While the U.S. is making history, here it's being brought back to life

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
January 21, 2009


VICTORIA

History is on a lot of minds these days, what with all the big events happening south of the border.

What many of us do not realize is how close this land came to being annexed by our neighbours.

Simon Sobolewski knows. He haunts archives in search of the letters and diary entries that capture life back when this city was a fort on what was still known as Vancouver's Island and the mainland was called New Caledonia.

He belongs to the Royal Engineers Living History Group. Born in the 20th century, he re-enacts 19th-century events for 21st-century audiences.

“We try to do the personal history,” he said. “The regular Joe, the private, the officer, the Hudson Bay official, the civilian.”

On the weekend, he ceased being a 46-year-old restaurateur, instead adopting the dress, mannerisms and knowledge of Sapper Kennedy, a carpenter from Galway, so far disgruntled by his stint with the Royal Engineers in a far-off land.

He wore thick wool socks, a wool scarlet tunic and a greatcoat so heavy it was “like wearing two great grey blankets.” He carried a mess kit, a bayonet and an ammunition pack. On his back was a wood-and-canvas knapsack.

Detail is important to the re-enactors. The sapper proudly acknowledged the wearing of what he described as “period underwear” – not that the public was to know. The authenticity of itchy undergarments can only help keep a middle-aged man in character as a sapper.

On the 150th anniversary of what is remembered as McGowan's War, Mr. Sobolewski marched up the Fraser Canyon to Yale. In the winter of 1859, Colonel Richard Moody led a small troupe of Royal Engineers along the same route to keep peace in the goldfields.

The chief trouble maker was an American prospector named Edward (Ned) McGowan, a shady character who had been implicated in bank robbery (while police superintendent in Philadelphia) and acquitted of a murder charge (while a judge in California). A petty dispute in the Fraser goldfields had tragicomic overtones, as a McGowan challenge to legal authority threatened to lead to an insurrection and possible annexation. About 30,000 Americans had spread along these British lands. A handful of Royal Engineers were dispatched by Governor James Douglas to enforce the law and calm the situation.

At a pivotal point, the engineers were challenged by an American sentry. Shots rang out.

“The Royal Engineers heard the shots, but didn't see the bullets,” Mr. Sobolewski said. “They chose not to fire back.”

Had they done so, argues the author Donald Hauka, the British Crown was likely to lose a colony it could only barely police, let alone defend.

Mr. Hauka wrote a well-received account of the incident in McGowan's War (New Star, 2003). He took part in the weekend re-enactment by portraying Matthew Baillie Begbie, remembered today as the Hanging Judge, though he had no need of the noose in this event.

“Now, as we all know, Begbie was about 6 foot 4, straight as a flagpole and a proper, polished barrister,” noted Mr. Hauka, who can claim none of those attributes, “so I am an obvious physical choice for the role.”

In the end, McGowan's War was a skirmish from which the only casualties were to reputations. It is a war that inspired more books than it caused harm.

Members of the public are encouraged to speak with the re-enactors, who remain in character as they engage in conversations, allowing their possessions to be held.

This summer, the Royal Engineers Living History Group will take part in a re-enactment of the Pig War on San Juan Island to mark the sesquicentennial of an incident in which the lone casualty is forever remembered in the naming of the war.

The Royal Engineers have been portrayed as red-coated paragons of Victorian virtue, impeccably dressed, reserved and heroic, Mr. Sobolewski said.

“We're constantly being confronted by the myth,” he said. “The reality is way more interesting.”

Research presents a far different image. The men in the field refused to wear dress uniforms and were instead issued rubber boots and floppy hats. They looked like slobs. Their officers backstabbed each other to curry favour from superiors. Some of the men even deserted.

Mr. Sobolewski knows the sapper he portrays will flee the colony in 1860, though he does not yet let on to the public his future behaviour. As it is now, he grumbles plenty about his lot.

History comes alive in story. Here are two.

Mr. Hauka is a former newspaperman for the tabloid Province. His colleague, the resourceful crime reporter Salim Jiwa, became the model for Hakeem Jinnah, a resourceful crime reporter featured in a detective novel and two CBC movies.

