Valentina Lisitsa with her hands on a piano, a Rachmaninoff genius … with those hands on her smart phone, not so much.
Under different circumstances, classical piano fans in the Greater Toronto Area by now might be raving about a unique performance they’d seen and heard of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2. They might have joined the thousands of concert-goers who’ve witnessed her brilliance on the piano keys at such venues as Carnegie Hall and Royal Albert Hall. They might have been able to say they saw the once child prodigy now internationally celebrated concert pianist Valentina Lisitsa. Instead, she took advantage of her celebrity to offer her pro-Russian view of Ukrainian politics.
“The new school year begins in Odessa with teachers forced to wear tribal dress, a truly European custom,” she tweeted (in 2014) in an apparent slam at the cultural dress of her native Ukraine. (more…)
Olli Jokinen at first Leafs’ presser (Toronto Maple Leafs)
I read the newspapers over the weekend. I expected to see news about a trade involving the Maple Leafs. And there it was on the front page of Monday’s Toronto Star sports section. Defenceman Cody Franson is gone. So is perhaps the hardest working forward on the team, Mike Santorelli. Then, Tuesday online, I caught a bit of the reporter scrum involving Toronto’s newest acquisition in the deal, 36-year-old Nashville Predator Olli Jokinen responding to the question: “Are you surprised?”
“Yeah, absolutely,” he told the Star. “Why wouldn’t I be?” (more…)
My mother, Kay Barris, could have run the retail department in which she served as a sales clerk.
The deadline for getting my news story on the air was fast approaching. My TV producer, a long-time filmmaker and friend named Sue, made some speedy recommendations in the editing room to help me get the story finished in time. At the time, her experience was wider and deeper than mine. And thanks to her skill, we managed to get my TV story broadcast that night. That’s when I delivered that horribly cliché and patronizing line about her talent.
“That’s why you get paid the big bucks,” I said condescendingly. (more…)
Cpl. Nathan Cirillo’s casket in the streets of Hamilton, Ontario, on the day of his funeral.
Politicians, police and just plain people have offered a lot of captions to the events in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Ottawa over the past week. The Prime Minister called the killings of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent and Corporal Nathan Cirillo an attack on Canada’s democracy. Law enforcement officials referred to the murders as “lone-wolf terrorism.” And friends of mine have said it was an assault on this country’s innocence. A paramedic who joined those watching Cpl. Cirillo’s body pass on Hwy 401 last Friday summed it up:
“I never expected to be standing here for a Canadian soldier killed on our own soil,” Roger Litwiller told the Toronto Star. (more…)
You can almost set your clock by it. The moment the latest story hits TV or the front pages of the daily newspapers about an elderly driver being involved a car crash, you can be sure the following day people on coffee row or at the gym will raise the subject. They’ll be indignant. They’ll blame the government for being too lax. But the thinking will be almost unanimous.
“Seniors are causing too many accidents,” they will insist. “People over 80 shouldn’t be on the roads.”
The case against older men and women getting behind the wheel of a car has grown in intensity in recent years. Small wonder. Each time a senior is involved in a car collision, it headlines the news. There was the recent case in Cooksville, Ont., where a 71-year-old man decided to make a left-hand turn by bypassing five vehicles waiting to turn and executed the turn from the middle of the intersection. The resulting crash killed his sister-in-law, her best friend and maimed him and his wife. A judge sentenced the crippled man to 10 months in jail.
A year or so ago, there was the incident in Winnipeg, where an 86-year-old driver pulled backwards out of a parking stall, but then continued in reverse the full length of the parking lot where he struck a child and ultimately came to a stop when his car hit a tree. The small girl survived, but the driver was charged.
And again the chorus screamed in unison for a ban on the elderly to drive. Well, in fact Manitoba is considering the implementation of stiffer restrictions or prohibitions much like those in Ontario. Currently, when a driver reaches age 80, according to the Government of Ontario site, s/he gets a letter and renewal form. The octogenarian then goes to a clinic for a vision test, an interactive group session about traffic laws, a complete screening exercise and a driving record review. Only then is the individual’s competency for driving determined. What’s important to remember, however, particularly in the case of the guy who made the illegal left-hand turn in Cooksville, is that he exhibited bad judgment; he didn’t screw up because he was 71.
“(The turn) is a marked departure from the standard expected of a prudent driver,” the Crown prosecutor said in court. “This manoeuvre, although brief, was highly dangerous.”
