Posts with the London tag

Barris Beat

Get some. Miss some.

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Firefighters in the Blitz, 1940.

The public-speaking appearance was half done. At intermission, last Friday night in the central-Alberta city of Camrose, I sat at a table signing books and listening to feedback from members of the audience.

A woman approached; with her British accent she offered her take on the subject of my evening talk, the Battle of Britain. She was a child in London during the Blitz in the summer of 1940, when she said her father had served in the London fire brigade fighting fires German bombers ignited each night.

“When he came home in the morning after fighting fires all night, I remember his face was completely black with soot,” she said, then drawing imaginary circles around her eyes, “except the white around his eyes where he’d warn protective goggles.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Warrior with a bucket of sand

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Fire watchers had tools, but during the Battle of Britain their greatest weapon was courage.

I’ve flown into Heathrow, the city of London’s major civilian airport, dozens of times – seeing a sky full of jetliners lined up to land at Europe’s largest commercial airport. But not until I met Torontonian Dorothy Firth, who lived there during the Second World War, had I ever imagined what the skies over that city might have looked like during a period known as “the Blitz.”

“It was always a nasty sound and a horrible feeling when the air-raid sirens went off,” she told me when I met her a few years ago, “because you never knew how fast the German (bombers) were coming.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Seated with respect

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Head stones vandalized at a cemetery in Israel. Times of Israel photo.

The images penetrated right to my core. I felt angry and hopeless both at the same time. Last week, a dear friend forwarded digital photographs she’d received from overseas. The pictures showed tombstones of fallen First and Second World War soldiers pushed over and spray-painted with swastikas.

A poignant quotation accompanied the images from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) cemetery in Israel.

“Why would someone want to cause pain in a place like this?” the caretaker of the cemetery said to the Times of Israel reporter. (more…)

Barris Beat

Via VIA

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120px-Edinburgh_Waverley_station_viewed_from_Edinburgh_Castle_2005-06-17_02
I remember a train trip from London to Edinburgh in the U.K. once; after about six hours en route, when we pulled into Waverley Station in Edinburgh two minutes late the conductor apologized profusely.

They issue tickets on the internet now. Unlike at the airport, there’s no window overlooking the tracks to see the trains arriving and departing. In fact, even at Union Station in Toronto – perhaps the busiest passenger rail terminal in the country – you can barely hear the clatter of wheels on steel or feel the rumble of the locomotive in the station. They don’t even blow a whistle on departure anymore. And yet VIA Rail’s slogan still reads:

“There is nothing quite like seeing Canada by rail.”

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Barris Beat

How much living space is enough?

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Most of these mansions or estate homes end up having two people rattling around in thousands of square feet of unused, unnecessary living space.
Most of these mansions or estate homes end up having two people rattling around in thousands of square feet of unused, unnecessary living space.

In most parts of Canada, they’re located in the suburbs where the lots are larger. In downtown areas they’re called mansions. In some older communities they’re found on former estates. In fact, out in the country, they’re described as estate homes. A few weeks ago, we were driving past a group of them north of Stouffville and an older passenger in our car gasped.

“Unbelievable aren’t they,” I said.

She nodded and reacted with an unexpected comment: “How on earth would anybody clean something like that?” she said.

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Barris Beat

From small town ideas

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Lancaster in front of Bomber Command Museum of Canada in Nanton, Alberta.
Lancaster in front of Bomber Command Museum of Canada in Nanton, Alberta.

I had hardly oriented myself to the place. Wood smoke from the recent B.C. fires had left Nanton, Alberta – a small prairie town south of Calgary – in a palpable haze. Nevertheless, aviation enthusiast Karl Kjarsgaard, who lives and volunteers there, had something he wanted to show me. Inside the newly renamed Bomber Command Museum of Canada, he led me to a storage area above the workshop. He opened a cardboard box and pulled out a metal bar about 18 inches long.

“This aluminum ingot has Canadian blood in it,” he said. “There’s 1,400 pounds of melted down aluminum in this box… and some of it is about to become famous.”

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