Mr. Sobolewski was a history major in university who changed disciplines because he found his studies to be too mind-numbingly boring. He wound up with two filmmaking degrees. His acting credits include a role in Hawkeye.

Mr. Sobolewski was born in Havana in 1962. He is a revolutionary love child. His father, Sigmund, born a Polish Catholic, became a Canadian citizen after surviving nearly five years at Auschwitz, where the Nazis marked him as prisoner No. 88. A socialist but not a Stalinist, he could not return to his Communist-occupied homeland after the war. Living in Toronto at the time of Cuban revolution, he heeded a call for international supporters to come to the Caribbean island. Just 10 days after arriving, he married a local woman named Ramona. The October missile crisis shortly after Simon's birth persuaded the couple to return to Canada.

The elder Sobolewski's story has been told in a book written by a rabbi (Prisoner 88: The Man in Stripes by Roy Tanenbaum) and in a documentary film by David Paperny.

The younger Sobolewski's story, as the Canadian-reared son of a Polish-Cuban marriage, is still being written. He launched a combined art gallery and restaurant (Havana) and a Vancouver video store (Celluloid Drugstore), in which clerks wore white laboratory coats. He is now business manager of Red Fish Blue Fish seafood restaurant in a converted shipping crate on the Victoria waterfront, where he sometimes wears period costume while dispensing fish and chips.

2009 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Meet 'The Man Who Refused to Die'

Fran and Bob Gauchie photographed by Deddeda Stemler

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
January 14, 2009


VICTORIA

Bob Gauchie pilots his wheelchair along the pathway of a hospital garden, where a thermometer records the noontime temperature as a tolerable eight degrees.

The instrument can go as low as -50, a temperature unknown to the city, but not to Mr. Gauchie.

“I don't suffer from the cold,” he said, “but I hate snow.”

Once, he endured a trial beyond the experience of any surviving human, a test of will so dreadful that people called him The Man Who Refused to Die.

His survival was described as a wonder and his story appeared on the front pages of newspapers across Canada and around the world. But even the miraculous comes with a price.

“I'm starting to get paid back for it now,” he said yesterday between sips of hot coffee.

The former bush pilot has arthritis and diabetes, and can find it difficult to take a deep breath. He is no longer able to walk, partly due to the loss of toes on both feet.

A handsome man whose wispy hair falls across his forehead, he wears a brush mustache and a forearm tattoo. He celebrated his 81st birthday last month, an accomplishment for someone left for dead in the Far North some 42 winters ago.

Born in Edmonton and raised in Barrhead, Alta., he joined the military at age 17 as war raged overseas. He married a pretty young woman from Saint John, and took a job as a truck driver. It was his dream to fly, however, so he re-enlisted with the Royal Canadian Air Force, becoming a pilot while based at Cold Lake, Alta. He left military service to become a commercial bush pilot with Northern Mountain Airways.

He fought fires, hauled freight, delivered prospectors to isolated claims.

Flying in the north in winter is a test unlike any other. Sometimes, firepots were needed to warm an engine. Mr. Gauchie remembers sending passengers home for warmer clothing, because heaters were not to warm people but to keep frost off the interior of windshields.

“Winter flying is really, really tough,” he said. “And cold.”

On Feb 2, 1967, on a solo return flight from Cambridge Bay, NWT, Mr. Gauchie became lost in a whiteout. His compass failed. With fuel running low, he decided to land his single-engine, propeller-driven Beaver. He transmitted a radio message, receiving a faint acknowledgment.

He then put the Beaver down on a frozen lake, finding to his horror that both emergency beacons were broken. The radio failed on all frequencies.

He took inventory. He had a rifle, a flare gun, some matches, a ballpoint pen and an emergency kit with some dried food. He also had some white fox furs and about 18 kilograms (40 pounds) of arctic char that he was bringing home to Fort Smith, NWT, for his wife.

There was not much to do but await rescue.

He slept fitfully in a parka and mukluks wrapped in several sleeping bags.

