tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56864768043582069952024-03-17T20:03:40.969-07:00Tom Hawthorn's blogTom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.comBlogger558125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-84979273446568964062022-09-28T14:02:00.002-07:002022-09-28T14:02:38.493-07:00Hockey and diplomacy met on ice in 1972<p><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNis27wE-qyi5JsbGxkeJOD4F7CWlaxozyJ3gXruHmyjoIp-62FAbpf_m2FD5B7djpfxr4RHVd0VCaYqj8eG2MUWCRCajHPKxXNg-mywPBDmxqSycVAnRwP0ytx6D32MrHvqkfORhgoE5JD8vQeBWC0kGnAIpfbgAB1uSj4BM_LZL8WGBno61YDQ/s7167/1972%20Team%20Canada%20(Times%20Colonist,%20Sept.%2028,%201997).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="7167" data-original-width="3569" height="794" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNis27wE-qyi5JsbGxkeJOD4F7CWlaxozyJ3gXruHmyjoIp-62FAbpf_m2FD5B7djpfxr4RHVd0VCaYqj8eG2MUWCRCajHPKxXNg-mywPBDmxqSycVAnRwP0ytx6D32MrHvqkfORhgoE5JD8vQeBWC0kGnAIpfbgAB1uSj4BM_LZL8WGBno61YDQ/w433-h794/1972%20Team%20Canada%20(Times%20Colonist,%20Sept.%2028,%201997).jpg" width="433" /></a></b></div><b><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b><p></p><p><b><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-large;">Hockey and diplomacy </span></b><b><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-large;">met on ice in 1972</span></b></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>By Tom Hawthorn, The Times Colonist, September 28, 1997</b></span></span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The Russian equipment was old and ratty. Their uniforms had patches like a hand-me-down quilt. The captain wore a "K" over his heart. The goalie wore No. 20, a defenceman's sweater.</span></span></p><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Their names — Mikhailov, Yakushev, Tsygankov — were barely pronounceable and certainly unspellable. They all wore helmets (the sissies). Canadian boys said it made them look like robots.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Had they come from Mars, the Soviet Union's best hockey players could not have looked more alien.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Today, 25 years to the day that Paul <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Henderson</span></mark>'s improbable goal decided the Summit Series, when Pavel Bure is a Vancouver Canuck and the Stanley Cup has been paraded through Moscow streets, it is hard to remember just how rare it was for Canadians to see a person from the Soviet Union, never mind an entire fast-skating, crisp-passing team of them.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Stalin was long dead in 1972. Igor Gouzenko, the cipher clerk who defected with tales of Soviet espionage rings, appeared in public only with a bag over his head. For most Canadians, the only Russian to have a name was Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, round and stiff like a matreshka doll, albeit one with comic eyebrows.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The battle for hockey supremacy was supposed to be a pushover for Canada's professionals.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Infamously, Canada's scouts watched Soviet goalie Vladislav <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Tretiak</span></mark> play a single game. He was a sieve, and that's what they reported. What they didn't know was that the hungover <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Tretiak</span></mark> had been married the day before.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Johnny Esaw, the CTV broadcaster, was so certain that Canada was to win in eight straight that he chose to air Games 1, 3, 5 and 7 on his network; he felt viewers would lose interest as the Canadians crushed their opponent.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">CBC got to air the decisive Game 8. By that time, the series had become less an exhibition and more a crusade.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It was Sept. 28, 1972. Elementary school pupils gathered in gymnasiums to watch on television. A federal election campaign was ignored for a day. Workplaces slowed, then stopped during the third period. Foster Hewitt did the play-by-play on television, while Bob Cole did the same on radio. Those who watched and listened have not forgotten the precise moment when, in the final minute of the final period of the final game, Paul <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Henderson</span></mark>, a forward blessed with more perseverance than skill, slipped a rebound past Vladislav <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Tretiak</span></mark>.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(I skipped junior high in Toronto that afternoon, a 12-year-old who feared crying in front of classmates if Canada lost. When <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Henderson</span></mark>scored, yahoos in apartments high above our own tossed empty beer bottles from their balcony, the brown stubbies shattering on the blacktop 25 stories below.)</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkZgT7hrvPSxJ_Dn0UdVdloGu8C9qwIiX-PauVi8QqQplJ-22_iaVNMjkrU0YhEo3NlAjFipIHMtE7FBe324E13kVZt2PrZjhhC4gJrxiNntIgaLyzZkLesPsI-ox47BCp7YRW80SNRgAw59S9jfEGIwDmyt_Mn65b9yjz15GIEgHRWfFCCuWxrA/s266/Paul%20Henderson%20hockey%20card.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="266" data-original-width="189" height="429" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkZgT7hrvPSxJ_Dn0UdVdloGu8C9qwIiX-PauVi8QqQplJ-22_iaVNMjkrU0YhEo3NlAjFipIHMtE7FBe324E13kVZt2PrZjhhC4gJrxiNntIgaLyzZkLesPsI-ox47BCp7YRW80SNRgAw59S9jfEGIwDmyt_Mn65b9yjz15GIEgHRWfFCCuWxrA/w305-h429/Paul%20Henderson%20hockey%20card.jpeg" width="305" /></a></span></div><p></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br />Ron Butlin, who now lives in Victoria, was among the whistling, enraptured spectators at Luzhniki Arena in Moscow, an outdated rink where fans behind the goals were protected by proletarian mesh and not bourgeois plexiglass.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">His strongest memory is not so much <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Henderson</span></mark>'s goal, but the arrival of a Soviet V.I.P.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"The Russians jeer by whistling and they were making quite a noise," he said, recalling Game 8. "All of a sudden, the whistling stopped, absolutely stopped. It was so quiet you could hear the skates of the players down on the ice. I looked around and saw Brezhnev walking through the stands to get to a private box at the top of the arena. Until he sat down, there wasn't a sound.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"Midway through the third period, Brezhnev got up and again there was silence, except for the blades of the skates cutting the ice. Once he was gone, everything resumed.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"It was either fear, or respect, or both. Those were the days of tough Communism."</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The series had become a showdown between more than just two hockey teams, but between rival systems - Communism vs. capitalism, collectivism vs. individualism.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Team Canada considered their rivals to be unthinking automatons, obedient to their system, incapable of adapting to circumstance or of allowing individual flare to flourish.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">For their part, the Soviet skaters felt the pros played only for money, not for pride of country. How wrong they were, too.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Away from the series, among fans, fantastical rumors took hold. It was said here <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Tretiak</span></mark> had been forced to have surgery to replace his ligaments with artificial ones. The Russians, in turn, believed that goalie Tony Esposito had a plate implanted in his forehead, the better to withstand shots to the head.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Over the years, the series has become a collage on the tape-loop of memory:</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The "To Russia With Hull" campaign; the shocking 7-3 Soviet win at the Montreal Forum to open the series; Pete Mahovlich's brilliant dipsy-doodle goal in Toronto; the booing spectators at Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver and Phil Esposito's impassioned, drenched-in- sweat, post-game monologue on national TV ("To the people of Canada, I say we tried. We did our best. We're really disheartened, disappointed and disillusioned. We can't believe we're getting booed in our own building. I'm really, really disappointed. I can't believe it. Some of our guys are really down in the dumps. They have a good team. Let's face facts. We came because we love Canada. I don't think it's fair that we should be booed"); the defection of four Team Canada players who returned home from Moscow; "da da Canada, nyet nyet Soviet"; indecipherable referees named Kompalla and Baader (the players called them Baader and Worse); Bobby Clarke's vicious two-handed slash of Valeri Kharlamov's ankle; Alan Eagleson's scuffle with Soviet officials during Game 8; his rescue from armed soldiers by Pete Mahovlich; Eagle's flipping a one- finger salute to the crowd from the ice; and, unforgettably, <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Henderson</span></mark>'s goal.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"As we got into the last minute of play," <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Henderson</span></mark> reminisced in Shooting for Glory, his 1992 autobiography, "I stood up at our bench and yelled three times at Peter Mahovlich to come off so I could get on the ice. It wasn't our line's turn, but I honestly felt I could get a goal. I can't explain why, but I just had this feeling, just as I'd had in the previous game. For whatever reason, Peter came to the bench and I catapulted myself over the boards to join the play in the Russian end. As I got on, the puck went to Cournoyer on the far boards. I screamed at him for a pass that I hoped to one-time at the net because I had a clear shot, but I had to reach back for the puck with all my momentum pushing me forward. I missed and their defenceman neatly tripped me, causing me to fall and slide into the boards behind their net. Immediately I thought, Get up. Get the puck and come back down to try to score.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"The Russians, with a great chance to clear the zone, failed to control the puck, allowing the relentless Phil Esposito to whack the loose disk towards the goal. <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Tretiak</span></mark> stopped Phil's shot but couldn't smother it. By this time I was standing alone in front of <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Tretiak</span></mark> to pick up the rebound. I tried to slide a shot along the ice, but <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Tretiak</span></mark> got a piece of it. The puck came right back to me, and with <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Tretiak</span></mark> down I slid it along the ice for the winning goal. There were only 34 seconds left to play!"</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">He leaped into Cournoyer's arms, an image captured by Toronto Star photographer Frank Lennon. <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Henderson</span></mark>, elated, is staring straight at the camera. So, too, is <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Tretiak</span></mark>, as he lifts his back off the ice, helpless as an upended turtle. To their left, Soviet defenceman Yuri Liapkin, a look of disbelief on his face, appeals silently to the referee for - what? A reprieve? The series was over. Canada had won.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Twenty-five years later, as they gather in Toronto for an exhibition to be played in their honor, Team Canada's alumni are pot- bellied and balding, enjoying the fruits of their labors in their 50s. Bill Goldsworthy has died of AIDS, Kharlamov in a car wreck, but otherwise most are in comfortable circumstances.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The image of <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Henderson</span></mark> being hugged by Cournoyer has become an icon, reproduced - for profit - on posters, coins, book covers, and, unveiled just this week, a postage stamp.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 85); color: #555555; margin: 0px 0px 17px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Meanwhile, on a farm in Ontario, Pat Stapleton claims to have put <mark style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Henderson</span></mark>'s puck in a box with many others. Some have come to his door with money in search of this Holy Grail of the series, but Whitey is having none of it. His dream is to play shinny with his grandchildren on a frozen slough, and to lose the puck in a snowbank.</span></p>Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-80944596832328359452020-12-21T23:50:00.005-08:002020-12-21T23:50:42.825-08:00Tall Sol was a goliath among Davids on Jewish basketball team<p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>By Tom Hawthorn</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Special to The Globe and Mail</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">December 22, 2020</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Sol Tolchinsky was a goliath among Davids on his Young Men’s Hebrew Association basketball team.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Standing 6-foot-4, Tall Sol, as he was called, played centre and forward for the YMHA Blues when the Montreal team won the Dominion basketball championship in 1950. The triumph was celebrated by Jewish communities across Canada.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Two years earlier, he had represented Canada at the Olympics in a basketball tournament remembered for the duplicity of European officials and the disunity of the Canadian team.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Mr. Tolchinsky, who has died at 91, was known for his sharp passes and an accurate hook shot.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“We depended on him to help out with rebounding,” said Murray Waxman, who, at 95, is the last living member of the championship Blues team.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The centre also was a specialist in layups, driving to the net before pushing the ball up and in. Another of his skills was wisecracking for his teammates and trash talking his opponents. He fouled out often and engaged in fisticuffs in more than one game, perhaps inspired by his city’s fondness for such shenanigans on the ice.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">After the trauma of the Second World War and the euphoria surrounding the founding of Israel, the Blues emerged as a team representing Jewish pride. Their team jerseys included a crest with a Star of David inside a maple leaf. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“We were an all-Jewish team,” Mr. Waxman said. “We were all born in Montreal. Everybody knew us. We were well supported by the community.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Two years earlier, in 1948, the Blues narrowly lost the Canadian title to the Vancouver Clover Leafs in a grueling, physical best-of-five series played at a packed Sir Arthur Currie Memorial gymnasium in Montreal.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The two teams met again two days later in the Olympic trials, a two-day knockout tournament at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The Blues got their revenge by defeating the Clover Leafs, only to lose to the upstart University of British Columbia Thunderbirds, a student team with fresh legs.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The Canadian Olympic basketball team ended up consisting of six Blues, seven Thunderbirds and Ole Bakken, the Norwegian-born star of the Clover Leafs.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The original plan was to play each group as a unit. In the end, the coaches mixed the players, but the teams had different styles and never performed smoothly together. The passing decades have not eased antipathy among the players.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“We had quite a good team,” Dr. Patrick McGeer, formerly of the Thunderbirds, said in 2012, “and a not-so-good team.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“We were the lead team,” Mr. Tolchinsky insisted at that time.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The 1948 Olympics are remembered as the Austerity Games, as postwar London barely could supply the basics let alone luxuries. After a week-long sail across the Atlantic aboard the Aquatania, a Cunard liner stripped down for war service as a troopship, players settled into spare quarters at an air-force base in Uxbridge. Those players who neglected to bring a towel had to rent one from organizers. The spartan lifestyle was familiar to Mr. Tolchinsky, a 19-year-old student who held a low-paying job in the <i>schmatta</i> (clothing) business as a shipper. He was so tall his feet dangled off the end of the bunk bed.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The team managed to hold two practices in a church basement where both nets were blocked by posts.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The shared misery of the journey did not ease tensions in the squad. The Vancouver players were honoured at a luncheon at British Columbia House. The Montreal players did not attend. The Montreal players were feted at a luncheon at Maccabi House. The Vancouver players did not attend.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">In the preliminary round of the Olympic tournament, Canada won three games and lost two, one of those by a single point. Though they finished in a three-way for second place, Canada was relegated to a consolation round because of points differential. They had deliberately not run the score up against an outclassed host British team, while others in the group had. Uruguay, also 3-2, advanced to the medal round even though Canada had beaten the South Americans by 52-50.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The Canadians then defeated Iran, Belgium and Peru to win the consolation bracket and finish ninth in the tournament, a bittersweet achievement.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">One of Mr. Tolchinsky’s strongest memories was of scrimping to save $75 in spending money for the six-week trip. “There was nothing to buy,” he said of a London still struggling with rationing and shortages. “Nothing to spend it on. Nothing.” He returned home with $16 still in his pocket.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Two years later, the Blues again challenged for the national title. Mr. Tolchinsky scored 28 points in a 65-45 victory over the Ottawa Valley champion Glengarry (Ont.) Cameron Highlanders, whose top scorer was Pete Finlay, who also played professional football with the Ottawa Rough Riders. The second game ended 53-34 for a total points victory of 118-79.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The Blues then eliminated the Toronto Tri-Bells to claim the Eastern Canada title before defeating the University of Manitoba Bisons in four games in a best-of-five series. For the first time since it had been donated by a sporting club in 1926, the national Montreal Cup was awarded to a team from the city in which it originated.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The victory was hailed by Jewish fans across the country.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">That summer, Mr. Tolchinsky joined four Montreal teammates and three Toronto players on the Canadian team attending the third annual Maccabiah Games in Tel Aviv. The United States defeated Canada 56-34 in the championship game that culminated the 18-nation Jewish Olympics.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Solly Tolchinsky, as his full name was officially registered by Rabbi J.L. Colton, was born in Montreal on Jan. 2, 1929. He was one of three children born to the former Nessie Cartman and Mendel (Max) Tolchinsky, a labourer and door-to-door salesman. The family, Ukrainian Jews from Odessa, immigrated to Canada in 1926.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">An older brother, Shmuel, known as Sam, arrived in the new country at age 13 without knowing a word of English or French. A few years later, he was elected president of his high-school class, served in the Canadian army during the war by playing glockenspiel in a military band, then moved to New York where he became the head writer of Sid Caesar’s famous <i>Your Show of Shows</i> alongside Mel Brooks and Neil Simon. He also wrote for Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope, and was story editor for the trailblazing 1970s sitcom <i>All in the Family</i>. “I’ve lived under the czar, Lenin, Stalin and Ronald Reagan,” he once quipped.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Sol Tolchinsky followed his brother by attending Commercial High, where he played on the school basketball team. He was still a teenager when named to the Canadian Olympic team.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">In the fall of 1950, Mr. Tolchinsky registered at McGill University, where he played for the basketball team. He was also a writer for the McGill Daily student newspaper, although his most creative work was writing musical comedy for the Red and White Revue theatre group.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">He befriended an aspiring actor by the name of William Shatner and was smitten by a chorus girl named Margot Blatt. They were married for 67 years. She survives Mr. Tolchinsky, who died in Montreal on Dec. 1 of complications related to Covid-19. He also leaves a son, two daughters, and five grandchildren. He was predeceased by his brother, known as Mel Tolkin, who died in 2007, and his sister, Rae Frank, who died in 1966.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Away from the sporting arena, Mr. Tolchinsky, who was also known as Sol Tolkin, operated Exposervice Standard Inc., a trade-show contractor. In 1980, he became the first Canadian to serve as president of the Exhibition Services and Contractors Association, which is based in Dallas, Tex.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Though he displayed panache on the basketball court in his youth, Mr. Tochinsky was something of a klutz in civilian life, a big man in a small world who regularly knocked over wine glasses or scraped fenders in parking garages.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-15385302795444181962020-10-24T18:56:00.000-07:002020-10-24T18:56:18.312-07:002020 B.C. election prediction<p>With every poll suggesting a large BC NDP plurality in the vote total, perhaps even a rare majority, I predict the seat totals will be:</p><p>(Number won or lost compared to 2017 election)</p><p>B.C. Liberals: 28 (-15) </p><p>B.C NDP: 58 (+17)</p><p>Greens: 0 (-3)</p><p>Independent: 1 (+1)</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Ridings changing hands:</b></p><p>To NDP from Liberals:</p><p>Skeena</p><p>Columbia River-Revelstoke</p><p>Boundary-Similkameen</p><p>Fraser-Nicola</p><p>Langley</p><p>Surrey-Cloverdale</p><p>Richmond-Queensborough</p><p>Richmond-South Centre</p><p>Richmond-Steveston</p><p>Coquitlam-Burke Mountain</p><p>Vancouver-False Creek</p><p>Vancouver-Langara</p><p>North Vancouver-Seymour</p><p>Parksville-Qualicum</p><p><br /></p><p><b>To NDP from Greens:</b></p><p>Cowichan Valley</p><p>Saanich North and the Islands</p><p>Oak Bay-Gordon Head</p><p><br /></p><p><b>To Independent from Liberals:</b></p><p>Chilliwack-Kent (Laurie Throness)</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-82044376022433253282020-07-26T09:42:00.000-07:002020-07-26T09:42:22.968-07:00Rosemary de Havilland (1904-2005)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8JFYnK6mxCY6BKXByY84yTvkJpXh-5Lji1_50jSx3TM2nu02p0lPuTIWMNfdod1PmI5fZTf22ESRYX1M9QoaDj87Dn18Nlk1vBum_U9ENifWuJO1UVZyhSvveY74PqRvrZZ7sJMSf7A/s1600/De+Havilland+sisters.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="775" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8JFYnK6mxCY6BKXByY84yTvkJpXh-5Lji1_50jSx3TM2nu02p0lPuTIWMNfdod1PmI5fZTf22ESRYX1M9QoaDj87Dn18Nlk1vBum_U9ENifWuJO1UVZyhSvveY74PqRvrZZ7sJMSf7A/s400/De+Havilland+sisters.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i>Hollywood's famous feuding acting sisters, Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine.</i></div>
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<b>By Tom Hawthorn</b><br />
<b>Special to The Globe and Mail</b><br />
April 6, 2005<br />
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By marrying Walter <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">de</span> <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Havilland</span>, Rosemary Connor joined a family whose disharmony was striking even by Hollywood standards. Her stepdaughters were the glamorous thespians Olivia <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">de</span> <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Havilland</span> and Joan Fontaine, sisters whose antipathy for each other was legend; as well, both were estranged from their father.</div>
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The newest addition to the feuding clan would not be immune from the discord. At their wedding in 1960, the groom was 87, the bride a youthful 55. The wedding ceremony attracted little press attention, unlike his previous two marriages.</div>
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Walter Augustus <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">de</span> <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Havilland</span>, was a handsome British eccentric whose first proposal for marriage was captured in a memorable Washington Post headline: Flips Coin; Wins Her. Tired of her suitor's ardent pursuit, Lilian Augusta Ruse playfully agreed to a coin toss to settle the matter. Miss Rusé -- she disliked the literal meaning of the family name and so placed an <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">accent aigu</i> on the final letter, a ruse of her own -- soon became the first Mrs. <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">de</span> <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Havilland</span>.</div>
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The couple settled in Tokyo, where he worked as a patent attorney. She bore him two daughters -- Olivia Mary, on July 1, 1916, and Joan de Beauvoir, on Oct. 22, 1917. The marriage ended soon after when she discovered her husband's affair with one of the maids. She raised her daughters in California, where they would not see their father for more than a decade.</div>
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In Tokyo, Mr. <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">de</span> <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Havilland</span> found himself shunned by the European community for living with Yuki Matsu-Kura, whom he married in 1927.</div>
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The sibling rivalry between the sisters was made all the more acute by their success in Hollywood. When Joan Fontaine won the Academy Award for best actress against four rivals, including her sister, she neglected to praise her sister from the podium or in private. While Miss <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">de</span> <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Havilland</span> would soon enough win two Oscars of her own, the breach was irreparable.</div>
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Mr. <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">de</span> <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Havilland</span> and his Japanese bride moved to the United States in 1941, a few months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. When she was ordered to be interned, he arranged for a comfortable life for themselves at a Colorado hotel. After the war, they moved to Victoria, B.C., where Yuki died in 1958.</div>
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Two years later, he married for the third and final time. Mary Eliza Connor was born in Yorkshire, later taking for herself the name Rosemary. She was a nurse in England and Canada and met Mr. <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">de</span> <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Havilland</span> in British Columbia. </div>
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All the while, her husband's relationship with his daughters occasioned headlines, not all of them complimentary. He once went to Hollywood to seek money. Later, he enjoyed a rapprochement of sorts with Olivia, who indulged a newspaper photographer by greeting him with a hug at Union Station in Los Angeles in 1952. </div>
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After Walter died in North Vancouver in 1968, his first wife and their two daughters journeyed to the English Channel island of Guernsey, the <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">de</span> <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Havilland</span> family's ancestral home. "Our mission then was to scatter my father's ashes into the sea at dusk," Joan Fontaine wrote in <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">No Bed of Roses</i> , her 1978 autobiography. "But we managed to smuggle only two-thirds of Pater into St. Peter Port. In Canada, his third wife, Rose Mary (sic), had been adamant: The other third should nurture flowers in the soil near Vancouver where he had lived with her so happily, dying there at the age of 96. I remonstrated with her, suggesting Father was not a birthday cake to be parcelled out in such a manner. Nevertheless, she divided his remains meticulously into three packages, one for each daughter, the third for herself and British Columbia."</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJtUDuebjW8IF2TU-LWqG2WXL4pZxmOLai4M62Lb4mwtypCY4HfN3yLDDW8E4aczv3NNRzFNm4_1EhGWbU8GTvNSH6zGIMaQY0FOV-vi8ooVnNtfrPz0GC6ptinYy4rPJoSzuYaIkmeg/s1600/Rosemary+de+Havilland+grave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="188" data-original-width="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJtUDuebjW8IF2TU-LWqG2WXL4pZxmOLai4M62Lb4mwtypCY4HfN3yLDDW8E4aczv3NNRzFNm4_1EhGWbU8GTvNSH6zGIMaQY0FOV-vi8ooVnNtfrPz0GC6ptinYy4rPJoSzuYaIkmeg/s1600/Rosemary+de+Havilland+grave.jpg" /></a></div>
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Even the passing of a late-in-life stepmother was not without its embarrassments. A paid death notice in the Vancouver Sun declared Olivia <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">de</span> <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Havilland</span> to have predeceased her stepmother; in fact, the last living star of <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Gone With the Wind</i> resides in Paris. By coincidence, she was the subject of the Proust Questionnaire on the final page of the March edition of Vanity Fair magazine. Asked how she would like to die, she responds: "I would prefer to live forever in perfect health, but if I must at some time leave this life I would like to do so ensconced on a chaise longue, perfumed, wearing a velvet robe and pearl earrings, with a flute of champagne beside me and having just discovered the answer to the last problem in a British cryptic crossword."</div>
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At Rosemary <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">de</span> <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Havilland</span>'s passing, eight weeks before her 101st birthday, she was a resident of Evergreen House, a 292-bed facility for long-term patients in North Vancouver. "Rosemary was interested in the psychics," her paid death notice states, "and was famous for her paintings that were generated through her psychic visions."</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Rosemary <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">de</span> <span class="hit" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #525252; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Havilland</span> was </span><span style="font-weight: 700;">born on April 23, 1904, in Ellerby in Yorkshire, England. She died on Feb. 27, 2005, in North Vancouver, B.C. She was 100.</span></div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-17400203972366313202019-04-03T12:46:00.001-07:002019-04-03T12:46:10.045-07:00The world had never seen a sporting event like it — the 1972 Summit Series<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnTl9aTSVBSW3fCRc07GEez73nkBXLeRYAoZD6DpDjMFd0hKQeL_xy9zwgKWWdIp6OWCqGKOxLhVw2iXb3LnZ7182B30vBQWCqKNJ4X1HtoqjWGoFXkOVNaIH56QomF8sBEZAU_GDtFw/s1600/Tretiak+dejected.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="239" data-original-width="318" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnTl9aTSVBSW3fCRc07GEez73nkBXLeRYAoZD6DpDjMFd0hKQeL_xy9zwgKWWdIp6OWCqGKOxLhVw2iXb3LnZ7182B30vBQWCqKNJ4X1HtoqjWGoFXkOVNaIH56QomF8sBEZAU_GDtFw/s400/Tretiak+dejected.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i>A dejected Vladislav Tretiak ignores celebrating Canadians.</i></div>
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By Tom Hawthorn<br />
Victoria Times Colonist<br />
September 28, 1997<br />
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The Russian equipment was old and ratty. Their uniforms had patches like a hand-me-down quilt. The captain wore a "K" over his heart. The goalie wore No. 20, a defenceman's sweater. Their names — Mikhailov, Yakushev, Tsygankov— were barely pronounceable and certainly unspellable. They all wore helmets (the sissies). Canadian boys said it made them look like robots.</div>
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Had they come from Mars, the Soviet Union's best hockey players could not have looked more alien.</div>
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Today, 25 years to the day that Paul Henderson's improbable goal decided the Summit Series, when Pavel Bure is a Vancouver Canuck and the Stanley Cup has been paraded through Moscow streets, it is hard to remember just how rare it was for Canadians to see a person from the Soviet Union, never mind an entire fast-skating, crisp-passing team of them.</div>
