By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
January 2, 2008
VICTORIA
At low tide, the exposed shoreline emits an odour of iodine mixed with sulphur. A snootful is as crisp as smelling salts, clearing the sinuses and watering the eyes.
The urge is to plug your nose. Not Tom Koppel. He inhales deeply.
“Some might find it stinky. It's a rich smell, not unpleasant to me.”
The reason?
“I like seafood.”
Mr. Koppel has spent many of his 64 years around the sea, chronicling the tale of the Hawaiian settlers of British Columbia (in his 1995 book "Kanaka") and surviving adventures in Indiana Jones fashion while tracing the route perhaps taken to this continent by prehistoric peoples ("Lost World").
A visit to the ocean was a rare treat in his early years, as he lived in a housing project in the Bronx. An annual seaside holiday introduced to him the natural wonder that is the subject of his latest book.
For one glorious week every summer, young Tom cavorted on Star Island, one of the nine rocky Isles of Shoals in the Atlantic off the coast where New Hampshire squeezes next to Maine. At high tide, he splashed along the fringe where sea met land. At low tide, the defined shoreline gave way to a treacherous minefield of rock and barnacles, all covered by slippery seaweed.
The sun would bake the exposed seabed until it gave off what he now recalls as “a powerful miasma of salt and organic decay.”
Mr. Koppel never lost the curiosity he held as a boy for a natural order that lifted an island's dock as much as four metres twice a day, and a lifetime's travel has led to an exploration of the phenomena in Ebb and Flow.
He would learn the rise and fall of tides was not always slow-acting, nor especially benign. Some of the fastest tidal currents in the world can be found in British Columbia's waters. He first heard, rather than saw, the effects of Skookumchuck Rapids. Named “place of strong waters“ in the Chinook coastal jargon, the rapids' roar results from a majestic display of crashing waves and, nearby, “deep, gurgling holes,” all the chaotic result of tidal waters pressed into narrow inlets and channels, water gushing through a bottleneck. Overhead, opportunistic seagulls wait to pluck fish injured in the maelstrom.
Not for nothing do Peril Strait and Deception Pass carry their warnings, while only the foolish ignore whirlpools known as the Drain and Devil's Hole. Mr. Koppel and a friend once got caught in a whirlpool, completing a dizzying revolution before a desperate tug restarted the outboard engine. “The roar of an internal combustion engine had never sounded so sweet,” he writes. “There was no need even to talk about our escape – that would come later. But we had felt the power of the tide, and how it dwarfed our petty human nature.”
Mr. Koppel's book belongs to a new genre of non-fiction in which everyday items and natural phenomena too often taken for granted are explored in narratives combining science and history.
They are usually presented with titles of monosyllabic definitiveness – “Cod” and “Salt“ and “Coal” – promising not so much a yarn as a dictionary entry. One of this season's entries is a tome on the humble toothpick, a sequel to the author's examination of the pencil.
Lest you think Mr. Koppel's choice of topic a tidal bore, the author finds the rise and fall of empires mirrored in the sea's ebb and flow, incorporating Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great in his captivating look at tides. He examines the complex science of tides and explores their possible future as an energy source. (One of his earlier works, Powering the Future, about the Ballard hydrogen fuel cell, was nominated for a National Business Book Award.)
A veteran magazine writer, Mr. Koppel knows how to tell a story. In doing so, he is his mother's son. Mr. Koppel was the product of a mixed marriage in that his father's ancestry was German Jewish and his mother's Irish Catholic. His father, Edwin, manufactured tchotchkes such as toothbrush holders and other gift items and novelties. His mother, Margaret, known as Peggy, was a minor celebratory in their New York neighbourhood as the author of a weekly column about domestic life called Sugar 'n' Spice for the Bronx Press Review. Her death in 1958, at 52, warranted a news obituary in the New York Times.
The family lived in Parkchester, a large planned community designed for working- and middle-class families. His parents were supporters of the pacifist Norman Thomas and his Socialist Party. (They were also early conservationists.) His father ran for a state assembly seat in 1937, losing to a Republican who would spend the next 27 years in the state capital. The elder Mr. Koppel would be asked to take his party's vice-presidential slot in 1956, an honour he wisely declined.
Tom Koppel graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1966, a would-be architect who wound up specializing in economic theory, which he found too boring to sustain a working life. After completing a doctorate in political science in Russian and German studies, he became a translator for a news service, a job that allowed him to live wherever he wished.
He chose the Gulf Islands, living on a shell midden on Prevost Island and in a lakeside log cabin on Salt Spring Island. He has travelled the globe, always returning to a place where nature provides a bounty.
The aboriginal peoples of this coast have a saying: “When the tide goes out, the table is set.”
At certain times over the past 30 years, Mr. Koppel could be found in gumboots, armed with a digging fork and a galvanized bucket, seeking supper on one of his island's beaches. He casts a discerning eye at his favourite dig. Not for him are the cockles (“too rubbery“) or oysters (“good but sparse”) or horse clams (“the meat tends to be tough”). He seeks little necks or manilas, small clams with tender meat, harvested for a white clam sauce to be served over vermicelli, “a simple but sublime meal.”
A page turns on the calendar. A year fades and another launches. We mark the occasion by lying to ourselves about improving bad habits.
The possibility of our success is an unknown, human behaviour being measurable but not absolutely predictable.
More certain is the continual rise and fall of the seas, an immutable law of nature and a timeless action that somehow comes with a timetable.
So, in the waters near Mr. Koppel's Salt Spring home, the Canadian Hydrographic Service predicts a high tide of 3.6 metres will be reached at 11:21 a.m. today. A low tide of 1.1 metres will be met eight hours, eight minutes later.
For those of you keeping track at home, that's a difference greater than Mr. Koppel's height.
2008 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Human history lives on Monkey Beach
By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
December 26, 2007
VICTORIA
Eden Robinson was 10 when she first visited a spot on the British Columbia coast with which she will forever be associated.
“I remember the whole beach was covered in broken shells. They crunched as you went,” she said, chortling at the memory.
Ms. Robinson has a kindly laugh that rolls gently at the end of her sentences, like a soft wave lapping onto a beach.
“It's one of the prettiest beaches. Up north there's not a lot of sandy beaches. This was sandy.”
Her family had sailed down from Kitamaat Village to harvest shellfish.
“At first, cockle picking was fun. But on the second day, I said, ‘Don't we have enough yet?' ”
She giggled again.
She made a return visit with her father two summers ago for the first time in years, bouncing along in a 3.6-metre boat with a 30-horsepower engine.
“Took two hours,” she said. “It's a pretty bumpy ride. You really want to take off your lifejacket to sit on it after the first hour.”
The beach, of course smaller than she remembered from childhood, teemed with critters on the morning she arrived.
“There were weasels, wolves and otters. It was alive with animals. And flies. We forgot to bring any bug repellant.”
She did not encounter the creature for which the beach is best known.