A day passed. Then another.

The first week ended with him still isolated and alone.

A second week passed.

On Feb. 18, he noted his youngest daughter's 13th birthday in his log book.

The official search was called off. Back home, friends and family raised money for a private search. It was called off after a third week.

On the 25th day, Mr. Gauchie heard a plane.

“I fired a flare,” he said. “He just carried on.”

A fourth week passed.

He heard and saw aircraft. He had even fired a flare at a plane that seemed to fly directly overhead.

His wife, Fran Gauchie, talked to a priest, but resisted holding a funeral.

“I didn't have a service for him at church,” she said. “I just knew he'd come back.”

Mr. Gauchie bade farewell to his wife and three daughters in the diary, listing the family's assets.

A fifth week passed. And a sixth.

His only company were wolves who seemed not to fear him. He shot once at a wolf, missing though the animal was a few feet away. He instantly regretted the act, feeling the creature shared with him the desire to survive in so inhospitable a place.

A seventh week passed.

He had eaten so much raw, frozen char he could barely stand the thought of placing another piece in his mouth. On some days, he preferred not to eat.

The emergency rations were exhausted. One night, his meal consisted of licking the inside of an instant onion soup bag.

An eighth week passed.

As the sun set on April 1, another aircraft flew overhead. The setting sun reflected off the windshield of the Beaver. Mr. Gauchie fired off two flares. The plane returned.

The two pilots overhead would look down on the sight of a thin, hairy man standing with a suitcase in hand, looking like a man waiting for a bus.

“Have you got room for a passenger?”

Those were the first words he had spoken to another human in 58 days.

In Fort Smith, a fellow ran into the Legion Hall with news of Mr. Gauchie's rescue. He was hooted down by disbelieving veterans.

The family reunited at his hospital bedside, where the youngest daughter commented on the stench from his five rotten, frostbitten toes. They were amputated. He had been prepared to chop them off with an ax himself to save his life.

After several months of recovery and recuperation, Mr. Gauchie launched Buffalo Airways, which he later sold to one of his pilots. He learned to fly helicopters.

His home today is a room in the tidy Mount St. Mary Hospital in downtown Victoria. It is more spacious than the cockpit that once served as his home for two months.

To this day, he does not eat fish.

2009 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Cold hearts keeping hot water bottles from seniors

Steve and Ann Thomson photographed by Deddeda Stemler.

By Tom Hawthorn

Special to The Globe and Mail
January 7, 2009


VICTORIA

At first, the problem seemed so easy to solve it was a wonder no one had thought of it before.

The problem: The old folks in a hamlet outside of Yambol in Bulgaria were freezing.

Ann Thomson, 50, of Victoria, learned of the plight of the elders from friends working at a real estate office in the southeast of the Black Sea nation.

She knew from her visits the suffering peasants lived in huts and hovels lacking running water. Electricity remained a fantasy. But most had small wood-burning stoves atop which water fetched from a well could be boiled.

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If you had hot water, Ms. Thomson reasoned, you could stay warm by cuddling a hot- water bottle.

In North America, folks use space heaters, or electric blankets, or heating pads warmed by microwave ovens. An object filled with warmed water seems a hopeless relic of a previous epoch.

Ms. Thomson, the proprietor of a craft shop, figured a brief word in the store's weekly newsletter might persuade a few customers to donate their underused hot- water bottles.

The bottles arrived in dribs and drabs. She expected to gather perhaps a dozen. She recognized "hot water bottles for Bulgaria" is less than an inspiring charity slogan.

In time, a dozen arrived. A second dozen soon piled up. Then, a third.

The final total was eight dozen plus five. That's 101 bottles, not as cute as the Dalmatian puppies of the Disney cartoon, but far more practical.

The donations were neatly packed into three boxes. It was time to send them to Europe. That's when the troubles began.

The quoted shipping costs were as high as $1,600, which is far more than the value of 101 second-hand rubber Thermoses.