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Stalin was long dead in 1972. Igor Gouzenko, the cipher clerk who defected with tales of Soviet espionage rings, appeared in public only with a bag over his head. For most Canadians, the only Russian to have a name was Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, round and stiff like a matreshka doll, albeit one with comic eyebrows.</div>
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The battle for hockey supremacy was supposed to be a pushover for Canada's professionals.</div>
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Infamously, Canada's scouts watched Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak play a single game. He was a sieve, and that's what they reported. What they didn't know was that the hungover Tretiak had been married the day before.</div>
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Johnny Esaw, the CTV broadcaster, was so certain that Canada was to win in eight straight that he chose to air Games 1, 3, 5 and 7 on his network; he felt viewers would lose interest as the Canadians crushed their opponent.</div>
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CBC got to air the decisive Game 8. By that time, the series had become less an exhibition and more a crusade.</div>
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<span style="color: #555555;">It was Sept. 28, 1972. Elementary school pupils gathered in gymnasiums to watch on television. A federal election campaign was ignored for a day. Workplaces slowed, then stopped during the third period. Foster Hewitt did the play-by-play on television, while Bob Cole did the same on radio. Those who watched and listened have not forgotten the precise moment when, in the final minute of the final period of the final game, Paul Henderson</span><span style="color: #555555;">, a forward blessed with more perseverance than skill, slipped a rebound past Vladislav Tretiak.</span></div>
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(I skipped junior high in Toronto that afternoon, a 12-year-old who feared crying in front of classmates if Canada lost. When Henderson scored, yahoos in apartments high above our own tossed empty beer bottles from their balcony, the brown stubbies shattering on the blacktop 25 stories below.)</div>
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Ron Butlin, who now lives in Victoria, was among the whistling, enraptured spectators at Luzhniki Arena in Moscow, an outdated rink where fans behind the goals were protected by proletarian mesh and not bourgeois plexiglass.</div>
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His strongest memory is not so much Henderson's goal, but the arrival of a Soviet V.I.P.</div>
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"The Russians jeer by whistling and they were making quite a noise," he said, recalling Game 8. "All of a sudden, the whistling stopped, absolutely stopped. It was so quiet you could hear the skates of the players down on the ice. I looked around and saw Brezhnev walking through the stands to get to a private box at the top of the arena. Until he sat down, there wasn't a sound.</div>
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"Midway through the third period, Brezhnev got up and again there was silence, except for the blades of the skates cutting the ice. Once he was gone, everything resumed.</div>
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"It was either fear, or respect, or both. Those were the days of tough Communism."</div>
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The series had become a showdown between more than just two hockey teams, but between rival systems - Communism vs. capitalism, collectivism vs. individualism.</div>
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Team Canada considered their rivals to be unthinking automatons, obedient to their system, incapable of adapting to circumstance or of allowing individual flare to flourish.</div>
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For their part, the Soviet skaters felt the pros played only for money, not for pride of country. How wrong they were, too.</div>
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Away from the series, among fans, fantastical rumors took hold. It was said here Tretiak had been forced to have surgery to replace his ligaments with artificial ones. The Russians, in turn, believed that goalie Tony Esposito had a plate implanted in his forehead, the better to withstand shots to the head.</div>
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Over the years, the series has become a collage on the tape-loop of memory:</div>
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The "To Russia With Hull" campaign; the shocking 7-3 Soviet win at the Montreal Forum to open the series; Pete Mahovlich's brilliant dipsy-doodle goal in Toronto; the booing spectators at Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver and Phil Esposito's impassioned, drenched-in- sweat, post-game monologue on national TV ("To the people of Canada, I say we tried. We did our best. We're really disheartened, disappointed and disillusioned. We can't believe we're getting booed in our own building. I'm really, really disappointed. I can't believe it. Some of our guys are really down in the dumps. They have a good team. Let's face facts. We came because we love Canada. I don't think it's fair that we should be booed"); the defection of four Team Canada players who returned home from Moscow; "da da Canada, nyet nyet Soviet"; indecipherable referees named Kompalla and Baader (the players called them Baader and Worse); Bobby Clarke's vicious two-handed slash of Valeri Kharlamov's ankle; Alan Eagleson's scuffle with Soviet officials during Game 8; his rescue from armed soldiers by Pete Mahovlich; Eagle's flipping a one- finger salute to the crowd from the ice; and, unforgettably, Henderson's goal.</div>
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"As we got into the last minute of play," Henderson reminisced in Shooting for Glory, his 1992 autobiography, "I stood up at our bench and yelled three times at Peter Mahovlich to come off so I could get on the ice. It wasn't our line's turn, but I honestly felt I could get a goal. I can't explain why, but I just had this feeling, just as I'd had in the previous game. For whatever reason, Peter came to the bench and I catapulted myself over the boards to join the play in the Russian end. As I got on, the puck went to Cournoyer on the far boards. I screamed at him for a pass that I hoped to one-time at the net because I had a clear shot, but I had to reach back for the puck with all my momentum pushing me forward. I missed and their defenceman neatly tripped me, causing me to fall and slide into the boards behind their net. Immediately I thought, Get up. Get the puck and come back down to try to score.</div>
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"The Russians, with a great chance to clear the zone, failed to control the puck, allowing the relentless Phil Esposito to whack the loose disk towards the goal. Tretiak stopped Phil's shot but couldn't smother it. By this time I was standing alone in front of Tretiak to pick up the rebound. I tried to slide a shot along the ice, but Tretiak got a piece of it. The puck came right back to me, and with Tretiak down I slid it along the ice for the winning goal. There were only 34 seconds left to play!"</div>
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He leaped into Cournoyer's arms, an image captured by Toronto Star photographer Frank Lennon. Henderson, elated, is staring straight at the camera. So, too, is Tretiak, as he lifts his back off the ice, helpless as an upended turtle. To their left, Soviet defenceman Yuri Liapkin, a look of disbelief on his face, appeals silently to the referee for - what? A reprieve? The series was over. Canada had won.</div>
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Twenty-five years later, as they gather in Toronto for an exhibition to be played in their honor, Team Canada's alumni are pot- bellied and balding, enjoying the fruits of their labors in their 50s. Bill Goldsworthy has died of AIDS, Kharlamov in a car wreck, but otherwise most are in comfortable circumstances.</div>
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The image of Henderson being hugged by Cournoyer has become an icon, reproduced - for profit - on posters, coins, book covers, and, unveiled just this week, a postage stamp.</div>
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Meanwhile, on a farm in Ontario, Pat Stapleton claims to have put Henderson's puck in a box with many others. Some have come to his door with money in search of this Holy Grail of the series, but Whitey is having none of it. His dream is to play shinny with his grandchildren on a frozen slough, and to lose the puck in a snowbank.</div>
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<br />Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-49442636727330860752019-04-02T23:06:00.000-07:002019-04-02T23:06:14.399-07:00What's black and white and whistles?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWARgKvixX07A8zT4OMLrrsB-U9SHoOse02-RZkYSZ3XGjpfL5MSKrgS1G0xXJ_fRUj4hGn910A3P01OWaAr5TrIcwFN3qxP9_RCHuzLyvnqASRLomfAveBZt0tYAr_kRCGJXjHIXiUQ/s1600/Lonnie+Cameron.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="590" data-original-width="1052" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWARgKvixX07A8zT4OMLrrsB-U9SHoOse02-RZkYSZ3XGjpfL5MSKrgS1G0xXJ_fRUj4hGn910A3P01OWaAr5TrIcwFN3qxP9_RCHuzLyvnqASRLomfAveBZt0tYAr_kRCGJXjHIXiUQ/s400/Lonnie+Cameron.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i>Lonnie Cameron (right) worked his final NHL game as a linesman on April 2, 2019.</i></div>
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<b>By Tom Hawthorn</b><br />
<b>Victoria Times Colonist</b><br />
May 24, 2000<br />
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Kelsey Chow, age eight, brought a zebra to her Grade 3 class for show and tell on Tuesday.</div>
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It weighed 225 pounds and had a black and white coat. Its name was <span class="hit" style="background-color: #f4e99d; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Lonnie</span> <span class="hit" style="background-color: #f4e99d; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; padding: 0px 2px; z-index: 500 !important;">Cameron</span>.</div>
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Cameron is a linesman -- a zebra in hockey slang -- and his natural habitat is the rinks of the National Hockey League.</div>
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The Victoria native came to View Royal Elementary with a message.</div>
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"Whatever you guys do," he told Kelsey's class, "try to be the best you can be at whatever you do."</div>
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Cameron, 35, wore his No. 74 black-and-white sweater with an orange NHL crest over his heart. He brought his hockey equipment, including a girdle and skates and shin pads, as well as a whiskey bag filled with whistles. The kids liked the whistles; they thought the hockey gear was stinky.</div>
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"I think I have a really cool job," he said.</div>
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Most hockey fans think linesmen have a thankless job that rarely wins them respect. Their daily chores seem mundane compared to the glamour afforded referees with their orange armband and a benevolent dictator's command.</div>
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"Kelsey, what does the linesman do?"</div>
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"Helps," she said.</div>
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"Helps?"</div>
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"Helps break up fights."</div>
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A linesman's job description includes calling icings and off- sides, dropping the puck for face-offs, and helping the referees maintain order on ice. Often that means sticking their noses into fights they would rather avoid.</div>
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The NHL rule book has 103 entries and Cameron is supposed to be able to recall any of them at a moment's notice.</div>
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"Say Brooke and Kelsey are in the corner," Cameron told the class, "and they're getting their elbows up. I'd say, `Hey, get your elbows down and play the puck.'</div>
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"And if she gave me that look," he said, indicating Kelsey's scowl, "she's in the penalty box."</div>
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Cameron has known little Kelsey since the day after she was born eight years ago to Ross and Lynn Chow. The linesman went to kindergarten with Ross and the families have kept in touch as Lonnie's hockey career took him from Juan de Fuca to Racquet Club to junior in Estevan, Sask., where his dreams of following Ken Dryden as an NHL goalie came to an end.</div>
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Instead, Cameron decided to become an official, working in the Western Hockey League where he won the Allen Paradice Memorial Trophy in 1995-96 as the league's top referee. Cameron also was on the ice for the hockey finals at the 1994 Olympic Games. He made his NHL debut on Oct. 5, 1997.</div>
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While some educators may occasionally find need of a linesman's assistance, teacher Catherine Harrower runs a tight ship.</div>
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In fact, the children in Mrs. Harrower's class are far better behaved than the scofflaws Cameron encounters in his working life. Just last year, Philadelphia Flyers coach Roger Neilson was suspended two games for throwing a stick on the ice that almost hit Cameron.</div>
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(In his defence, Neilson said he had no intent of hitting the linesman, but was keen on getting the referee's attention. He did, though not in the manner he intended.)</div>
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Earlier on Tuesday, Cameron addressed the intermediate students at View Royal with an inspirational message.</div>
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"If you set a goal, always try to achieve it," he told them. "Shoot for the stars. If you hit the moon, that's just a speed bump."</div>
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Later, he said, "It's kind of corny, but I believe in that."</div>
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With 30,000 officials working in sports in Canada, Cameron told Kelsey's class that he landed one of only 60 jobs open for refs and linesmen in the NHL.</div>
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The class asked good questions. Heidi Shenkenfelder asked if girls could play hockey. (Certainly, Cameron said, and he expects the NHL will one day have women officials.) Jeff Camden wanted to know if his dad, the mayor of View Royal, worked as hard as the linesman? (Maybe even more so, Cameron said.) Tyler Laberge simply wore a Maple Leafs sweater. ("Good team," Cameron said.)</div>
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Cameron had a trick question in his classroom quiz. How many teams are on the ice during a game?</div>
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"Two!" the children shouted.</div>
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"Three teams," Cameron said. "We as officials work as a team. If the team in black and white isn't doing their job, they'll know about it from the fans."</div>
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The linesman gave an autographed photo to each students. It showed him standing to the side as Donald Brashear punches the face of Marty McSorley.</div>
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"These guys aren't really getting hurt," Cameron cautioned the class. "It's all make believe."</div>
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After the presentation, the class returned to their study of insects such as the ladybug (not Lady Byng) and the cockroach (not Claude Lemieux, but close).</div>
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Mrs. Harrower was not much of a hockey fan before show and tell.</div>
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"When I heard that Kelsey was bringing a linesman, I had no idea," she told her class. "I thought he climbed poles."</div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-26498091547841955422019-02-19T16:11:00.000-08:002019-02-20T16:52:45.460-08:00Edith Iglauer (1917-2019), writer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-pcgpU4BRGslbg7JT4-OiFqkjtarHx0KJMqpWLo7XqHZI7RXCP4wNG0HS1ljWki3MobSeHLxPjFNbMQa5tyLzzt9fa6uBX6jS0xvu7dfsD5YArnM5N7cH-FpZmX1zUv-m3-d9TX4rXQ/s1600/Edith+Iglauer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="224" data-original-width="190" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-pcgpU4BRGslbg7JT4-OiFqkjtarHx0KJMqpWLo7XqHZI7RXCP4wNG0HS1ljWki3MobSeHLxPjFNbMQa5tyLzzt9fa6uBX6jS0xvu7dfsD5YArnM5N7cH-FpZmX1zUv-m3-d9TX4rXQ/s400/Edith+Iglauer.jpg" width="339" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">By Tom Hawthorn<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The Globe and Mail</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">February 16, 2019</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Few outsiders have so profoundly captured the Canadian spirit as Edith Iglauer, an American who wrote about eccentric geniuses and rough-hewn laborers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">She profiled the artist Bill Reid and the architect Arthur Erickson, though was best known for her memoir, “Fishing with John,” about her unlikely romance with a salmon troller on the Pacific coast. The book was turned into a forgettable movie, but it is not every magazine writer who can claim to have been portrayed on the silver screen by Jaclyn Smith.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In 1969, after the publication of a memorable profile of Pierre Trudeau for the New Yorker magazine, she spontaneously invited the prime minister to dinner at her Manhattan apartment. He accepted, arriving to announce he had invited a guest — Barbra Streisand.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">After a career lasting nearly eight decades, including a stint as a war correspondent in the final weeks of the Second World War, Ms. Iglauer has died at 101 in Sechelt on the British Columbia coast, an area where she spent much of the last half of her life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In the pages of magazines such as Harper’s, The Atlantic and, particularly, the New Yorker, whose staff she joined in 1961, she chronicled a vast land and its peoples for an American audience often indifferent to “the strangers next door,” a phrase used as the title for her collected works of journalism. She was an unsentimental writer with a gimlet eye, rendering her pieces with prose as bracing as the geography in which many of the stories were set.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">She wrote often of the Canadian North and expressed a sympathetic yet unromanticized view of the hardships faced by indigenous inhabitants whose centuries-long survival in a pitiless landscape had become perilous with the arrival of interlopers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In the book “Denison’s Ice Road,” she described the harrowing business of carving a route across tundra and frozen inland seas, where truck drivers kept their right hand on the wheel and their left on the door handle, lest their heavy rig punch through the ice, leaving them mere seconds to abandon what would otherwise be an icy tomb. The book, set in the Northwest Territories, inspired an episode of “Suicide Missions,” a program airing on the History Channel, and, later, the reality television series “Ice Road Truckers.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Her works were informed by a Chekhovian attention to detail, perhaps no surprise as she had devoured the Russian classics not long out of grade school after the school librarian provided a copy of Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” at age 12.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Ms. Iglauer displayed the standards of an upper middle-class upbringing — elegant blouses, a confidence about etiquette, and an attention to coiffure, which, late in life, was rendered as a gloriole of silvery hair framing a fine-boned face. She was blessed with a journalist’s most useful quality — a curiosity for which there seemed no satisfying.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Edith Theresa Iglauer was born on March 10, 1917, in Cleveland, a second daughter for the former Bertha Good and Jay Iglauer, a comptroller and later executive for the upscale Halle Bros. department store. Both parents were American born from German Jewish families. His salary afforded the daughters a comfortable upbringing in a large, three-story home in the leafy University Circle neighbourhood. The household included two maids, one of them a 49-year-old widow from Canada. The family later moved to a larger home on a half-acre lot in suburban Cleveland Heights.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Summer weekends were spent at a cabin on the Chagrin River in the Ohio countryside, where Edith rode horses and developed a passion for rural life. Her mother devoured books and displayed exquisite taste, while her more adventurous, free-spirited father exulted in the natural environment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Late in 1933, even as many struggled through the deprivations of the Depression, the family enjoyed a week-long cruise aboard the ocean liner <i>Mauretania </i>from New York to Halifax and back, likely her first visit to the country she would interpret for her countrymen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Jay Iglauer had abandoned a university scholarship as a young man to work to support his family after his father’s death, so he encouraged both daughters to pursue higher education. Midway through high school, Edith was sent to Hathaway Brown School for Girls, a private institution in nearby Shaker Heights preparing the social elite for a liberal arts college education. “I missed the boys,” she once said, “but I had two great teachers.” The courses included rigorous language instruction, as lessons about Virgil in Latin by Anna Blake “taught me to listen to the music in words.” The headmistress and English instructor Mary E. Raymond once told her, “Edith, never stop writing.” For the rest of her life, she would recall those four words every time she sat down at a typewriter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Literature classes at Wellesley College in Massachusetts paled in comparison, a disappointment for a young woman hungry to improve her craft. Instead, she threw herself into club work, serving as president of the Student Forum in her senior year, during which she introduced prominent lecturers, such as professors from Harvard Law, and met students from war-torn China and Loyalist Spain. In December 1937, she attended a conference of Canadian and New England students to discuss the deteriorating global situation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">After graduating with a degree in political science, she attended Columbia University’s School of Journalism in New York, selling articles to the Christian Science Monitor in Boston and to the Cleveland News in her hometown, whose editor, Nat Howard, almost immediately spotted her talent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Ms. Iglauer joined the Office of War Information, where she worked on the religion and Scandinavian desks for the radio newsroom, relaying news to those surreptitiously listening in Norway and other Nazi-occupied countries. She convinced a senior officer to include Eleanor Roosevelt’s weekly White House press briefings in her work routine, forging a friendship with the First Lady.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“As the newest and youngest reporter there,” she said, “I kept my mouth shut, learned a lot and loved being part of her intimate circle of reporters.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">On Dec. 25, 1942, she married the journalist Philip Hamburger, who was also serving with the War Information Office. They had met by chance in the library at Columbia after matchmaking grandmothers from both families sought to introduce the pair. The ceremony was performed by a judge in the home of Major Robert Kintner, a former White House correspondent and columnist with the New York Herald Tribune. (Mr. Kintner became a television network executive after the war, landing on the cover of Time magazine when he testified before the U.S. Congress about the rigging of quiz shows.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In 1945, Mr. Hamburger was dispatched to Europe as the New Yorker’s correspondent in the Mediterranean Theatre, where he covered the execution of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Ms. Iglauer, who continued to use her maiden name for professional purposes, traveled to Yugoslavia via Casablanca, filing stories to the Cleveland News, whose readership included many who traced their ancestral roots to the Balkans. Even a short time in a war zone convinced her of the folly of armed conflict.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“The shocking destruction from bombings that I saw everywhere, especially in London, made a confirmed peace marcher out of me,” she told a convocation audience while accepting an honorary degree at the University of Victoria in 2006.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">After the war, they set up housekeeping in railroad apartment (small rooms connected in a row without a separate hallway) on the third floor of a walk-up tenement. Mr. Hamburger resumed his career at the New Yorker. After the couple announced a pregnancy, Harold Ross, the magazine’s founder, asked their landlord, who happened to be a friend, to find the couple a larger apartment. The landlord was Vincent Astor, millionaire head of the famous aristocratic family.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The young family fell into traditional roles with Mr. Hamburger as the breadwinner and Ms. Iglauer alone to raise two sons, as well as responsible for organizing dinner parties and other social occasions. Ms. Iglauer once told the writer Annabel Lyon that her husband, a man of great intellect, was so unfamiliar with the daily rigors of childrearing he had once placed the rubber pants next to the baby’s skin with the cloth diaper overtop.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">After both boys were in school, Ms. Iglauer endeavored to revive her own career. She arose each morning at 4 a.m. to write for three hours before returning to domestic chores. By then, her husband was a critic and she often accompanied him to concerts and recitals, only to fall asleep midperformance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">She proposed story ideas for the “Talk of the Town” section of the New Yorker. Other writers were then assigned the story. In time, she was allowed to report and write them herself. In 1961, spurred by a sense of adventure, she journeyed by train and dogsled to Northern Quebec to write about an economic co-operative being formed by Innu families whose nomadic life was coming to an end. Other expeditions to remote places in the Arctic followed. She liked to say she discovered Canada from the top down.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Ms. Iglauer displayed a doggedness and meticulous attention to detail notable even for the glacially-paced New Yorker of the era. In 1972, she finished an article on the building of the foundation for the World Trade Center, the story taking longer to complete than the foundation itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">An exposé on sulphur dioxide in Manhattan’s air forced Consolidated Edison to burn a lighter oil and brought attention to environmental despoliation in 1964, six years before the inaugural Earth Day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The writer was on assignment when a friend suggested she meet John Heywood Daly, a commercial fisherman. An unlikely romance bloomed between the gruff and uncouth seaman and the sophisticated cosmopolitan. He invited her to spend time with him aboard <i>MoreKelp</i>, a 41-foot boat lacking a toilet and reeking of diesel fuel. She wrongly anticipated pulling into quaint New England ports of her childhood and even packed formal wear for swanky dinner parties, which, needless to say, never materialized. As he worked the coast, she decided she had found her next major writing project, alerting New Yorker editor William Shawn to the story from Port Hardy, surely the only call of its kind ever made from the Vancouver Island fishing village.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">She had returned to New York when Mr. Daly awakened her with a telephone call.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“I’ve just bought a wooden toilet seat that I think will fit very well on top of that pail on the boat,” he said. “It’s sky blue, and I paid $8.50 for it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“Lovely,” she replied. “But it’s two o’clock in the morning. What about it?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“What about it?!” he sputtered. “Marriage! That’s what.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The union was a happy one until the night Mr. Daly died suddenly of a heart attack at a community dance four years after their marriage. In her grief, Ms. Iglauer wrote her most famous, and autobiographical, work, which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Non-fiction in 1988.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Other notable books include “Seven Stones,” a biography of Mr. Erickson published in 1981, and “Inuit Journey” (2000), an updated and revised version of her first book, “The New People,” published in 1966.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">She met a widower named Franklin Wetmore White, an autodidact and self-described “bush ape” who had spent much of his life as a trucker and gyppo logger. He was the father of Howard White, her publisher with Harbour Books. They embarked on a Green Acres relationship, as he had spent much of his time in logging camps and had the table manners to show it, while she traveled in circles so sophisticated they not only read the New Yorker, they wrote it. After a quarter-century courtship, they married in 2006. They lived in Mr. Daly’s seaside cottage in Garden Bay on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast. At age 99, Frank White, who was known as Munga, published a best-selling memoir, “Milk Spills and One-Log Loads,” following up a year later with “That Went By Fast: My First Hundred Years.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Into her nineties, Ms. Iglauer wrote marvelous short essays for Geist, a literary magazine based in Vancouver. She also worked on a memoir, a genre with which she disliked being associated, as she felt far too many people were writing navel-gazing works of low quality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">She died at Sechelt Hospital on February 13. She leaves two sons, Richard Shaw Hamburger, of New York, a theatre director, and Jay Philip Hamburger, of Vancouver, founder and artistic director of Theatre in the Raw, and their families. Her marriage to Mr. Hamburger ended in divorce in 1966 and he died in 2004, aged 89. She was also predeceased by her second husband, Mr. Daly, who died in 1978, and her third husband, Mr. White, who died in 2015, aged 101. Her older sister, Jane Iglauer Fallon, a patron of the arts and inductee to the Cleveland Play House Hall of Fame, died in 2002, at 89.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Ms. Iglauer displayed a dogged attention to detail notable even for the glacially-paced New Yorker of the era. In 1972, she finished an article on the building of the foundation for the World Trade Center, the story taking longer to complete than the foundation itself.</span></div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-580134671959005872019-01-23T10:44:00.000-08:002019-01-23T10:44:00.887-08:00Marking 50 years on the legislature floor<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">George MacMinn photographed by Deddeda White.</td></tr>
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<i>With renewed attention being paid to the position of the clerk of the B.C. Legislature, here's a profile of George MacMinn, who spent a half-century in the post. </i><br />
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By Tom Hawthorn<br />
The Globe and Mail<br />
June 4, 2008<br />
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George MacMinn's office contains one of only two working fireplaces in the capital's historic parliament building.</div>
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His desk has a plaque marking it as once having been used by the Queen.</div>
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Such perks are the reward for someone whose workday includes interminable hours at a table on the red-carpeted floor of the legislature.</div>
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He is the clerk of the British Columbia Legislature. For 50 years, Mr. MacMinn has been surrounded by politicians, his ears buffeted by the warm blast of rhetoric.</div>
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No table officer anywhere in the vast Commonwealth — from Antigua to Zambia — has enjoyed so long a tenure.</div>
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In the raucous chamber, in which sitting members square off like irate hockey players, the Speaker acts as referee, wearing a robe instead of a striped shirt. As clerk, Mr. MacMinn is the neutral and non-partisan keeper of the rule book. He is an expert in procedure, precedent and standing orders.</div>
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Some may think a half-century of listening to politicians to be cruel and unusual, but not Mr. MacMinn.</div>
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"It's a rather awesome experience sitting there in the middle of the action," he said. "Bullets flying back and forth. And none of them seem to hit me."</div>
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He's written what some parliamentarians describe as the bible. (No, not the Bible. He's not that old. He's only 78.) Mr. MacMinn is currently at work on the fourth revised edition of his <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Parliamentary Practice in British Columbia</i> , which he hopes to get to the Queen's Printer later this year.</div>