The long tidal flats have long figured in Haisla cultural lore as a home of the Bekwis, which is pronounced bah-KWISS. Ms. Robinson has a better suggestion: “Just say ‘big wuss' really fast.” The Bekwis is a large, hairy creature known to some as “stick man” and to others as Sasquatch.
The creature gave this place its name of Monkey Beach. It was an informal designation not to be found on official maps. That is, until recently.
Monkey Beach is on the east side of Boxer Reach, a rare level spot on a mountainous peninsula set amid the archipelago that is so much a feature of the central British Columbia coast. Here, unnamed peaks drop precipitously to the sea.
Jay Powell has studied the peoples of this area for much of his adult life, visiting isolated seaside hamlets while cocking a learned ear to the nuances of the local tongue.
With his wife, Vickie Jensen, he has written dozens of schoolbooks in a variety of aboriginal languages. He is also responsible for many of the alphabets in use, in which ancient sounds are rendered in an English peppered by apostrophes, underscores and uncommon consonant combinations. If these can seem indecipherable to untrained eyes, imagine the difficulty in learning to speak languages in which some words begin with glotteral stops.
The Haisla prize the shorelands for the rich selection of shellfish.
Halibut, flounder and spring salmon are also plentiful. Since the resources have always been so bountiful, other tribes are welcome to share in the bounty with implied Haisla consent.
The Haisla maintained a seasonal campsite at the north end of the beach, a site known as Q'wak'waksiyas. It was from here that the Bekwis were sometimes spotted.
This is a bittersweet time for Prof. Powell, a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of British Columbia. His hearing has begun to fail and he can no longer differentiate the 12 different pronunciations of K used in the aboriginal languages of the northwest.
With each passing day, the opportunity to record myths and legends and even place names slips away, just as his own hearing fades with time.
“A lot of these things are alive only in the memories of old people,” he said. “We're catching dodo birds. Catching them by the toenails while they fly off to extinction.”
This year the B.C. Geographical Names Office adopted the designation Monkey Beach as an established local name. The professor's submission provided the proper background.
Then, in April, the provincial government announced 2,699 hectares of land would be protected as the Bishop Bay-Monkey Beach Conservancy.
Back in Kitamaat Village, on a night when snow fell and the lights flickered, Ms. Robinson was surprised to learn the beach's name had been officially acknowledged.
It is, in some ways, an honour in which she shares credit.
She was at the university in Vancouver working on a novel that would be her master's thesis. The first draft was titled The Shamanic Verses. A classmate, whose sharp ear earned her the nickname “the Title Queen,” was asked what she thought. Her response: “Blagh!”
Instead, Zsuzsi Gartner, an acclaimed writer herself, asked Ms. Robinson to describe the story. She got as far as the setting before being abruptly stopped. Monkey Beach won a B.C. Book Prize and was nominated for both a Giller Prize and a Governor-General's Award.
These days, Ms. Robinson works as an archival assistant at the Haisla Nation Treaty Office. She is learning her father's language, although she admits to being slow when it comes to Haisla. “I can say, ‘I am hungry' and ‘I am full.' Baby stuff.”
She says she has been told why the Haisla don't encounter the Bekwis as much as lore says they once did.
“My dad's theory is that they built malls and they're too busy shopping to see us any more.”
Or perhaps they’re looking at the provincial gazetteer, where, at Longitude 53 degrees, 27 minutes, 31 seconds and Latitude 128 degrees, 56 minutes, 24 seconds, in a glorious seaside setting, an ancient home is officially on the map.
2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Special to The Globe and Mail
December 26, 2007
VICTORIA
Eden Robinson was 10 when she first visited a spot on the British Columbia coast with which she will forever be associated.
“I remember the whole beach was covered in broken shells. They crunched as you went,” she said, chortling at the memory.
Ms. Robinson has a kindly laugh that rolls gently at the end of her sentences, like a soft wave lapping onto a beach.
“It's one of the prettiest beaches. Up north there's not a lot of sandy beaches. This was sandy.”
Her family had sailed down from Kitamaat Village to harvest shellfish.
“At first, cockle picking was fun. But on the second day, I said, ‘Don't we have enough yet?' ”
She giggled again.
She made a return visit with her father two summers ago for the first time in years, bouncing along in a 3.6-metre boat with a 30-horsepower engine.
“Took two hours,” she said. “It's a pretty bumpy ride. You really want to take off your lifejacket to sit on it after the first hour.”
The beach, of course smaller than she remembered from childhood, teemed with critters on the morning she arrived.
“There were weasels, wolves and otters. It was alive with animals. And flies. We forgot to bring any bug repellant.”
She did not encounter the creature for which the beach is best known.
The long tidal flats have long figured in Haisla cultural lore as a home of the Bekwis, which is pronounced bah-KWISS. Ms. Robinson has a better suggestion: “Just say ‘big wuss' really fast.” The Bekwis is a large, hairy creature known to some as “stick man” and to others as Sasquatch.
The creature gave this place its name of Monkey Beach. It was an informal designation not to be found on official maps. That is, until recently.
Monkey Beach is on the east side of Boxer Reach, a rare level spot on a mountainous peninsula set amid the archipelago that is so much a feature of the central British Columbia coast. Here, unnamed peaks drop precipitously to the sea.
Jay Powell has studied the peoples of this area for much of his adult life, visiting isolated seaside hamlets while cocking a learned ear to the nuances of the local tongue.
With his wife, Vickie Jensen, he has written dozens of schoolbooks in a variety of aboriginal languages. He is also responsible for many of the alphabets in use, in which ancient sounds are rendered in an English peppered by apostrophes, underscores and uncommon consonant combinations. If these can seem indecipherable to untrained eyes, imagine the difficulty in learning to speak languages in which some words begin with glotteral stops.
The Haisla prize the shorelands for the rich selection of shellfish.
Halibut, flounder and spring salmon are also plentiful. Since the resources have always been so bountiful, other tribes are welcome to share in the bounty with implied Haisla consent.
The Haisla maintained a seasonal campsite at the north end of the beach, a site known as Q'wak'waksiyas. It was from here that the Bekwis were sometimes spotted.
This is a bittersweet time for Prof. Powell, a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of British Columbia. His hearing has begun to fail and he can no longer differentiate the 12 different pronunciations of K used in the aboriginal languages of the northwest.
With each passing day, the opportunity to record myths and legends and even place names slips away, just as his own hearing fades with time.
“A lot of these things are alive only in the memories of old people,” he said. “We're catching dodo birds. Catching them by the toenails while they fly off to extinction.”
This year the B.C. Geographical Names Office adopted the designation Monkey Beach as an established local name. The professor's submission provided the proper background.
Then, in April, the provincial government announced 2,699 hectares of land would be protected as the Bishop Bay-Monkey Beach Conservancy.
Back in Kitamaat Village, on a night when snow fell and the lights flickered, Ms. Robinson was surprised to learn the beach's name had been officially acknowledged.
It is, in some ways, an honour in which she shares credit.