She eventually got an acceptable $500 quote from Air Canada Cargo. The clerk also offered a crash course in the intricacies of overseas shipments. To enter Bulgaria, Ms. Thomson needs only a Canadian passport. However, her hot water bottles required a sheaf of documentation, generating enough paperwork to warm even the cold heart of a bureaucrat.

At this point, Ms. Thomson decided to call her local member of Parliament for assistance. She met with Denise Savoie to explain the circumstances, feeling only mildly foolish since the NDP MP was eager to return to Ottawa during the constitutional crisis.

In turn, the MP met with Bulgarian embassy officials in the capital.

After overcoming initial confusion over the properties of the mysterious hot water bottle, apparently an innovation unknown in the homeland, it was agreed the packages could be sent to Bulgaria as charitable donations.

Last month, the boxes began the long journey.

They arrived safely in Sofia at 9:15 p.m. on Dec. 17.

Where a customs agent demanded duty payments.

Officials also began charging $10 a day storage for the boxes.

The Balkan state is balking at releasing the shipment.

If money is not paid by Friday, she has been told, the boxes will be seized.

She has put calls out to the embassy in Ottawa and to her MP in Victoria.

"I thought Canada was bad when it came to bureaucracy," Ms. Thomson said, "but Bulgaria wrote the textbook."

"We're not trying to cheat the Bulgarian government out of justifiable taxes. If I was trying to ship prescription medicines, or expensive sporting goods, I could see their concern about how they could end up in the wrong hands."

Until four years ago, after learning her father's birthplace on his death, she didn't know Bulgaria from Burundi. "I had to look it up in an atlas," she admits. "I didn't know where it was." The father she thought was German was in fact born as a Kalojanoff, fleeing the Communist regime in 1951. Fearing suspicion for having been born in what was by then a faithful satellite of the Soviet Union, he kept from his family his origins.

Intrigued, Ms. Thomson travelled to Bulgaria, where she found a people warm in spirit if poor in possessions. The cities reminded her of the Victoria of her childhood, a small-town idyll where folks kept chickens in their backyard.

Let's take a moment to reflect on the humble hot water bottle. Some credit the modern object, a precursor to the Thermos flask, to the Croatian inventor Slavoljub Eduard Penkala, who registered a patent in 1903. He went on to develop the world's first mechanical pencil, as well as an insecticide and a flying machine he named for a butterfly.

The hot water bottle was so simple in design it clearly did not exhaust his wellspring of ideas.

For Ms. Thomson, sending an ordinary household item from Canada to Bulgaria seemed a modest contribution to improving relations between nations.

"We're not building an orphanage, or something magnificent," she said.

"We were just trying to get a few old people warm."

Modest thought it may be, it remains a worthy goal. The forecast for Yambol today promised a nippy low of -7.

She already has a resolution for 2010.

The next time Ms. Thomson gathers donations for Bulgaria she will pack them up in a suitcase, book a flight to Europe and deliver them in person.

Syd Thomson, soldier (1914-2008)

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
January 1, 2009


VICTORIA

The Battle of Ortona would be known over the years by other names — Italy’s Stalingrad, or the Bloody Christmas.

In December, 1943, Canadian troops faced the unenviable task of evicting battle-hardened German soldiers from the Adriatic port.

The battle reduced the ancient city to rubble, as warriors fought street by street, house by house, room by room. It was in this ferocious hand-to-hand combat that the Canadians developed a technique called mouse-holing in which they attacked an adjacent house by blowing a hole in shared walls.

The costs were heavy for the Loyal Edmonton Regiment and the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada, the latter commanded by Sydney W. Thomson.

The dawning of Christmas morning brought no peace, nor any respite from the fighting.

As men continued to do battle, Mr. Thomson and an imaginative quartermaster prepared a Christmas dinner so memorable the survivors gathered every year after the war to mark the meal.

He retired from the military as a brigadier general with medals to his name and a vicious scar in one leg, which he would show to his children at their request if they were on good behaviour.

Sydney Wilford Thomson was born in Salmon Arm in British Columbia’s Shuswap to Cyril and Eva (nee Bromham) Thomson. His Scottish-born father co-owned a garage and later became a dealer of General Motors cars and trucks. Cyril Thomson was elected mayor of the municipality in 1928, serving in the post for 14 years.

