Posts with the Pentagon tag

Barris Beat

Identity lost and found

Written by Ted Barris on . 1 Comment
Uxbridge Oilies Oldtimers Hockey Club.

Last Sunday, about 1 o’clock in the afternoon, I disappeared. I wasn’t hiding. I wasn’t trying to escape. In fact, I’d just returned home from a getaway-weekend hockey tournament in Bancroft – an annual event my oldtimers teammates and I enjoy.

As I arrived home, however, I felt my pocket, noticed my wallet was missing. I began retracing my steps. One of my hockey buddies and I had stopped for coffee. I’d paid the cashier, picked up the coffee cups and pastry and promptly forgot my wallet at the cash.

“Did anybody turn in a wallet left on the counter?” I asked an employee over the phone.

“Not that I know of,” she said.

I asked her to check with a supervisor or manager. But the answer was the same. Nothing in the lost-and-found. Nothing on the counter, the floor, anywhere. The wallet I’d absentmindedly left behind was gone. (more…)

Barris Beat

From isolation can come greatness

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Composer Viktor Ullmann, imprisoned but not silenced.

Imagine a curfew keeping you inside your home. You can. Imagine quarantine as if it were imprisonment. You can. Then, imagine coming up with a unique way to deal with your isolation by turning to one of your life skills. I imagine that you can do that too.

That’s what Victor Ullmann did, in 1942. Imprisoned at a place called Terezin, a concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Bohemia, Ullmann, a music composer by profession, wrote an opera inside the prison depicting his predicament. It was called The Emperor of Atlantis.

“It’s a (musical) parable about a mad, murderous ruler,” wrote a reviewer years later, “who proclaims universal war.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Tunnel in a teapot

Written by Ted Barris on . 2 Comments
Toronto Police Services' Mark Saunders addresses media about tunnel discovery (courtesy CBC).
Toronto Police Services’ Mark Saunders addresses media about tunnel discovery (courtesy CBC).

Radio, television, the newspapers and most of social media were all buzzing, Monday night, because Toronto Police had found a tunnel a stone’s throw from an indoor tennis court facility in northwest Toronto. It wasn’t just any tennis court. It wasn’t just any tunnel. The tunnel was big enough to live in and apparently pointed in the direction of the Toronto Pan-American Games tennis venue – the Rexall Centre. But when asked at a press conference if he thought the tunnel was part of a terrorist plot, Deputy Chief Mark Saunders had a simple response:

“There’s no criminal offence for digging a hole,” he said. (more…)

Features

9/11 Volunteer

Written by Ted Barris on . 1 Comment
Laurie Laychak seated on the bench dedicated to her husband David Laychak, who was killed in the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon’s southwest wall (pictured behind her).
Laurie Laychak seated on the bench dedicated to her husband David Laychak, who was killed in the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon’s southwest wall (pictured behind her).

One day last summer, Laurie Laychak came back to the place where her husband David died. She visits the recently inaugurated cantilevered benches, Crape Myrtle trees and light pools of the Pentagon Memorial several times a month. Yes, it’s a pilgrimage. But she’s also on a mission. This day, the Laychaks’ daughter Jennifer has joined Laurie for the drive over. Just before her mother meets a group of travel journalists from Canada, Jennifer makes a painful admission to her mom.

“I can’t remember Dad’s voice,” the 20-year-old said. (more…)

Barris Beat

Occupying minds, not parks

Written by Ted Barris on . 1 Comment
On Nov. 15 city officials delivered eviction notices to the Occupy Toronto protest site in St. James Park. A judge later stayed that eviction until the weekend.
On Nov. 15 city officials delivered eviction notices to the Occupy Toronto protest site in St. James Park. A judge later stayed that eviction until the weekend.

The comment was bold and brutal. The man on the other end of the phone was blunt and to the point. He pulled no punches. His voice was full of disgust.

“You’re lazy. You’re vagrants. You’re a bunch of hoodlums, drug addicts and anarchists” he said on the phone. “Get out of our park!”

(more…)