Posts with the OISE tag

Barris Beat

For the love of cursive

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Sergeant medic Alex Barris in Czechoslovakia, 1945.

It was April 1945. The Second World War was just days from ending in Europe. My father’s medical battalion had received a few days’ leave in the then Allied-occupied German city of Düsseldorf.

There, Alex and his comrades enjoyed hot meals, hot showers, and billets with beds and clean sheets. Somewhere in the chaos, somehow in the uncertainty, my father found a place and some time to sit down and compose a letter.

“Dear Koula,” he wrote to a pen pal in New York City. “We have known each other so long, yet I never saw you very often after I finished school.”

Koula Kontozoglus, a pen pal worth writing to,

The words spoke to me deeply because Dad was expressing emotion in a war zone that allowed little room for feelings. He was admitting frailty – delinquency for not writing often enough. And his words flowed because they were written cursively. (more…)

Barris Beat

Competence and reward? Not here!

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Promoting cafe staff, like everything else, by merit and experience. thebalancesmb.com

It was the end of our shift. The boss, the owner of the restaurant, called a staff meeting. There were waiters, waitresses, cooks and the busboy staff – about a dozen of us. For several weeks we’d known that the head busboy was leaving the diner. So, we were looking to the boss for some kind of announcement about who would become the next head busboy. His decision was not unexpected. He gave the job to Denny.

“Denny’s been with us the longest,” the boss said. “He has the most experience. He has the trust of everybody on staff and all our customers. He’s the right choice for the position.”

Nobody, not a single person on our staff, disagreed. Everybody could see that the promotion had gone to exactly the right person. Denny met all criteria. So, he got the job. That’s the way it was done at a restaurant staff meeting I attended in the summer of 1966. (more…)

Barris Beat

Fairness or bust

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Statue of Ryerson toppled in Toronto, June 6, 2021. BBCNews

It started with registration and Frosh Week in September 1968. I was so eager to attend the school I even lined up at the bookstore to buy a jacket with his name “Ryerson” arched across the back. Three years later, I reached a milestone there when I received the certificate signifying that I had completed all my courses in broadcast journalism. But I returned a few years later, when Ryerson had become a degree-granting institution, completed the makeup courses, and stood in line again to receive my BA in 1976.

“By virtue of the authority granted by the province of Ontario under the Polytechnical Act, 1962, Ryerson has awarded the degree Bachelor of Applied Arts to Theodore Barris,” the document said. Next to my name, a seal with the bust of Egerton Ryerson embossed on the degree.

I thought of that seal, and that bust, Monday morning, as I learned that demonstrators in front of the main gates of Ryerson University in downtown Toronto had toppled the statue of the institution’s namesake. (more…)