asked. “Typical Ontario small town?”

(more…)

Barris Beat

Giant leaps for humankind

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 lunar landing in July 1969.

It was the summer I turned 20. It was also the summer of anti-war demonstrations on Canadian and U.S. university campuses. It was the summer of Chappaquiddick and then Woodstock. Then, in the middle of the night, on July 20, 1969, we heard those indelible words.

“One small step for a man,” Neil Armstrong said between bits of static on the TV feed from the moon. “One giant leap for mankind.”

(more…)

Barris Beat

Gift of art

Written by Ted Barris on . 2 Comments
Stained-glass artists Sue Parkinson presents her work as a gift.

A few months ago, my wife and I were invited to a meeting in downtown Toronto. We thought it was about planning our European battlefield tour for next spring. So, we arrived at the Merit Travel agency on schedule. We were then escorted through a rabbit’s warren of office cubicles and into a boardroom and introduced to a member of the agency staff whom we didn’t know.

“This is Sue Parkinson,” we were told. “She’s got something for you.”

(more…)

Barris Beat

Dog days of summer

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
A Kerry with dual citizenship (and neither is Ireland).

Late last month – I think it was just before the Civic Holiday weekend – I got a message on a net-serve account. A writer friend of mine was in a bit of a jam and she needed help. So she put out an all-points-bulletin to her writer colleagues for help on the Internet. Normally, this online service helps writers find editors, publishers, venues for reading and other aids that writing professionals require. Her call for help this time was a little unexpected.

“Anybody know where I can kennel my dog over the holiday weekend?” she asked.

(more…)