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While not spellbinding reading, it does include a chapter with the promising title of "Offer of Money to Members; Bribery in Elections."</div>
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"Haven't had to consult that one," he said. "Yet."</div>
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He has served 15 Speakers, observed 10 premiers. His tenure has been such that he has seen sons follow fathers - the Gordon Gibsons, as well as Bill and W.A.C. Bennett - onto the floor.</div>
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He has had a front-row seat to some of the most dramatic events in the province's political history. He has felt the elder Mr. Bennett's dominating personality, heard Flyin' Phil Gaglardi in full rhetorical flight, witnessed a defiant Dave Barrett being carried out of the chamber.</div>
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He takes so seriously his role as a non-partisan officer that he has not cast a ballot in the 13 provincial elections since he joined the clerk's staff.</div>
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His hiring was an unexpected turn of events.</div>
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On a quiet day, the 27-year-old lawyer took a telephone call at his office. The voice on the other end wanted to know if he was available that day to meet the province's attorney-general.</div>
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"Just a minute, I'll check my calendar," Mr. MacMinn replied. The day's schedule was blank. He agreed to a 3 p.m. appointment.</div>
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Robert Bonner, a veteran who had been wounded during the war, was a powerful minister in the Bennett cabinet. The attorney-general had two questions.</div>
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"Are you closely aligned with any political party?" he asked.</div>
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"I must confess," Mr. MacMinn replied, "I haven't been too interested."</div>
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Mr. Bonner seemed pleased by the response.</div>
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His second question was succinct, though unexpected.</div>
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"Do you have a sense of humour?"</div>
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"I think so," Mr. MacMinn answered.</div>
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He was then dispatched to meet with a white-haired, craggy-looking fellow named Ned de Beck. The job interview with the clerk of the House was even briefer than the meeting with the attorney-general.</div>
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"Are you in any way related to Hope MacMinn?" he asked.</div>
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That was his mother.</div>
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"I play bridge with her," the clerk said. "You'll do fine."</div>
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His appointment was ratified by the House at its next sitting. His salary was a munificent $800. He has not left the table since.</div>
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He came to law only after realizing poor science marks did not herald a career in medicine.</div>
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He was born in 1930, on the cusp of the Depression, at New Glasgow, N.S., where his father was a bank manager. Earle George MacMinn had dreamed of being a doctor, passing on to his son both his name and his own thwarted ambition, if not necessarily his Conservative politics.</div>
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The family moved to Victoria when George was 13. Five years later, he was bird hunting with his father on a day when what seemed to be an inconsequential decision proved to be tragic.</div>
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The elder MacMinn slipped into a punt on a lake near Duncan to roust birds on the far shore. Unseen by his son, the boat tipped.</div>
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After spotting the overturned craft, as well as his father's hat, floating on the water, George ran for help. The RCMP were unable to find the body. On the following day, the lake froze over. His father's remains were recovered later.</div>
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He inherited from his father a love for tennis. Mr. MacMinn makes a biennial pilgrimage to Wimbledon. He has also transformed the expansive lawn between the sea and his Oak Bay house into what he calls Spoon Bay Centre Court. He thinks lawn tennis a subtle game and one easy on the knees of a septuagenarian whose backhand remains defiantly one-handed.</div>
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The province is celebrating its sesquicentennial this year, marking 150 years of modern history. The mighty MacMinn has sat dutifully in the legislature for one-third of all those years.</div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-79050296219982709242019-01-11T13:28:00.002-08:002019-01-11T13:28:45.559-08:00Jim Taylor (1937-2019), sportswriter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">By Tom Hawthorn<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The Globe and Mail</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Jim Taylor was a sportswriter more entertaining than the teams he covered. He was certainly more popular.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Generations of Vancouver sports fans knew that however disappointing the performance of hockey’s Canucks, soccer’s Whitecaps, or football’s B.C. Lions, they would be treated the following day to a funny, acerbic and satisfying sports column.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Mr. Taylor, who has died on Vancouver Island at 81, showed little patience for prima donna athletes, or wannabe jocks in the press box. He abhorred cliché, eschewed the bland quote, and took delight in eviscerating the pompous.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">His bon mots were shared at office water coolers, stuck to refrigerators, kept folded inside wallets and purses. In the days when he wrote for the afternoon Vancouver Sun, sports-obsessed schoolchildren raced home after the final bell to read his column.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Over the years, he wrote more than 15,000 newspaper columns, many of them produced on deadline. He did at least twice as many radio commentaries, as well as countless television appearances, and found the time to write more than a dozen books, including collaborations with wheelchair athlete Rick Hansen, big-band leader Dal Richards and the father-son duo of Walter and Wayne Gretzky. Two collections of his columns were titled, “You Mean I Get Paid to do This?” and “Forgive Me My Press Passes.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">His writing displayed a deft, conversational touch leavened by sarcasm and wit. It had been his ambition as a young man to be a humourist like Eric Nicol.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">When a hockey team agreed to pay out the remaining $60,000 on a player’s contract, Mr. Taylor conjured an epistolary exchange with his editor in which he munificently offered to not write for a similar amount.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">When another hockey player’s first-person account of skating in the Stanley Cup playoffs was pitched to his editor, Mr. Taylor’s response was a column in which he offered to be a sixth-string defenceman for the New York Islanders.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“In my entire life I’d bet on four horses,” he once wrote. “At last report all four were still running and the clocker was using a sundial.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Mr. Taylor once explained to readers the positions of a curling foursome: “Each rink is made up of a ‘lead,’ who is first to the bar; a ‘second,’ who is a step slower; a ‘third,’ who arrives in time to buy the round; and a ‘skip,’ so called because he’s always in the washroom when the tab arrives.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">When the Edmonton Eskimos dominated football and the Edmonton Oilers hockey, Mr. Taylor assured Vancouver readers that those fans, however happy, still faced the ignominy of living in a barren wasteland.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“It’s Minor Hockey Week in Canada,” he once suggested. “Take a Canuck to lunch.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The concluding series of never-ending hockey playoffs he described as “the Stanley Cup Finally.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">He dismissed baseball except for its soporific qualities. “To be properly appreciated,” he wrote, “baseball requires a great sofa.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">There was nothing athletic about Mr. Taylor, who was bald in his 20s and squinted behind thick glasses. He had a braying laugh and a habit of testing one-liners on fellow sportswriters. Colleagues nicknamed him Skull for his barren scalp. When he and fellow Sun columnist Jim Kearney both took ill during a road trip, Mr. Taylor branded them as “Butch Casualty and the Sunstroke Kid.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">His humour about gender roles and conjugal relations dated from the Mad Men era, yet he helped at least one aspiring young woman to break into sports writing. He was known for his generosity to young reporters, offering words of praise. His opinions about newspaper management were mostly unprintable. He left the Vancouver Sun when a new publisher forbade freelance work. Mr. Taylor’s impressive output in print, radio and on television was fueled by a desire to provide the best possible care for a daughter rendered a quadriplegic when crashed into by a reckless skier in 1976.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">James Edgar Taylor was born on March 16, 1937, in the Saskatchewan village of Nipawin, population 892. “To get to Nipawin,” he wrote, “you headed the dog team north and when the last dog died, you were almost there.” He was the youngest of four children born to the former Ethel Florence Quinton, the daughter of a Winnipeg sheet-metal worker, and James Edgar Taylor Sr., known as Ed, a grocer who became the proprietor of a coffee shop.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Mr. Taylor’s earliest memory was of listening to hockey broadcasts on the radio on Saturday evenings with his father. At the grocery store, the boy would be plunked onto the counter to recite the roster of the Toronto Maple Leafs by memory in hopes of coaxing a nickel from customers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The family opened a coffee shop down the street from their home. Taylor’s Lunch Room served fresh pies and doughnuts, as well as sandwiches for the lunch crowd. His mother cooked, a sister served and an older brother chopped wood to keep the ovens roaring. By then, his father had been left bedridden with cancer in a room off the dining area. He died two weeks after Jim’s seventh birthday. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A fortnight after that, the boy was in a Winnipeg hospital to have an operation on a lazy left eye. In his 2008 memoir, “Hello Sweetheart? Gimmie Rewrite!,” Mr. Taylor recounts awakening from surgery to utter darkness. He screamed until calmed by nuns. No one had thought to warn him he would need to wear a bandage over his eyes for two weeks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">With an oldest brother fighting overseas during the Second World War, the family struggled financially, living briefly in Winnipeg, where his mother operated a rooming house before returning to Nipawin, where she opened a smaller coffee shop called Kozy Korner. They returned to Winnipeg before moving to Victoria to move in with her brother.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">An English and journalism teacher at Victoria High School spotted the young man’s felicity with words and got him a part-time job at the Daily Colonist covering men’s softball. The youth was so inexperienced that for his first story he set the margins of his typewriter the exact same width as a newspaper column. So uncertain was Mr. Taylor of his future that for a time he retained his morning paper route for the same newspaper.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Mr. Taylor also successfully proposed a column about popular music for young people. (He mostly wanted free records.) The column, called “Needle Dust” before he renamed it “Off the Record,” is remembered for his prediction of the flash-in-the-pan popularity of a young singer named Elvis Presley.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In 1963, Mr. Taylor traveled from Victoria to Vancouver to cover the Grey Cup football championship, during which Angelo Mosca of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats delivered a devastating and possibly late hit on hometown hero Willie Fleming of the B.C. Lions. The Ticats went on to win the game. Mr. Tayor raced to the ferry, wrote his stories while aboard ship, dropped them off at the newspaper office, and then covered a local hockey game.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">After a decade in the British Columbia capital, Mr. Taylor was lured to Vancouver to join the staff of the fledgling Vancouver Times, a daily founded by hustling advertising salesman Val Warren. The city’s third daily lasted less than a year before folding and Mr. Taylor retreated to the Colonist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The Vancouver Sun hired him to cover the football beat in 1966. Four years later, he joined Mr. Kearney as a columnist in replacing the great Denny Boyd. The sports department also included the fine horseracing writer Archie McDonald and a stellar cast of beat reporters. Mr. Taylor covered the 1972 Winter Olympics in Japan, as well as hockey’s legendary Summit Series in September, which placed him in Moscow to witness Paul Henderson’s famous goal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Mr. Taylor left the Vancouver Sun by moving down the hall of a shared building to write columns for The Province, his home for the next 16 years. In 1995, he was hired away to become the assistant publisher and marquee columnist for a weekly called Sports Only, a tentative foray into the Vancouver market by the Toronto Sun newspaper chain. After the weekly soon after folded, Mr. Taylor became a nationally syndicated columnist with the Calgary Sun until his retirement from daily journalism in 2001.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Mr. Taylor was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame (1989), the Greater Victoria Sports Hall of Fame (2006) and the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame (2005) in Vancouver. In 2010, he received the Bruce Hutchison Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jack Webster Foundation, the province’s highest journalism accolade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Mr. Taylor died on Jan. 7 at his home at Shawnigan Lake, outside Victoria. He leaves a son, Christopher, and a daughter, Teresa. He was predeceased by his wife of 56 years, the former Deborah Easton, who died in 2016.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">For all his accolades, Mr. Taylor readily acknowledged missing out on the sports scoop of his career. At the teary 1988 press conference announcing his trade from the Edmonton Oilers, Wayne Gretzky opened by saying, “I want to apologize to my friend Jim Taylor in front of everyone.” Mr. Taylor had learned of the pending deal but out of loyalty to the family pledged to hold the information until an approved time. Instead, news leaked out and Mr. Taylor lost the scoop. He did not regret it, he said. After all, he had given his word.</span></div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-27010788961391097432018-06-05T09:47:00.003-07:002018-06-05T09:47:53.840-07:00The Old Ball Game: Ontario crossroads site of historic backwoods matchup<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA9Zjcbf4Kvbk0RT1AqNyQqgtLiJN8XLjmDOBCXk1RGtYqW4quhvozT75QAK751S6dBDhx8222Yu21X-wFpG81v0RWpwfQUL5thI4C8gA76Btii7xpXcNlgJeh-j57u-FFCTjIDfQMMw/s1600/Beachville+recreation+game.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="154" data-original-width="327" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA9Zjcbf4Kvbk0RT1AqNyQqgtLiJN8XLjmDOBCXk1RGtYqW4quhvozT75QAK751S6dBDhx8222Yu21X-wFpG81v0RWpwfQUL5thI4C8gA76Btii7xpXcNlgJeh-j57u-FFCTjIDfQMMw/s400/Beachville+recreation+game.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Players recreate the 1838 game between Beachville and Zorra as described by Adam Ford. Photo from the Beachville (Ont.) District Museum. </i></td></tr>
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<b>By Tom Hawthorn</b><br />Special to The Globe and Mail<br />June 4, 1988</div>
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<br />NO ONE REMEMBERS how old Old Ned Dolson was when they started calling him Old. All that is known is that Old Ned hailed from Zorra Township and was about as fine a baseball player as had ever been seen in those parts.</div>
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So when the hard-working farmers of the area, near London, Ont., took a break from their chores on the King's birthday 150 years ago today, Old Ned was asked to bring his team, The Zorras, down to nearby Beachville for a game against the locals.</div>
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Among the spectators was a 7-year-old boy named Adam Ford, who was so impressed by this new sport that he never forgot it. Years later, Ford, a medical doctor and dipsomaniac, penned his reminiscences of the game.</div>
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The account he wrote stands today as the first recorded evidence of baseball being played.</div>
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That historic game will be replayed tomorrow, when Beachville residents challenge their neighbors from Zorra to a rematch under the primitive rules of 1838.</div>
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As if to make up for decades of neglect, this lost chapter in Canada's sporting history is being celebrated with a full lineup of commemorative events this weekend, including the induction of five players into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame at a banquet in Ingersoll tonight. Old Ned and all the other players from those two pioneer teams also will be inducted.</div>
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All this fuss is the result of a letter written by Ford to <i>Sporting Life</i>, a Philadelphia publication, in 1886. The correspondence describes in detail the players and rules of that early Beachville game.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNEVQn6jbdXAJxV_kbGRnoUZF_JocKlvDdbRzXP9uXrO0-Q1vHPduLeX-naZTWCzTfktdYWEr8_05VQQLYzZY668jLiNcI5cDxk2gPs-0EuQA6WUDcLU0GysBsWNkXb2LiPpHl5Rh1OQ/s1600/Beachville+Zorra+Adam+Ford+diagram+baseball+1838.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="255" data-original-width="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNEVQn6jbdXAJxV_kbGRnoUZF_JocKlvDdbRzXP9uXrO0-Q1vHPduLeX-naZTWCzTfktdYWEr8_05VQQLYzZY668jLiNcI5cDxk2gPs-0EuQA6WUDcLU0GysBsWNkXb2LiPpHl5Rh1OQ/s1600/Beachville+Zorra+Adam+Ford+diagram+baseball+1838.png" /></a></div>
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Ford also included a drawing of the playing field with its knocker's stone (home plate) and five byes (bases).</div>
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But because he wrote the account almost 50 years after having seen the game as a child, some doubted the accuracy of his recollection.</div>
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A pair of academic detectives from the University of Western Ontario, however, have traced the names cited by Ford through land records and tombstones.</div>
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"This is beyond hearsay," says professor Bob Barney. "It's the oldest recorded validation. It fits another picture in the puzzle of baseball's opaque history."</div>
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Barney, who worked with graduate student Nancy Bouchier, says Canada's claim to the American game leaves some of his fellow academics in a dither.</div>
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"The reaction is one sometimes of disbelief, sometimes of scoffing," he said.</div>
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The New York village of Cooperstown was identified earlier in this century as the site of the first recorded game of baseball. Abner Doubleday, who would go on to become a Civil War hero, supposedly organized the first baseball game there in 1839.</div>
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Latter-day research has debunked that notion. It is now generally agreed that the Doubleday myth was fostered by baseball entrepreneur A.G. Spalding, a founder of the National League and of the sporting goods business that still bears his name. Spalding was keen on creating a suitably patriotic beginning for America's national pastime.</div>
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Ford descries the Beachville game being played on a smooth pasture behind Enoch Burdick's carpentry shops. No one knows the score, or even who won, and it probably didn't matter much at the time. The game was simply a pleasant diversion from long hours of labor.</div>
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It was Militia Muster Day, and a company of Scottish volunteers, raised to fight the rebellion of the previous year, stopped to watch. They saw George Burdick, Adam Karn, and William Hutchinson from Beachville take on Old Ned Dolson, Nathaniel McNames, and Harry and Daniel Karn from Zorra.</div>
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Dolson was so good it was said he could "catch the ball right away from the front of the club if you didn't keep him back so far that he couldn't reach it."</div>
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They played with a calfskin ball made of double and twisted woolen yarn fashioned by a shoemaker. Bats were rough-hewn blocks of cedar, although some used a wagon spoke.</div>
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The field was square, with the first bye only 18 feet from the knocker's stone. The idea was to allow runners on the bases, because it was considered fun to put them out. A runner was out if he was soaked — hit by a ball thrown by the fielding team.</div>
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Players dressed in their work clothes and wore no gloves. A striker (batter) was out even if his hit was caught on the first bounce. A game could last from six to nine innings, and teams fielded from seven to 12 players at a time. Sometimes, games ended when one side scored 18 (or 21) tallies (runs), which were recorded by cutting a notch into a stick.</div>
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It was while verifying Ford's account that Barney and Bouchier learned that Canada's first baseball chronicler led a life so rich in baseball and scandal it might have come from the pen of William Kennedy.</div>
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Ford seemed a paragon of Victorian virtue. He had a successful practice and was involved in both civic and sporting affairs. He was even elected mayor of St. Marys, Ont., in the 1870s. But the mayor had a weakness for alcohol, and it was his undoing.</div>
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St. Marys had an active temperance movement at the time, and the doctor was known to use a drug to lessen the effects of his drinking. (Which drug he took remains unknown.) At a party in his office, the doctor administered the drug to his drinking partner. The man suffered a violent reaction and died. As luck would have it, the man was secretary of the local temperance union.</div>
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Charges were eventually dropped, although an inquest revealed that a young woman was also involved in the now notorious drinking party.</div>
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"The entire town was scandalized," Barney says, "even though it never went to trial."</div>
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Ford abandoned his wife and a son in St. Marys to flee to Denver with his other son. He organized the first curling bonspiel west of the Missouri River there, and wrote his letter to Sporting Life.</div>
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Unfortunately, he descended into alcoholism and died penniless. He had spent his days caring for his son, who had become addicted to morphine.</div>
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The site of the game he described is now home to homes and a church. The re-enactment is being played on a nearby school ground.</div>
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As well, Tom Heitz, librarian with the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., is bringing his Leatherstocking Base Ball Club to Beachville for an 1838-style game this afternoon.</div>
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The Leatherstockings, who count an innkeeper and several students on their roster, are in their fourth season of playing baseball under old rules. They wear plain red workshirts and Amish-style twill pants to better resemble their predecessors. They play about seven road games a year, and today's match marks their longest journey yet.</div>
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"You really feel at times that you've stepped back into another century," Heitz said. "The form of baseball we will play (today) is a more primitive form than even we're used to."</div>
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A practice game played last month surprised organizer Bill Riddick of Ingersoll, who stepped up to the knocker's stone wielding a big stick.</div>
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"It was like a Hydro pole," he said of a hand-made bat that was more than four feet long. "It would have taken a mighty big man to swing that. And the ball was so soft, it was like a Nerf ball."</div>
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Still, Heitz says his Leatherstockings are ready.</div>
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"You don't need a great deal of skill," he says. "You just have to think a little differently. All this game really requires is unbridled enthusiasm and joy. Enthusiasm and joy, that's baseball."</div>
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Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-37240698148854618282018-04-26T14:43:00.000-07:002018-04-26T14:43:15.381-07:00A beauty of a ballplayer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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By Tom Hawthorn<br />Special to The National Post<br />December 22, 2003<br /><br />Mary Baker was a model and store clerk who left Regina in 1943 to become a professional baseball catcher.</div>
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She was featured in Life magazine, appeared on television's What's My Line?, and was likely the inspiration for the character portrayed by Geena Davis in the 1992 Hollywood movie, A League of Their Own.</div>
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Baker, who died on Wednesday in Regina, aged 84, was one of the stars of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Her dark good looks made her a favourite choice when a player was needed to pose for publicity photos. She became the face of the league. Male reporters dubbed her Pretty Bonnie Baker, giving the league what its owner most desired, a touch of glamour.</div>
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Many women have charm; not so many can also whack the ball.</div>
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She played more games in the storied circuit than any other player, with 930 regular-season and 18 playoff appearances. She was also the only player to become a manager, coaching the Kalamazoo Lassies for a season even as she fulfilled her daily catching duties.</div>
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A beauty in front of the lens, she was a pugnacious presence behind the plate. The catcher was a fan favourite for her spirited arguments with umpires. Those debates were often conducted in small sandstorms generated by the stomping of her feet, which soiled the polished shoes of the unwitting arbiter.</div>
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"She was a tough competitor," said Arleene Noga, 79, a farmgirl from Ogema, Sask., who played the infield for the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Daisies. "Like catchers do, she kept her team's spirits up."</div>
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The 5-foot-5, 133-pound fireplug hit only one home run in her nine-year career and finished with an unimpressive .235 average, but she had a discerning eye -- striking out just six times in 256 at- bats in her rookie season -- and was a threat to score once on base. Baker stole 506 bases in her career, including 94 in 94 games in 1946, when she was named the league's all-star catcher.</div>
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Baker spent the first seven years of her career in South Bend, Ind., with the Blue Sox. Her first visit to Bendix Field reminded her of her hometown.</div>
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"The dust was blowing and it was always very windy, but that didn't hinder me," she told the South Bend Tribune last year. "I felt like I was playing in Yankee Stadium."</div>
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Mary Geraldine George was born in Regina on July 10, 1919. (Some baseball sources list her birth a year earlier.) She had four brothers and four sisters, all athletes and every one a catcher. She was blessed with a powerful right throwing arm and once hurled a baseball 343 feet.</div>
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In 1943, she was working as a $17-a-week clerk at the Army and Navy store by day while playing softball for the A&N Bombers at night and on weekends.</div>
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She was discovered by Hub Bishop, a hockey scout who was recruiting players for a fledgling women's league being launched in Chicago. With her husband serving overseas in the air force, Baker was convinced by her mother-in-law to accept the invitation to a tryout at Chicago's Wrigley Field, without seeking her husband's approval.</div>
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The adventure was welcome. There was nothing to do on the Prairies during the war, Baker once said, "except play ball and chase grasshoppers."</div>
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The league was the brainstorm of Philip K. Wrigley, the chewing- gum magnate who owned the Chicago Cubs. He wanted to create a profitable wartime entertainment that would also furnish a tenant for his ballpark on those days when his men's professional team was on the road.</div>
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As it turned out, the league thrived not in Chicago but in the smaller cities of the American Midwest. South Bend was one of the league's inaugural teams, along with the Kenosha (Wis.) Comets, the Racine (Wis.) Belles, and the Rockford (Ill.) Peaches.</div>
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The Belles of the Ball Game, as they were called, were given instruction in etiquette and were accompanied at all times by a chaperone. The women wore uniforms of a short-sleeved, belted tunic dress with a flap that buttoned on the left side, leaving room for a circular crest on the chest. While wartime heroine Rosie the Riveter may have been depicted in jean overalls, the women baseball players had to wear skirts, often raising ugly welts and strawberries on their exposed legs.</div>
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As a base stealer, Baker suffered more injuries than most.</div>
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Before every game, the two teams would stand along the foul lines from home plate in a "V for Victory" formation in support of the war effort. Once, Dorothy Maguire, a catcher for Racine, took her place in the V only moments after learning her husband had been killed in action.</div>
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Life published a two-page spread on the league in June, 1945. Baker was featured in a photograph showing her in a catcher's mask.</div>
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The league's popularity peaked in 1948, as teams drew more than one million paying customers that season.</div>
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"The fans treated us as though we were stars," Baker told the Tribune. "They took us into their homes and treated us as family."</div>
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Once, she was even presented with an automatic washing machine made at a factory in South Bend.</div>
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Baker was traded to the struggling Lassies in 1950. As manager, she improved the club's performance, but the Lassies still finished last of eight teams with a terrible 36-73 record. After her stint, the league barred women from becoming managers.</div>
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Baker sat out the 1951 season to have a baby, and returned the next year for what would be her final professional campaign. She hit just .208, and for the only time in her career had more strikeouts (22) than stolen bases (20).</div>
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The All-American league closed its doors two years later.</div>
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Back in Regina, Baker took up softball again and led her team to the world softball championship tournament in 1953. She became a sportscaster for Regina radio station for CKRM in 1964. And she managed the Wheat City Curling Club in Regina for 25 years until retiring in 1986.</div>
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She has been inducted into the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame and the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame. The Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in St. Marys, Ont., inducted the league's Canadian-born players as honorary members in 1999.</div>