As a Manitoba publication pointed out recently, sometimes the danger posed by senior citizens behind the wheel comes from a deterioration of motor skills. In other words, it’s very likely age will cause eyesight to blur, reflexes to slow or one’s wits to become muddled. But any of those shortcomings can occur among young people too. Introduce the sense of invincibility or entitlement that the young often feel and the result can be speeding or drinking under the influence. Throw in a dash of smart phone addiction or the vanity that your “followers” can’t do without you before you park and you have equally dangerous distracted driving. When was the last time you saw a senior texting an LOL on the 401?
Sure, there is the potential for the invisible crippler – dementia – to hasten the need for an elderly driver or the family to take action. And statistics appear to be working against the elderly. In the past 20 years, the number of drivers over the age of 65 has doubled in Ontario, from 600,000 to 1.2 million. And at the same time the Alzheimer’s Society reports that half a million Canadians have dementia, with a new case reported every five minutes. In a generation, the babyboomer numbers will increase the frequency of to a new case every two minutes. All that doesn’t alarm Dr. Shawn Marshall at the Hospital Rehab Centre in Ottawa. The Toronto Star quoted Dr. Marshall’s “Candrive” study two years ago.
“The vast majority of older drivers are safe,” Marshall discovered in his research and he decried “crazy blanket comments (about seniors) that are ageist and unfair.”
I remember distinctly when my mother gave up her driver’s licence. Nobody told her she had to. Neither the police nor the DOT people came down on her with a legal ruling. Nor did her family apply any pressure. She simply recognized that her strength, her reflexes and her ability to see after dark were not what they used to be. She, like so many seniors who fear the loss of independence, but fear hurting someone even more, did the right thing. She decided to leave the car in the parking garage until a member of her family came along to help her get somewhere. Or she took the bus or a taxi.
One of the most powerful lobby groups representing seniors, the American Association of Retired Persons, recommends in-person licence renewals and screening that is not aged based.
“What determines your safety isn’t your age, but your ability,” AARP said.
When Brendan Shanahan took his turn parading the Cup, it was a bittersweet moment.
On Saturdays, 35 years ago, Brendan Shanahan the former NHL star forward, travelled to minor hockey games in west-end Toronto with his father. On those mornings at the arena, Donal Shanahan carried a newspaper under his arm; before each game “Father Don,” as he was known, would tap Brendan’s boyhood teammates on the head for good luck.
“For all those times … he got up in the morning (and) took me to the rink as a kid and tied my skates … or drove me to tournaments,” Brendan Shanahan told me in 1997, “I owe him.”
And 1997 was the year Shanahan won the Stanley Cup with the Red Wings. It was the first time Detroit had won the Cup in more than 40 years.
The image of Brendan going to the minor hockey rink a generation ago, and kids like him the generation before that, are what I call “Canadian Gothic,” not unlike the 1930s classic American painting by Grant Wood. Only in this case, the two figures are not a farmer’s wife and a farmer with a pitchfork, but rather a father with a hockey stick and a son or daughter with a hockey bag.
That’s Canadian Gothic, a vision and a symbolism I kept imagining all this past week as Canada’s men’s and women’s national hockey teams won gold medals at the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. Contrary to Don Cherry’s rock ’em sock ’em attitude being credited with the Canadian victories, I’d suggest to you that credit for Canada’s hockey gold medals at Sochi should be given to the players’ moms and dads.
Canadian women’s Team Canada.
Case in point. A few months before the women’s hockey Team Canada left for Russia, the team’s sponsor (Procter & Gamble’s “Thank You Moms campaign) arranged a special bonding dinner for the players in Laval, Quebec. My wife – a senior editor for Zoomer magazine – attended the dinner because she’d learned that the team brass had planned something different for the young women players – a surprise visit from the mothers.
The golden feeling went right round the room, as Anne Apps, who had not seen Gillian Apps since training camp in August, heartily embraced her daughter; as Nathalie Saviolidis caught up with her daughter Geneviéve Lacasse so that the two could share conversation about the goaltender’s prospects against the arch-rival Americans; and as veteran player Hayley Wickenheiser and her mom, Marilyn, talked of hers and Team Canada’s pursuit of a fourth straight gold medal.
“I’ve never met so many young women who appear so comfortable in their own skins,” Jayne MacAulay wrote in Zoomer. “Elite hockey, it appears, is a college for confidence and leadership.”