She was at the university in Vancouver working on a novel that would be her master's thesis. The first draft was titled The Shamanic Verses. A classmate, whose sharp ear earned her the nickname “the Title Queen,” was asked what she thought. Her response: “Blagh!”
Instead, Zsuzsi Gartner, an acclaimed writer herself, asked Ms. Robinson to describe the story. She got as far as the setting before being abruptly stopped. Monkey Beach won a B.C. Book Prize and was nominated for both a Giller Prize and a Governor-General's Award.
These days, Ms. Robinson works as an archival assistant at the Haisla Nation Treaty Office. She is learning her father's language, although she admits to being slow when it comes to Haisla. “I can say, ‘I am hungry' and ‘I am full.' Baby stuff.”
She says she has been told why the Haisla don't encounter the Bekwis as much as lore says they once did.
“My dad's theory is that they built malls and they're too busy shopping to see us any more.”
Or perhaps they’re looking at the provincial gazetteer, where, at Longitude 53 degrees, 27 minutes, 31 seconds and Latitude 128 degrees, 56 minutes, 24 seconds, in a glorious seaside setting, an ancient home is officially on the map.
2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Fans band together on note of generosity
Adrian Lam photo
By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
December 19, 2007
VICTORIA
The tracks of the Esquimalt & Nanaimo railway run behind Bruce Brackney's cottage. A train called the Malahat rumbles past twice a day.
“Music to my ears,” he says.
In his younger days, he hopped aboard the freights that crisscross the continent, riding for free in what he calls the “sidedoor Pullman.”
Mr. Brackney, 60, has long sported a mutton-chop beard. He dressed against the rainy-morning cold in a vest. Cufflinks with the crossed initials of the Southern Pacific railway are on his shirt. He looks like a conductor.
Instead of calling out destinations, though, he picked up a guitar to sing a tune written by a good hobo friend who won't be able to perform the song in Canada any time soon.
U. Utah Phillips's ticker has gone wonky. Again. The singing storyteller, the Will Rogers of trampdom who has been a legendary figure at music festivals for more than 30 years as the self-proclaimed Golden Voice of the Great Southwest, has been ordered by his doctor to desist. He can no longer ride the rails, nor hit the road. He has cancelled all his touring dates, including several in Canada.
But if Utah can't play for the people, then the people will play for Utah.
Fans declared December to be Utah Phillips Month. Mr. Brackney has helped launch a grassroots campaign to raise money for the 72-year-old poet and philosopher, a troubadour whose poor health has cost him his livelihood as he faces growing medical bills.
In Toronto, folk singer Eve Goldberg raised $2,000 with a show at Hugh's Room on Monday. In Winnipeg, a benefit concert including the Duhks brought a hefty $7,000 on Saturday. The money and whatever else is donated in the coming weeks will be sent south by Mr. Brackney, who first met Mr. Phillips after a concert in Eureka, Calif., in 1976.
The two free spirits hit it off, sharing not only a love of the railway but membership in the Industrial Workers of the World, the revolutionary union.
Mr. Phillips and Mr. Brackney also formed a union of another kind in the Rose Tattoo, a gathering of like-minded musicians that is more social club than band. The initiates – “a motley crew, and far flung” – are branded with such monikers as Smokestack and Boomer Bob and Mama Pipes and Cream City Slim and the Feather River Kid. Utah is known as Bow Tie, while Mr. Brackney is called Haywire Brack. All bear a permanent ink-etching of a red flower. Haywire was tattooed many years ago in San Francisco by Lyle Tuttle, a renowned practitioner of the venerable if not always respectable art.
Last year, the wandering musicians gathered around a campfire for 7 ½ hours of nothing but railway songs, not a tune repeated.
Haywire has lived the kind of life in which he can say “my earliest memory is of an orphanage.” His parents were too poor to care for him, although he returned to them after a few years.
As a young man, Haywire worked a placer gold claim in California. “I didn't mine much,” he said, “but it was an excuse to live in the wilderness and pretend it was 1876 instead of 1976.” He tramped from Minnesota by catching passing freights over the hump, often stopping in Spokane to visit Utah. Riding the rods is an experience he no longer recommends.
“It's terribly dangerous now. There's no more migrant workers, just gangs of the severely drug addicted who will kill you for your shoes.”
One of his last rides was one of his most memorable. He and a buddy spotted a deadhead – “clean and empty” – in the yards and climbed aboard just as it pulled away in the predawn hour. Turns out the box car was not quite empty. The stamped metal floor had divots the depth of a golf ball sliced in half and each of those hundreds of small depressions was filled with ash from the volcanic eruption at Mount St. Helens. Luckily, they had kerchiefs to protect their noses and mouths.
“Utah was appalled,” he remembered. “We looked like ghosts. He hosed us off in the yard.”
Haywire laughed at the memory, before picking up the phone to dial a number in California.
On the other end of the line, Utah reminisced about performing at the Mariposa folk festival in Orillia, Ont., and at the Frostbite music festival in Whitehorse. He talked about meeting veterans of the On-to-Ottawa Trek of the 1930s and he sang the praises of Stompin' Tom Connors.
After having played so many benefits himself, and having joined striking workers on picket lines, he was asked what he made of being on the receiving end of generosity.
“It's family coming through,” he said. “The family's coming together to give us a hand.”
Haywire doesn't know when next he'll see his old friend. When they do get together, guitars will be pulled out, old songs will be sung while old lies will be reworked to sound fresh.
At Haywire's house, a room off the kitchen is closest to the tracks.
Twice a day, display cabinets rattle as the Malahat passes. Haywire collects railway china, beautiful pieces that once rested on white linen tablecloths in fancy dining cars the insides of which a hobo like himself never got to enjoy.
2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Still so many questions about Lillian O'Dare
Lillian Jean O'Dare (right) poses with a friend known only as Diana.
By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
Dec. 12, 2007
She was found because tenants were looking for more storage space.
It was spring, 1989. Sheila Adams, a graphic artist, was renting a rambling, three-bedroom house in Vancouver's eastside. She shared the space with a boyfriend and a tree-planting buddy.
“It was big and cheap,” she said. “Great location. A short block off the Drive.”
Artists and musicians had flocked to the streets surrounding Commercial Drive, taking advantage of low rents near a lively stretch of cafés and restaurants.
At 941 Salsbury Dr., between Parker and Venables, Ms. Adams's gearhead boyfriend looked for a place to store car parts. In the basement, he found a small opening in the wall. The original porch upstairs had been closed in and added to a bedroom, part of which extended beyond the foundation.
The opening was sealed by a door on which four letters were crudely painted. The door had no hinge and had been nailed shut. It was pried open.
“There was a bunch of stuff in there,” Ms. Adams said. “Suitcases. Garbage bags. Not thinking anything of it, we took it all to a dumpster.”
After the junk was removed, they decided to level the dirt floor. Ms. Adams remembers hearing her boyfriend cry, “Uh, oh!”
His shovel had unearthed a skull. A bit of skin and hair was visible, but the remains had been there for some time. Police were called. The skeletal remains were removed, and the dirt sifted for evidence.
