Crowded kiosks inside Terminals 1 and 3 at Pearson. Automated luggage processors. Swamped ticket counters. Endless security lines. Chaotic airline gate waiting areas. Scrambling for carry-on space in overhead bins. And lacklustre service in the air.
None of these places has been a welcoming spot for Canadians flying domestically recently. Indeed, when my wife and I went through all those figurative minefields last weekend, I think the overwhelming question we asked ourselves was:
“Why would anyone actually want to attempt air travel right now?” (more…)
Going into and returning from the U.S., requires a swab. But which one?
There were several of us sitting in the consultation area of a local Uxbridge pharmacy last week – all of us waiting, most of us doing this for the first time, and everybody looking a bit anxious. The woman next to me – well, actually two metres away – was busy texting somebody. Of all those in the waiting area, she seemed the most at ease. I thought I’d seek some assurance.
“Done this before?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said through her mask. “My husband and I travel a lot. So, we’re getting used to it.” (more…)
It happened last Saturday morning. We at the Uxbridge Cosmos newspaper had assembled on Maple Street. Our float needed a couple of last-minute touches, but we were ready and waiting for the parade to begin. I was looking for something else to do. I suddenly noticed a traffic jam at Maple and Centre Road. I thought maybe I could lend a hand. When I got there, I found a long line of southbound cars on Centre trying to get through the Santa Claus Parade floats. A woman in the first car I encountered rolled her window down.
Members of Cosmos family – staff, contributors, fans – from Santa Claus Parade several years ago.
“This kid,” she said pointing to her son in the back seat, “has to be at a music lesson downtown in six minutes. Get me through this.”
“Well, try this way,” I said as I directed her along Maple Street.
She followed my hand direction and raced up the street (we both hoped) to get her son to his music lesson on time. For the record, I have no idea whether my direction was a help or a hindrance. I just offered her a potential way out of the psychological and geographical gridlock she faced in that intersection. But I later remarked to my Cosmos colleagues how powerful I’d felt directing her through the traffic. (more…)
I remember as a boy of six or seven, when my mom and dad and sister and I got a lift out to Malton (that’s the former name for Pearson International) Airport for a marathon flight to New York. I was almost jumping out of my skin, I was so excited. I think for a month afterward all I ever said in gatherings of more than two people was:
“You know what I did? I flew to New York on an airplane.” (more…)
The Pearson tarmac showed the ill effects of an ice storm on airline traffic. Courtesy Sun News.
Not so long ago, the talk in our oldtimers’ hockey dressing room turned to the usual grousing. The Leafs likely won’t make the playoffs, one guy moaned. Somebody else complained that township roads weren’t being ploughed quickly or thoroughly enough this winter. Then, Pearson airport became the target. In the recent ice storm, weren’t the delays horrendous? Wasn’t it criminal that travellers were forced to remain on the tarmac for hours?
And, just for good measure, aren’t those sunshine destination airfares outrageous? And I thought about something one of our daughters had said, when I complained about a similar problem, delay or cost.
“It’s a First World problem, Dad,” she pointed out quietly.
“Yes, but…” and I stopped myself. She was absolutely right.
This week, I caught both the federal budget unveiling in the House of Commons and the political and public response. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced that he would run the country’s business for about $250 billion, running a $2.9 billion deficit with an additional $3 billion contingency just in case the economy goes south. He suggested he would stay the course “to weather any future global economic storms,” in his speech in the
Commons. I’m sure Flaherty’s done the math, but Canada’s deficit and contingency alone would cover much of the assets of many Third World countries such as Bangladesh, Congo, Liberia, Eritrea and Afghanistan combined. In other words, deficits and contingencies and economic storms are all relative.
I watched Global TV’s coverage of Opposition leader Tom Mulcair assess the budget. The NDP leader complained that there are 300,000 more Canadians looking for work than during the economic crisis of 2008; in particular, he worried that 260,000 young Canadians are still looking for work. Down the hall, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau worried the budget didn’t offer any hope of growth or a vision for the future; he scoffed that it was an electoral budget, promising to balance the books just in time for next year’s federal election.
“We’re not seeing any vision,” Trudeau scolded, but then, that’s what Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition’s job is – to complain.