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In 1988, an exhibit honouring the All-American league was placed on permanent display at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.</div>
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A League of Their Own also encouraged recognition for the pioneering athletes, an honour long seen as overdue by many. The movie starred Madonna, Tom Hanks, Rosie O'Donnell and Ms. Davis, whose portrayal of a character named Dottie Hinson was widely believed by the former players to be mostly based on Mrs. Baker. The family of another catcher, the late Dottie Green, also claim to have been the inspiration for the character.</div>
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Baker died of respiratory failure at the Santa Maria Senior Citizens Home in Regina on Dec. 17.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #555555;">She leaves a daughter, Maureen (Chick) Baker</span><span style="color: #555555;"><span style="background-color: white;">, two grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and brothers Andrew and Patrick.</span></span></div>
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She was predeceased by her husband Maurice, who died in 1962, three children who died in infancy, two brothers and four sisters, including Gene McFaul, a pitcher who had been her teammate at South Bend in 1947.</div>
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A memorial service was held at the Wascana Country Club on Saturday. The eulogies were followed by a seventh-inning stretch, during which mourners sang Take Me Out to the Ball Game.</div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-10551568606435504092017-12-13T06:49:00.002-08:002017-12-13T06:49:41.050-08:00Sinclair gets another crack at Major League dream <br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By Tom Hawthorn<br />The Times Colonist</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">September 28, 1997</span></b><br />
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Not so long ago, Steve Sinclair had called it quits, had hung 'em up, had stepped down from the pitcher's mound for good, had seen his childhood dream go to that big bullpen in the sky. He had languished in the Toronto Blue Jays system for five yearsand the closest he got to the bigs was listening to Buck Martinez on TSN. He had had enough and came home to Victoria at age 24 to go to school, to get a job, to become a grownup.</div>
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He worked as a doorman at a fancy hotel and, on some summer eves, threw bullets and hit taters against amateurs at the same parks in which he had played as a kid. He decided he still had a love for the game. He also decided his left arm was meant for better things than holding open doors.</div>
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So, this spring he returned to the same small Florida town where he had toiled for so long for so little reward, and once again began the climb up baseball's ladder. He ended the season in Syracuse, New York, just one level below the parent club.</div>
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Along the way, his fastball picked up some zip. He had been throwing in the 88 to 89 m.p.h. range for years. After taking up weight training, Sinclair was throwing in the 92 to 93 m.p.h. range. It is the difference between a fastball that is ho-hum and one that is a hummer. As they age, ballplayers are expected to add heat to aching muscles, not to their pitches.</div>
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"Maybe I'm just a late bloomer," Sinclair says with a laugh.</div>
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Sinclair leaves today for Toronto to join Canada's Olympic team, for whom he will pitch in a qualifying tournament in Mexico City. He will then become one of the Boys of Winter, playing for Lara in Venezuela at the suggestion of the Blue Jays.</div>
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At spring training, he expects to be battling for a spot in Toronto's bullpen.</div>
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At 26, Sinclair is closer than he ever has been to earning the baseball immortality that goes to those who play in the major leagues. "Once you're in Triple A, you're just one phone call away," Sinclair says. "One injury away. One little break."</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #555555;">He got one of those little breaks this summer when the Jays traded relief pitchers Mike Timlin and Paul Spoljaric to Seattle. The Jays have yet to post a Help Wanted sign for their bullpen, but every vacancy helps. Sinclair is a left-handed relief pitcher, a baseball commodity</span><span style="color: #555555;"><span style="background-color: white;"> for which demand never lessens.</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
First, though, he will get an education in beisbol. He knows little of Venezuela, speaks only "pequito" Spanish - not yet even enough to get himself a cold cerveca after a game - and truly hopes the fans do not carry the same passion for ball that they do for soccer. "All I know is that we're not going out on New Year's Eve," he said. "They shoot their guns off in the air to celebrate, so I guess we'll be staying in and having a party of our own."</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
Venezuela is a long road trip for someone who first fell in love with ball watching his father, Scott, play for the Seaboard fastpitch team in the 1970s.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
"I would go on all their trips with him," he recalled. "I'd have a ball and bat in my hands when I got up from bed and I'd have a ball and bat in my hands when I went back to bed at night."</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
His first big break came in the minors when Blue Jays general manager Pat Gillick came to take a look. Gillick, a former minor leaguer himself, hunched down behind the catcher to get a better look at Sinclair's stuff. Another prospect would have been intimidated by having his future depend on a few tosses. Not Sinclair.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
"I was just up there letting loose," he recalls, "letting him know what I had."</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
His arsenal has improved over the years. Bull sessions in the bullpen with the likes of Frank Viola have taught him that pitching is far more than just rearing back and throwing.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
"I've learned that to be successful you have to pitch inside and change your speeds. Once you pitch inside, you widen the plate both inside and outside.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
"Most of the time, I lived outside. I had a good sinker and threw outside, outside, outside. At Triple A, you face much better hitters. They can take that pitch the opposite way. But if you can throw consistent strikes inside, then that's going to keep the hitters off balance."</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
Sinclair's repertoire includes a fastball, a changeup, a curve, and a split-finger fastball that he has yet to refine.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
He was 2-5 in Dunedin, allowing 63 hits in 68 1/3 innings, showing good control with 66 strikeouts to go with just 26 walks, three of those intentional.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
At Syracuse, he pitched just nine innings over six games, recording a 6.00 earned-run average with no decisions. He had nine strikeouts and three walks.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
"I look at my numbers and I go, wow, 6-something, that's not so good. But you only need three or four good innings and that comes way down."</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
On a recent hot afternoon, Sinclair limbered up on a mound at Lambrick Park, tossing big looping curveballs to a friend, Todd McLaughlin. Sinclair wore a Blue Jays cap and a team windbreaker. In a year's time he could well be throwing curves from the mound at SkyDome.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
If so, his name and statistics will be included in the Baseball Encyclopedia, the registrar of baseball immortality that shows that in a century and a half of organized ball, only a single Vancouver Islander, Steve Wilson, a left-handed pitcher, ever made the bigs.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
Still, Sinclair's friend had a better reason to cheer for his friend's success. "I want him to make the big bucks," McLoughlin said, "so he can come back home and buy the beer."</div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-53286493635424220002017-11-25T09:24:00.001-08:002017-11-26T21:12:26.148-08:00Peter Trower (1930-2017), bard of the British Columbia backwoods<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP4wSCj68bSinbcfBoH3CPO2xZ2i5zUuflZL5DAwlZXbOXNewcPN9WkhenSnXg16XMfoGBuVvgp4aVDFXQILd6xpAUlHUKEQ0meOPoxItQFTfmBn2G3v0n_9TS3t50SLupS9SvrvNIAQ/s1600/EWX7FQQXMVHYXOHFM767X3V2YY.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP4wSCj68bSinbcfBoH3CPO2xZ2i5zUuflZL5DAwlZXbOXNewcPN9WkhenSnXg16XMfoGBuVvgp4aVDFXQILd6xpAUlHUKEQ0meOPoxItQFTfmBn2G3v0n_9TS3t50SLupS9SvrvNIAQ/s320/EWX7FQQXMVHYXOHFM767X3V2YY.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><i>The poet Peter Trower reads from a manuscript.</i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">By Tom Hawthorn<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">The Globe and Mail</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">November 25, 2017</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">To some poets, a tree is worthy of rhapsody. To Peter
Trower, a tree was as likely to crush him as inspire him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Mr. Trower spent more than two decades working as a
logger in the woods, a dangerous place where a moment’s inattention or a
comrade’s carelessness could have grave consequence. Far from civilization in
isolated logging camps, he endured lonely nights by reading Jack Kerouac, finding
in the stream-of-consciousness prose an avenue for expressing his own poetic insights
into life in the bush.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">He eventually abandoned the forest for an impecunious
yet beery life as a writer, producing several collections of poetry and three
novels, an output which earned him praise in British Columbia as a bard of the
backwoods. He was less celebrated by the Eastern Canadian tastemakers of Canadian
literature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">His death at 87 marks the end of an era for worker
poets whose sharp eyes and calloused hands conveyed the beauty and horror to be
found in the sweaty labour of a resource economy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">He spent decades in caulk boots, a duffle-bag wanderer.
He worked as a baker, surveyor, shake-cutter, choker setter, whistle punk, crane
operator, and pulp-mill hand. The worst job he had was working the pot-line in
a smelter, converting bauxite into aluminum, a cloud of black sputum erupting
from his every cough.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">In the act of falling a tree he saw an echo of the
combat the older members of his crew had witnessed, as he expressed in the poem
“Like A War:”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">No bombs explode, no khaki regiments
tramp<br />
to battle in a coastal logging-camp.<br />
Yet blood can spill upon the forest floor<br />
and logging can be very like a war.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">In the big city, many a night (and early morning) was
spent with elbows on beer-soaked, terrycloth tabletops at dive bars on
Vancouver’s skid row, where poets bellowed their stanzas over the blare of a
jukebox and the roar of a night’s revelry. After such training, performing in
front of an audience at a reading was a snap, even when burly loggers expected
to be averse to verse filled a room.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">When not at the microphone, Mr. Trower was a shy man
so soft spoken as to mumble. With a fleshy, droop-eyed face and a downturned
mouth, he resembled the actor Peter Boyle. He could be disheveled, though a
Greek fisherman’s black cap and sunglasses gave him a certain élan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">“He looked like every toothless logger I’d ever met
before,” one of his publishers said. “I couldn’t imagine him writing poetry.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Mr. Trower persisted in large part because his mother
had always insisted he would be a writer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Peter Gerard Tower was born on Aug. 25, 1930, at St
Leonards-on-Sea, a tranquil resort town on the English Channel. He was the
first of two boys born to Gertrude Eleanor Mary (née Gilman), known before her
marriage as Gem for the initials of her given names, and Stephen Herbert Gerard
Trower, a test pilot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">His mother was the only daughter of the Acting British
Resident to the Selangor Sultanate in Malaya. At first, her parents opposed the
proposed union, their objections raised not for displeasure with the
prospective groom’s character but rather for the perilous nature of his profession.
In the end, the Hon. E.W.F. Gilman escorted the bride on his arm at a wedding
at St. Mary’s Church in Kuala Lumpur in which the ceremony was officiated by
the Bishop of Singapore.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">The newlyweds moved to Calcutta where the groom worked
for the Anglo-Indian Air Survey. The teeming city did not win the approval of
the new Mrs. Trower, so the couple soon after resettled with the groom’s parents
in England. A second son, Christopher, arrived early in 1933.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">The pilot, who had retired from the Royal Navy, was
commissioned as a flying officer in the Royal Air Force Reserve in 1934. He
tested aircraft for the Fairey Aviation Co., a British firm. In 1935, he
delivered one of the company’s military planes to Moscow. His grateful Soviet
hosts took him to the opera and feted him at banquets, a remarkable honour at a
time of famine. The pilot’s less-than-gracious response was to don blue
overalls to join his minder, less loyal than his boss’s suspected, in sneaking
into an automobile factory. Once inside, they saw workers putting together
aircraft. The machine he had flown in was clearly going to be a model for
knockoffs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Later that summer, the pilot demonstrated a Fairey
Fantôme, a state-of-the-art biplane, at a competition for flying machines at a
military airbase in Belgium. While performing loops and other feats of
derring-do from a great height, the sleek aircraft began a nosedive towards the
ground from which it would not recover. It was thought the pilot had blacked
out. He was 34.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">The bereaved family retreated to an estate owned by the
boys’ maternal grandparents near the village of Islip in Oxfordshire. Years
later, Mr. Trower would remember being indulged, especially at Christmas, a
mountain of wrapped gifts a replacement for the ache of the tragic loss of a
father.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Peter was sent to a boys-only preparatory school in
Oxford known for its “robust informality and relaxed rigor,” a training ground for
England’s future elites, including at least two generations of Tolkiens.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">The outbreak of war in 1939 heralded an end to young
Trower’s pastoral childhood. Family lore has it that Lord Haw-Haw, the
traitorous Nazi announcer William Joyce, had identified an oil depot at Islip
as a worthy target for an air bombardment during the Battle of Britain. On July
18, 1940, Mrs. Trower and her boys boarded on tourist-class tickets the
Canadian Pacific Line steamship Duchess of Bedford, bound for Montreal. They
sailed across the dangerous Atlantic without event before joining relatives in
Vancouver.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Less than two months later, the widow married Trygve
Iversen, a roughhewn wood-pulp engineer, and the boys were once again on the
move, this time to Port Mellon, a mill town northwest of Vancouver, where a
one-room schoolhouse offered a more rustic education than that on offer in
Oxford. The settlement was accessible only by boat or float plane, and had not
yet been wired for telephone service. Later, the poet would remember the
outpost as a “jerry-built, tarpaper town.” A half-brother, Martin, was born in
1942.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">(While she was in hospital to give birth, her husband acceded to her wish
to have the interior of the house painted. She returned to find floors of yellow
ochre, except in the kitchen, where a battleship grey floor was contrasted by cupboards,
walls and a ceiling painted green, all from leftover paint at the mill.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Mr. Iversen, who was superintendent of the mill, disappeared
while on a timber cruise to estimate a stand of forest at the head of Bute
Inlet. He was presumed to have fallen into the water and drowned. Not yet 14,
Peter Trower had lost a father and a stepfather.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">The grieving family spent the next few years shuttling
between Gibsons, near Port Mellon, and Vancouver, where Peter attended high
school before dropping out to find work in 1948. Mr. Trower followed his
younger brother to a logging camp in the Queen Charlotte Islands (now Haida
Gwaii).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">After three years, he returned to Port Mellon to homestead
60 acres his stepfather had purchased during the Depression. He lived in a
stump-house while taking on odd jobs in logging and construction, all the while
cutting shakes on the property. He worked in a pulp mill at Woodfibre and spent
two years in the aluminum smelter at Kitimat. “Like working in hell,” he once
said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">A modest inheritance allowed him to quit the smelter
and enrol at the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University), where he
dabbled as a cartoonist. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Chastened by the superior drafting skills of his
younger, less worldly classmates, he dropped out, pursuing instead the dissolute
life of a beatnik, “learning what the bottom of life was like.” He discovered
after three years that it meant he had no money, so he returned to Gibsons and
a life in the woods.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">After a slipped choker smashed him in the mouth,
knocking out his teeth, Mr. Trower again abandoned logging for work as a
surveyor. A first collection, “Moving Through the Mystery,” was published by
Talon Books in 1969, though the volume is now treasured more for the
psychedelic mandalas drawn by Jack Wise. Even Mr. Trower later dismissed his
writing as juvenilia, though he was nearly 40 on publication.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">After a young university graduate named Howard White published
the first of a proposed series of volumes titled Raincoast Chronicles about life on the
West Coast, a chagrined Mr. Trower summoned the publisher to his home to demand
to know why he had not been invited to contribute. Mr. White found him in a cabin
on his mother’s property. “It had the whiff of the bunkhouse,” Mr. White
recalled recently, “the unmistakeable stench of stale beer, old socks, mouldy
skin mags.” The poet offered to share his beer, rubbing a thumb on the lip of a
soiled glass in a modest swipe at domesticity. The two became friends and Mr.
Trower was named associate editor of subsequent editions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Mr. White’s Harbour Publishing would publish several
of Mr. Trower’s dozen poetry collections, including “Between Sky and Splinters”
(1974), “The Alders and Others” (1976), and “Bush Poems” (1978). The publisher
also released Mr. Trower’s three novels — “Grogan’s Café” (1993), “Dead Man’s
Ticket” (1996) and “The Judas Hills” (2000). Other poetry collections were released
by such British Columbia publishers as Ekstasis and Reference West. Only two of
his works were handled by Eastern houses — “The Slidingback Hills” (Oberon,
1986) and “Ragged Horizons” (McClelland and Stewart, 1978).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">A regular habitué of such Vancouver drinking
establishments as the Alcazar Hotel and the Railway Club, Mr. Trower was
encouraged by such poets as John Newlove, Al Purdy and Patrick Lane. The editor
Mac Parry at the lifestyle magazine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vancouver</i> championed his work, introducing the hard-scrabble poet to readers
otherwise indulging fantasies about new bathroom fixtures.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">The poet was invited to join the magazine staff at
post-publication parties. At one of these, the young writer Les Wiseman was
introduced to Mr. Trower, who had just been featured on the cover of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Georgia Straight</i> underground newspaper.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">“You remind me of this guy, Bukowski, have you ever
read him?” the writer asked the poet.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">He replied, “I just wrote a poem called ‘Funky
Bukowski.’ It’s here in my briefcase. Would you like to read it?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">The poet opened the battered valise unveiling a pair
of Y-front, tighty-whitey briefs atop a stack of paper. He fished around beneath
the underwear before retrieving a draft manuscript.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">The poet was the subject of at least two documentaries
— “Between Sky and Splinters” by Mike Poole, and “Peter Trower: The Men There
Were Then” by Alan Twigg and Tom Shandel for CBC.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Over the years, Mr. Trower also made an occasional
appearance on the police blotter. He forfeited a $100 peace bond and was fined
an additional $20, plus his share of $252 in damage, after a handgun was fired
during a party in a mill dormitory in 1953. In 1967, he spent a month in jail
for marijuana possession after his house in Gibsons was raided by a police drug
squad, whose members included the notorious Abe Snidanko (obituary, Aug. 13).
He was also fined $1,000.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">After the death of his mother from respiratory failure
in 1979, Mr. Trower rekindled a romance with the writer Yvonne Klan, whom he
had known in high school. She had a salutary effect on the poet, insisting he
not visit when drunk. As it turned out, he preferred her company to that of
the beer hall, most of the time. He dedicated a volume of tender, unsentimental,
lyrical love poems, “A Ship Called Destiny,” to Ms. Klan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">A jazz and blues aficionado, who later became a fan of
psychedelia, Mr. Trower maintained an unexpected but steadfast appreciation for
the old-time, big-voiced singer Frankie Laine, whose talents were not acknowledged
by the poet’s circle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">“I get somewhat put down by the hip purists for this
little indulgence but I don’t care,” he wrote to a friend in the 1960s. “Laine
keeps me in touch with the mad past which I must mine for all its worth.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Mr. Trower released his own music and poetry compact
disc, “Sidewalks and Sidehills” in 2003.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Honours were late coming to Mr. Trower. (His friend
the writer Jim Christy once fashioned a fake trophy for him from typewriter keys
and labels from Extra Old Stock beer bottles.) Mr. Trower received the B.C. Gas (now George
Woodcock) Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, and the Jack Chalmers Poetry
Award from the Canadian Authors Association in 2005 for his collection, “Haunted
Hills and Hanging Valleys.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">His writing earned Gibsons, a town on British Columbia’s
Sunshine Coast otherwise known as the setting for television’s “The Beachcombers,”
an entry in John Robert Colombo’s encyclopedic “Canadian Literary Landmarks.” Gibsons
council repaid the favour last year by voting to name a street in a new
subdivision Trower Lane.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Mr. Trower died on Nov. 10 at Lions Gate Hospital in
North Vancouver from complications following surgery for a broken hip. He had been
diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, granting power of attorney to his widowed
sister-in-law four years ago. He spent his final years at the Inglewood Care
Home in West Vancouver. He was predeceased by his brother in 2006 and his half-brother
in 2013, as well as by his long-time companion Yvonne Klan in 2004.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">A memorial and celebration is scheduled to be held
today at 3 p.m. at his old Vancouver hangout, now known as
the Railway Stage and Beer Café. It will not be teetotal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Mr. Trower was a mentor to street poets, including Evelyn
Lau, a drug-addicted, teenaged prostitute whose work deeply impressed the older
writer. He put her in touch with the book agent Denise Bukowski, and Ms. Lau’s “Runaway:
Diary of a Street Kid” launched a notable literary career.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">In a 1994 made-for-television movie based on the
memoir, Sandra Oh portrayed the lead role in “The Diary of Evelyn Lau.” Mr.
Trower played himself, declaiming poetry while sitting at a table in a bar, a role
for which he had a lifetime’s preparation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Special to The
Globe and Mail<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-9160388394227856072017-05-02T09:36:00.002-07:002017-05-02T09:36:46.635-07:00It's 20 years since Imlach's Old Leafs won the Cup<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
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<i>Leafs captain George Armstrong holds the Stanley Cup for photographers on the ice at the Montreal Forum following Game 6 of the 1967 Stanley Cup finals.</i></div>
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<b>By Tom Hawthorn<br />The Globe and Mail<br />May 2, 1987</b></div>
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<br />The year was 1967. Expo had just opened, the summer of love was about to bloom and, to everyone's surprise, the aged Toronto Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup.</div>
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Twenty years ago today, coach Punch Imlach led what he called The Old Fellows Athletic Club to what has been Toronto's most recent hockey championship.</div>
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Now the heirs to that storied team are trying to rekindle the Leaf's once-proud tradition.</div>
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If some of the current Leafs do not appreciate their historic task, they have an excuse. Left winger Wendel Clark was a baby when the Leafs last won the Cup. Rookie forward Vincent Damphousse had not even been born.</div>
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For some of the old-timers, it was easier to play in the Stanley Cup playoffs than to watch the current team on television.</div>
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"I die with the Leafs," said Allan Stanley, the stay-at-home defenceman who now stays at his resort near Bobcaygeon, Ont. "When I watch, I work just as hard as I did when I was playing the game. I make every move with them. I squeeze by the defencemen, and I hit those forwards. I'm tired when I'm through."</div>
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Stanley said he never gets as tired as he was after his team beat their arch rivals the Montreal Canadiens. It was the last of the classic showdowns among the original six teams of the National Hockey League.</div>
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The Leafs had had a lousy regular season in 1967, losing 10 games in a row and barely qualifying for the playoffs.</div>
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Montreal's victory seemed so certain that the Cup had already been placed on display in Quebec's building at Expo, while Czechoslavakia's pavilion had a magnificent glass sculpture dedicated to Montreal's triumph.</div>
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Imlach's warhorses spoiled the celebration.</div>
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With Toronto ahead three games to two, they played the sixth game before 15,997 roaring fans at Maple Leaf Gardens. Ron Ellis and Jim Pappin scored for the Leafs in the second period, before Montreal's Dick Duff finally was able to get a shot past Terry Sawchuk in Toronto's goal.</div>
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Time and again Sawchuk, 37, frustrated Montreal's attack. "He was hotter than a $3 bill," remembers Gump Worsley, his opposite number in the Montreal cage.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #555555;">With only 55 seconds left in the game, Montreal coach Toe Blake lifted Worsley for a sixth skater. Imlach sent out his best to take a face-off in the Leafs end. Stanley, 41, beat Montreal's Jean Beliveau to the puck and held onto his rival. Red Kelly, 39, grabbed the disk, promptly throwing it ahead to Bob Pulford, a mere wisp of 31. Pulford </span><span style="color: #555555;"><span style="background-color: white;">caught team captain George Armstrong, 37, on the fly on an open wing. Armstrong popped the puck into the empty net.</span></span></div>
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"I really credit Imlach with sticking with us old guys," said Armstrong, named Chief Shoot the Puck by an Alberta tribe. "He remained loyal to the old players who had produced for him in the past. But I guess it was his downfall."</div>
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The Leafs missed the playoffs the following season, as age, and expansion, took their toll.</div>
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But the old squad had one final week-long party of drinking and high jinks that began after the game when Pappin and Mike (Shakey) Walton tossed Imlach into the dressing room showers.</div>
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Schools closed early three days later so that school children could attend the ticker-tape parade through downtown Toronto. More than 30,000 fans cheered their favourites riding in open sports cars bearing white pennants on which their names were emblazoned in blue.</div>
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The players got gold wrist watches from the city, lifetime passes to the Gardens in the form of a medallion, and a bonus of $5,250 as Cup winners.</div>
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At Expo 67, the Cup was moved from the Quebec building to its new home in the Ontario pavilion, where it was guarded by two OPP officers in formal dress. Brian Conacher, a rookie forward with the Leafs, remembers with delight that the Czechs had to turn their trophy around.</div>
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Eight of those Leafs — Armstrong, Kelly, Stanley, Johnny Bower, Marcel Pronovost, and Frank Mahovlich, as well as the late Terry Sawchuk and Tim Horton — have been elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame.</div>
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Armstrong, currently the chief scout for the Quebec Nordiques, said Leaf fans should not fret over the current drought.</div>
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"There're 21 teams in the league," he said. "If each of them wins once, it'll take 21 years. So it's not up yet."</div>
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<i>Coach Punch Imlach pours champagne into the Stanley Cup in the Leafs dressing room. He'd soon wind up in the showers, fully dressed.</i></div>
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<i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIpFhE-9pjIfEKa5i_hEzJwoBrpDUizTpqOHm0J-MrA3nPC3jLtUpRxeqRRtN52ZL-zKgAtOpGT2ngw0Fn3PLk4JcvIQF39kblJI-Tat45O80JcVsP-nl7NV2qDOY3SAbg38eMRwVFpg/s1600/0d0c3d17-fee0-4439-8481-fd17338c5142.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIpFhE-9pjIfEKa5i_hEzJwoBrpDUizTpqOHm0J-MrA3nPC3jLtUpRxeqRRtN52ZL-zKgAtOpGT2ngw0Fn3PLk4JcvIQF39kblJI-Tat45O80JcVsP-nl7NV2qDOY3SAbg38eMRwVFpg/s400/0d0c3d17-fee0-4439-8481-fd17338c5142.jpg" width="347" /></a></i></div>
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<i>The Maple Leafs victory parade on May 5 rode up Bay Street before stopping at Toronto's modernistic City Hall. Leafs captain George Armstrong shares the trophy with team owner Harold Ballard, who would soon enough bring ruin to the franchise.</i></div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-40459845274274347212016-08-18T00:15:00.002-07:002016-08-18T00:17:05.010-07:00Lord Tanamo, ska vocalist (1934-2016)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>By Tom Hawthorn</b><br /><i>Special to The Globe and Mail</i><br />
<i>May 6, 2016</i><br /></div>
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The singer known as Lord Tanamo shared
with audiences around the world the buoyant sounds of ska music born
in the shantytowns of his native Jamaica.</div>
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As a vocalist with the Skatalites, Lord
Tanamo gave voice to a music that would thrust his island homeland to
the forefront of popular culture. Although the band's original lineup
lasted less than two years, the group's recordings had a profound
impact.</div>
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Ska melded traditional island music
with American blues and jazz, creating a fast-paced, infectious,
danceable sound with a steady bass line and an emphasis on the
upbeat. It was the sound of poor, black Jamaica and a precursor to
reggae. Ska has undergone at least two revivals since the Skatalites
broke up in 1965. The surviving members have had several band
reunions with Lord Tanamo joining them for tours of Europe, Asia and
South America.</div>
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The singer had already settled in
Canada when hired in 1969 to perform at the Jamaica pavilion in
Montreal at the post-Expo exhibition known as Man and His World.
