Posts with the Toronto Metropolitan University tag

Barris Beat

Betrayal of the tribe

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
George Maharis and Martin Milne in “Route 66” TV series.

Last weekend, I stopped at one of the service stations in town to gas up my car. As I painfully watched the LED readout of my gas purchase whiz higher and higher, a guy pulled up to the pump across from me. He was in town for the weekend car show, driving a Corvette, an early one, like the one Todd Stiles and Buz Murdock drove in the hit TV series Route 66. As he began filling his car, I caught his eye.

“This must be the least fun part of driving a car like that,” I said to the guy, “filling a gas guzzler like your Vet.”

“Not at all,” he said. “It’s my guilty pleasure.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Just short of witnessing history

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Classic image from Woodstock Festival in 1969. Smithsonian Magazine.

I happened to be hitchhiking that life-changing afternoon. My parents had purchased a hobby farm outside Bethany, Ont. But with my family away in the late 1960s, suddenly the farm became my responsibility. So, this early August day, not owning a car to get me from Toronto to the farm, I chose to hitchhike my way there. My last ride pulled over at the intersection of Hwys 115 and 35, and I ran toward the car for the lift.

That’s when I tripped off the curb of the road, twisted my ankle really severely. And everything changed. (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…)