Posts with the U.S. tag

Barris Beat

Tunnel vision

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Ontario’s premier wants to replicate Boston’s “Big Dig” under Hwy 401

Among our Thanksgiving traditions, particularly when we invite guests to our gatherings over Turkey dinner, our family usually engages in “What if?” talk. Often the Q&As reveal attitudes among family members we didn’t know. Other times, it’s a chance for guests to tell us about themselves and stimulate conversation. Over Monday’s turkey dinner, my granddaughter hit me with this question:

“Twenty years from now, what looming event do you think you’ll have difficulty explaining?”

I thought long and hard about challenges we’re all facing today – democracy threatened by the race for the presidency in the United States, global preparedness for the next pandemic, pushing back xenophobia in Canadian society, ensuring career opportunities are there for our grandchildren and their children.

But I guess, if I’m still around in 2044, I’ll probably find it difficult to rationalize how western civilization, with as much access to information as any society in modern history, didn’t recognize and rise to the challenge of slowing climate change.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to rationalize our incompetency,” I told my granddaughter “for failing to save the planet from greenhouse gases.” (more…)

Barris Beat

The Order of things

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Gov. Gen. Mary Simon & I right after my appointment as Member of the Order of Canada. Oct 3, 2024.

It generally goes like clockwork. And, since Governors General have officiated at investitures to the Order of Canada at Rideau Hall since 1967, they pretty much all happen with precision. Last Thursday went mostly that way. About halfway through the procession of 56 recipients, Ken McKillop, secretary to the Governor General and ceremony MC, called my name.

As instructed, I walked to the front of the hall, faced the audience and McKillop read a citation about my work preserving military heritage. He finished by turning to the Governor General and said, “Excellency, Dr. Barris.”

I looked back as we both realized the “Doctor” title wasn’t accurate.

Nevertheless, I moved to a spot in front of Gov. Gen. Mary Simon. She stepped forward and began attaching the Order of Canada medal onto a hook pinned to my left lapel. (more…)

Barris Beat

Portrait recovered. Story retrieved.

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“Roaring Lion” portrait of Winston Churchill by Yousef Karsh.

The famous picture was taken by a photographer in December 1941. It was taken by a thief exactly 80 years later. It was recovered last week when Ottawa police announced they had located the original print in Genoa, Italy.

A contemporary art collector had apparently purchased it, not realizing it had been stolen. He has now begun the process of returning the famous “Roaring Lion” photo of Winston Churchill to its rightful home at the Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa.

“I didn’t know about the theft in Canada,” art collector Nicola Cassinelli told the media this week.

(more…)

Barris Beat

Entre Amis. Between Friends.

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Canadian and American flags flying near the Ambassador Bridge at the Canada-U.S. border crossing in Windsor, Ont. Cdn Press

It was July 1, back in 1966. I was a teenager working for tuition money at my uncle’s restaurant in Baltimore. I was wearing a T-shirt with the red Maple Leaf flag on it (it had become the symbol on our national flag the year before) and a customer at that Double-T Diner in Maryland asked me, “How come you’re wearing that red Maple Leaf on your shirt?”

“I’m Canadian. It’s Canada Day, our national holiday,” I said, “kind of like your July 4.”

He nodded as if he understood, but I quickly realized he didn’t. (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

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

Canada’s nuclear legacy

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Outside Nelson’s former post office…
… and down an alley way.

The archivist at the museum had no idea it was there. In fact, when Jean-Phillippe Stienne applied for and landed the job as new archivist and collections manager of the museum, archives and art gallery in Nelson, B.C., back in 2017, he knew nothing about the explosive history buried beneath his new office.

“I came here because it’s a beautiful part of the world,” Steinne, 43, told me during a speaking stop I made in British Columbia last week. “I’d actually been working here a few years before I knew about the mystery under the museum.”

When I asked what he was talking about, Stienne, or “J.P.” as everybody calls him, walked me out the front door of his museum (formerly the Nelson post office) and down a back alley to an adjacent building. He unlocked an exterior door, which revealed an inner door with a thick circular porthole window and a black-lettered sign that read, “Nelson’s Cold War Bunker.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Merge at our peril

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John Cleghorn, in 1989 Chair of Royal Bank of Canada. torontopubliclibrary.ca

The meeting happened on a November afternoon in 1998. A big merger was in the wind. Rumour of “Yea” or “Nay” ran rampant across the country. One man in the room at a Montreal home argued his industry needed to grow bigger in order to compete globally. The other feared that sector’s customers, Canadian consumers, might not be well served. The industry man got riled.

“You’re not listening to me!” complained John Cleghorn, chairman of the Royal Bank of Canada.

Paul Martin, in 1989 Finance Minister. National Post.

“Mergers … are not in the best interest of Canadians,” said Paul Martin, the MP and cabinet member.

This exchange, described by the Canadian Encyclopedia, recreated the meeting between banker Cleghorn and then finance minister Martin at the latter’s Montreal home. (more…)

Barris Beat

The “just in time” mentality

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Where most busted washing machines end up – for pick-up at the curb.

Over coffee the other day, some friends shared an experience about modern-day delivery. A clothes washer had broken down at their house, so they weighed their options. Take the old one to the curb for pick-up and buy new, or try to extend the life of the old washer by attempting a repair.

Not surprisingly, my friend went online, learned about the problem and determined that a $10 part might repair the washer. The question was: How long would it take the part to arrive? It was a Saturday, but he ordered the part anyway.

“They guaranteed next-day delivery,” he said, then added sarcastically, “Sunday delivery? Not likely. Sure enough, though, next day we got back from church and this van pulled up to deliver the part. Couldn’t believe it!” (more…)

Barris Beat

Owning gun violence

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Najma Ahmed, trauma surgeon and founder of Canadian Doctors for Protection from Guns. CBC.ca

They call it “code orange” in Toronto hospitals. And trauma surgeon Najma Ahmed found herself in the middle of it late one night in July last summer. When she received the code signal, she said she dashed to St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto in minutes. She passed a long line of ambulances on her way to the emergency ward and immediately began conducting triage of injured civilians.

“There was a sense of shock,” she told the CBC. “We’re Canada. This does not happen here.” (more…)