Posts with the RCMP tag

Barris Beat

Those who followed also served

Written by Ted Barris on . 2 Comments
Bill Stewart, Paul Moffatt and Al Thomas, firefighters from Toronto, prepare to pay tribute to veterans at Menin Gate on May 23, 2024.

The three of them seemed buried in preparations – arranging the wreath, adjusting their berets, straightening their blazers and ties – and they didn’t notice me approaching with my cellphone camera. Then, suddenly as they stepped to the curb beneath the Menin Gate, a shaft of sunlight caught them.

“Look here guys,” I called out.

Almost in perfect symmetry, the three men – Bill Stewart, Al Thomas and Paul Moffatt – all snapped to attention the way they’ve done thousands of times before. And I clicked the photograph of the three retired firefighters in their parade uniforms, ready to join one of the most poignant Great War commemorations in Europe. (more…)

Barris Beat

Speaking first, engaging the brain later

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Premier Ford and Finance Minister Bethlanfalvy ignoring the Greenbelt scandal. YouTube

I thought I was in complete control of the moment. I’d read – both aloud and to myself – all the appropriate practice phrases. I arrived right on time for my first CBC Radio News announcing audition at the main Toronto studios. They gave me the audition scripts – a newscast, a piece of poetry and lists of words in French, Italian, German and English to just read aloud during my audition.

I had time to review the copy, then I entered the studio to record my audition. Everything went swimmingly – including the French, Italian and German. But then I tripped up on an English word. I came across the word “epitome,” paused and said:

“E-pi-tome,” with the emphasis on the first syllable, as if I’d said “epic tome.” And the moment I mispronounced it, I knew I was wrong and I wished I could’ve quickly crammed the word back in my mouth to say it properly the first time. But it was too late. (more…)

Barris Beat

Enough with broken promises

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U.S. President Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, after breaking promise to keep American boys out of it.

In 1964, I remember U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) uttering these words: “We’re not about to send American boys … 10,000 miles away from home … to war.”

Johnson was promising to keep U.S. troops out of the war in Vietnam. In fact, his administration and the one following it sent more than 3 million American soldiers into an unwinable war. Nearly 60,000 of those young men died. They died of a broken promise. (more…)

Barris Beat

Tempest in a passport

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Abandoned target range where 116th Battalion recruits honed their marksmanship for war in 1915.

Last April, about the middle of the month, I took a detour from my regular travels. I turned down a dirt road south of town, got out of my car and wandered into the bush. There, just a few feet into the woods lies a bunker containing the rusted frames of century-old shooting targets.

It was here young men, three generations ago, prepared to become part of Canadian wartime history. And as I imagined those young recruits of the 116th (Ontario County) Battalion, practising on their Ross rifles, I think of the photograph – at our township museum and depicted in our downtown mural – of troops leaving for the Great War in 1916.

Volunteers depart Uxbridge for overseas in 1916.

“God bless our splendid men,” the sign over Brock and Toronto streets reads in the photo and the mural. “Send them safe home again.”

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Barris Beat

When Canada’s sovereignty was young

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Arctic ice pack. carbon brief

Seventeen years ago, a number of Canadian and American scientists set off on a unique voyage – sailing the Bellot Strait, a narrow channel in the Arctic Ocean that separates the most northerly point of North American mainland from Somerset Island in Canada’s Far North.

For the first time in history their vessel crossed the strait in October (when typically it would be frozen). One of the scientists on the trip in 2006 noted that Canadian Coast Guard officials aboard the ship all had the same reaction.

“They were collectively terrified,” explained Michael Byers then director of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC. Terrified that the strait was entirely ice-free during the voyage, and therefore open to passage. (more…)

Barris Beat

Portrait of a war artist

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Artist Dave Sopha about to reveal a unique tribute, August 2013.

