Posts with the Ontario Morning tag

Barris Beat

Of character and characters

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Barry Penhale & Jane Gibson receive lifetime achievement award from Ontario Historical Society. 2019.

Look closely on the walls of their sunlit living room: There’s a framed lifetime achievement certificate, as recognized by the Ontario Historical Society. The citation praises Barry Penhale and Jane Gibson for their many years of professional and volunteer work bringing history and heritage to the attention of Ontarians.

The OHS presented the award to this extraordinary couple in 2019. Seated in his favourite armchair in that living room, Penhale smiled modestly.

“History isn’t something any one person owns,” he told me last week. “It’s about preserving and celebrating what we’ve all experienced.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Celebrity, thy name is Uxbridge

Written by Ted Barris on . 2 Comments

You probably missed it. You can be forgiven because I missed it too. But last Monday the Internet was all a twitter (yes, pun intended) about a birthday event. It’s one that your teeny-bopper kids (or grandkids) probably noticed. It appears that music heart-throb Justin Bieber celebrated his 16th birthday by visiting the Son of a Gun Tattoo and Barbershop in Toronto. There he had a tattoo of a seagull inked onto his left hip.

“That’s a bad area,” the tattoo artist told MTV News. “Justin was nervous, but then he got into it and it was done. It’s very tiny.”

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