This week, I conducted a bit of a state-of-the-union survey among my journalism students at the college where I teach. They decried tuition fees. They wished cell phone rates weren’t so high. They hated the cafeteria food. And when I asked why some of them hadn’t arrived on time for their news reporting class, they said it was scheduled too early in the day.
It was just after 11:30 a.m. and – to some – that was an ungodly hour to be expected to perform thinking, reasoning or any other creative skills. When I informed them that I had originally intended to schedule the class for 8:30 a.m., they responded with such indignation, you’d have thought I’d insulted their family name.
By the end of the tour, the rain and the reality had scared off most of the tourists.
“That’s ridiculous,” one of them said. “How could anybody function under those conditions?”
The reaction gave me pause. I remembered a personal experience that had profoundly affected my sense of perspective. In the summer of 2010, I travelled to Krakow, Poland. I met a guide, who had offered to assist me as I planned a subsequent trip leading a tour of Canadians through that part of Eastern Europe. I asked him if he would get me to a small town just outside Krakow, called Oświęcim, where during the Second World War, the Nazis constructed a prison (Auschwitz) and concentration camp (Birkenau) to systematically exterminate political prisoners and the Jews of Europe.
The railway in did not indicate it was a one-way trip.
“The tour will last three hours,” the on-site guide told us at the Auschwitz interpretive centre. “And I hope you brought umbrellas.”
I hadn’t. But it didn’t matter. The rain was pouring down with such intensity and volume as we began the tour of Auschwitz prison, that most of the people in our group were drenched within the first 10 minutes of the visit. And because the content of the tour was so severe and depressing, only a handful of us remained by the time the three-hour tour had concluded.
Much of what the former prison contained haunted me. The cells in which the condemned spent their last hours depressed me for days. The photographs of the men and women tortured and killed stick in my head even now. And when I got to Birkenau and realized how many thousands of Jews the Nazis had crammed inside those former horse barns, I cried. But what stays with me most of all, was the sight inside one of the prison barns of a lone faucet and basin, the sole washing facility for hundreds and hundreds of prisoners there.
To this day, I cannot turn on a tap, brush my teeth, take a shower or pour a glass of water without flashing back to that solitary faucet and basin. I guess it’s the mental equivalent of reminding myself – anytime I complain – that mine are “are just First World problems.”
Toronto Star photo of government ministers Murray, Flaherty, Kent and Alexander at photo op to announce expansion of Rouge Urban National Park… and, oh yes, an airport.
It happened one morning a couple of weeks ago. I was driving down Brock Road in the southbound rush-hour east of Toronto. In the stop-and-go-traffic just below the village of Brougham – near the intersection of Brock and Hwy 407 – I pulled up beside a pickup truck with a construction logo on the door. I had my window down. So did he.
“Construction season’s started, eh?” I said so the guy could hear me.
“Oh yeah,” he said and smiled. He seemed glad to be working.
President Roosevelt signs declaration of war on Dec. 8, 1941.
There was a day in my parents’ lives that changed everything. It happened in 1941. My father was 19 that September. My mother was a year younger. They both had grown up and gone to school in New York City. But events that day just before Christmas, meant that my mother would see her brother-in-law and her future husband, my father, go off to war. My parents were both U.S.-born and their American president described the change that day indelibly.
“December 7, 1941, is a date which will live in infamy,” Franklin D. Roosevelt said.
Homemade Barris Christmas angel ornament (fashioned by our daughter Quenby in 1980s).
It happened after I’d graduated from Ryerson in 1971. I’d learned about a position writing press releases and biographies about up-and-coming rock ‘n’ roll musicians. They called it A&R, an artist and repertoire position. My employer would be one of the biggest recording labels in the world – Warner Brothers. And, they told me, I would be working from a brand new office in Yorkville, the heart of Toronto’s pop music world.
I wanted that job so badly I could taste it. I applied in June, got it in September and was told I’d start in December. It would be my biggest, best Christmas present ever. Then, the roof caved in.
“Sorry to have to tell you this,” the Warner Brothers flunky said on the phone that December. “Changed their minds. No A&R office. No job.”