Based in Toronto, he performed on occasion in the city even as he
returned frequently to his homeland to record.</div>
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In 2008, the singer suffered a stroke,
which left him unable to speak, a cruel affliction for one whose
voice had entertained audiences for so many years. He communicated by
batting his eyelashes. He lived in an assisted care facility in
Toronto until his death from natural causes on April 15. He was 81.</div>
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With a lollipop physique, the singer
was neither a crooner nor a belter. Lord Tanamo preferred a relaxed,
seemingly carefree vocal styling, capturing in recordings the feel of
the easygoing street musician and hotel entertainer he had been as a
young man.
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The singer was also a noted
percussionist for his playing of the rumba box, a bass lamellophone
also known as a tinkle box. The instrument provides the heavy bass
line typical of Jamaican music and is usually played by sitting atop
the box while reaching between the legs to pluck the keys.</div>
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In island fashion, he took as his
performance name a noble title paired in his case with an exotic
locale, Tanamo (pronounced TAH-nah-mo) being a shortened version of
Guantanamo, the Cuban city across the Caribbean Sea from Jamaica.</div>
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Joseph Abraham Gordon was born on
October 2, 1934, in Kingston, Jamaica, to Julia (née Dunkley) and
Charles Simeon Gordon, who operated a business in the craft market
aimed at tourists. The boy, the youngest of 15 children, remembered
first hearing the sound of a rumba box when Cecil Lawes, later known
as Count Razza, visited the family home with one. The instrument
fascinated him.</div>
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“I liked the sound from the first time I heard
it,” Lord Tanamo told Tim Perlich of Toronto's Now newspaper in
2002. “Later, when I was a teenager, I began performing on the
corner with Cecil and his rumba box. In the day I'd put on torn pants
and a straw hat and sing calypso to hustle the tourists, and then at
night I'd put on my suit and tie and sing ballads with a band.”</div>
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As a young man, Mr. Gordon performed in
swanky hotels along the island's north coast — the Royal Caribbean,
the Casa Montego and the Casa Blanca. He sang calypso, the
Trinidadian style that became a sensation with North American
audiences in the early 1950s, and he also sang mento, the unique
music of the Jamaican countryside known for witty, sometimes ribald
lyrics and an emphasis on the upbeat.</div>
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Meanwhile, the Kingston businessman
Stanley Motta, a prominent electronics and appliance merchant,
launched a domestic recording industry by opening a recording studio
and launching his own label, M.R.S., for Motta's Recording Studio.
Lord Tanamo had his first hit at age 20 with “Crinoline Incident,”
released as a 78 r.p.m. record. Strongly influenced by the stylings
of calypso singer Lord Kitchener (a Trinidadian born as Aldwyn
Roberts), Lord Tanamo would remain a presence on the Jamaican charts
for years to come.</div>
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When Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong arrived
on the island with his orchestra for an engagement in 1957, he was
greeted at the airport by dignitaries, while a band led by Lord
Tanamo played calypsos, including a number titled “The Things
Satchmo Said,” written by Tanamo for the occasion.</div>
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Radio Jamaica regularly played Lord
Tanamo's songs, including “Come Down,” which peaked at No. 3 on
the Jamaican charts in 1963. His first album, “Come Come Come to
Jamaica,” featuring a selection of mento tunes, was released the
following year. The singer also performed live in theatres on
stage-and-screen cards including dozens of acts, including comics and
dancers, as well as movie double bills.</div>
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The evolution of the ska genre
coincided with the heady days following Jamaican independence in
1962. At the heart of the new sound was a band of crackerjack
instrumentalists who had attended the Alpha Boys School. The
Skatalites formed in 1964, featuring two tenor saxophones, an alto
saxophone, a trombone, a trumpet, an upright bass, drums, piano,
guitar and several vocalists, including Lord Tanamo and Doreen
Shaffer, though many of their most popular numbers, including “Guns
of Navarone,” were primarily instrumental tunes.</div>
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Lord Tanamo took credit for coining the
band's clever, punning post-Sputnik name, although other members
dispute his claim. In any case, the Skatalites quickly became the
most popular band on an island filled with terrific musicians. In
1965, the group performed aboard a float in the independence day
parade in Kingston, preceded by the Jamaican Agricultural Marketing
Corporation and followed by a bevy of beauty queens.</div>
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For a time, Lord Tanamo had several
songs on the Jamaican charts, both as a solo artist and as a
Skatalite vocalist.
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One of his more popular songs was “I'm
in the Mood for Ska,” a bouncy cover of “I'm in the Mood for
Love,” a song first made popular by Louis Armstrong.</div>
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After the Skatalites broke up, the
Jamaica Tourist Board hired Lord Tanamo as a troubadour promoting
island music. In January, 1966, he performed at the Eaton's store in
downtown Toronto with a calypso band as part of a promotion for the
tourist board and Air Canada. The band, with members wearing torn
straw hats and ruffle-sleeved shirts, played in the store throughout
the day.</div>
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A local woman invited the band to her
home in Etobicoke for dinner. When Lord Tanamo telephoned to announce
the band was on the way, the call was answered by the woman's
daughter. After he hung up, the singer told his bandmates, “I am
going to marry this girl.” He married Joan Fletcher in a ceremony
in Jamaica that December.</div>
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In 1969, the singer and his
Calypsonians, including old friend Mr. Lawes on rumba box and Wilbert
Stephenson on bamboo saxophone, travelled to Montreal for a
four-month gig at the Jamaican pavilion at the successor to the
world's fair.</div>
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In Toronto, he formed a mento group
that became the quartet for the keyboardist Jackie Mittoo, another
Skatalite original who had also settled in Canada. The two men also
owned and operated the Record Nook with Karl Mullings, a shop which
became a popular gathering place for the Caribbean diaspora.</div>
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On one of his return trips to Jamaica,
Lord Tanamo recorded a reggae cover of “Rainy Night in Georgia,”
a plaintive version which spent seven weeks at the top of the
Jamaican charts.</div>
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On his many forays to his homeland,
Lord Tanamo recorded backed by the likes of the famed reggae rhythm
duo Sly & Robbie (drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie
Shakespeare). In 1979, an album, “Calypso Reggae,” was produced
and arranged by Bunny Lee (born Edward O'Sullivan Lee), a prominent
figure on the Jamaican music scene.</div>
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<br /></div>
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A revival of ska in Britain in the late
1970s led to a reunion of the Skatalites in 1983. The band played
together for the first time in 18 years at the Reggae Sunsplash
festival in Montego Bay, where Lord Tanamo delivered “a sensational
performance,” according to Jamaica Gleaner newspaper. He joined the
Skatalites on several subsequent global tours and sat in with the
band for a performance at the Glastonbury Festival in England in
2003.</div>
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<br /></div>
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In 2000, he revisited many of his mento
and ska hits on a compact disk titled, “The Best Place in the
World,” backed by Dr. Ring-Ding and the Senior Allstars, a German
band with which he toured Europe.</div>
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<br /></div>
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At home in Toronto, he performed at
such night clubs as the Silver Dollar and the El Mocambo. In 2002, he
sang old-time mento tunes and played the rumba box during a Legends
of Ska concert at the Palais Royale, which was filmed by Brad Klein
for a documentary of the same name released last year.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The singer was honoured at an event
called Canada Salutes Icons 2003, in which the calypsonian Jayson (a
Juno-winning singer named John Perez) and the singer and dancer
Pluggy Satchmo (John Gilbert Peck) were also praised for their
cultural contributions. Lord Tanamo had to skip the ceremony as he
was touring overseas with the Skatalites. At a London show during the
tour, he was urged by bassist Lloyd Brevett to give the crowd “some
real old time music.”</div>
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Lord Tanamo looked out at a crowded venue
filled with young dancers before pronouncing, “Old thing? A new
thing this!”</div>
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<br /></div>
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He leaves Joan, his wife of 49 years,
from whom he had separated, as well as their two sons and a daughter.
He is also survived by two sons and a daughter from a previous
relationship with Helena Khouri of Jamaica. He was predeceased by
their son, Joseph, who was killed during political strife on the
island in 1979. Lord Tanamo is also survived by five siblings and
several grandchildren.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A visitor to his room at the
assisted-living facility noted a framed invitation to Barack Obama's
inauguration on a wall, while his beloved rumba box rested in a place
of honour in a corner.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In 1989, his cover of “I'm in the
Mood for Love” was licensed for a 30-second British television
commercial in which a bored man has an ecstatic reaction after being
served chicken coated in Paxo breadcrumbs. The spot thrust Lord
Tanamo's 25-year-old recording onto the charts, where it peaked at
No. 58, his only hit in the United Kingdom.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3BHqIyG1nDG5G0LdvI20hW2wvgkAbO7E6LCJsJ_QHPOv8T0VeO1kCzRzSh2DgkP5iiK1Q5GZOZLqzpJ6chmZAKt4w06xE_zJsFlQYIFRzXKn_AD8GLBtyrvBaqHHqi6VB_UAiQYvcxg/s1600/Skatalites+with+Lord+Tanamo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3BHqIyG1nDG5G0LdvI20hW2wvgkAbO7E6LCJsJ_QHPOv8T0VeO1kCzRzSh2DgkP5iiK1Q5GZOZLqzpJ6chmZAKt4w06xE_zJsFlQYIFRzXKn_AD8GLBtyrvBaqHHqi6VB_UAiQYvcxg/s400/Skatalites+with+Lord+Tanamo.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<i>Lord Tanamo (fourth from left) with the Skatalites</i><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-41039996430955102622016-06-06T10:24:00.001-07:002016-06-06T10:24:26.656-07:00James Doohan (1920-2005), actor<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px; text-align: center;">
<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw2TcGe6UIAth0QSbkkOUezjNpzgkZhgHM5AkSgkAM04RqawUaRvqZ50YM7ZcyWjnjIJRy3qpgXPf1yuk_Zr3NsP63-CaM4TntyI5Cpn1FaghHNg6EHbkWpeOOzQNtAsTb_NcHd1EzlQ/s1600/James+Doohan+%2528Scotty%2529+%2528Star+Trek%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw2TcGe6UIAth0QSbkkOUezjNpzgkZhgHM5AkSgkAM04RqawUaRvqZ50YM7ZcyWjnjIJRy3qpgXPf1yuk_Zr3NsP63-CaM4TntyI5Cpn1FaghHNg6EHbkWpeOOzQNtAsTb_NcHd1EzlQ/s400/James+Doohan+%2528Scotty%2529+%2528Star+Trek%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box;">By Tom Hawthorn<br />The Globe and Mail<br />July 23, 2005</span></div>
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<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Star Trek</i> 's chief engineer, Lt.-Cmdr. Montgomery Scott, was irascible, excitable and prone to delivering dire warnings in a Scots burr. As portrayed by James Doohan, a Canadian, Scotty became a favourite of the cult television program's legions of fans.</div>
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Many assumed the actor shared traits with his character, but out of his red uniform Mr. Doohan was a serious actor with a substantial list of credits.</div>
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As a young man, he led soldiers as part of the D-Day invasion in an attack which he later described as "giving Hitler the finger."</div>
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Mr. Doohan's chief engineer character cursed dilithium crystals and coaxed power from overstressed warp-drive engines on the Starship Enterprise. The order to be beamed aboard was directed at Mr. Doohan; "Beam me up, Scotty" became a cultural catchphrase, as well as the punchline to innumerable jokes. Mr. Doohan became so associated with the command that he used it as the title of his autobiography.</div>
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Yet, the program's dedicated fans —their numbers legion and their allegiance bordering on the fanatical — insist no character ever uttered the phrase. "Beam me up, Scotty" is to <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Star Trek</i> what "Play it again, Sam" is to Casablanca.</div>
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After the original series ended following a three-year run, Mr. Doohan was upset at being typecast as the irascible engineer with the unforgettable burr. After all, he had earlier performed Shakespeare under the direction of Mavor Moore and won notice for his performances in dramas telecast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. He eventually made peace with the character, whom he portrayed in subsequent feature films. He also became a frequent and well-received guest at <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Star Trek </i>conventions.</div>
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A first-class mimic, Mr. Doohan tested eight accents when auditioning for the role. "Well, if you want an engineer," he told <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Star Trek </i>creator Gene Roddenberry, "it had better be a Scotsman." Mr. Doohan settled on a dialect he described as an Aberdeen brogue.</div>
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Scotty's accent, it has been noted by one newspaper, fooled no one north of Berwick-upon-Tweed, let alone a Scotsman. Yet the near-comic urgency of his delivery compelled many fans into worshipful imitation. The actor named the character after his maternal grandfather, James Montgomery, a sea captain.</div>
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In many ways, Mr. Doohan imbued the chief engineer with what could be described as Canadian qualities. His practical warnings ("In four hours, the ship blows up") and excitable protestations ("Ah canna change the laws of physics") always gave way to a resourceful fortitude in completing a task, however dangerous or improbable.</div>
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The actor may have drawn on his own experiences as a veteran of the Second World War. He was wounded during the D-Day invasion of Normandy.</div>
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Those who found his accent unconvincing were not surprised to learn he traced his Scottish roots to an ancestor who lived three centuries ago. He was Irish by heritage and Canadian by birth. James Montgomery Doohan, conceived in Belfast, was born in Vancouver on March 3, 1920. His parents and three older siblings had just emigrated to Canada, arriving in Halifax on New Year's Day.</div>
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In his 1996 autobiography, Mr. Doohan describes his father as a dentist, pharmacist, veterinarian and drunkard. His memories were of a household made unhappy by his father's alcohol-fuelled rages. The family moved to Sarnia, Ont., when the boy was 6. Two years later, while serving as an altar boy at a Catholic mass, Jimmy suddenly felt delirious and was rushed from church. He was diagnosed with diphtheria.</div>
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Around home, he was known to imitate the voices he heard on the radio or at the cinema. At 16, he played the title role in a school production of <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Robin Hood</i> at Sarnia Collegiate Institute and Technical School.</div>
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Eager to leave home, he enlisted as a gunner in the Royal Canadian Artillery immediately after Canada declared war on Germany on Sept. 10, 1939. After learning Morse code and earning a commission as an officer, Mr. Doohan spent two frustrating years in training in England. He served as a general's aide-de-camp during the planning for the Dieppe raid.</div>
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On June 6, 1944, Mr. Doohan commanded 120 men of D Company of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles. In the early morning of D-Day, he joined the landings on Juno Beach. While he saw a captain go insane and another man suffer a grievous stomach wound, Mr. Doohan managed to lead his men to the seaside village of Graye-sur-Mer without casualty.</div>
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Soon, however, they came under fire from a machine-gun lodged in a church tower. Mr. Doohan, a command post officer by rank, borrowed a rifle. His first shot missed, but each of the next two shots felled a German soldier and the nest went silent. He never learned whether he had killed or wounded the enemy.</div>
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Shortly before midnight, Mr. Doohan was walking to his command post when a "machine-gun opened up on us. It hit me and spun me around. Staggering, I fell down into the shell hole," he wrote in his autobiography. "Then I looked at my right hand and saw the blood covering it. I could see the holes in my middle finger."</div>
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He walked to a regimental aid post where it was discovered four bullets had also imbedded in his left leg. In his shock at the three shots that smashed his right hand, Mr. Doohan hadn't even noticed the other wounds.</div>
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He examined the rest of his uniform, discovering a bullet hole in his shirt. He reached his left hand to his right breast pocket. "I pulled out the sterling silver cigarette case that my brother Bill had given me when I was his best man. And there I discovered a dent in it.</div>
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"The bullet had come in at an angle, ricocheted off the cigarette case, and bounced away. Four inches from my heart."</div>
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The finger was amputated. Years later, <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Star Trek</i> fans would detail scenes in which the absence of the digit is noticeable. For his part, Mr. Doohan was always self-conscious about the loss. He often subtly camouflaged his right hand.</div>
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After six years in uniform, he was left with few plans for the future at the end of war. He became an actor by accident. Annoyed by poor performances in a radio drama, Mr. Doohan went to radio station CFPL in London, Ont., to record himself reading from Shakespeare and other works. He disliked what he heard, but an enthusiastic sound engineer convinced him he was a natural. By coincidence, a brochure for a Toronto drama school had arrived at the station not an hour earlier. The novice signed up, and soon won a scholarship to study at the Neighbourhood Playhouse School of the Theater in Manhattan.</div>
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Mr. Doohan was taught by Sanford Meisner, whose eponymous technique of self-investigation was heavily influenced by the great Russian director Constantine Stanislavsky. Others attending the school in those years included Lee Marvin and Leslie Nielsen, a fellow Canadian who became a close friend.</div>
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A versatile performer, Mr. Doohan did not want for work. From 1950 to 1958, he appeared in, by his count, 450 live television broadcasts and 4,000 radio shows, shuttling from New York to Toronto. He was called Canada's busiest actor. He starred in <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Flight into Danger</i> , an hour-long television drama aired on CBC's General Motors Theatre in 1956. Mr. Doohan portrayed a traumatized fighter pilot who takes over the controls of a commercial airliner after both pilots are incapacitated by food poisoning. The script was the first written by Arthur Hailey, a British émigré who settled in Canada after the war and went on to write such blockbusters as <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Airport</i> and <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Hotel</i> .</div>
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A role as an agent on the television series <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Treasury Men in Action</i> evaporated without explanation soon after director David Pressman was identified as a Communist. Only later did Mr. Doohan learn he had lost the gig to an actor who secretly accused him of being a Red.</div>
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In 1963, Mr. Doohan appeared as a defence attorney in his first feature film, <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Wheeler Dealers</i> , a romantic comedy starring James Garner and Lee Remick, directed by Edmonton-born Arthur Hiller. Meanwhile, his list of television credits reads like an anthology of cult hits. He appeared in episodes of <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Bewitched, Ben Casey, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.</i> and <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea</i> .</div>
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The three-year run of the original <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Star Trek</i> series cemented the actor's image in the public mind as a blustery but dependable miracle worker in a red uniform. He was paid just $850 U.S. per episode in the inaugural season.</div>
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A cast so familiar now -- with William Shatner, another Canadian, starring as Capt. James T. Kirk; Leonard Nimoy as the logical Mr. Spock, a pointy-eared Vulcan; and DeForest Kelley as the crusty Dr. Leonard H. (Bones) McCoy -- won only a modest audience at first. The series lasted just three seasons, two years short of the Enterprise's promised "five-year mission to explore strange new worlds."</div>
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The low-budget series allowed for strong characterizations, which in part explains <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Star Trek</i> 's success in syndication. The series became a phenomenon, sparking an industry of collectables and conventions. Fans memorized large chunks of dialogue. Among the engineer's most repeated quotes: "The best diplomat that I know is a fully loaded phaser bank."</div>
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Mr. Doohan often failed to mask his antipathy for the star's hammy acting. The kindest praise he offers for Mr. Shatner in his autobiography is a grudging acknowledgment that one episode's performance was "pretty okay."</div>
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The Scotty character was not often the focus of plot twists, although in an episode titled <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Changeling</i> , Bones leans over the engineer's body to deliver the shocking line, "He's dead, Jim."</div>
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Happily, the engineer is revived before hour's end.</div>
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In <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Trouble with Tribbles</i> , perhaps the best-loved of all episodes, Scotty disobeys captain's orders and precipitates a bar brawl with Klingons. The episode concludes on a pun ad-libbed by Mr. Doohan, after he dispatches a growing horde of furry creatures to a Klingon ship. "I transported the whole kit 'n' caboodle into their engine room," he tells the captain, "where they'll be no tribble at all."</div>
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Cancellation left Mr. Doohan unemployed and, he feared, unemployable. He complained of being typecast to his dentist, who said, "Jimmy, you're going to be Scotty long after you're dead. If I were you, I'd go with the flow."</div>
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He did so, reprising his role as Scotty in seven films. In <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home</i> , the engineer attempts to give voice commands to a 20th-century computer, including speaking into a mouse. Audiences roared with laughter.</div>
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After surviving a massive heart attack in 1989, Mr. Doohan seemed ever more frail. He deferred questions about the rumoured deterioration of his health by quipping: "If I had Alzheimer's I think I'd remember."</div>
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What would be his final public appearance came last August at a five-day event in Los Angeles billed as "Beam me up, Scotty -- one last time." He posed in his wheelchair in front of his star along the Hollywood Walk of Fame.</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"><span style="color: #555555;"><span style="background-color: white;">James Doohan was born on March 3, 1920, in Vancouver. He died on Wednesday at home in Redmond, Wash., a lakeside suburb 30 kilometres east of Seattle. Alzheimer's disease was one of many afflictions he suffered, including diabetes, lung fibrosis and Parkinson's. He was 85. He leaves his wife, Wende Braunberger, and their three children, Eric, Thomas and five-year-old Sarah. He also leaves four adult children -- Larkin, Deirdre and twins Montgomery and Christopher -- from his 15-year marriage to Janet Young, which ended in divorce in 1964. A marriage to Anita Yagel in 1970 ended in divorce two years later. Space Services Inc., a Houston-based company, will send his ashes into space, as he requested.</span></span></span></div>
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<i>Special to The Globe and Mail</i></div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-87159473193814064112016-04-26T12:49:00.002-07:002016-04-26T12:50:35.798-07:00Frank White (1914-2015), worker and author<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIYerIiMuOvC71GQKv2O8OCJntRlnV60HpCmlykdAWo5Oojfw1dQZKHFFPLO4f3eBu_RZEvUFpcmJp3rT76N5DaCslqn410Q2oeUN_lnVegtbL5Knd_puZEsjrnD1t0peqyeV_ojuBbw/s1600/Frank+White+at+his+home+in+Madeira+Park+c.+1990.+Stephen+Osborne+photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIYerIiMuOvC71GQKv2O8OCJntRlnV60HpCmlykdAWo5Oojfw1dQZKHFFPLO4f3eBu_RZEvUFpcmJp3rT76N5DaCslqn410Q2oeUN_lnVegtbL5Knd_puZEsjrnD1t0peqyeV_ojuBbw/s400/Frank+White+at+his+home+in+Madeira+Park+c.+1990.+Stephen+Osborne+photo.jpg" width="308" /></a></div>
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<i>Frank White photographed at his Madeira Park home in 1990 by Stephen Osborne. BELOW: Working on a truck. Clayton Bailey photograph. BOTTOM: Photo by Jan Brink.</i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>By Tom Hawthorn</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The Globe and Mail</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
November 13, 2015</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Frank White butchered hogs, delivered
raw milk to dairies, hauled logs out of the woods, operated a
waterworks, bit into the earth as an excavating contractor, and
pumped gas at a station in a picturesque fishing village on the
British Columbia coast.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
Late in life, at age 99, he added
bestselling author to his resumé with “Milk Spills and One-Log
Loads” (Harbour, 2013), a thoroughly engaging memoir of his time as
a pioneer trucker.<br />
By the time he died on Oct. 18, at 101, he had
a second title to his credit. with “That Went By Fast: My First
Hundred Years.” He was thought to be the oldest active author in
the province, if not the land.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The books resulted from a prize-winning
autobiographical magazine article published in 1974. For nearly four
decades, he wrote scattered notes to jog his memory, snippets of
facts and details which read like found poetry.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
After Mr. White
reached his ninth decade, his son, the author and publisher Howard
White, began tape recording his father's reminiscences, jogging the
old man's memory with the lyric notes filled with haphazard
punctuations and capitalizations — “Neighbor sawing wood at
fence. We kids enjoy the noise and sawdust. … Cooking the small
potatoes for the pigs, Breaking the windows. in the old house his
father built.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The son then transcribed the tapes,
resulting in a 180,000-word manuscript. At first, the results
disappointed the senior White.</div>
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“I can't believe a man's life can
be made so small,” he complained.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXQldrCADL9jj98cJPO5qbOHlCodZseLcbqH9GH3Bp3dgwPIJClBR02z-WPA-1DOVcD4AnIg1hT2xMGDmtmnreLdlJ8pV53E3KkfQk4i0XiGz05qd76og4xJlllPhJu6-OomezhyakuQ/s1600/Frank+White+with+truck+at+Medeira+Park+in+1974+%2528Clayton+Bailey+photo%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXQldrCADL9jj98cJPO5qbOHlCodZseLcbqH9GH3Bp3dgwPIJClBR02z-WPA-1DOVcD4AnIg1hT2xMGDmtmnreLdlJ8pV53E3KkfQk4i0XiGz05qd76og4xJlllPhJu6-OomezhyakuQ/s320/Frank+White+with+truck+at+Medeira+Park+in+1974+%2528Clayton+Bailey+photo%2529.jpg" width="274" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The son read aloud the results
to an audience of two — his father's second wife, the former New
Yorker writer and one-time war correspondent Edith Iglauer, and their
Filipina caregiver. Their approval convinced the subject his life was
worthy of being shared.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The two volumes offer a rare glimpse
into working-class life in a province where so many of those jobs
have disappeared over the years. The elder White had lived so long