Syd Thomson dropped out of school in Grade 10 to earn money for the family as the ravages of the Depression began to be felt. He picked apples in the summer, worked in a grocery store, unloaded and delivered the contents of a freight car of coal, which he would always describe as the most arduous job of his life.

In the 1930s, he joined the local company of the Rocky Mountain Rangers, needing his father’s consent as he was underage. He trained as a signaler, and was a lieutenant in the company when Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Britain declared war two days later. On Sept. 9, Mr. Thomson received orders to mobilize the company. Canada declared war the following day.

He was ordered overseas in 1940, by which time he had transferred to the Seaforth Highlanders, arriving at the height of the Battle of Britain. He served as a platoon commander under Major Cecil Merritt (obituary, July 15, 2000), the Vancouver officer who would win a Victoria Cross for his bravery at Dieppe.

While stationed in the south of England, officers were invited to take tea at Streat Place, an estate that boasted a Jacobean manor house. The teetotal hospitality not being appreciated by the officers, they drew straws to determine attendance. Mr. Thomson picked a short straw. As it turned out, Mr. Thomson met a young woman who would become his wife after the end of the war. He would later offer detailed descriptions of his first glimpse of the host’s 18-year-old daughter, Catriona Bromley-Martin, who wore a blue dress while standing against a magnificent fireplace.

Had the officers more fully appreciated the deprivations to be faced in the coming months of war they might not have been so reluctant to take part in the tea.

In June, 1943, the Seaforth Highlanders set sail for the Mediterranean aboard the Circassia. They joined in the invasion of the island of Sicily the following month, the beginning of a long and bloody Italian campaign. By now a captain, Mr. Thomson served as a company commander.

Three days after the invasion, the company stumbled across a makeshift road block. Italian soldiers opened fire, shooting the captain through the thigh of his right leg. The wound was treated. The medical officer gave the commander an injection of painkillers, after which he was placed in the manger of a barn, his sidearm removed by comrades for safekeeping.

He awoke to find he was sharing the manger with two peasants carrying pitchforks. He reached for his gun only to discover he was unarmed, according to the official regimental history by Reginald Roy. To his relief, the farmers sought only hay for their oxen.

Sent to Sousse, Tunisia, to recuperate, he was treated with the experimental wonder drug penicillin.

Mr. Thomson was soon back in the field. In October, he led his men in an advance across a rocky knoll near a heavily-defended hill. A company slipped across without incident, but the enemy pinned Mr. Thomson’s soldiers with artillery, mortar and machine-gun fire. A smokescreen failed to offer cover and four enemy tanks appeared on the right flank. The battalion had yet to face such intense enemy fire.

Mr. Thomson, by now an acting major, led his men in an assault that called for an advance across an open, muddy field as long as 10 football fields. The Seaforths charged uphill while facing the afternoon sun to capture Hill 1007 (Monte San Marco). Their commander was awarded the Military Cross for his “cool and skillful leadership” that “was an inspiration to his men throughout.”

The Seaforths continued the slow fight northward. Their war took a different turn at Ortona, as the cramped port offered little room to maneuvre. Crackerjack German paratroopers defended the ancient town, building roadblocks with engineers to force the attacking Canadians into the few open squares, which were ringed by machine-gun nests to create a killing ground.

Battling in close quarters, the Edmontons and Seaforths fought a slow, bloody battle in the waning days of 1943. On the morning of Christmas Eve, the Germans launched a dangerous counterattack, which, at such close quarters, eliminated the use not only of the Canadians’ artillery but even mortars.

The regimental history offers a crisp description of events that day.

“The threat was such that A/Lt-Col. (acting lieutenant-colonel) Thomson made his way to the company positions and, although constantly exposed to sniper, machine-gun and mortar fire, remained with the forward troops, directing and co-ordinating the defence, and showing a cheerfulness and coolness under fire which did much for the men beating off the attack,” Mr. Roy wrote in his 1969 history, “The Seaforth Highlanders of Canada, 1919-1965.”

