Posts with the Steve Clark tag

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

Ford’s foxes in our hen house

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Choosing expediency over experience. Pinterest

We had considered many options. People. Places. Past knowledge. We knew the subject – youth violence and alienation – required some very specific understanding of the causes and effects of the problem. We had plenty of college and university experts on hand because we worked among them. But somehow we sensed to get to the root of the problem, we had to get closer to the ground. There was a vital element missing in our approach.

It was experience. (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

Where the Ford government allegiances lie

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Oath-taking – a practice for those wishing to tell the truth.

When I cross the border into the United States, it happens. When we go through security checks at international airports, it happens. When I was approached by the Ontario Court for jury duty, it happened. At those moments and others, we are asked:

“Do you swear that this is the truth?”

It’s called an oath. And when we cross an international border, Customs and Immigration officers need to know we’re being honest. Going through Pearson Airport security and onto public commercial airlines, security needs to know we’re abiding by the law. And if we’re meeting our civic duty in the Ontario court system, the judge needs to hear us say, “Yes, that’s the truth.”

So why don’t any of those protocols of oath-taking, of abiding by the rules, apply to Ford government officials around Conservative policies regarding protection of Greenbelt lands? (more…)

Barris Beat

Another Ford Greenbelt review?

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Richard Nixon, found out, covering up the truth, nearly impeached, claiming, “I am not a crook!” Poliitico.

I dodged most of the last few months of my university classes to see it. I sensed – as a journalist-in-training in the early 1970s – that reality was more important than theory. So, we all crowded into a student lounge at Toronto Metropolitan University (then Ryerson) to watch the daily TV Senate Committee hearings into connections between the Watergate break-in and then president Richard Nixon.

I specifically remember Committee Chair Sen. Sam Ervin sparring with Nixon’s then White House adviser John Ehrlichman.

“The President seems to extend executive privilege way out past the atmosphere,” Ervin said later. “What he says is executive privilege, is nothing but executive poppycock.” (more…)

Barris Beat

When a ship of state is sinking…

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Not living up to responsibility costs lives. HistoryExtra.

In 1979, I met and interviewed a seaman named Steve Prentice; he was in his 80s then. Just before midnight on April 14, 1912, the ship on which he served, RMS Titanic, struck an iceberg 600 kilometres off Newfoundland. As a junior purser, his job was to serve the needs of passengers and crew.

That night, he happened to be close to the bridge of the Titanic, just as the ship’s designer Thomas Andrews told Bruce Ismay, the chairman of White Star, and Titanic’s senior officer Edward Smith what he’d seen below decks.

“What’s her position?” Ismay asked Andrews.

“The position, sir, is that she’s going to sink,” Andrews said. “The water’s coming straight up. The bulkheads won’t help her in any way at all.”

Young Steve Prentice then spent the next 90 minutes convincing as many passengers as possible to get to the lifeboats. It was his job. (more…)

Barris Beat

Signs of development = the Greenbelt gravy train

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Signs of the times. Is this creating affordable housing?

They seemed to pop up overnight. One day I was driving through Pickering up Brock Road and there was the Greenbelt land – fields, gullies and natural forest. The next day, following the same route, there were signs as big as all outdoors shouting out to all who passed:

“100-foot by 300-foot lots!” those signs proclaimed.

As I recall, it was just before the recent Greenbelt controversy erupted that I first saw the signs. (more…)

Barris Beat

Bad judgment must be called out

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Playing on a tree on the other side of the fence was so inviting, but, it turned out, against the rules.

It happened when I was about nine. The public-school playground got a little boring, so a bunch of us found a maple tree just across the back fence of the schoolyard to climb, sit in and hang from. Word got around to the principal, Mr. Palmer Kilpatrick. If for no other reason than fear of liability, he announced that the tree was off limits.

That didn’t stop us. Next day, we headed back over the fence and scrambled back up the tree. Suddenly, it got quiet. All my fellow tree-climbers disappeared. I was alone. I looked down and there was Mr. Kilpatrick standing at the foot of the tree.

“Ted, come down,” he said sternly. “You know you’re not supposed to be up there.”

“Yes sir,” and I came down. Everybody else who’d climbed the tree with me that day had taken off. And I could have too. But something inside me said, “Fess up and face the consequences.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Hands off our Greenbelt!

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Where development and Greenbelt collide. #ONGreenbelt

On a recent nighttime flight home from a trip out West, I looked out the passenger jet window. Our landing approach toward Pearson took the flight across terrain northeast of the GTA. In the darkness, I spotted a cluster of lights I knew to be Uxbridge. A calmness came over me. The darkness around that cluster of lights reassured me that our Greenbelt looked safe. Untouched. Protected.

Then this week, I heard the municipal affairs minister at Queen’s Park describe a land swap to reporters.

“It’s a bold action to ensure that we meet our housing target,” Steve Clark said.

Bold indeed. But in my view not in a positive way. (more…)

Barris Beat

Where feathers lie

Written by Ted Barris on . 1 Comment

They stood there, almost as if frozen. The look on their faces was the best appearance of innocence they could muster. Most kids are pretty good at trying to look innocent. And though the evidence of a massive pillow fight between the two sisters was everywhere, when we suddenly caught them at it, well, you probably know what we got.

“OK, who’s responsible?” we asked.

“Nope,” said one, and she quickly turned to her sister.

“Not me,” said the other.

I experienced a similar feeling of disbelief, on the weekend, when I read a quotation in the Toronto Star from MPP Steve Clark. The minister of municipal affairs was responding to criticism from David Crombie, the outgoing chair of the province’s Greenbelt Council. Crombie announced on Sunday he was resigning because of the Conservative government’s intends to limit the ability of conservation authorities to assess environmental impact of developments.

“(I’ve) been steadfast in my commitment to protect the Greenbelt for future generations,” said Clark in the Star story. (more…)