his recollections of such things as logging with a winch known as a
steam donkey crossed from the mundane to the historical.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Franklin Wetmore White was born three
months before the outbreak of the First World War on May 9, 1914, to
Jean Wetmore (née Carmichael) and Silas Franklin White. The family
lived in Aldergrove in British Columbia's fertile Fraser Valley,
although the boy was born just across the frontier at Sumas, Wash.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
His father had an adventurous life,
including a stint as a barnstorming prize fighter, who worked
carnivals by taking on local farm boys and other tough guys. Once
married and settled, he operated a butcher shop in which young Frank
learned to slaughter hogs at a young age. The boy also sold magazine
subscriptions door to door and became so adept a driving that he
operated a truck for his father years before he could legally drive.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Many other jobs followed. He was an
apprentice box-maker in British Columbia's bountiful Okanagan region,
drove milk trucks, hauled freight, worked the woods as an
independent, small-scale operator known as a gyppo logger.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“He
was a working fool,” his son said. “He just worked and worked and
worked. His whole life was about work.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Known by his neighbours
as a kindly and warm-hearted figure, he was also a voracious reader,
though he mostly eschewed literature, preferring instead histories
and obscure treatises on equipment and mechanical operations. For
many years, he subscribed to Hansard, reading verbatim accounts of
debates from the House of Commons in far-off Ottawa. These tended to
occupy flat surfaces throughout his gas station, undoubtedly
disappointing workers who used the men's room, where might be
expected a more titillating publication.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtaYHGyRhP8dqjrmXVw6hd66XD4e7mA_V0fqM96NJNjk-mL8AzwlLQ4UrCiqXKqmD9AVo2-h_x2cYTUHTsBoj_7G1MSuS-zVXBeiagbKftmuOMrtmf9jOcMkVSpw5ODTw3Yevzs6vkbQ/s1600/Frank+White+with+his+second+wife+Edith+Iglauer+in+Garden+Bay%252C+2010.+Photo+by+Jan+Brinton..tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtaYHGyRhP8dqjrmXVw6hd66XD4e7mA_V0fqM96NJNjk-mL8AzwlLQ4UrCiqXKqmD9AVo2-h_x2cYTUHTsBoj_7G1MSuS-zVXBeiagbKftmuOMrtmf9jOcMkVSpw5ODTw3Yevzs6vkbQ/s320/Frank+White+with+his+second+wife+Edith+Iglauer+in+Garden+Bay%252C+2010.+Photo+by+Jan+Brinton..tif" width="230" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Frank White hugs Edith Iglauer.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In 1939, Mr. White married Kathleen,
known as Kay, Boley, a farmer's daughter with whom he had a
successful union until her death in 1978. A few years later, while on
a bus trip to New York City, he called on Ms. Iglauer, a widow who
maintained homes in Manhattan and on British Columbia's Sunshine
Coast. He told her he wanted to see the opera, about which he knew
nothing other than it was one of her preferred entertainments. Theirs
was a Green Acres relationship — he had spent years in logging
camps with the manners to prove it, a self-described “bush ape,”
while she travelled in the sophisticated milieu of the sorts who not
only read the New Yorker, but produced it. He found in her a
firecracker of enthusiasms for the arts, while she found in him a
kindly, generous autodidact whose lack of formal education had not
restricted an inquisitive mind. He had even built an early computer
from designs in a magazine, using the machine to record the notes
used in his memoirs.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. White died at his home in Garden
Bay, B.C. He leaves Ms. Iglauer, whom he married in 2006 after a long
courtship; a daughter, Marilyn Plant; sons Don White and Howard
White; six grandchildren; and, eight great-grandchildren. He was
predeceased by his first wife and by daughter Cynthia (Cindy) Wilson,
who died in 2005. He was also predeceased by five siblings, including
Wesley James White, a lance sergeant who was captured at Hong Kong
and died of diphtheria in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in 1942.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
While he rarely left British Columbia
in his first 60 years, Mr. White travelled extensively afterwards. On
a trip to India, he could not bring himself to hire pedicabs, seeing
it as too exploitive a mode of transportation. One day in Delhi,
though, he got lost and in desperation engaged a pedicab to return to
his hotel. Mr. White insisted on exiting the pedicab at the foot of
every hill; he also insisted on buying the driver a meal at the
hotel. In turn, the driver invited Mr. White to join his family for
dinner at their home, which turned out to be a spot on the sidewalk
on which he dined on chicken and vegetables, the most memorable meal
of his sojourn.</div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-3537931202672785772016-04-26T12:31:00.002-07:002016-04-26T12:31:39.639-07:00Leon Bibb (1922-2015), singer and civil rights activist<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih7oYfPxtumXkU-hRStyAjzYu_HxrD09S7kIp9N5QmzoSHoe9eD8GZZ66RkihLBUT5AP4zn85g3yvxFfD3jloERrM_nqKGjDsaKWcJPwF_6lA2uHMJ9_klDkGNOQE5NEnaaQs11uKfYw/s1600/Leon+Bibb+%2528floppy+hat%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih7oYfPxtumXkU-hRStyAjzYu_HxrD09S7kIp9N5QmzoSHoe9eD8GZZ66RkihLBUT5AP4zn85g3yvxFfD3jloERrM_nqKGjDsaKWcJPwF_6lA2uHMJ9_klDkGNOQE5NEnaaQs11uKfYw/s400/Leon+Bibb+%2528floppy+hat%2529.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i>Leon Bibb raised his magnificent voice in support of civil rights.</i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>By Tom Hawthorn</b></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The Globe and Mail</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
November 2, 2015</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
One August morning in 1968, Leon Bibb
awoke in a plush hotel room at the Bayshore Inn in Vancouver. He
looked upon peaceful Lost Lagoon and the forest of Stanley Park. In
the other direction, he marvelled at a working harbour with
snowcapped mountains as a backdrop. The singer knew he had found his
promised land.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He moved to the city two years later, abandoning a
New York career in which he had played Greenwich Village
coffeehouses as well as Lincoln Center; performed on Broadway as well
as been host of a television variety show; sang at the inaugural
Newport Folk festival as well as recorded more than a dozen albums
for the Vanguard and Columbia labels, among others.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
That so distinguished a performer — a
classically trained lyric baritone, who moved easily into the tenor
register; a brilliant guitarist; a stage performer who had received a
Tony nomination while sharing a stage with James Earl Jones and
Cicely Tyson, who did not — chose Vancouver as his home did not go
unnoticed by grateful citizens.<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXf3fkv55x4gVJbsY8KdrUpmnYc0U20Z_eLiWbrAHGT3tU8LDBLH8bv_z4tKvQJAC93DFrm6VAEH983wSi1k5pYoRPMnFYOLp1PTaurq6J_ENcAx4cdKqZk8IsGY_9GA9GAs6CVJMFag/s1600/Leon+Bibb+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXf3fkv55x4gVJbsY8KdrUpmnYc0U20Z_eLiWbrAHGT3tU8LDBLH8bv_z4tKvQJAC93DFrm6VAEH983wSi1k5pYoRPMnFYOLp1PTaurq6J_ENcAx4cdKqZk8IsGY_9GA9GAs6CVJMFag/s320/Leon+Bibb+poster.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
His death on Oct. 23 at 93 was
preceded by many honours, including induction into the B.C.
Entertainment Hall of Fame and investment into the prestigious Order
of British Columbia.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. Bibb had barely settled into his
adopted city when he acquired the rights to “Jacques Brel is Alive
and Well and Living in Paris,” which had an unprecedented
seven-month run at the Arts Club, a landmark event in the
establishment of live theatre in Vancouver. He performed pop songs
with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, while some of his stage shows
were turned into acclaimed CBC television specials.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Those who heard Mr. Bibb sing in person
never forgot it. Even in his 90s, his velvet voice could quiet a
concert hall or a packed church. Gentle in demeanour, handsome like
Harry Belafonte (a longtime friend), preternaturally youthful, Mr.
Bibb was celebrated for honest, soulful renditions of even the most
tired chestnuts. He was also praised for his lifelong advocacy of
minority rights, a cause he furthered in Canada with a school program
called “A Step Ahead,” designed and supported with his own money.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Earlier, he braved threats of physical
violence to join civil rights marchers in his native American South,
also putting into jeopardy a career derailed for his having been
blacklisted during the Red scare of the 1950s.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
High cheekbones, smooth facial skin,
and an exuberance belied his age. At the height of his career, one
encyclopedia supposed he had been born in 1935, making him 34. He was
in fact 47 at the time.<br />Charles Leon Arthello Bibb was born in
Louisville, Ky., on Feb. 7, 1922, to Elizabeth (née McClaskey) and
Leon Bibb, who worked for the post office. He was the second child
and first son of what would be four children. Sonny, as he was known,
grew up in what he would later describe to a Vancouver audience as “a
segregated and racist city.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He remembered first singing in church
as a boy at about age four, encouraged by a great aunt to learn
“Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit,” an African-American spiritual.
After graduating from Central Colored High School, young Bibb
enrolled at the Louisville Municipal College for Negroes, where he
was a featured soloist with the glee club.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Following service in the U.S. Army
during the Second World War, Mr. Bibb moved to New York for training
as a singer and, later, as a guitarist. In 1946, he appeared on
Broadway in “Annie Get Your Gun” with Ethel Merman in a run
lasting 1,147 shows. He later had a role as Jim in a musical
adaptation of “Huckleberry Finn” called “Livin’ the Life.”
His performance in “A Hand Is On The Gate” earned Mr. Bibb a Tony
nomination in 1967 for best featured actor in a musical, though the
production lasted only 20 performances. (The prize went to Joel Grey
for “Cabaret.”)</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis8o9sxLMz2Wr60852HHCKYlxibeOA0-1wGJkix4via5wsONbcwpPGSv_eXh8c0NIynFVczCPClZaIebsjTsRVTnUI9d5n98IauTga8gx6xT7_78At0F2iDjSKCXJb4zFXjyGwmGlKqw/s1600/Leon+Bibb+sings+Folk+Songs+jacket.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis8o9sxLMz2Wr60852HHCKYlxibeOA0-1wGJkix4via5wsONbcwpPGSv_eXh8c0NIynFVczCPClZaIebsjTsRVTnUI9d5n98IauTga8gx6xT7_78At0F2iDjSKCXJb4zFXjyGwmGlKqw/s320/Leon+Bibb+sings+Folk+Songs+jacket.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Early in his life, Mr. Bibb took as his
model Paul Robeson, the superb bass-baritone singer, actor, athlete,
author, and champion of working people and African-American civil
rights. The men performed together and struck a fast friendship with
Mr. Robeson named godfather in 1951 to Mr. Bibb's boy-girl fraternal
twins.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
As Mr. Robeson was harassed and
blacklisted for being pro-Communist, Mr. Bibb also came under
scrutiny for having sung at such benefit concerts as a tribute to
Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Chicago boy murdered in Mississippi in
1955. For a time in the late 1950s, Mr. Bibb performed on stage and
in the recording studio under the name Lee Charles.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In 1961, he signed and soon after
renounced a statement commending the American Legion for being
vigilant in rooting out Communists, a defiance of the blacklist that
in the end had little effect on his popularity.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. Bibb's smooth, soulful renditions
of folk songs, English ballads, chain-gang chants, spirituals and
gospel songs, not to mention Broadway show tunes, made him a popular
guest on television variety programs. He appeared on The Tonight Show
and the Merv Griffin Show, as well as the Ed Sullivan Show for which
he made six live performances from 1959 until 1965. He also appeared
regularly on ABC-TV on such programs as Hootenanny and Discovery ’64.
In 1968, he sold the concept of a variety show featuring unknown and
up-and-coming acts. Mr. Bibb served as host of “Someone New,”
which aired on New York station WNBC.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Busy on stage and screen, he also
maintained a steady schedule of recording, his releases on a variety
of labels usually earning accolades. Billboard magazine praised the
Vanguard single “Rocks and Gravel” (“sung with great spirit and
gusto”), the album “Leon Bibb Sings” (“an excellent showcase
for his versatile vocal talents”), and “Leon Bibb Sings Folks
Songs” (“a sensitive and talented interpreter.”)</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In 1963, he put his career on temporary
hold to go to Mississippi to join civil-rights marches and voter
registration drives. Two years later, he was in Alabama to perform
for 25,000 marchers at the Alabama State Capitol building at the end
of the Selma-to-Montgomery march. He appeared on stage with Mr.
Belafonte, Joan Baez, the Canadian-born Oscar Brand, and Peter Yarrow
and Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Between those two events, he embarked
on a 10-week performing tour of Europe with his family, ending with a
whirlwind 24-day, 12-concert, five-city tour of the Soviet Union. “We
were given the red carpet treatment,” he said, “and that is not
meant facetiously.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. Bibb made his screen debut in
Sidney Poitier's “For Love of Ivy” in 1968. He also appeared
alongside Mr. Poitier the following year in the black revolutionary
fantasy, “The Lost Man.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It was while touring as the opening act
to the comic Bill Cosby that Mr. Bibb made his first visit to
Vancouver in the summer of 1968. Twenty-eight months later, his first
marriage over, Mr. Bibb loaded up his possessions.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I drove across the country from New
York with my furniture in a big van and got to the border and thought
that I could just come on in to Canada: Here I am,” he once told
Holger Petersen, the broadcaster and record producer. The Canadian
customs officer gave the singer two days to get his papers into
order.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Vancouver in those days was still a
rough-hewn, blue-collar port city with an operating cooperage just a
few blocks from the downtown Orpheum Theatre, which itself barely
escaped the wrecking ball. Mr. Bibb's first performances involved a
two-part concert program at the University of British Columbia
featuring blues and work songs, as well as anti-war ballads and the
poems of Malcolm X. Even with tickets costing just 50 cents, barely
half the ballroom was filled and Mr. Bibb could have been excused had
he entertained doubts about his move.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Not long after, he was stopped by
police and questioned about a robbery, made a suspect solely for his
skin colour. He eventually fought for and won an apology.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Despite the poor welcome, Mr. Bibb
cemented his reputation in the city with “Jacques Brel,”
performing with Ann Mortifee and others in a smash hit, which sold
some 40,000 tickets, making patrons out of philistines.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He later toured Canada with singer Gail
Nelson and pianist Stan Keen in a revue called “We Three.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A show in which Mr. Bibb adopts a
dandy's persona while offering a singing history of the blues was
presented at the Orpheum in 1977. Ranging in setting from a Harlem
nightclub to a New Orleans whorehouse, the show was adapted as “The
Candyman” for broadcast on CBC television, earning a rave review in
the Globe. A sequel, “Candyman's Gospel Show,” aired in 1979.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfe5Ti8XhkIU3TmpMDvQnFP33sy6Aqm7fVNcUZd_x02jbnHLGkkbIda2ldWgKUXMktxhVSCMo7VhMzLsUf4RtFkighz8G2wYkTmtTaa-Lmbhq0v2KsKIhFF1gsAB1GfN_hcZLUlBoteg/s1600/Pete+Seeger+single+with+Leon+Bibb+%2528Newport+Folk%252C+1959%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfe5Ti8XhkIU3TmpMDvQnFP33sy6Aqm7fVNcUZd_x02jbnHLGkkbIda2ldWgKUXMktxhVSCMo7VhMzLsUf4RtFkighz8G2wYkTmtTaa-Lmbhq0v2KsKIhFF1gsAB1GfN_hcZLUlBoteg/s1600/Pete+Seeger+single+with+Leon+Bibb+%2528Newport+Folk%252C+1959%2529.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. Bibb followed by writing a gospel
cantata about the underground railroad. “One More Stop on the
Freedom Train” premiered in Toronto in 1984, toured Ontario the
following year, and was mounted in Vancouver during Expo 86.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A
career highlight for Mr. Bibb involved the release of two recordings
with his Grammy-nominated bluesman son with “A Family Affair”
(2002) and “Praising Peace: A Tribute to Paul Robeson” (2006).
Through the years, Mr. Bibb maintained a steady appearance on the
performing calendar in his adopted city, whether singing at the
annual folk music festival, or appearing at a benefit concert. As he
did in his early days, he liked to put aside the amplification of a
microphone, allowing his mellifluous voice to fill the space.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. Bibb leaves twins Dorie Bibb Clay,
of New York, and Eric Bibb, of Helsinki, Finland, and youngest
daughter Amy Bibb-Ford, also of New York. He also leaves nine
grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, as well as companion
Christine Anton. He was predeceased by his siblings John Bibb,
Harriett Porter and Edward Bibb.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What would be Mr. Bibb's final public
performance took place at Government House, the vice-regal residence
in Victoria, in February, 2014. He was singing as part of
celebrations to mark B.C. Black History Month.</div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-47245592108939961392016-04-26T12:00:00.001-07:002016-04-26T12:00:59.038-07:00Stuart Hodgson (1924-2015), territorial commissioner<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3NUtlv1z9YjoS-0tZAveAzx2FiQvyEG7Dve8oagWxz0EVSxu9xHXxpaQdWLLWnENdbmHq91zGgRvTMvjQaKt2do9NSj4JKs_tJF7JgXCXj5dwRdXxWg0uhrzftcihENohU97B2CF7Tw/s1600/Stu+Hodgson+with+Pierre+Trudeau+and+Justin+Trudeau.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3NUtlv1z9YjoS-0tZAveAzx2FiQvyEG7Dve8oagWxz0EVSxu9xHXxpaQdWLLWnENdbmHq91zGgRvTMvjQaKt2do9NSj4JKs_tJF7JgXCXj5dwRdXxWg0uhrzftcihENohU97B2CF7Tw/s400/Stu+Hodgson+with+Pierre+Trudeau+and+Justin+Trudeau.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i>Stuart Hodgson (left) and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau flank young Justin Trudeau.</i></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>By Tom Hawthorn</b></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The Globe and Mail</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
January 22, 2016</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Stuart Hodgson dodged Nazi U-boats on
frigid Arctic convoys before battling Communists within his union as
he organized loggers on both coasts of Canada. Later in life, he
built a distinguished career as a public servant, most notably
serving as the first resident commissioner of the Northwest
Territories.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A towering man with large, rough hands
and a booming voice, he displayed a good-humoured enthusiasm that
verged on the comical. The New Yorker writer Edith Iglauer once
described him as a “supersalesman for the North (who) always talks
in exclamation marks.” The Inuit knew the jolly, mustachioed
commissioner as <i>Umingmak</i> — musk ox.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. Hodgson, who has died at
91, was also a founding signatory of the New Democratic Party. Mentored by NDP Leader Tommy Douglas, he received his northern
appointment from Liberal Prime Minister Lester Pearson, befriended
his successor Pierre Trudeau, and, later still, served in several public administration roles in British Columbia with appointments
from Social Credit Premier Bill Bennett.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Stories by and about Mr.
Hodgson are legion, perhaps the best known involving the union leader
being approached about becoming commissioner by Mr. Pearson.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“But I don't know that much about
government,” Mr. Hodgson protested.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“That's why I'm sending you,” the
prime minister replied.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The commissioner exercised one-man rule
over a vast swath of the North American continent, a
sparsely-populated expanse of 1.25 million square miles, a third of
the Canadian land mass. His instructions were to begin a process
leading to self-rule by northern residents.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
His administration coincided with a
growing rise of militancy among younger native leaders and the
commissioner earned criticism for his authoritarian approach to
governance. As commissioner, he was a force unto himself, combining
the roles of premier and lieutenant governor, as well as legislative
speaker. “I am the government,” he once told a reporter. At the
same time, he insisted his every edict was issued with the interests
of the territorial population in mind. “I have 34,000 bosses,” he
once said.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Eager, gregarious, though unfamiliar
with the Arctic except for his brief wartime experience, Mr. Hodgson
was a superb choice for the transitional period. “I had gone north
as a tourist, I suppose, looking for adventure and I returned home as
someone who realized the enormous potential there,” he wrote in an
unpublished memoir. He promoted tourism and mining, and established a
civil service in the territory. He also found a lingering acrimony
amongst northerners towards their southern rulers. The federal
Department of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources, known as DNANR,
was referred to by northern residents as the Department of No Action
and No Results. The commissioner pushed the territory towards
self-rule. In this role, he was on occasion referred to as one of the
last fathers of Confederation.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In his years in the north, he
befriended commoner and royalty alike, from hunters on the frozen
tundra to Prince Charles, who invited Mr. Hodgson to his wedding to
Lady Diana in 1981. “I've always looked upon him as a friend,”
Mr. Hodgson told Angela Mangiacasale of the Globe. “To think of all
the millions of people he must have met, it's nice to know he feels
the same way.” In the end, Mr. Hodgson had to send his regrets,
missing out on what became known as the wedding of the century.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Stuart Milton Hodgson was born in
Vancouver on April 1, 1924, a second son for Mary Louisa (née Allen)
and Allan Jay Hodgson, a labourer at plywood mills on the Fraser
River. The boy, who would grow to a strapping 6-foot-2, began working
in the mills at age 15, taking a full-time job when he quit high
school after completing Grade 11.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
With war waging around the globe, he
joined the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve. He served as an
anti-aircraft gunner aboard HMCS Monnow, a frigate which escorted a
convoy to the Arctic port of Murmansk in the Soviet Union. Mr.
Hodgson and another gunner were credited with shooting down a German
combat plane off the Norwegian coast. At war's end, a boarding party
from the frigate accepted the surrender of a German U-boat.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr.
Hodgson returned to the West Coast and the mills, becoming an
activist in the International Woodworkers of America. The enemy then
was not so much the bosses but rival trade unionists seeking to
affiliate the woodworkers with a Communist union. “A vicious
fight,” he once described the struggle to Jamie Lamb of the
Vancouver Sun. “Fist fights. Shotguns. That sort of thing.”<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In
1951, he married Pearl Kereluk, a secretary originally from Hairy
Hill, Alta., whom he had met when she asked him for a light for her
cigarette.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. Hodgson's faction prevailed and he
became a prominent figure in British Columbia trade union circles. In
1959, he was dispatched to Newfoundland to support what became a
bitter, bloody loggers' strike. The death of a policeman during a
brawl in the town of Badger and the subsequent incendiary words of
Premier Joey Smallwood provoked a mob to seek out Mr. Hodgson at his
hotel in Grand Falls. The organizer arrived shortly ahead of the
vigilantes only to find the innkeeper had tossed his possessions into
the snow.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
As Mr. Hodgson frantically tossed his
clothes back into a suitcase, a passing cab driver asked what
happened.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Fell on the ice, he explained, and the expletive
suitcase popped open.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. Hodgson took a seat in the cab, eager to
make his escape.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The driver was in no hurry.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“There's
a mob comin’ our way and the word is they're going to hang a guy,”
the cabbie said in a Newfoundland brogue. “That ya might like to
see it.”<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The mob was spotted coming over a hill towards the
hotel.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. Hodgson, seeking to not betray his identity, not to
mention his urgent desire to flee, politely asked if there was a way
to avoid being caught in the jam.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
As they drove down side streets,
the driver asked what brought the stranger to town. <br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I'm a shoe
salesman,” he lied. “But, you know, business is bad. I'm having a
hard time moving any product.”<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Well, there's a strike on,”
the driver explained.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The cabbie later realized the identity
of his passenger, whom he ordered out and left abandoned on the side
of the highway. Mr. Hodgson and other union leaders eventually made
their way to a deserted barracks at Gander airport where they hid for
several days before seeking to leave the island. They tried to buy
tickets on a flight to Ottawa, but the agent balked. “Not for you
fellas,” he said.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Meanwhile, word got out about the union guys
being at the airport and a small but noisy group pursued them through
the concourse.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
An alert Pan American Airways agent
quickly got the men onto a trans-Atlantic flight that happened to be
stopping in Gander to refuel.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. Hodgson wound up sitting in the
front of the plane, where he convinced a stewardess to leave him a
bottle of Crown Royal. It was only once he was in the air that he
realized he did not know his destination. He was never so happy as
when he landed in New York.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
An activist with the social democratic
Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, Mr. Hodgson and his union
played a central role in the creation of the NDP following the
debacle of the 1958 federal election. But he soured on the new party
after it failed to make a breakthrough in the subsequent campaign. He
accepted a Liberal appointment to serve as a territorial
commissioner. In 1967, as commissioner, he led two chartered
propellor planes filled with bureaucrats and office furniture, as
well as one civil servant's pet skunk, to the small mining town of
Yellowknife, where the territory capital was established after
decades of rule from far away Ottawa. The new government offices were
temporarily located in a school, a curling rink and a bowling alley.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. Hodgson's tenure coincided with
times of great change in almost all aspects of life in the North. The
commissioner appointed Abe Okpik to head Project Surname, restoring
to the people traditional surnames that had been replaced by the
federal government with a series of numbers placed on disks like dog
tags. A distinctive polar bear-shaped license plate was adopted in
1970 as part of centennial celebrations for the territory. The
inaugural Arctic Winter Games were held that year, a brainchild of
Mr. Hodgson's after he despaired at the poor showing local athletes
made when facing southern competition.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In 1975, he relinquished his authority
to an elected council, an important evolution on the path towards
self rule.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
On April 16, 1979, Prince Charles journeyed to
Yellowknife to officiate at the opening of the Prince of Wales
Northern Heritage Centre, a $5-million museum and archive which
served as a showpiece for Mr. Hodgson's desire to boost tourism. The
commissioner had also commissioned American artist Arnold Friberg,
known for his monumental set designs for Cecil B. DeMille's “The
Ten Commandments,” to paint a life-sized portrait of the
Prince.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. Hodgson soon after left the north to serve as chairman
of the International Joint Commission, which handles issues involving
shared water boundaries with the United States. This was followed by
a term at the helm of the BC Ferries and, later, as head of BC
Transit. Mr. Hodgson then served as citizenship judge until his
retirement in 2005.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He was invested in the Order of Canada
in 1971 for his role in labour relations and as commissioner. Pearl
Hodgson received the Order herself three years later for her
volunteer work in the north. As well, Mr. Hodgson was made a
commander in the Order of Dannebrog by Queen Margrethe of Denmark.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. Hodgson died in Vancouver on Dec.
