Posts with the Greenbelt tag

Barris Beat

Cut college funding at your peril!

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Ontario Legislature shut down by winter election, in 2025

Like most, I received my “convincer cheque” from the provincial government a few days ago. It says it’s from the Ministry of Finance. But it couldn’t be plainer that its point of origin is Conservative Party HQ. It’s dated Jan. 29, 2025, exactly 24 hours after the premier visited Lt. Gov. Edith Dumont to dissolve Ontario’s 43rd Parliament for a general election Feb. 27, even though the premier doesn’t need to call an election until June 2026.

“Ontario Taxpayer Rebate,” the cheque is called.

Of greater importance to me that same week, however, I learned that Centennial College, where I instructed for 18 years, had permanently cancelled 49 programs, including 16 programs in its business school, seven at its engineering school and 14 communications courses at the Story Arts campus in East York. (more…)

Barris Beat

Vigil over Pickering lands continues

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Brian Buckles speaks at Land Over Landings meeting in 2018.

Brian and Jane Buckles had only lived on their property in Pickering between Concession Roads 7 and 8 for about four years, when, in 1972, the federal government expropriated their land for the proposed Pickering Airport.

Overnight their country dream home – with an old Ontario farmhouse on 20 acres of land – became one of the hottest political potatoes in the GTA. Brian Buckles, however, would not go quietly.

“Days after the announcement, (farmer) Lorne Almack and I became the technical committee for People or Planes. I talked to officials with Air Canada and De Havilland preparing the technical case against the airport.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Much sole-sourcing. No soul-searching.

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ServiceOntario outlet. CityNews.

The last time I went there, I learned something. Remember those Ontario Health cards with the red and white stripes and no head shot? Several years ago, I received notice that I needed to have mine updated with new coding and a photograph. I honestly had visions of lineups, questionnaires, and a long wait to have a new photo taken and an even longer wait for the new card to arrive.

“Nope,” the ServiceOntario representative said. “I already have your photo from your driver’s licence in the file. We can use that for your new health card.”

I was in and out of the service outlet in minutes. My updated card arrived just days later. And I’d discovered that the digital system storing my photo ID actually does work. (more…)

Barris Beat

Canada’s veterans would not be amused

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Grace MacPherson put her pride of country above all else in the Great War.

Grace MacPherson had all the credentials she needed to become an ambulance driver in the Great War. The first woman in Vancouver to earn a driver’s licence. The first woman to purchase a car in that city. When war broke out in 1914, she even paid her own way to Britain offering her skills as a driver to the Red Cross ambulance corps.

When she gained an audience with Sam Hughes, Canada’s minister of militia and war in 1917, to plead her case, however, he turned her down.

“I’ll stop any woman from going to France,” Hughes blustered.

“With your help, or without it,” Miss MacPherson said, “I will serve.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Speaking first, engaging the brain later

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Premier Ford and Finance Minister Bethlanfalvy ignoring the Greenbelt scandal. YouTube

I thought I was in complete control of the moment. I’d read – both aloud and to myself – all the appropriate practice phrases. I arrived right on time for my first CBC Radio News announcing audition at the main Toronto studios. They gave me the audition scripts – a newscast, a piece of poetry and lists of words in French, Italian, German and English to just read aloud during my audition.

I had time to review the copy, then I entered the studio to record my audition. Everything went swimmingly – including the French, Italian and German. But then I tripped up on an English word. I came across the word “epitome,” paused and said:

“E-pi-tome,” with the emphasis on the first syllable, as if I’d said “epic tome.” And the moment I mispronounced it, I knew I was wrong and I wished I could’ve quickly crammed the word back in my mouth to say it properly the first time. But it was too late. (more…)

Barris Beat

Ford’s foxes in our hen house

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Choosing expediency over experience. Pinterest

We had considered many options. People. Places. Past knowledge. We knew the subject – youth violence and alienation – required some very specific understanding of the causes and effects of the problem. We had plenty of college and university experts on hand because we worked among them. But somehow we sensed to get to the root of the problem, we had to get closer to the ground. There was a vital element missing in our approach.

It was experience. (more…)

Barris Beat

Enough with broken promises

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U.S. President Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, after breaking promise to keep American boys out of it.

In 1964, I remember U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) uttering these words: “We’re not about to send American boys … 10,000 miles away from home … to war.”

Johnson was promising to keep U.S. troops out of the war in Vietnam. In fact, his administration and the one following it sent more than 3 million American soldiers into an unwinable war. Nearly 60,000 of those young men died. They died of a broken promise. (more…)

Barris Beat

Where the Ford government allegiances lie

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Oath-taking – a practice for those wishing to tell the truth.

When I cross the border into the United States, it happens. When we go through security checks at international airports, it happens. When I was approached by the Ontario Court for jury duty, it happened. At those moments and others, we are asked:

“Do you swear that this is the truth?”

It’s called an oath. And when we cross an international border, Customs and Immigration officers need to know we’re being honest. Going through Pearson Airport security and onto public commercial airlines, security needs to know we’re abiding by the law. And if we’re meeting our civic duty in the Ontario court system, the judge needs to hear us say, “Yes, that’s the truth.”

So why don’t any of those protocols of oath-taking, of abiding by the rules, apply to Ford government officials around Conservative policies regarding protection of Greenbelt lands? (more…)

Barris Beat

Another Ford Greenbelt review?

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Richard Nixon, found out, covering up the truth, nearly impeached, claiming, “I am not a crook!” Poliitico.

I dodged most of the last few months of my university classes to see it. I sensed – as a journalist-in-training in the early 1970s – that reality was more important than theory. So, we all crowded into a student lounge at Toronto Metropolitan University (then Ryerson) to watch the daily TV Senate Committee hearings into connections between the Watergate break-in and then president Richard Nixon.

I specifically remember Committee Chair Sen. Sam Ervin sparring with Nixon’s then White House adviser John Ehrlichman.

“The President seems to extend executive privilege way out past the atmosphere,” Ervin said later. “What he says is executive privilege, is nothing but executive poppycock.” (more…)

Barris Beat

When a ship of state is sinking…

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Not living up to responsibility costs lives. HistoryExtra.

In 1979, I met and interviewed a seaman named Steve Prentice; he was in his 80s then. Just before midnight on April 14, 1912, the ship on which he served, RMS Titanic, struck an iceberg 600 kilometres off Newfoundland. As a junior purser, his job was to serve the needs of passengers and crew.

That night, he happened to be close to the bridge of the Titanic, just as the ship’s designer Thomas Andrews told Bruce Ismay, the chairman of White Star, and Titanic’s senior officer Edward Smith what he’d seen below decks.

“What’s her position?” Ismay asked Andrews.

“The position, sir, is that she’s going to sink,” Andrews said. “The water’s coming straight up. The bulkheads won’t help her in any way at all.”

Young Steve Prentice then spent the next 90 minutes convincing as many passengers as possible to get to the lifeboats. It was his job. (more…)