Police estimated the body had been there for about a decade. They were off by just one year.
Another 18 years passed before science could identify it.
This year, Forensics Magazine highlighted a new technology for DNA testing known as mini-STR (which stands for short tandem repeat), in which even small fragments of biological material can yield helpful information. The development will “make it possible for law enforcement to re-examine unsolved murder and sexual assault cases that have not been addressed for years,” the magazine reported.
On July 9, the remains were identified, and five weeks later, the Missing Women Task Force revealed the victim was Lillian Jean O'Dare.
She had been reported missing on Sept. 12, 1978.
Five years ago, her name was added to the city's list of missing women, which now numbers 65. Robert Pickton has been convicted in the murders of six of the women and is accused of killing 20 more.
No one has been charged in Ms. O'Dare's death.
In August, police released a fading photograph showing Ms. O'Dare with a friend.
She is of average build, stands 5 feet 6, has carefully waved blond hair. She wears a loose-fitting white pantsuit over a brown blouse speckled with white dots. Ms. O'Dare hugs her petite friend Diana with her right arm.
Police released the photo hoping friends or family might recognize Diana, who may have been a roommate when Ms. O'Dare went missing.
Little is known about the dead woman, who was from Williams Lake.
She shared a birthday with Elvis, although the singer was nine years older than she. At her disappearance she was 34.
Ms. Adams remembers a staff sergeant from the Vancouver police pointing out the letters G-R-M-C daubed on the door.
“Do you know what that stands for?” he asked.
She guessed it was the French initials for the RCMP.
“Grim Reapers Motorcycle Club,” he said.
Later, a neighbour told her the house had been occupied by bikers. They were the targets of a drive-by shooting. The next day, the bikers vanished.
Ms. Adams called the police after the name was released this summer. She has since been reinterviewed by the RCMP.
“I'm really glad that she was identified,” Ms. Adams said. “It seems more hopeful, I guess.”
She continued to live in the house after the discovery, even though some of her friends were “creeped out.”
Long after she moved from Salsbury Drive, she continued to think about the woman, as she has the other missing women.
Ms. Adams volunteers at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, which was founded the year Ms. O'Dare was killed. She helps serve food at holiday meals, arranges prizes for bingo games and prepares the centre's newsletter.
A trial has ended, but women still go missing. The centre has posters of some who have disappeared in recent months. “It's not over,” she said.
Yesterday, Ms. Adams saw the photo for the first time, putting a face to a woman too long unknown.
Ms. Adams feels a responsibility to her.
Spare a moment to remember Lillian O'Dare, missing no more, but still posing so many questions.
2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The man who filmed the Montebello provocateurs
By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
Dec. 5, 2007
VICTORIA
Paul Manly's five-minute, 23-second video clip of a confrontation during a summer protest in Quebec is a compelling piece of theatre.
A man wearing a suit jacket challenges three burly men whose faces are hidden behind black bandannas.
“Take your mask off, brother,” he says. “Take your mask off.”
He taps the shortest of the burly men on the shoulder. He then spots a large rock in the man's gloved right hand.
“Put the rock down, man!” the man in the suit orders. “Put the rock down!”
He taps him on the back, swears at him, calls him a cop. He places a hand against his chest to prevent him from moving toward a line of helmeted riot police.
The man with the rock responds by shoving the suited man. Meanwhile, other masked demonstrators begin chanting, in French, “Policier!”
The standoff becomes ever more tense when arms reach in to grab at the masks. In the end, the three burly men press through the police lines to be arrested and escorted away.
Mr. Manly, a 43-year-old Nanaimo filmmaker, captured the scene on a high-definition camcorder while making a documentary. He's going to call it Trading Democracy for Corporate Rule, which means Michael Moore is not about to be challenged at the box office.
Mr. Manly travelled to cover the protests against a summit of the leaders of Canada, Mexico and the United States held at a luxury resort at Montebello, Que., in August. He rode a bus with members of the Council of Canadians, which he has since joined, a group critical of trade talks taking place without input from ordinary citizens.
The balding man in the suit jacket who confronted the burly men was Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union of Canada. Which explains his use of the word “brother,” as well as some of his riper oaths. (The CEP represents many Globe and Mail employees.)
“It was a pretty intense scene for me,” Mr. Manly said of the confrontation that began Aug. 20 at a police line across from the village's cemetery.
“I was confused because I don't speak French. I thought at first the crowd was saying Dave Coles was police. When I saw rocks, then I got worried. I could see these guys were intent on causing trouble.”
The standoff lasts just three minutes. It begins with the trade union leader trying to shoo away a small contingent of masked demonstrators, at the front of which were the three burly men.
“This is our line,” Mr. Coles announces. “This is for old guys, grandmothers, grandfathers. This is our line.”
Afterward, addressing the crowd and reporters, Mr. Coles accuses the burly men of being police provocateurs, although he rhymes the word with Mousketeers. “They were provocateers with boulders,” he says. “…They're trying to create a riot so they can suck us all in to get beat up.”
Soon after, he left aboard a bus on which Mr. Manly showed him the footage. The documentarian and the trade unionist were well on their way home by the time another confrontation wound up with police firing tear gas.
Mr. Manly posted his video on the Internet that night.
“Putting the video on YouTube made me nervous,” he said. “I didn't know who these guys were. CIA? CSIS? Blackwater [security firm] agents?”
The provincial police denied the three men were police officers. The accusation was dismissed as paranoia.
But the posting got enough traffic to warrant media interest. Brief clips of Mr. Manly's video aired on national TV newscasts. The police came clean and admitted the men were undercover officers. “At no point did Sûreté du Québec policemen act as agents provocateurs or criminals,” the force said in a statement.
In retrospect, the police infiltrators are dressed in costumes that are a comic-book fantasy of the anarchist style. They looked more like frat boys celebrating Halloween. The short man with the rock wore a ball cap sideways on his head, a black T-shirt, camouflage pants and, as Mr. Manly's film showed, the exact same model of boot as was being worn by the police officer who arrested him. Whoops.
Besides, your average scrawny anarchist – a young dumpster diver, or perhaps a self-described tofu-powered vegan freak – does not usually tip the scales beyond the 100-kilogram mark.
Mr. Manly said the infiltration of legal, peaceful protests darkens the reputation of police. He is not without sympathy. His sister is an Ontario Provincial Police constable; an uncle served in the RCMP.
“I do not want to get tear-gassed, tasered, batoned, or water-cannoned,” he said. “I just want to exercise my democratic rights.”
Mr. Manly thinks there should be an inquiry into police activity at Montebello, a demand repeated in the House of Commons yesterday by his MP, Jean Crowder (NDP – Nanaimo-Cowichan). Rocks were thrown that day and he wonders who launched them. Could be protesters. Could be cops. Who knows?
Tomorrow, he will be posting more high-definition images on YouTube showing questionable behaviour by some members of the crowd.
