Posts with the “Raise Your Vibration tag

Barris Beat

Fix nationhood. Don’t abandon it.

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
First Peoples of Canada print of Battle of Batoche, 1885.

It was the climax of the chapter, about a 19th-century military battle in western Canada. It was an important feature in my first non-fiction book, written 44 years ago. It pitted a massive force of army militia troops from eastern Canada against Métis communities defending their land rights in the Saskatchewan territory. That spring of 1885, it became known as the Battle of Batoche.

In my book, Fire Canoe, I referred to the stand that Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont made at Batoche as “the Riel rebellion.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Publish or perish

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment

It must have been an extraordinary moment. A 40-year-old inventor in the 15th century city of Mainz, Germany, had experimented with metal alloys, molds, a pressing machine and oil-based ink. He took handmade paper, placed it in his press and moved the letters of the alphabet into position to print a 42-line piece of writing. He repeated the process 30 times to create a book. The book was a short Bible. The inventor was Johann Gutenberg. And the invention was history’s first mass printing of the world’s first published book.

“Incomparably the greatest event in the history of the world,” Mark Twain wrote 400 years later.

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