Posts with the world war tag

Barris Beat

That which endures

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Completely intact and with old cement attached, this Coca-Cola bottle emerged from the dust of another era of renovation.

It surfaced a few months ago. We found it along an old, stone foundation during some renovations at our house (built in the 1920s). And while this piece of history wasn’t nearly as old as the house, it dated back nearly that far. It was an empty Coca-Cola bottle. You know, those short, stubby ones, sometimes made of blue-green glass, but more often clear – the ones that were a perfect fit in your hand. Our artefact came from an era when the Coke slogan (c. 1938) was: “The best friend thirst ever had.”

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Barris Beat

A voice of unity

Written by Ted Barris on . 3 Comments

He helped save Canada.

Aside from times during the two world wars, I think some of this country’s darkest days occurred in the years immediately following the Centennial in 1967. First with the St-Jean-Baptiste riots and bombings in Montreal (1968), then during the October crisis (1970), when the FLQ kidnapped and killed cabinet minister Pierre Laporte in Quebec City, hope for maintaining a united Canada seemed bleakest in those early 1970s.

Then, in November 1976, the Parti Quebecois came to power on a platform that included Quebec’s separation from Canada. I worked as a radio producer/host for CFQC in Saskatoon in those years. Our morning program was heard all over the three Prairie provinces. And I remember our station manager, Dennis Fisher, calling us together soon after the PQ’s historic victory that autumn.

“The nation has never been so threatened,” he said. “It’s up to us to do something.”

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