Checking out the 10-minute introductory film to his documentary, which was posted three weeks ago, I was viewer No. 1,518. The video of the police infiltrators being exposed, posted three months ago, had 338,406 hits as of yesterday afternoon.
That's what you call an audience.
2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Special to The Globe and Mail
Dec. 5, 2007
VICTORIA
Paul Manly's five-minute, 23-second video clip of a confrontation during a summer protest in Quebec is a compelling piece of theatre.
A man wearing a suit jacket challenges three burly men whose faces are hidden behind black bandannas.
“Take your mask off, brother,” he says. “Take your mask off.”
He taps the shortest of the burly men on the shoulder. He then spots a large rock in the man's gloved right hand.
“Put the rock down, man!” the man in the suit orders. “Put the rock down!”
He taps him on the back, swears at him, calls him a cop. He places a hand against his chest to prevent him from moving toward a line of helmeted riot police.
The man with the rock responds by shoving the suited man. Meanwhile, other masked demonstrators begin chanting, in French, “Policier!”
The standoff becomes ever more tense when arms reach in to grab at the masks. In the end, the three burly men press through the police lines to be arrested and escorted away.
Mr. Manly, a 43-year-old Nanaimo filmmaker, captured the scene on a high-definition camcorder while making a documentary. He's going to call it Trading Democracy for Corporate Rule, which means Michael Moore is not about to be challenged at the box office.
Mr. Manly travelled to cover the protests against a summit of the leaders of Canada, Mexico and the United States held at a luxury resort at Montebello, Que., in August. He rode a bus with members of the Council of Canadians, which he has since joined, a group critical of trade talks taking place without input from ordinary citizens.
The balding man in the suit jacket who confronted the burly men was Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union of Canada. Which explains his use of the word “brother,” as well as some of his riper oaths. (The CEP represents many Globe and Mail employees.)
“It was a pretty intense scene for me,” Mr. Manly said of the confrontation that began Aug. 20 at a police line across from the village's cemetery.
“I was confused because I don't speak French. I thought at first the crowd was saying Dave Coles was police. When I saw rocks, then I got worried. I could see these guys were intent on causing trouble.”
The standoff lasts just three minutes. It begins with the trade union leader trying to shoo away a small contingent of masked demonstrators, at the front of which were the three burly men.
“This is our line,” Mr. Coles announces. “This is for old guys, grandmothers, grandfathers. This is our line.”
Afterward, addressing the crowd and reporters, Mr. Coles accuses the burly men of being police provocateurs, although he rhymes the word with Mousketeers. “They were provocateers with boulders,” he says. “…They're trying to create a riot so they can suck us all in to get beat up.”
Soon after, he left aboard a bus on which Mr. Manly showed him the footage. The documentarian and the trade unionist were well on their way home by the time another confrontation wound up with police firing tear gas.
Mr. Manly posted his video on the Internet that night.
“Putting the video on YouTube made me nervous,” he said. “I didn't know who these guys were. CIA? CSIS? Blackwater [security firm] agents?”
The provincial police denied the three men were police officers. The accusation was dismissed as paranoia.
But the posting got enough traffic to warrant media interest. Brief clips of Mr. Manly's video aired on national TV newscasts. The police came clean and admitted the men were undercover officers. “At no point did Sûreté du Québec policemen act as agents provocateurs or criminals,” the force said in a statement.
In retrospect, the police infiltrators are dressed in costumes that are a comic-book fantasy of the anarchist style. They looked more like frat boys celebrating Halloween. The short man with the rock wore a ball cap sideways on his head, a black T-shirt, camouflage pants and, as Mr. Manly's film showed, the exact same model of boot as was being worn by the police officer who arrested him. Whoops.
Besides, your average scrawny anarchist – a young dumpster diver, or perhaps a self-described tofu-powered vegan freak – does not usually tip the scales beyond the 100-kilogram mark.
Mr. Manly said the infiltration of legal, peaceful protests darkens the reputation of police. He is not without sympathy. His sister is an Ontario Provincial Police constable; an uncle served in the RCMP.
“I do not want to get tear-gassed, tasered, batoned, or water-cannoned,” he said. “I just want to exercise my democratic rights.”
Mr. Manly thinks there should be an inquiry into police activity at Montebello, a demand repeated in the House of Commons yesterday by his MP, Jean Crowder (NDP – Nanaimo-Cowichan). Rocks were thrown that day and he wonders who launched them. Could be protesters. Could be cops. Who knows?
Tomorrow, he will be posting more high-definition images on YouTube showing questionable behaviour by some members of the crowd.
Checking out the 10-minute introductory film to his documentary, which was posted three weeks ago, I was viewer No. 1,518. The video of the police infiltrators being exposed, posted three months ago, had 338,406 hits as of yesterday afternoon.
That's what you call an audience.
2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
From peaches and beaches to world beaters
By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
Nov. 28, 2007
VICTORIA
Dick Warwick buried a brother last month. He buried a sister in July and another sister a year ago next month.
He might say he was worried about grief becoming a habit if only he had more siblings to lose.
Nine of 10 Warwick children of a great sporting family are gone.
“I'm the only one left,” Dick, 79, said at his home in the Saanichton neighbourhood, near Victoria. The thought gave him pause. “You know, five of us are in the hall of fame in Saskatchewan.”
Claude was a boxer. Millie played baseball professionally in the United States in a circuit made famous by the Hollywood movie A League of Their Own. Grant and Billy were tough forwards in the National Hockey League.
Dick was never in the NHL, but he lured his brothers to the Okanagan Valley in the 1950s, where they operated a popular restaurant and helped transform a local hockey team from a squad of amateurs into world beaters.
They learned their toughness on the Saskatchewan prairie. Their parents, who hailed from Quebec's Eastern Townships, travelled west after the Great War, during which their father broke colts for military service. They had farms at Sintaluta and Indian Head, but lost the land during the Depression and were forced into the city. Their father went from driving a tractor to driving a truck.
Dick Warwick was the baby in a brood with five sisters (Embyl, Isma, Jean, Wilda, Millie) and four brothers (Archie, Claude, Grant, Billy).
“It was tough times,” he said. “There was no money at all. But my parents worked hard and we never missed a meal.”
They lived across the street from a large field that the city flooded each winter. The boys learned to stickhandle with broken sticks scavenged from the local junior team, nailed together and covered in tape. Skates were shared among the boys and Dick can remember his mother spending 15 cents to buy him a second-hand pair.
“We played every sport there was to be played. It kept us out of trouble.”
Hockey also encouraged the lads in an exploration of the pugilistic arts. In 1941, Claude took the Dominion amateur featherweight title, overcoming a hard-hitting local favourite at a tournament in Vancouver.
Claude joined the navy as a boxing instructor that summer. He was pressed into service with the Regina Navy football team and scored his team's only touchdown against Winnipeg in the 1942 Western final.
He was stationed in Nova Scotia near the end of the Second World War when the bus in which he was a passenger was struck by a train near Sydney. He suffered a concussion, was taken to hospital in Montreal, and lingered for two weeks before dying four days before what was to have been his wedding day.
