Rene Thied in 2013, listening to Canadian veterans recall their role in the liberation of Sicily. — Rene Thied – art historian, tour guide and lover of life – seemed eager to learn more every day.

Like it did millions of other Europeans, the Second World War changed Rene Thied’s life. Born in Hanover, Germany, following the war, Thied first learned about the Holocaust while he attended Ann Frank Schule, a grade school in Hanover. Even as a boy, Rene was appalled by what the Nazis did during the war.

“I couldn’t live in a country that had done such a thing,” he told me years later, “so, I decided to leave my home country.”

Today, November 11, Canada’s annual Remembrance Day, I will try to pay tribute to as many Allied servicewomen and men as I can. Over the years, I have had the good fortune to meet and interview perhaps 6,000 vets of the two World Wars, the Korean War, U.N. peacekeeping and Afghanistan. Many of them are top of mind today. (more…)

ITALY_POSTCARDS_TICKET_MAY2013_E — Postcards awaiting postage stamps I couldn’t buy. The ticket (top) should have entitled me the chance to purchase those stamps, but the system in Italy doesn’t work that way.

It began innocently enough. I wanted to mail some postcards home. I’d done the hard part – composing some thoughts and finding the addresses. I’d even discovered that postage stamps were available in tobacco stores here. So I searched one out and asked for “francobollo” in my best, fractured Italian. But the tobacconist waved his hands. They didn’t sell stamps anymore. I’d have to go to the post office. There, I found what I thought I needed – wickets, line-ups and clerks – until I reached the front of the line.

“No. No,” the clerk said. He too was waving his hands at me, as if I was contagious. And he shouted at me, “You need ticket!”

“Oh, a first-come first-served system like a bakery,” I thought. “I can do this.”

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Ted Barris

author | journalist

Posts with the Sicily tag

The German who served Canadians

Getting things done Italiano