“To see the commanding officer of the battalion at such a time somehow gave confidence to the private soldier, and Thomson’s unruffled calm and big smile acted like a tonic.”

The Canadians held their positions before returning to the dangerous task of claiming streets one house at a time. Mr. Thomson would be awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his action in the battle.

Christmas Day dawned, promising nothing more than another full day of stiff fighting. However, Capt. D.B. Cameron, an enterprising quartermaster, scrounged linen, candles and chinaware from the ruined homes of Ortona on which to serve a holiday meal. Tables were arranged in rows behind the thick walls of the church of Santa Maria di Costantinopoli. The companies ate in relays. The pipe major played his pipes and a signals officer played the churchs harmonium, even as shells whistled and exploded outside. The padre led volunteers in singing “Silent Night,” as well as jauntier carols.

“Soup, roast pork, vegetables and Christmas pudding, along with a bottle of beer for each of the tattered, scruffy, war-weary soldiers was served,” Mr. Thomson recalled many years later. The menu also included cauliflower, apple sauce, mashed potatoes with gravy, and even mince pie.

Dirty plates were stacked on the altar, while a side altar was covered by boxes of fruit and canned food.

“Between December 20 and the 28th we lost 42 killed and 78 wounded,” Mr. Thomson said. “Christmas in Ortona — the meal — yes. But the spirit of the occasion, the look on the faces of those exhausted, gutsy men on entering the church is with me today and will live forever.”

After taking part in the fight to break the Gothic Line in 1944, Mr. Thomson returned to England as an acting colonel to command the Canadian Infantry Training Unit at Aldershot. He reverted to lieutenant colonel to take command of the Black Watch in the Netherlands, where he was mentioned in despatches.

After the war, he returned to the Shuswap, where he went into business with his friend Big Jim Stone (obituary, Dec. 27, 2005), a much decorated Seaforths officer. The men built a resort at Salmon Arm named Sandy Point.

Mr. Thomson followed his father by running a General Motors dealership. He also owned an interest in the local bowling alley.

In 1950, Mr. Thomson rejoined the Canadian army, serving with the United Nations Observers Group in Pakistan. He spent months wandering the disputed Himalayan border region, covering the valleys by jeep and the foothills by mule and pony.

“These two armies, Indian and Pakistan, under tough physical conditions, have been facing one another for five long years,” he wrote to Mr. Stone, who, in turn, would go on to distinguished service in the Korean War. “Daily they sharpen their knives, clean their weapons and scowl across the line.”

On his return to Canada, Mr. Thomson became an executive with Hiram Walker & Sons, rising through the distillery’s ranks until named European sales manager in 1964. While in London, he became a director of the United Rum Merchants as well as a trustee of a fund for Canadian veterans.

He returned to Canada on his retirement in 1977, building his own home north of Victoria, from which he sailed to explore the nearby Gulf Islands. He also built greenhouses, even coaxing tobacco plants and tropical fruits from Vancouver Island’s temperate climate.

In May, 1987, he returned to Italy, where he offered an eyewitness account of the fight at the Gothic Line for a battlefield study conducted by the Canadian Land Forces Command and Staff College of Kingston, Ont.

Mr. Thomson returned to his Salmon Arm birthplace in 1996, eventually living in a cottage next door to his eldest daughter, from which he looked out on Sandy Point.
The Seaforths held a memorial service for him earlier this month.
It was his final wish that his ashes be cast on Shuswap Lake.

Sydney Wilford Thomson was born on Nov. 14, 1914, at Salmon Arm, B.C.. He died on Nov. 8 at Salmon Arm Hospital. He was 93. He leaves daughters Jacqueline (Jacqui) Maxton, of Coquitlam, B.C.; and Linda Franklin and Terry McDiarmid, both of Salmon Arm. He is also survived by a sister, Betty MacLean, of Abbotsford, B.C.; six grandchildren; and, four great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by the former Catriona Mary Bromley-Martin, his wife of 54 years, who died in 2000.