Not a large man, he stood about as tall as the art easel he was about to unveil. But by the motion of his hands as he spoke and the animation in his face, we knew we had to listen. He wore a bright red and white shirt (I think I’ve always seen him in the colours of Canada). His commentary spoke of pride. His eyes sparkled telling a veteran’s story.

Then, he pulled away the easel’s covering to reveal his latest portrait honouring Second World War veteran and friend Harry Watts. There was instant applause from the audience, there to honour Harry’s 90th birthday in 2013. Then, portrait artist Dave Sopha and veteran Harry Watts hugged a genuine hug of appreciation and respect.

“Veterans like Harry Watts are larger than life,” Dave said. “We owe them everything.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Tell me, Prime Minister…

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RCMP Const. Heidi Stevenson at a public- service event in 2020. Cdn Press photo.

On Sunday, April 19, after as excruciating a night of pursuit as any known to her force, I’m sure, RCMP Const. Heidi Stevenson made the toughest decision of her life. She’d heard radio calls from a fellow constable nearby that he’d been shot by a murder suspect looking like an RCMP officer, driving what looked like an RCMP cruiser in Nova Scotia. She must have recognized the object of the all-night manhunt was taking deadly advantage of RCMP insignia to approach innocents and shoot them. She must have decided to at least try to take away that advantage. She spotted the impersonator and took drastic action.

“She rammed him,” Brian Sauvé of the National Police Federation told the Toronto Star, “and probably saved countless lives.”

Not, however, her own.

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Barris Beat

The salvation community can give

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Sean Brandow, Humboldt Broncos volunteer chaplain, at Uxbridge Arena, Nov. 23.

All of his initial assumptions were wrong that night. When he neared the scene on a Saskatchewan highway back on April 6 of this year, Sean Brandow didn’t know there’d been an accident. When he got a text about it, it suggested that a busload of fans had crashed. When he spotted ambulances, police and even available conservation officers dashing back and forth, he figured it was bad. But not nearly as bad as he soon discovered.

“As I walked closer, I could see hockey bags everywhere,” Brandow, said. “I knew it wasn’t a fan bus. I knew the guys in the ditch, the guys on stretchers, and the guys being loaded into ambulances were hockey players.”

Sean Brandow, volunteer chaplain for the Humboldt Broncos Saskatchewan Junior A hockey club, still finds it difficult to describe what he witnessed that night seven months ago. (more…)

Barris Beat

It can’t happen here

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RCMP cordoned off the community centre  in Sherwood Park. Sherwood Park News.

The first I heard, it was a fire inside a building. Later on, last Tuesday evening, I learned it was an explosion. Then, it was two explosions. Next, that the blasts had occurred in the same community where I was about to present one of my Remembrance talks, last Wednesday night. But I never felt as if I were in any real danger until I learned that the RCMP had become involved.

“RCMP have cordoned off the area around Festival Way in Sherwood Park,” the CBC News story reported Wednesday morning.

If that community – Sherwood Park– sounds a bit familiar, it should. It’s a satellite town near the City of Edmonton. And it’s the place where last Tuesday evening, according to police, a young man set off two bombs inside a public parking garage, and one of the bombs severely damaged the car he had driven there. (more…)

Barris Beat

Smoke and mirrors

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Aurora Borealis as captured by Canadian National Geographic photo.

I had only been in the city a few days. When I arrived in Saskatoon that winter of 1972, I had a job – as a TV producer in the audio-visual centre of the University of Saskatchewan – but I didn’t have a place to stay. A friend directed me top a house rented by some U of S students. I met with them and and they said I could move into the available room – a kitchen on the second floor. They told me to bring my stuff a few days later.

I arrived at my new lodgings only to discover a phalanx of RCMP cruisers barricading my way into the house.

“Who are you?” asked one of the officers. “What’s your connection to this place? Clearly, I had walked into the middle of a police raid.

“I’m just moving in,” I explained. I later learned that the house where I was about to reside in Saskatoon was home to one of the busiest soft drug distribution points in the city.

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