While not exactly the same – because there are fat NHL salaries attached – I remember at the beginning of February, when the Leafs brass continued an annual tradition of bringing the players’ fathers along for a road-trip to Florida; on the junket the fathers watched their sons play the Panthers in Miami and two nights later the Lightning in Tampa Bay. The atmosphere of the trip some likened to a tailgate party, during which the players roomed with their dads, attended father-and-son dinners and did a little fishing. Toronto Star reporter Curtis Rush talked to Randy Carlyle about the value of such an investment.
“It’s an opportunity where we can use (the players’) dads as a catalyst and say, ‘Hey, play well for your father.’”
The record shows that the Leafs got dumped by the Panthers 4-1 on the Tuesday night. But after the hoped-for pep talk from their dads and a couple of days’ R and R, on Thursday night the Leafs came through with a convincing 4-1 win over Tampa.
Parents and coaches volunteering time and support have as much to do with the game as winning.
Over the past five months or so, I’ve carried on something of a tradition in our family. Back before Donal and Brendan Shanahan’s early Saturday trips to the rink in Mimico, back the 1960s, my dad – despite his newspaperman’s late-night hours – accompanied me to the outdoor rink in Agincourt to watch me play early-morning house-league hockey. Two generations later, this winter, I’ve accompanied my son-in-law as we watch his son Sawyer and his teal-jersey Sharks learn the skills of skating, stick-handling and shooting.
“Just like my own minor hockey days back in Agincourt,” I said to my son-in-law, “we learned it wasn’t about winning, but being there.”
Finally, I guess I should point out the irony of Brendan Shanahan’s NHL championship with the Detroit Red Wings in 1997. His traditional victory skate around Joe Louis Arena, that spring night in 1997, must have felt bittersweet.
“I regret that (my dad) wasn’t able to see me play in the NHL,” Brendan Shanahan said, “or watch me win the Stanley Cup.”
“Father Don” Shanahan, who had always “taken his son to the rink” in Brendan’s minor hockey days, died of Alzheimer’s disease six years before his son won the Stanley Cup.
Dr. Allan Dafoe and the Dionne quintuplets on display at Corbeil, Ontario, in May of 1934
It was a new idea at the time. In the late 1990s, students in college were certainly used to attending classes during which experts lectured them. But perhaps not quite the way I envisioned such a thing. I was interested in having the journalism and broadcasting students I teach at Centennial College meet contemporary media figures, who were highly visible in the profession. One of the first to agree to come to engage my students was quite eager.
“I truly enjoy, and still feel flattered when I’m asked to chair a symposium, referee a debate, or give a speech,” she told me in March 2000.
Centennial College in Toronto recently asked me to organize a roundtable discussion during several days of lectures, study and debate on human rights. I agreed and have approached several acquaintances of mine in the federal civil service to participate. I was hopeful, in one case, that an expert on federal law might join the roundtable to offer a Canadian perspective.
“I’d love to, Ted,” he said. “But I’ve been told not to speak publicly on anything.”
“Not you too,” I responded. “Not like the scientists.” (more…)
The current Juno Award owes its name to a champion of Canadian arts and culture from the late 1960s, Pierre Juneau. Photo Music Canada.
A couple of weeks ago, I had a conversation with some of my journalism students about the annual parade of awards shows – the Grammys, the People’s Choice Awards, the Oscars and the rest. The subject of this year’s Canadian music awards, coming up in April, eventually cropped up. They had all heard of the Junos, sure. But then I asked if anyone knew the origin of the Junos.
“Oh, it’s the name of the Canadian beach on D-Day,” one said.
“Yes, you’re right on the D-Day reference,” I said. “But not the musical one.”
“I know,” said one of my more erudite students. “Juno is the Roman goddess of marriage and queen of the gods.”
“Right again,” I said. “But she’s got nothing to do with the Juno Music Awards in Canada.”
Christine Sinclair of the Canadian women’s soccer team. Courtesy The Record, U.K.
The Olympics have dominated much of our attention the past week. And as I suggested in my column last week, nobody deserves the attention or the applause more than these dedicated young athletes. However, there is one side effect to watching, listening to and reading about the Games I find bothersome. And it came up the other night just before the women’s soccer semi-final match between Team Canada and Team U.S.A. Somebody asked an analyst how important the game was for the Canadian women.
“Hugely,” she said. “It’s the most important game ever.”