18. He leaves a son, a daughter, and five grandchildren. He was
predeceased by his wife.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In his time as commissioner, Mr.
Hodgson tried to visit every hamlet in the territories at least once
a year. The commissioner carried a rifle and sometimes a sidearm, but
did not shoot game either for sport or sustenance. He was asked in
one settlement why he did not hunt. It was reported he said his wartime exploits
included shooting down the German plane. While most of the crew were
rescued, one young man had died. For Mr. Hodgson that was enough
death to last a lifetime.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-26453963657036537012016-04-26T11:44:00.000-07:002016-04-26T11:44:08.952-07:00Art Finley (1926-2015), broadcaster<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieyiabDPcTR5JvOiDnH5VziPSx7qNzcBKn3WGwf2i9Mh1595sj_is3xxioZj52GTBKW7lrzHuTZ241O_dL8PkM6u4Pimmh80G_UGsr4GR3h6ceMNPIsQOJaBTNPc_iG7IlV6d3g7fN7A/s1600/Art+Finley+at+CKNW.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieyiabDPcTR5JvOiDnH5VziPSx7qNzcBKn3WGwf2i9Mh1595sj_is3xxioZj52GTBKW7lrzHuTZ241O_dL8PkM6u4Pimmh80G_UGsr4GR3h6ceMNPIsQOJaBTNPc_iG7IlV6d3g7fN7A/s400/Art+Finley+at+CKNW.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<i>Art Finley prepares to go on air at CKNW in Vancouver.</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>By Tom Hawthorn</b></div>
The Globe and Mail<br />
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
September 11, 2015</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In a profession known for bombast,
hyperbole and self-aggrandizement, radio talk-show host Art Finley
stood out by relying on none of that.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The broadcaster displayed a witty yet
probing technique in on-air interrogations, making him “the
thinking man's host” in the opinion of Red Robinson, another
well-known Vancouver radio personality.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. Finley, who has died at 88, first
made a name in San Francisco before coming north to Canada in 1968,
the year after the Summer of Love, quickly becoming a star in an era
when talk-radio dominated the Vancouver scene.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In a broadcast career lasting a
half-century, the mellifluous host interviewed a Who's Who of
celebrities and newsmakers including musicians (Joan Baez, James
Brown, John Lennon), prime ministers (Pierre Trudeau, John
Diefenbaker, Brian Mulroney), authors (Gore Vidal, Pierre Berton,
Isaac Asimov), movie stars (Sophia Loren, Bette Davis, Arnold
Schwarzenegger), television stars (Leonard Nimoy, Andy Griffith, Bill
Shatner), healers (Dr. Jonas Salk, Dr. Henry Heimlich, Dr. Gifford W.
Jones), and such activists and rabble-rousers as Germaine Greer, Huey
Newton, Cesar Chavez, Ralph Nader, and Dr. Henry Morgentaler.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He enjoyed a good laugh and had a
wicked sense of humour himself, so took every opportunity to put on
air such comedians as Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, George Carlin,
Jonathan Winters, Lily Tomlin, Phyllis Diller, and Professor Irwin
Corey, as well as members of the Monty Python troupe.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A voracious reader, the host said he
gained an audience by listening objectively to the opinions expressed
by call-in listeners and by not putting on airs with his guests.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I am always myself,” he once said.
“I talk exactly on the air the same way I do off the air — except
for the words the (Federal Communications Commission) says you can't
say. I'm honest. I put people at ease.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
As for those sitting across from his
microphone, he had only two requirements. “The worst guest is a
person who doesn't know his subject,” he said in a 1990 interview,
“and talks slow.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
While he enjoyed a certain fame in
British Columbia, his voice recognized by strangers even decades
after he left the air, he made an indelible impression on a
generation of Baby Boom children in the San Francisco Bay area as
Mayor Art, the host of a live, after-school television program.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
His
own childhood began in the rolling Appalachian coal mountains of West
Virginia. Arthur Irving Finger was born in Fairmont to Minnie (née
Zindler) and Benjamin Sardon Finger, a clothing merchant, on Aug. 25,
1926. He had two older brothers born more than a decade earlier. On
his walks home from school during the Depression, young Art scavenged
small chunks of coal alongside the railway tracks running out of the
Monongahela River valley.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
After his father died of a heart attack
in 1937, his widowed mother moved with the boy to Texas, where her
family lived. While studying mechanical engineering at the University
of Houston, he wrote a column in the student newspaper titled
Finger-Tips in which he offered whimsical record reviews and notes on
radio broadcasts. A bit of doggerel he wrote about the pronunciation
of unfamiliar wartime place names was picked up by a syndicated
columnist and reprinted in several daily newspapers around the United
States. It read in part:<br /><i><br /></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i>Scorn not the poor announcer</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i>In exotic tongues enmeshed,</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i>Who says, “We bombed
Plo-es-ti,”<br />When we really bombed “plaw-YESHT.”</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He lied about his age to enlist in the
U.S. Army Air Corps in the waning days of the Second World War.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He
was still an undergraduate when hired as a $36 per week radio
announcer for station KXYZ. He held a variety of jobs at the station
and took part in several zany stunts, including the sending aloft of
silver-painted discs at the height of the UFO craze. By 1949, he was
host and production manager of “Saturday at The Shamrock,” a
weekly live broadcast on the national ABC network featured a big band
performance from the ballroom of Houston's grandest hotel. It was
during the show he had his first brush with meeting stars of stage
and screen, and it was also where he met a hotel guest from New
Jersey named Geraldine Molt, whom he almost immediately told he
planned to marry. They did so eventually, though she insisted on a
courtship lasting longer than his original 24-hour wooing.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
While serving in the U.S. Air Force
during the Korean War, he helped establish military radio stations in
Newfoundland. After completing his service, he spent two years in New
York before moving to California to become a producer and performer
on the “Tooneytown” children's show for KOVR-TV in Stockton. His
wife came up with the concept — he would be Mayor Art and the
children on the show would be his council. She fashioned for him a
long-tailed morning coat and a top hat. An official at the station
decided his venerable family name did not fit a kiddie show and he
settled on the professional name Art Finley.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The show, which soon
moved to KRON-TV in San Francisco, aired live for two hours from 4 to
6 p.m. on weekdays. He introduced cartoons and offered a news program
for children. He was aided by a hand-puppet named Ring-A-Ding, a
wisecracking cuckoo-clock bird.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In the fashion of the day, the host
also did double-duty as pitchman, and Mayor Art was a fast-talking
purveyor of Fudgees snack cakes, Buitoni macaroni, and fruit drinks
(“It hasta be Shasta”).</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Absurd, goofy and always kindly, Mayor
Art became known for such catchphrases as “A glass of milk and a
how-do-you-do?,” which he spoke after announced the next day's
school lunch menu. Cartoon segments were heralded by Mayor Art
leading bleachers of children in shouting, “Blooey! Blooey!” He
ended each show with a hearty, “I'll be seeing you (pause)
subsequently.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The children's show ended in 1966,
after which he briefly played host to a low-budget afternoon call-in
game show for adults. He also handled a call-in show on radio station
KSFO and, beginning in 1962, had a daily cartoon published in the San
Francisco Chronicle. The “Art's Gallery” cartoon featured an
elaborate and detailed woodcut illustration from a 19th-century
magazine with an anachronistic caption. The result — a medieval
knight on horseback looking over his shoulder with the caption, “Is
that cop still following us?” — was more wry than knee-slapping.
The one-panel cartoon ran in the Chronicle for two decades and was
syndicated to newspapers in Canada and the United States.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In 1967, Mr. Finley and his wife became
involved in an oddball caper involving a breakaway British colony.
The residents of the Caribbean island of Anguilla, population 6,000,
declared they wanted no further association with the nearby islands
of St. Kitts and Nevis. An independent republic was declared and
confirmed in a referendum by a vote of 1,739 to 4.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The leaders rejected large sums from
developers, instead seeking small donations from individuals to
support the island. The San Francisco couple helped create the
Anguilla Trust Fund in which honorary citizenships and passports were
issued for donations of $100 US. (Among the donators was Linus
Pauling, the scientist and humanitarian.) The idealistic hope was
Anguilla would be a bastion of peace and popular democracy in a world
torn by strife. In the end, the republic failed, but the island did
become a separate British overseas territory.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. Finley was hired by Vancouver radio
station CHQM in 1968. He soon after jumped to CKNW, a ratings
juggernaut in news and current affairs, including a stellar lineup of
talk-show hosts, the king of whom was Jack Webster, a gruff, acerbic,
no-nonsense Glaswegian known as The Mouth That Roared. The newcomer's
comparably laid-back style — “a mellow-tone voice with the
octaval range of a slide trombone to wrap us in the warmest strains
of rational charm,” in the words of Lee Bacchus of the Vancouver
Sun — set him apart from the microphone maulers.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
After Mr. Webster was lured away to
rival station CJOR for a reported contract of $110,000 per year, Mr.
Finley replaced him in the coveted 6:30 to 8 p.m. slot.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He returned to San Francisco to handle
a call-in show for KGO in 1974, returning to Vancouver and a spot on
CJOR in 1981. After five years, he hopscotched the continent with
WNIS in Norfolk, Va., and XRA in San Diego, Calif., before becoming
host of the popular “Nightbeat” show with KCBS in San Francisco.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He retired to Victoria, B.C., from
where he and his wife travelled the world. They were holidaying in Buenos Aires in 2006 when Geraldine Finger died suddenly of a heart
attack on her 77<sup>th</sup> birthday. He then moved to Vancouver.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Those who knew him away from the camera
and microphone claim he was the same person off air as on, a joking,
high-spirited figure who, when shopping at a bargain store promising
“every item $1,” imagined making a public-address announcement of
“Price cheque on aisle nine.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“If I have unknowingly offended
somebody, I apologize,” he once said. “If I have knowingly
offended somebody, give me a chance and I'll do it again.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. Finley died on Aug. 7 after
suffering a heart attack while on a stroll in his Vancouver
neighbourhood. He leaves son Jeff Finger and daughters Julie Emerson
and Suzanne Noel-Bentley. He was predeceased by his wife of 56 years
and two brothers.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In 2002, he donated a reel-to-reel tape
and 141 audiocassettes to the University of British Columbia Library.
The donation includes 100 radio interviews, ranging from cradle (Dr.
Benjamin Spock) to grave (Dr. Jack Kevorkian). Available for future
researchers, you might say the world has not heard the last of Mr.
Finley.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNL-akYnr1nQc_a3ZZwkzbxXEgs7fVnJAb71zl-Mb7o51MkRalhsJ-s4buj8giCvf3hVcAC3bGIaZQCw8_q5qHdx4KEZqGmfcExvq_58M8oNrRRXuamThA294jcOe6vc1e1nROMLRfnQ/s1600/Mayor_Art_and_Cheri_Block.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="338" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNL-akYnr1nQc_a3ZZwkzbxXEgs7fVnJAb71zl-Mb7o51MkRalhsJ-s4buj8giCvf3hVcAC3bGIaZQCw8_q5qHdx4KEZqGmfcExvq_58M8oNrRRXuamThA294jcOe6vc1e1nROMLRfnQ/s400/Mayor_Art_and_Cheri_Block.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i>Art Finlay as Mayor Art was a staple of children's television in San Francisco.</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-3760066212539985452016-03-23T07:58:00.001-07:002016-03-23T07:58:08.069-07:00Parrot Lady joins choir invisible<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIC0e0VXPeG4FHsWYxUigvBNxJ3Mo_qP6quqGildCird5MELAOX-GfQVI47_LKs4_M9Ardpl1t87vzk2IjOXQwR1g9SbsoEyzHgLc0EYbawSr2xmVzLGy-OBi-mt2Q9T-qXz0zKwJ98Q/s1600/Wendy+Huntbatch+%2528Parrot+Lady%2529+%2528Deddeda+White+photo%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIC0e0VXPeG4FHsWYxUigvBNxJ3Mo_qP6quqGildCird5MELAOX-GfQVI47_LKs4_M9Ardpl1t87vzk2IjOXQwR1g9SbsoEyzHgLc0EYbawSr2xmVzLGy-OBi-mt2Q9T-qXz0zKwJ98Q/s400/Wendy+Huntbatch+%2528Parrot+Lady%2529+%2528Deddeda+White+photo%2529.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<i>Wendy Huntbatch operated a parrot refuge at Coombs, B.C. (Deddeda White photograph)</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>By Tom Hawthorn</b><br />Special to The Globe and Mail<br />March 7, 2016<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
One morning in 1995, Wendy Huntbatch
discovered four beloved birds had been plucked from her aviary.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The pilfered parrots included three
macaws and a green Amazon with a short tail and yellow nape named
Apollo. The RCMP said the birds were worth $10,000, but as far as Ms.
Huntbatch was concerned each was priceless.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“It's like having your child stolen,”
she said at the time.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A public plea for their return
attracted the attention of distressed parrot owners who could no
longer care for their own birds and who saw in Ms. Huntbatch an
opportunity. Soon, she was caring for 15 birds. More birds kept
coming and the cause of nursing injured parrots back to health became
her calling, dominating her life until her death from cancer last
month. She was 70.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A tireless advocate, Ms. Huntbatch
sought to educate the public on the unsuitability of parrots as
household pets. She campaigned against the breeding of the birds for
profit and was a fearless and outspoken critic of those bird-brained
humans, notably gangsters and other lowlifes, who thought owning an
exotic bird made them as dashing as a pirate.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
She founded the World Parrot Refuge, a
grand name for a roadside attraction built on scrub land on Vancouver
Island.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The refuge is home to a dazzling array
of birds, including some whose magnificent plumage is described in
their name, such as Congo African greys, blue and gold macaws,
Mexican red-headed amazons, green-winged macaws, orange-winged
amazons, blue-front amazons, scarlet macaws, hyacinth macaws, and
citron-crested cockatoos, as well as Australian kings, umbrella
cockatoos, eclectus parrots, triton cockatoos, and military macaws,
among others.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
As loud as their colours, the cacophony
of so many birds in an enclosed space, even one measuring
23,000-square-feet, is such that many of the refuge's 10,000 annual
visitors choose to wear ear plugs.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The founder often solicited donations
for her refuge, which was also supported by admission tickets,
donations, an on-site thrift store, and proceeds from an adjacent
8,000-plant lavender farm. The facility has also received provincial
government grants. It costs about $500,000 per year to keep the birds
in nuts, seeds, peanuts, almonds, walnuts, macadamia nuts, and fresh
fruit and vegetables, including broccoli.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A thin woman with a flighty air, Ms.
Huntbatch displayed a birdlike quickness as she darted about the
sanctuary, which included space allowing the birds to stretch their
wings in flight. Many of the animals surrendered to the refuge arrive
sick, or suffering from self-mutilation, a behaviour the founder
attributed to the cruelty of having been kept in cages.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Parrots
have an extremely high intelligence and intelligent human beings
can't be stuck in a prison,” she told the Abbotsford Times
newspaper in 2004.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The parrots at the refuge are neither
for sale nor adoption, although supporters are encouraged to
contribute funds for the maintenance of specific birds as part of an
online “virtual adoption” program. Needless to say, her flock
grew in size over the passing years.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Born in Wolverhampton, England, on
Sept. 1, 1945, the penultimate day of the Second World War, Wendy
Norma Seabridge was the daughter of a homemaker and a mechanical
engineer. She was concerned with animal welfare from an early age.
She married and bore a son before emigrating to Canada in the
mid-1970s.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
She wound up living in the Fraser
Valley east of Vancouver, where she served as branch president of the
British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in
the municipality of Mission.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In 2004, by which time she was caring
for 400 parrots in a facility in Abbotsford, her flock was threatened
by the possibility of a government-ordered cull to curtail an
outbreak of avian influenza. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
She halted public tours and ordered
visitors to change clothes and shoes when on site.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“We were like a sitting duck when
that happened,” said Horst Neumann, her common-law partner and
refuge co-founder.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The couple decided to abandon the
Fraser Valley, home to many commercial poultry farms, for Vancouver
Island. They sought a property on the Saanich Peninsula north of
Victoria to be close to other tourist attractions such as Butterfly
World and Butchart Gardens, but were unable to find a suitable
location. They settled on a 22-acre property on the old highway that
runs through Coombs, a community of about 1,400 people about 150
kilometres north of Victoria.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The refuge has not been without
controversy. In 2006, her non-profit group faced a $13,000 tax bill
from Revenue Canada for unpaid employee deductions. She tried to pay
the bill by remortgaging the property, only to be rebuffed by her
lender.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“They ask, 'What are you going to do with the money?'