Then the oldest son, Archie, a flight lieutenant in the air force, had a nervous breakdown after crash landing while towing a glider. After recuperating, he had a long career as an engineer.
Meanwhile, Grant, who was nicknamed Nobby, was named the NHL's rookie of the year for scoring 16 goals with the New York Rangers during the 1941-42 season. Grant enjoyed eight seasons in the NHL. Billy joined him for two brief call-ups with the Rangers, although most of his career was spent in the minors.
Dick never made the NHL. In those days, there were more seats in the House of Commons than jobs in the top league. Still, there was a market for the Warwicks' hard-crashing, take-no-prisoners, win-at-all-costs style. In 1948, Dick turned down a chance to play professionally at Wembley. “They made a big offer,” he said. “I'd have been the dukes of dukes.” Instead, he wound up playing in Nanaimo, then moved on to Penticton in the beautiful Okanagan Valley.
The town, whose population was about 12,000 in the mid-1950s, was known for its peaches and its beaches. The senior amateur hockey club even took its nickname from three varieties of peaches grown in the bountiful valley – Vedette, Valiant and Veteran.
The Vees had more aspirations than talent in Dick's first season with the club. It was not until he lured his brothers to British Columbia – fans even passed the hat to raise $1,300 to gain Grant's release from Buffalo – that the team had enough scoring punch to challenge for the Dominion title.
Away from the ice, the brothers operated Warwick's Commodore Cafe (“Where sportsmen meet”) across the street from the post office. Dick liked to order a sirloin, or T-bone steak. (He was also partial to a pretty cashier named Pam, to whom he has been married for 53 years.) The restaurant was a popular gathering place for local sports fans.
In 1953-54, with Grant as the playing coach, the Vees won the Okanagan league. They then defeated the Nelson Maple Leafs for the B.C. championship and the flashy Winnipeg Maroons for the Western title, before upsetting the Sudbury Wolves for the Allan Cup as senior champions. The Vees were then selected to represent Canada at the world championships to be played in West Germany the following March.
The little town went crazy. A local singer recorded a song urging her team on to victory.
The Vees were placed in the unenviable position of having to reclaim Canada's reputation as a hockey power after the Soviets had knocked off a team from Toronto the previous year.
The Vees crushed the Americans 12-1 with Billy scoring six goals. In the game against Czechoslovakia, Billy Warwick twice tied the score for Canada before the Penticton team won, 5-3.
The Warwick brothers were ardent anti-Communists, and before the showdown against the Soviet Union, Grant told the players that if they lost they might as well move to China.
A few thousand Canadian soldiers stationed nearby attended the game at Krefeld, West Germany, which was broadcast by Foster Hewitt to a large radio audience back home.
“They were dirty buggers, I'll tell you,” Dick said of the Soviet players.
The Soviets relied on a scientific rather than a spontaneous style of puck movement.
“They had a certain pattern of coming out of their own end,” Dick said. “We adapted to it and then we took command.”
The Canadians won 5-0 with Billy scoring two goals and Ivan McLelland getting the shutout. (The goalie gave up just six goals in eight games.) After the game, he told Mr. Hewitt and his Canadian audience that victory over the Soviets felt better than winning the Stanley Cup.
The team returned home with a beautiful silver trophy. The brothers put it on display in their restaurant. It was supposed to be returned to competition, but Dick remembers Billy hated the idea of surrendering it.
“He said, ‘Hell, we worked hard for that trophy. We're keeping it.' ”A silver-plated replica was ordered and was sent to Europe the next year with the Kitchener-Waterloo Dutchmen.
The Warwicks kept their secret for years.
A year ago, there were four surviving siblings. Millie died in Edmonton last December. Wilda died in Winnipeg in July. Billy died in the Alberta capital last month. Now, there is only Dick left from his generation of Warwicks. He knows where the trophy is but he's not saying.
The Vees' triumph came seven months after the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver. Preceded by Percy Williams' two gold medals at the 1928 Summer Olympics and followed by the world hockey championship won by the Trail Smoke Eaters in 1961 and Nancy Greene's Olympic skiing medals seven years later, the Vees put the province on the world's sporting map, a status to be confirmed in 26½ months with the opening of the 2010 Winter Games.
Mr. Warwick is hoping he'll be invited. If so, he might have a piece of silverware to show off.
2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Special to The Globe and Mail
Nov. 28, 2007
VICTORIA
Dick Warwick buried a brother last month. He buried a sister in July and another sister a year ago next month.
He might say he was worried about grief becoming a habit if only he had more siblings to lose.
Nine of 10 Warwick children of a great sporting family are gone.
“I'm the only one left,” Dick, 79, said at his home in the Saanichton neighbourhood, near Victoria. The thought gave him pause. “You know, five of us are in the hall of fame in Saskatchewan.”
Claude was a boxer. Millie played baseball professionally in the United States in a circuit made famous by the Hollywood movie A League of Their Own. Grant and Billy were tough forwards in the National Hockey League.
Dick was never in the NHL, but he lured his brothers to the Okanagan Valley in the 1950s, where they operated a popular restaurant and helped transform a local hockey team from a squad of amateurs into world beaters.
They learned their toughness on the Saskatchewan prairie. Their parents, who hailed from Quebec's Eastern Townships, travelled west after the Great War, during which their father broke colts for military service. They had farms at Sintaluta and Indian Head, but lost the land during the Depression and were forced into the city. Their father went from driving a tractor to driving a truck.
Dick Warwick was the baby in a brood with five sisters (Embyl, Isma, Jean, Wilda, Millie) and four brothers (Archie, Claude, Grant, Billy).
“It was tough times,” he said. “There was no money at all. But my parents worked hard and we never missed a meal.”
They lived across the street from a large field that the city flooded each winter. The boys learned to stickhandle with broken sticks scavenged from the local junior team, nailed together and covered in tape. Skates were shared among the boys and Dick can remember his mother spending 15 cents to buy him a second-hand pair.
“We played every sport there was to be played. It kept us out of trouble.”
Hockey also encouraged the lads in an exploration of the pugilistic arts. In 1941, Claude took the Dominion amateur featherweight title, overcoming a hard-hitting local favourite at a tournament in Vancouver.
Claude joined the navy as a boxing instructor that summer. He was pressed into service with the Regina Navy football team and scored his team's only touchdown against Winnipeg in the 1942 Western final.
He was stationed in Nova Scotia near the end of the Second World War when the bus in which he was a passenger was struck by a train near Sydney. He suffered a concussion, was taken to hospital in Montreal, and lingered for two weeks before dying four days before what was to have been his wedding day.
Then the oldest son, Archie, a flight lieutenant in the air force, had a nervous breakdown after crash landing while towing a glider. After recuperating, he had a long career as an engineer.
Meanwhile, Grant, who was nicknamed Nobby, was named the NHL's rookie of the year for scoring 16 goals with the New York Rangers during the 1941-42 season. Grant enjoyed eight seasons in the NHL. Billy joined him for two brief call-ups with the Rangers, although most of his career was spent in the minors.
Dick never made the NHL. In those days, there were more seats in the House of Commons than jobs in the top league. Still, there was a market for the Warwicks' hard-crashing, take-no-prisoners, win-at-all-costs style. In 1948, Dick turned down a chance to play professionally at Wembley. “They made a big offer,” he said. “I'd have been the dukes of dukes.” Instead, he wound up playing in Nanaimo, then moved on to Penticton in the beautiful Okanagan Valley.
The town, whose population was about 12,000 in the mid-1950s, was known for its peaches and its beaches. The senior amateur hockey club even took its nickname from three varieties of peaches grown in the bountiful valley – Vedette, Valiant and Veteran.
The Vees had more aspirations than talent in Dick's first season with the club. It was not until he lured his brothers to British Columbia – fans even passed the hat to raise $1,300 to gain Grant's release from Buffalo – that the team had enough scoring punch to challenge for the Dominion title.
Away from the ice, the brothers operated Warwick's Commodore Cafe (“Where sportsmen meet”) across the street from the post office. Dick liked to order a sirloin, or T-bone steak. (He was also partial to a pretty cashier named Pam, to whom he has been married for 53 years.) The restaurant was a popular gathering place for local sports fans.
In 1953-54, with Grant as the playing coach, the Vees won the Okanagan league. They then defeated the Nelson Maple Leafs for the B.C. championship and the flashy Winnipeg Maroons for the Western title, before upsetting the Sudbury Wolves for the Allan Cup as senior champions. The Vees were then selected to represent Canada at the world championships to be played in West Germany the following March.
The little town went crazy. A local singer recorded a song urging her team on to victory.
The Vees were placed in the unenviable position of having to reclaim Canada's reputation as a hockey power after the Soviets had knocked off a team from Toronto the previous year.
The Vees crushed the Americans 12-1 with Billy scoring six goals. In the game against Czechoslovakia, Billy Warwick twice tied the score for Canada before the Penticton team won, 5-3.
The Warwick brothers were ardent anti-Communists, and before the showdown against the Soviet Union, Grant told the players that if they lost they might as well move to China.
A few thousand Canadian soldiers stationed nearby attended the game at Krefeld, West Germany, which was broadcast by Foster Hewitt to a large radio audience back home.
“They were dirty buggers, I'll tell you,” Dick said of the Soviet players.
The Soviets relied on a scientific rather than a spontaneous style of puck movement.
“They had a certain pattern of coming out of their own end,” Dick said. “We adapted to it and then we took command.”
The Canadians won 5-0 with Billy scoring two goals and Ivan McLelland getting the shutout. (The goalie gave up just six goals in eight games.) After the game, he told Mr. Hewitt and his Canadian audience that victory over the Soviets felt better than winning the Stanley Cup.
The team returned home with a beautiful silver trophy. The brothers put it on display in their restaurant. It was supposed to be returned to competition, but Dick remembers Billy hated the idea of surrendering it.
“He said, ‘Hell, we worked hard for that trophy. We're keeping it.' ”A silver-plated replica was ordered and was sent to Europe the next year with the Kitchener-Waterloo Dutchmen.
The Warwicks kept their secret for years.
A year ago, there were four surviving siblings. Millie died in Edmonton last December. Wilda died in Winnipeg in July. Billy died in the Alberta capital last month. Now, there is only Dick left from his generation of Warwicks. He knows where the trophy is but he's not saying.
The Vees' triumph came seven months after the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver. Preceded by Percy Williams' two gold medals at the 1928 Summer Olympics and followed by the world hockey championship won by the Trail Smoke Eaters in 1961 and Nancy Greene's Olympic skiing medals seven years later, the Vees put the province on the world's sporting map, a status to be confirmed in 26½ months with the opening of the 2010 Winter Games.
Mr. Warwick is hoping he'll be invited. If so, he might have a piece of silverware to show off.
2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Trying to save the world, one idea at a time
By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
Nov. 21, 2007
VICTORIA
Lawyers in black suits and matching ties do battle with stick-wielding policemen on the streets of Lahore, Pakistan.
In Afghanistan, critics assail Hamid Karzai's meddling in anointing a successor as leader of the Alokozai, one of the Pashtun tribes supporting the president.
On the lawless border between the two lands, the remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda plot their latest offences.
Half a world away, in a non-descript office in an ordinary building at the University of Victoria, a man with a common name but an uncommon résumé monitors developments in those lands of strife and battle.
All in a day's work for Gordon Smith.
Few on campus know his work, fewer still in the surrounding city are aware of his reputation. Yet, he is engaged on a global level on two high-profile files – security in Afghanistan, and the expansion of the G-8.
The former diplomat and high-level federal bureaucrat is the executive director of the Centre for Global Studies, a clearing house of sorts for think tanks.
“I feel like I'm part of some kind of global conspiracy to make the world a better place,” he said. He thought a moment. “Not much of a conspiracy.”
At 66, he is wrestling with some of the great questions of our age.
More than a half-century has passed since an unforgettable childhood incident in East Berlin sparked a lifelong interest in world peace.
He weighs his words before speaking, reflecting both the caution and the precision of one who had a long career as a diplomat and a bureaucrat. In formal portraits, his long face and pensive demeanour make him look as world-weary as the cartoon character Droopy Dog. The world is a heavy thing to carry on your shoulders.
After earning a doctorate in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he embarked on a career in the Canadian civil service. His titles included a blizzard of secretaryships and senior-adviser positions and stints as deputy undersecretary of this and that. He enjoyed a steady rise and promotions to several key posts. A deputy minister at foreign affairs. Ambassador to NATO. Secretary to the cabinet for federal-provincial relations (after the collapse of the Meech Lake accord). Ambassador to the European Community.
After so long a career as a mandarin, he no longer gets to form policy, nor is his opinion sought by politicians as it once was. He has to content himself by contributing to the debate.
“Nobody from government, from the political or public service level, has ever called me, or asked me for my advice or views on anything,” he said.
“You do it because you hope to stir up a more informed discussion on these things. I think that's happening.”
Earlier this year, he prepared a study titled Canada in Afghanistan: Is It Working? In it, he argued that NATO might have to negotiate with elements of the Taliban. He also suggested a marketing board should be established to purchase the poppy crop for medicinal purposes.
As for Afghanistan, “we wear it.”
He said Canada might have unwittingly engaged in a war in Afghanistan, but having done so – and having suffered military losses, and having killed Afghan civilians – the country cannot now simply set an arbitrary date for departure.
“You just can't walk away from it, even if we got in there not knowing what we were doing. We're there.”
He rejected as unrealistic calls for a pullout, or a date for withdrawal, or the replacement of the Canadian military in hard-fought Kandahar by another NATO ally.
“The political debate in this country is to me – I was going to say the word pathetic, but that's too strong – is superficial.”