and you say are going to donate it to charity,” she told the
Nanaimo Daily News.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In the end, supporters donated funds to cover
the outstanding bill.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The refuge was also home to ferrel
rabbits relocated from the University of Victoria after overrunning
the campus. Alas, some of the rabbits escaped into an adjacent
farmer's field to dine on grass and hay. The farmer shot 30 of them.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
More recently, some disgruntled former
employees alleged mistreatment of birds, although the manager of
cruelty investigations for the SPCA said they spotted no problems at
the refuge.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Through the turmoil and the
never-ceasing demands for fundraising, Ms. Huntbatch also struggled
with health problems following a diagnosis of cervical cancer more
than four years ago.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Ms. Huntbatch died on Feb. 3, hours
after being moved by ambulance from her home to a hospice in nearby
Parksville. She leaves Mr. Neumann, her partner of 22 years, and a
son, Justin Huntbatch. She also leaves a pandemonium of parrots
numbering more than 700 birds.</div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-70900763400749040122016-01-06T08:42:00.002-08:002016-01-06T08:43:18.580-08:00Professor Midas (1904-1998)<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjphK6oD0UW-RQi7uWhDi2rz3iFU5aBs3Sc_f4lKiXvIKHlpt5lAqhfu3uwjz-h-IAxxiM5b0O6vMLpwt2ID1HZyQgfq2WN4O5cbQeMUUYoK-QNCz0HIT2ZM87Yd1C4FaOzHPekU8d9ng/s1600/Harry+Warren+singlets.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjphK6oD0UW-RQi7uWhDi2rz3iFU5aBs3Sc_f4lKiXvIKHlpt5lAqhfu3uwjz-h-IAxxiM5b0O6vMLpwt2ID1HZyQgfq2WN4O5cbQeMUUYoK-QNCz0HIT2ZM87Yd1C4FaOzHPekU8d9ng/s400/Harry+Warren+singlets.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
<i>The B.C. Sports Hall of Fame recently acquired artefacts from Harry Warren's important sporting career. You can read more about this important donation here: </i><i style="background-color: transparent;"><a href="http://bcsportshalloffame.com/visit/curators-corner/" target="_blank">http://bcsportshalloffame.com/visit/curators-corner/</a> </i><i>Here is Mr. Warren's obituary as it was published in the Globe and Mail on April 13, 1998.</i></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
<br />
<br />
HARRY VERNEY WARREN</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
Monday, April 13, 1998</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Professor, father of biogeochemistry, athlete. Born on Aug. 27, 1904, in Anacortes, Wash.; died of influenza in Vancouver, on March 14, 1998, aged 93.</i></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
The man they called Professor Midas was born in a Washington port because his father, an accountant who followed fishing boats, found himself with the salmon fleet in late August, 1904. The father went where the money was, and the son would spend a lifetime in the bush doing the same.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
Harry was sent to Vernon Preparatory School in B.C.'s Okanagan Valley, which inspired a remarkable academic career. He earned four degrees in four years -- BA (UBC, 1926), applied science (UBC, '27), science (Oxford, '28, as a Rhodes Scholar), and PhD (Oxford, '29) with a thesis on zinc deposits in southwestern Europe. In 1932, he joined the UBC faculty as an $800-a-year lecturer.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEDIJu1lETDVAHO23QikfglwLEmJCCeZ8-vcVEt57RdpSXYAGJaxbwTK3RDxzm59M9yhyphenhyphenxnpgHRxO1xwsqeAuBNDuqG-5AlbTvbXMy-E4pb3NmTLmvraVqqh2n1Urbpb0sns27vFKAAQ/s1600/Harry+Warren+mug.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEDIJu1lETDVAHO23QikfglwLEmJCCeZ8-vcVEt57RdpSXYAGJaxbwTK3RDxzm59M9yhyphenhyphenxnpgHRxO1xwsqeAuBNDuqG-5AlbTvbXMy-E4pb3NmTLmvraVqqh2n1Urbpb0sns27vFKAAQ/s400/Harry+Warren+mug.jpg" /></a>He considered law, but decided not to spend his life answering to wealth. Rather, he wanted to search for natural sources of it. During the Depression, the federal government hired junior geologists to help prospectors. Harry Warren and a colleague were sent to the Rock Creek area east of Penticton, B.C.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
"We couldn't find a prospector in the area except a little storekeeper," Mr. Warren recalled of a man whose method was to use a piece of metal swinging on a thread. "We thought this was not the most significant way of prospecting."</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
Mr. Warren had a theory: Soil and what grew on it reflected the mineral content of the rocks below. It had occurred to him when a rancher asked why some, but not all, of his herd had taken ill, although Mr. Warren liked to say he became inspired because he simply "got tired of digging holes." The theory became a science, biogeochemistry; Mr. Warren is widely regarded as its father.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
Over the years, he discovered three gold-bearing areas in B.C. by studying <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Phacelia sericea, </i>a small purple flower with orange stamen. "The wretched flower can grow without any gold. But if there is any gold, the cyanide in its roots collects the gold and gives you a clue about what's there."</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
Later, he failed to find a link between lead and multiple sclerosis in Trail. After the 1985 cancer death of his wife Margaret Tisdall, the daughter of a Vancouver mayor, he dedicated himself to seeking medically useful applications of his theory.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
No stranger to controversy, Mr. Warren nearly lost his teaching job in 1938 after criticizing the Liberals for their patronage appointments. He later felt the wrath of Social Credit premier W. A. C. Bennett and NDP premier David Barrett, thus exhausting the spectrum of B.C. politics. Among his more outrageous pronouncements were calls for three years' forced labour for young people and for the damming of the Fraser River for hydroelectric power.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
Every summer, he spent a few hardscrabble months in the bush. He taught prospecting school for the B. C. & Yukon Chamber of Mines for 54 years, and lectured inmates at Oakalla prison on prospecting and mineral identification, the latter a subject some of his scofflaw pupils knew only too well.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNrCi_hL9O68i3hzHKNO8U15P-huvJDOBD2gUmgzf8Idy4x2mayKgAEMwpJZ3nW3wcTlXMRCVW_tdO6LLcgmvERSWtvCbbtc0eytdgQQphGCkRxT1ykWLGTiCLs_IuSgieLB88Gp4zFQ/s1600/Harry+Warren+%2528Order+of+B.C.%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNrCi_hL9O68i3hzHKNO8U15P-huvJDOBD2gUmgzf8Idy4x2mayKgAEMwpJZ3nW3wcTlXMRCVW_tdO6LLcgmvERSWtvCbbtc0eytdgQQphGCkRxT1ykWLGTiCLs_IuSgieLB88Gp4zFQ/s320/Harry+Warren+%2528Order+of+B.C.%2529.jpg" width="216" /></a>Professor Midas had a jumble of letters to follow his name: OC, DSc, DPhil, FRSC, FGSA. But perhaps the one that best captured him was one he never used -- BMOC. Big man on campus. Into his 90s, he made the daily trek to UBC, where he sat behind a worn wooden desk in a spartan office, the paring knife for his daily pear wedged into a cranny. A "puckish, small man with infectious enthusiasm," remembered the geographer John Chapman. "For his ideas, he was a persistent activist. I used to hear people describe him as an adult Boy Scout."</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
Students who saw him in later years making his painstaking way across campus with a cane and then by wheelchair could hardly have imagined that he had been on Canada's 1928 Olympic track team, with the Vancouver sprinter Percy Williams. Harry was given a modest task: "I slept in the cot next to Percy. His coach was concerned Percy get lots of fresh air and oxygen. But he had a nasty habit of always, before falling asleep, pulling the sheets over his head. My job was to reach over and pull the sheets off of him."</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
In 1990, Mr. Warren was inducted into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame for his indefatigable work in promoting field hockey.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
Following a series of small strokes, he checked into extended care at the campus hospital in 1996. He spent the last two years of his life there, before succumbing to Sydney A flu. He maintained his humour to the end.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; font-family: Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 17px;">
"My father," said daughter Charlotte, "would have told you the reason for death was too many birthdays."</div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-28280159847056716322015-11-02T15:37:00.000-08:002015-11-02T15:37:18.342-08:00How 'the dumbest manager in baseball' got to the World Series via Vancouver<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx5wB4eZKJzgllT_LXX-E8hCdFN10FytQA_ldcU3aAVrVsrL7uoDw9x3u2FMxUfWjq_Dxi1E1O0AuQDnHSIvcJPM-qC_38Ll0Te-yE0uzInxE441fLsFfcTX9vtAO_FXw3l0xG-XfOjA/s1600/Ned+Yost+%2528Canadians%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx5wB4eZKJzgllT_LXX-E8hCdFN10FytQA_ldcU3aAVrVsrL7uoDw9x3u2FMxUfWjq_Dxi1E1O0AuQDnHSIvcJPM-qC_38Ll0Te-yE0uzInxE441fLsFfcTX9vtAO_FXw3l0xG-XfOjA/s400/Ned+Yost+%2528Canadians%2529.jpg" width="276" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Ned Yost with Vancouver Canadians in 1979.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Royals manager Ned Yost and two of his coaches<br />learned baseball while playing in Vancouver</span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
By Tom Hawthorn</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
On the field in New York, jubilant
players in the uniforms of the Kansas City Royals jumped about and
mock wrestled like a Little League team that had eaten too much
Halloween candy. One of them, a giant and good-natured catcher from
Venezuela named Salvador Perez, pulled away from the hijinx in search
of his boss, skipper Ned Yost.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The cagey manager knew what Perez was
up to and, for several minutes, managed to stay out of sight. At
last, though, he decided he would take what was coming. He doffed his
ball cap and ran headlong towards Perez, who gleefully baptized him
by pouring a large container of ice water on his head.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The Royals knocked off the New York
Mets to win the World Series in much the same fashion as they
dispatched the Toronto Blue Jays last month. They bided their time,
did not panic when trailing, and when the opposing second baseman
made a mistake — Toronto's Ryan Goins inexplicably allowing an easy
pop up to land on the grass, and New York's Daniel Murphy twice
treating a ground ball like a bar of soap bouncing in the shower —
they pounced. (Murphy's two devastating errors led to much hilarity
on Twitter, where his anti-gay bigotry encouraged schadenfreude. Two
of the better jokes went along the lines of “I don't approve of
Daniel Murphy's fielding lifestyle” and “It's Adam and Eve, not
Adam and E4.”) The wide-eyed Missouri team came to the Big Apple,
but it was the rubes who fleeced the sharps.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEqrbZcKpwU4q5uor_zXIgt8pPtD1DfH1J_T3AQYp-aiVNssWRmgW_xaGFpf4XFZsy8beFwpE68DKkBFn4rdi-3Dykt9Deb2jki-Gm1_9UTa729-DDx97hrVAQGA4XPj8OCWXQIyUbqA/s1600/Dale+Sveum+%2528Vancouver%2529+card.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEqrbZcKpwU4q5uor_zXIgt8pPtD1DfH1J_T3AQYp-aiVNssWRmgW_xaGFpf4XFZsy8beFwpE68DKkBFn4rdi-3Dykt9Deb2jki-Gm1_9UTa729-DDx97hrVAQGA4XPj8OCWXQIyUbqA/s320/Dale+Sveum+%2528Vancouver%2529+card.jpg" width="226" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Mr. Movember</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The brains behind the Royals operation
was Yost (rhymes with toast), himself widely considered a dim bulb
among managers. The baseball writers have ridiculed him. The fans —
Royals fans especially — have hated him. His moves have gone
against baseball convention without ever seeming to show the genius
that in retrospect would be revealed. Seven years ago, Sports
Illustrated published a long article about his unpopularity. “He is
more than a simple lightning rod for the fans' discontent,” wrote
John Donovan. “He is a lightning rod on top of a dartboard on the
hottest of hot seats.” Players seemed to like him well enough, but
in an age of Sabrmetrics, he came across as an innumerate good ol’
boy. As a tactician, he behaved like an Italian general. Even when
one of his seemingly boneheaded moves worked out in the end, he was
greeted with blogger headlines such as: “Ned Yost is not the
village idiot of managers.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Yet here he was soaking wet on the
grass at Citi Field in Queens, the manager of a World Series
champion, an accomplishment that has eluded Buck Showalter, Bobby
Valentine, Dusty Baker, Cap Anson, Clark Griffith, Gene Mauch and Joe
Cronin.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Yost's long journey to last night's
triumph included an important stint in Vancouver with the
minor-league Canadians. One of the oddities of the Royals triumph is
that three of the team's eight-man coaching staff had played in
Vancouver — manager Yost, hitting instructor Dale Sveum and bench
coach Don Wakamatsu.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Yost once said he could live with a
reputation as “the dumbest manager in baseball” because he hired
smart coaches.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Edgar Frederick Yost III first arrived
in Vancouver in 1979. He had been drafted in the second round five
years earlier by the Montreal Expos, only to become a Mets prospect
and then the property of the Milwaukee Brewers. The 24-year-old
catcher had already had stops in Batavia, N.Y.; Wausau, Wis.;
Jackson, Miss.; Tidewater, Va.; and Spokane, Wash., before crossing
the border to join the Canadians in only their second season in the
Pacific Coast League, one level below the majors.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The catcher
played in 130 games in 1979, hitting a respectable .263. More
importantly, he had as his manager John Felske, a retired catcher who
had only 54 major-league games to his credit, although he had spent
11 seasons in the minors before becoming a coach.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“John Felske helped me a lot when he
was my manager at Vancouver,” Yost told the Milwaukee Journal in
1981. “He's the one who turned it around for me. He got me thinking
about the game.<br />“Before that, I was just putting on my uniform
and going out and playing. I didn't know what I was doing.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Physical
ability was never any problem, but I never thought about the mental
part. John taught me I had the mental capacity to play the game. It
was something I didn't even realize you needed before.”<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnKAPrn-rc1hT3kFaS-akSVfaKnkpTiNcPE3QIr6u1rXp8bxp2z5dIRwE0-ce-v2Cmn2MF81Dmo8-zEPQR5UBbaA4osdr8pF0Q-7iQ8B7rJ43SVUyvGmH1wHvaSEIbj6Nis4ukv0ZsNQ/s1600/Don+Wakamatsu+%2528Vancouver%2529+card.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnKAPrn-rc1hT3kFaS-akSVfaKnkpTiNcPE3QIr6u1rXp8bxp2z5dIRwE0-ce-v2Cmn2MF81Dmo8-zEPQR5UBbaA4osdr8pF0Q-7iQ8B7rJ43SVUyvGmH1wHvaSEIbj6Nis4ukv0ZsNQ/s320/Don+Wakamatsu+%2528Vancouver%2529+card.jpg" width="227" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Don Wakamatsu has A+ penmanship.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The next
season, Yost tried to crack a Milwaukee Brewers lineup in which he
was No. 4 on the depth chart behind veteran Ray Fosse, Charlie Moore
and Buck Martinez. (Buck wound up as a beloved catcher with the Blue
Jays, where he is now the play-by-play announcer. Moore also played
for the Blue Jays and is perhaps best remembered as the emergency
fill-in for an injured Ernie Whitt during the Blue Jays' infamous
swoon of 1987. The Jays squandered the American League East pennant
by losing the final seven games of the season. Moore was sitting at
the venerable Wheat Sheaf Tavern in Toronto to drown his sorrows when
the plaster ceiling of the 138-year-old drinking hole landed on his
head.) Yost made the parent club's roster after spring training in
1980, but only got in two games before being returned to Vancouver.
He hit a solid .309 at Nat Bailey Stadium before being called up
again after 80 games.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A great defensive player, he'd have
only a middling major-league career as a backup catcher (batting an
anemic .212) lasting just 219 games spread over parts of six seasons,
ending with five games played for the team that drafted him, the
Expos.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In 2003, the lantern-jawed Yost became
manager of the Brewers, a position once held by former Vancouver
Mounties players George Bamberger and Rene Lachemann, as well as by
former Canadians manager Tom Trebelhorn, who had led Vancouver to a
Pacific Coast League championship in 1985. Yost built the Brewers
into a contender through five seasons before being surprisingly fired
after a 3-11 streak with just 12 games left in the 2008 season. It
was only the third time baseball historians could recount when a
manager was fired from a contending team in the final month of the
season.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Yost was replaced by Sveum, his
third-base coach, who had never before managed in the majors. Sveum,
like Yost originally from California, joined the Vancouver Canadians
as a 21-year-old infielder in time to help the club win the 1985
championship. He hit just .236 that season, but spent the 1986
campaign divided between Vancouver and the parent Brewers.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Sveum (pronounced <i>swaim</i>) works
under Yost on the Royals as a hitting instructor, an achievement for
a player whose career major-league average was .236, the same he hit
in his only full season in Vancouver.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The third Vancouver connection in the
Royals dugout is bench coach Wakamatsu, who was hired away from doing
that job with the Blue Jays in 2013.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Another backup catcher, he was in his
sixth year of an apprenticeship in the minor leagues when he got a
surprise call up to the majors. In 1991, the Canadians were a farm
club of the Chicago White Sox, who had Carlton Fisk, a future Hall of
Famer, as first-string catcher and Ron Karkovice as a backup. When
Karkovice tore a ligament in his left thumb, the emergency call went
to Vancouver, even though Wakamatsu was hitting an anemic .127 at the
time.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You play in the minor leagues for so
long you wonder if you're ever going to move up,” he told me at the
time. “Everything I touched this year went bad. You can't ever give
up. Statistic-wise, when I'm playing my worst, I get called up. It's
a strange game.”<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The promotion to his dream job turned out to be
a bit of a nightmare. His first assignment was to catch the unguided
missiles tossed by Charlie Hough, a knuckleballer. Early in his
debut, two elusive pitches corkscrewed past Wakamatsu, allowing a run
to score. In the end, his Sox defeated the California Angels and he
managed a single in four at-bats. The ball was waiting for him in his
locker at the end of the game. He also finally had a chance to read
his name in a big-league box score, even if it was reduced to
“Wkmts.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Wakamatsu would only play in 18 games
for the ChiSox that season, as most of his career was spent in a
12-season whistle-stop tour from Billings, Mont., to Chattanooga,
Tenn., to Port City, N.C., to Albuquerque, N.M., to New Orleans. He
played 117 of his career 780 pro games in the uniform of the
Canadians, which had been deliberately designed to look like the
label of a Molson lager with which it shared a name.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Wakamatsu had greater success as a
coach, working his way up until he was named manager of the Seattle
Mariners in 2009. He guided the team to a mediocre 127-147 record
over two forgettable seasons worthy of note only because he became
the first person of Asian-American ancestry to manage in the
majors.<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A fourth-generation Japanese-American from Oregon,
Wakamatsu was a college student before he learned the full story of
his grandparents internment during the Second World War. His father
was born in a detention camp in Tule Lake, Calif. Near the end of the
war, his grandfather even enlisted in the U.S. Army. Yet when the
family returned to their former home at Hood River, they were
ostracized by the townspeople. Barbers and hairdressers refused to
touch their hair and even the merchants who deigned to sell to them
made them enter through a back door. The grandparents rebuilt a home
from lumber purchased from the camp in which they had once been
held.<br />His father made a conscious decision not to raise his own
children in such an atmosphere of hatred and bitterness, which
explains why Wakamatsu was an adult before he learned the family's
full history. Ever since, he has taken it as his duty to share the
story as a lesson.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The Royals faced a crisis in the World
Series when Edinson Volquez's father died suddenly in the Dominican
Republic just hours before his son was to be the starting pitcher in
Game 1. The family decided to keep the news from the pitcher. It fell
on Wakamatsu to develop a contingency should Volquez find out and be
unable to play. (He quietly told Chris Young, himself bereaved a
month ago when his father died of cancer, to be prepared to be the
starter.)
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Among Wakamatsu's many tasks as bench
coach is responsibility for filling out the lineup card posted in the
Royals dugout, which he does in a beautiful faux-Gothic cursive, a
nod to his grandfather's beautiful penmanship. The cards are
cherished by Royals players as keepsakes from games in which they
reached a personal milestone. It is unknown who will keep Makamatsu's
card from Sunday's World Series-winning game, although it probably
belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame.</div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-20742393522360069892015-10-17T12:19:00.002-07:002015-10-17T12:19:17.528-07:00Gordon Quan had to fight to get the vote. He doesn't want you to waste yours. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1XzWRdarSzkPzc9R7sb9xA3zodw0QUGQjTlCUJTe7o7GDO1nBzks0GFrFWZL8DAjNku_nD-kCRsd2SwJ4-0DRUoTFaa8-HkIqZ74ZL-e3jda0hW3T9wLyQ18hbixwPdtHRDFQcPPhDg/s1600/Gordon+Quan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1XzWRdarSzkPzc9R7sb9xA3zodw0QUGQjTlCUJTe7o7GDO1nBzks0GFrFWZL8DAjNku_nD-kCRsd2SwJ4-0DRUoTFaa8-HkIqZ74ZL-e3jda0hW3T9wLyQ18hbixwPdtHRDFQcPPhDg/s400/Gordon+Quan.jpg" width="302" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Gordon Quan in uniform in London in 1945.</i></div>
<br />
<b>By Tom Hawthorn</b><br />
<b>Boulevard Magazine</b>October, 2015<br /><br />
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Late on the evening of October 19, a worker will tip over a box to pour out folded paper ballots. These will be carefully opened and stacked. They will be counted and recounted.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />A similar scene will unfold across the city, the island, the province, and, indeed, all across this vast land. Election Day is a time when we take a brief pause in our daily activity to offer an opinion on the future direction of the country.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
One of those boxes will include a ballot cast by <span class="il">Gordon</span> <span class="il">Quan</span>, who will celebrate his 90<sup>th</sup> birthday in January. In an age when barely more than half of us cast a ballot once every four years, <span class="il">Quan</span> votes in federal elections and provincial elections and municipal elections. He is among the dedicated few who never miss a chance to do their civic duty.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />“I always vote,” he said. “To vote is to get your idea into the system.”</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="il">Quan</span> votes because there was once a time when the country of his birth said he could not. He returned from active service in the Burmese jungles at the end of the Second World War to a Canada that would still deny him the franchise solely because of his ethnic heritage. In British Columbia, the restrictions on voters were removed slowly and over time with Chinese Canadians and Hindu Canadians granted the franchise in 1947, Mennonites and Hutterites in 1948, Japanese-Canadians and First Nations in 1949, and Doukhobors in 1952.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="il">Quan</span> had earned the right to vote since he had fought in the war, but he vowed never to skip an opportunity others had once sought to deny him.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He was born Juy Kong <span class="il">Quan</span> in Cumberland, where his father was a Chinatown merchant. His father died when the boy was five, so his mother took the boy to her ancestral village in Canton for four years. He returned to Victoria at age nine, attending North Ward School and, after school, taking lessons at the Chinese school on Fisgard Street.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He remembers a Victoria where people were expected to know their place and boys who looked like him were not permitted to swim at Crystal Pool. It was also a time when their parents were barred from such professions as teaching and the law.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
At 18, he enlisted in the war effort. He did basic training in Saskatchewan before being seconded to the British Army where he was to join others of Chinese descent in Force 136 of the Special Operations Executive. A good pupil, he showed promise and received further training in the dark arts of sabotage and demolition. Midway through 1945, he was dispatched to the jungles of Burma where he was to blow up bridges and fuel depots to harass the occupying Japanese forces.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He was under no illusion as to his likely fate. “A suicide squad” is how he describes the assignment today. Despite that, he was willing. Lucky for him, the destruction of two civilian cities by atomic bombs brought a quick end to the war.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He returned to civilian life, got married, and took a job washing dishes at the Mandarin Chop Suey restaurant in Victoria's Chinatown. After taking an 18-month vocational course, the cost covered as a veteran's benefit, he qualified as an automobile mechanic. He joined the militia in 1952, retiring from the Canadian Army after 35 years for which he was awarded the Order of Military Merit for his exceptional service. In his civilian life, he became the first person of Chinese ancestry to work for the City of Victoria's public works department.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
To mark a ballot with a checkmark or an X — the sign of the cross, a child's scratch, a mark so simple it is used as a signature by illiterates — is the easiest of tasks.</div>
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What would <span class="il">Quan</span> say to the millennials and others who don't bother to vote?</div>
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“You have the right to vote,” he said. “You're not going to help the country. When you grow older you're going to regret you didn't vote when you had the opportunity.”</div>
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There is one other reason to vote, he added.</div>
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“If you don't vote,” he said, “you can't do any squawking.”</div>
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So, he will cast a ballot on election day. Three weeks later, on Remembrance Day, he will wear his beret and his uniform as he lays a wreath at the cenotaph in front of Saanich Municipal Hall, as he has done for years.</div>
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On election day, I'll be remembering the most basic of rights and the simplest of actions are easy to take for granted. Others were once dropped into unforgiving jungles to ensure we'd have this chance. To go mark a ballot is the least we can do.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif9jmpMtyVnJrnqiykCvPcdsK91bzEDVetZoHHKyluKrZQ9RL7qjI-5e5X2fq4tSS9mGTr63CpDf-GGoOX1BSbU8u4JPbtCxNi4IYcakDi6a7cPm8FMGs_leI0Nf6Omq-x7vSnn3UIgg/s1600/Gordon+Quan+discharge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif9jmpMtyVnJrnqiykCvPcdsK91bzEDVetZoHHKyluKrZQ9RL7qjI-5e5X2fq4tSS9mGTr63CpDf-GGoOX1BSbU8u4JPbtCxNi4IYcakDi6a7cPm8FMGs_leI0Nf6Omq-x7vSnn3UIgg/s400/Gordon+Quan+discharge.jpg" width="347" /></a><br /><i>Gordon Quan's discharge papers. He later re-enlisted.</i></div>
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Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5686476804358206995.post-38152049832421589852015-10-02T23:29:00.002-07:002015-10-16T23:40:27.020-07:00Frances Wasserlein (1946-2015), irrepressible feminist activist<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGowTB535QiOJv6qGpiONGZtnWQc54xIEuw5cCnCEdD6msv9dTtfsqlKm2V2xsxuBCRj08E1l2KD6pDS1Hi7WOXqF_jiDlZW5Vf6nOsfkpLWwWiQhxUcr5JiBUUIBzeIDPl39uyPOqOA/s1600/Frances+Wasserlein+in+2001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGowTB535QiOJv6qGpiONGZtnWQc54xIEuw5cCnCEdD6msv9dTtfsqlKm2V2xsxuBCRj08E1l2KD6pDS1Hi7WOXqF_jiDlZW5Vf6nOsfkpLWwWiQhxUcr5JiBUUIBzeIDPl39uyPOqOA/s400/Frances+Wasserlein+in+2001.jpg" width="271" /></a></div>
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<b>By Tom Hawthorn</b><span style="line-height: 1.5;">Special to The Globe and Mail<br />September 30, 2015</span></div>
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In her journey from secretary to front-line activist, Frances Wasserlein battled a premier, helped change a law and confronted discrimination against gays and lesbians.</div>
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She also sought to protect, shelter and aid women and their children seeking relief from violence on the street and in the family home.</div>
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For four decades, Ms. Wasserlein, who died at 69, was an activist of note on the West Coast and a prominent figure in feminist groups. She was one of 18 women to co-found a group providing assistance to women who had been raped. They also successfully lobbied to add domestic sexual assault to the Criminal Code.</div>
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In certain circles, she was one of those people you bumped into wherever you went in Vancouver.</div>
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Go to the annual folk music festival at Jericho Beach and she’d be volunteering in some role. (Eventually, she became executive producer.) Buy a ticket for the Vancouver International Writers Festival, and she’d be managing the box office. Attend a play, or a concert, or some other shindig at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, and she’d be in the foyer, because she handled the centre’s bookkeeping, as she did for many other arts organizations.</div>
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While both arts and political activist groups can be known for petty grudges and internecine warfare, Ms. Wasserlein navigated rough waters by relying on her warmth and good humour. While she could be intense in debate or while making a speech, she more often could be spotted flashing a gap-toothed smile.</div>
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Frances Jane Wasserlein was born in San Francisco on July 31, 1946, to Helen Therese (née Maier) and Robert Lohrs Wasserlein. She moved to Vancouver with her family at age 14. She graduated from Little Flower Academy, a private Roman Catholic girls’ day school.</div>
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She was working as a secretary at the University of British Columbia when her work with the union, as well as a summer job with Vancouver Rape Relief, guided her toward an interest in social justice. By then, her second marriage had ended and she declared herself to be a “women’s liberationist.”</div>
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She enrolled as a full-time student at the university, completing a history degree with honours in three years. While an undergraduate, she worked with the Women’s Office on campus, learning about the important role women had played in establishing the university and in continuing to fight for equitable treatment.</div>
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Ms. Wasserlein worked as co-manager of the YWCA’s Munroe House, a temporary residence for women who were victims of violence. She did research and writing for the Women’s Research Centre, a non-profit society that did advocacy on behalf of women. She topped up her income by bookkeeping for a wide variety of groups, which made her a familiar figure in arts, publishing and feminist circles.</div>
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In 1978, Anita Bryant, a pop singer and orange-juice pitchperson who became a crusader against gay rights, was reported to be coming to British Columbia to speak. Opponents quickly formed a group called Coalition Against Discrimination, for which Ms. Wasserlein was an indefatigable mobilizer. “You organized by telephone,” she once told the publication Xtra. “You put leaflets out in bars and places where people went. You told your friends, people you knew. You set a date and hoped that people showed.” Ms. Bryant, citing exhaustion, limited her speaking tour and not did address a Vancouver audience.</div>
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Four years later, Ms. Wasserlein was a co-founder of Women Against Violence Against Women, a rape crisis centre. She also continuously worked in supporting women seeking to escape being beaten in their homes by their male partners.</div>
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Several years of organizing seemed to culminate in the widespread protests of 1983, when a re-elected Social Credit government proposed a harsh budget targeting many of the groups – unionized workers, community groups, gays and lesbians, as well as feminists – it considered to be enemies. Playing a strong hand gave rise to a mass movement in opposition which, inspired by the insurrection of Polish workers, took the name Solidarity. Ms. Wasserlein led a coalition called Women Against the Budget. In July, 1983, she addressed a march of 20,000 protesters, which had earlier stretched five kilometres along the streets of downtown Vancouver.</div>
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“We will not be silenced,” she told the crowd. “We will defeat this legislation and we will defeat this government.”</div>
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In the end, she would be right only about the first assertion. Trade union leader Jack Munro negotiated an agreement with Premier Bill Bennett as the province teetered toward a general strike, a move seen as an abject sell out by many of the community groups that had been involved in the protests.</div>
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Ms. Wasserlein soon after returned to her studies, completing a master’s degree at Simon Fraser University. Her thesis was an important history of the 1970 Abortion Caravan, a cross-Canada trek from Vancouver to Ottawa to demand the procedure be legalized. After gaining her degree, she taught women’s and lesbian studies at the university and at Langara College.</div>
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She ran for a seat on Vancouver city council in three elections, twice for the left-wing Coalition of Progressive Electors and once as an independent, finishing well down the at-large ballot each time. She also served for six years on the board of the advisory group that came to be known as the B.C. Arts Council.</div>
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In 2003, just eight days after same-sex marriage became legal in British Columbia, she married Marguerite Kotwitz, an American potter, in a ceremony in a grove on the site of the folk music festival. They had met on the Internet. “It was love at first sight,” Ms. Wasserlein told the Globe’s Rod Mickleburgh, “or maybe love at first site.”</div>
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The midlife marriage surprised Ms. Wasserlein. “In 1975, I left my second husband and I said, then and many times thereafter, I will not get married again, not even for the revolution,” she told Xtra.</div>
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The couple moved to Halfmoon Bay, on the province’s Sunshine Coast, where they operated a bed and breakfast called Honeysuckle Rose Cottage. Ms. Wasserlein served on the local arts council and as a library trustee.</div>
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She suffered a medical incident three years ago, which was eventually diagnosed as posterior cortical atrophy, a form of dementia. Ms. Wasserlein died at home on Aug. 23. She leaves Ms. Kotwitz and two sisters. The announcement of her death led to an outpouring of grief on her Facebook page with many praising her as a teacher and mentor.</div>
Tom Hawthornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03735463921192114357noreply@blogger.com0