His other portfolio is less emotional. He has been hard at work making the case for the G-8 group of nations to expand. The addition of China, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa may some day lead to a G-13.
Mr. Smith was born into a family in which public service was seen as a duty. His maternal grandfather, Gordon W. Scott, a chartered accountant from Montreal, had been provincial treasurer in the Quebec government. After the outbreak of the Second World War, he was pressed into service by Munitions Minister C. D. Howe as a dollar-a-year adviser.
Early in the war, he joined Mr. Howe and industrialist E. P. Taylor aboard the Western Prince, which sailed from New York to Britain with a cargo of aircraft for the Royal Air Force. The three men were travelling to promote the sale of Canadian munitions to their wartime ally. About 600 kilometres west of landfall, the liner was struck by a torpedo fired by a German U-boat. The three all managed to get into lifeboats, but the one carrying Mr. Scott capsized and he was lost at sea.
A grandson today recites the date – Dec. 16, 1940 – as though it happened much less than 67 years ago. Mr. Smith's father was absent for much of his childhood, spending four years in military service.
When the boy was aged 12, his family toured Europe. He asked to visit East Berlin, which was under Communist control. The Berlin Wall had not yet been built, nor had the city recovered from the desperate battle that had levelled it in 1945.
“The rubble was all there. People were living in the basement of bombed-out buildings.”
One stop on their tour included a cemetery in which thousands of Soviet troops had been buried. A keen photographer, young Gordon took out his Leica camera to snap a shot of a bust of Stalin.
As he did so, a worker dressed in blue coveralls stepped forward. He addressed the boy in English.
“Take a picture of that bastard?”
The worker spat on the ground.
Soldiers who had been standing guard at the graveyard came running as if to arrest the man.
“Our guide swooped me up, threw me in the car, and off we went back through Checkpoint Charlie,” he said.
From that day on, he said, issues of war and peace have never been far from his mind.
A boy whose curiosity unwittingly caused an incident in which the outcome for the protester will remain forever unknown has spent the rest of his life trying to solve, rather than provoke, conflict.
Special to The Globe and Mail
Nov. 21, 2007
VICTORIA
Lawyers in black suits and matching ties do battle with stick-wielding policemen on the streets of Lahore, Pakistan.
In Afghanistan, critics assail Hamid Karzai's meddling in anointing a successor as leader of the Alokozai, one of the Pashtun tribes supporting the president.
On the lawless border between the two lands, the remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda plot their latest offences.
Half a world away, in a non-descript office in an ordinary building at the University of Victoria, a man with a common name but an uncommon résumé monitors developments in those lands of strife and battle.
All in a day's work for Gordon Smith.
Few on campus know his work, fewer still in the surrounding city are aware of his reputation. Yet, he is engaged on a global level on two high-profile files – security in Afghanistan, and the expansion of the G-8.
The former diplomat and high-level federal bureaucrat is the executive director of the Centre for Global Studies, a clearing house of sorts for think tanks.
“I feel like I'm part of some kind of global conspiracy to make the world a better place,” he said. He thought a moment. “Not much of a conspiracy.”
At 66, he is wrestling with some of the great questions of our age.
More than a half-century has passed since an unforgettable childhood incident in East Berlin sparked a lifelong interest in world peace.
He weighs his words before speaking, reflecting both the caution and the precision of one who had a long career as a diplomat and a bureaucrat. In formal portraits, his long face and pensive demeanour make him look as world-weary as the cartoon character Droopy Dog. The world is a heavy thing to carry on your shoulders.
After earning a doctorate in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he embarked on a career in the Canadian civil service. His titles included a blizzard of secretaryships and senior-adviser positions and stints as deputy undersecretary of this and that. He enjoyed a steady rise and promotions to several key posts. A deputy minister at foreign affairs. Ambassador to NATO. Secretary to the cabinet for federal-provincial relations (after the collapse of the Meech Lake accord). Ambassador to the European Community.
After so long a career as a mandarin, he no longer gets to form policy, nor is his opinion sought by politicians as it once was. He has to content himself by contributing to the debate.
“Nobody from government, from the political or public service level, has ever called me, or asked me for my advice or views on anything,” he said.
“You do it because you hope to stir up a more informed discussion on these things. I think that's happening.”
Earlier this year, he prepared a study titled Canada in Afghanistan: Is It Working? In it, he argued that NATO might have to negotiate with elements of the Taliban. He also suggested a marketing board should be established to purchase the poppy crop for medicinal purposes.
As for Afghanistan, “we wear it.”
He said Canada might have unwittingly engaged in a war in Afghanistan, but having done so – and having suffered military losses, and having killed Afghan civilians – the country cannot now simply set an arbitrary date for departure.
“You just can't walk away from it, even if we got in there not knowing what we were doing. We're there.”
He rejected as unrealistic calls for a pullout, or a date for withdrawal, or the replacement of the Canadian military in hard-fought Kandahar by another NATO ally.
“The political debate in this country is to me – I was going to say the word pathetic, but that's too strong – is superficial.”
His other portfolio is less emotional. He has been hard at work making the case for the G-8 group of nations to expand. The addition of China, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa may some day lead to a G-13.
Mr. Smith was born into a family in which public service was seen as a duty. His maternal grandfather, Gordon W. Scott, a chartered accountant from Montreal, had been provincial treasurer in the Quebec government. After the outbreak of the Second World War, he was pressed into service by Munitions Minister C. D. Howe as a dollar-a-year adviser.
Early in the war, he joined Mr. Howe and industrialist E. P. Taylor aboard the Western Prince, which sailed from New York to Britain with a cargo of aircraft for the Royal Air Force. The three men were travelling to promote the sale of Canadian munitions to their wartime ally. About 600 kilometres west of landfall, the liner was struck by a torpedo fired by a German U-boat. The three all managed to get into lifeboats, but the one carrying Mr. Scott capsized and he was lost at sea.
A grandson today recites the date – Dec. 16, 1940 – as though it happened much less than 67 years ago. Mr. Smith's father was absent for much of his childhood, spending four years in military service.
When the boy was aged 12, his family toured Europe. He asked to visit East Berlin, which was under Communist control. The Berlin Wall had not yet been built, nor had the city recovered from the desperate battle that had levelled it in 1945.
“The rubble was all there. People were living in the basement of bombed-out buildings.”
One stop on their tour included a cemetery in which thousands of Soviet troops had been buried. A keen photographer, young Gordon took out his Leica camera to snap a shot of a bust of Stalin.
As he did so, a worker dressed in blue coveralls stepped forward. He addressed the boy in English.
“Take a picture of that bastard?”
The worker spat on the ground.
Soldiers who had been standing guard at the graveyard came running as if to arrest the man.
“Our guide swooped me up, threw me in the car, and off we went back through Checkpoint Charlie,” he said.
From that day on, he said, issues of war and peace have never been far from his mind.
A boy whose curiosity unwittingly caused an incident in which the outcome for the protester will remain forever unknown has spent the rest of his life trying to solve, rather than provoke, conflict.
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