As goes the groin, so goes the season

The fall of Capt. Luongo

By Tom Hawthorn

Special to The Globe and Mail
December 31, 2008


VICTORIA

The shot heard 'round the province seemed such an innocent thing.

On the afternoon of Nov. 22, at 4 minutes 54 seconds of the first period in a game at Pittsburgh, Philippe Boucher of the Penguins fired the puck from the point.

Roberto Luongo was ready. Kneeling in a butterfly position, the Vancouver Canucks goaltender moved his left leg to block the shot. When the puck instead ricocheted to his right, Mr. Luongo reflexively flicked his right leg.

He was attempting a physical position nature had not intended.

He collapsed face-first on the ice.

He was skated to the dressing room by teammates Ryan Kesler and Taylor Pyatt, the goalie placing his weight on his right leg, the left trailing behind. A photograph of the pair escorting the goalie looked like the painting The Death of General Wolfe, as all around looked on in horror at the fallen warrior.

As it turned out, the Canucks won a game, but lost a superstar.

The goalie's groin is “strained, not torn,” the club insisted in announcing he had suffered an adductor-muscle strain on the left side of his groin. Like a James Bond cocktail, the precision of the description is key. In this case, it is the fans who are both stirred and shaken.

Hours after the injury, a sports reporter wrote: “Roberto Luongo walked Sunday,” as if to reassure diehard fans and obsessive poolsters that the goalie's fate was better than that of Gen. Wolfe.

Here are some statistics. Mr. Luongo wears sweater No. 1, stands 6 foot 3, weighs 205 pounds. He has a save percentage of .928 and a goals-against average of 2.17. He has been watching games from the press box for five weeks and he still leads the National Hockey League in shutouts with five.

When you combine the words “Roberto Luongo” with “groin” on Google, you get 86,700 hits.

Comedian Torben Rolfsen says the goalie possesses the most talked-about nether parts since Sharon Stone appeared in Basic Instinct.

I will say this.

I know more about his groin than I do my own.

(In a city that gave us a band called Bruno Gerussi's Medallion, how long before some smart-aleck punks call themselves Roberto Luongo's Groin?)

The concern over Mr. Luongo's health reached a crisis in the week before Christmas when a radio station reported the goalie is lost for the season. The club insists the athlete is being evaluated on a week-by-week basis.

Why so much ink over one player's inguinal injury?

Mr. Luongo, the team's captain, is regarded as a cornerstone of its success. No Bobby Lou, no long playoff run. No long playoff run, no additional revenue from ticket sales, no jam-packed bars and restaurants, no (temporary) newspaper circulation gains, no out-of-towners staying in downtown hotels, no cops making tons of overtime while eyeballing celebratory fans. A lot of money rides on that adductor.

Goalies can have strained relations with their body parts, especially involving what is euphemistically referred to as a lower-body injury. A recitation of Czech-born goaltender Dominik Hasek's many groin injuries reads like a Franz Kafka tale as told to Feodor Dostoyevsky. (Note to hockey fans who have stumbled onto the news pages – the latter pair are dead writers, not checking forwards to watch at the 2010 Olympics.) So dark and so bizarre were Mr. Hasek's struggles with his health that the sports columnist Mitch Albom once wrote a dialogue between the injured goalie's brain (“I can come back”) and his groin (“I'm feeling a twinge. I'm not kidding”).

The media reports on Mr. Luongo's condition read like war dispatches:

Dec. 1 – Luongo skated a few laps, but did not take shots.

Dec. 2 – Luongo spent an hour on the ice.

Dec. 5 – Luongo faced “controlled shots” during practice.

Dec. 9 – Luongo returns to practice.

Dec. 11 – Luongo left practice early.

Dec. 13 – Luongo suffers a setback and will no longer take to the ice.

The Canucks have twice made the finals of the seemingly never-ending Stanley Cup playoffs. The euphoria of the 1982 and 1994 springs was a joy to behold. Okay, both ended in disappointment, and the white surrender towels of '82 would have been handy during the riots of '94. Still, the mood of the province is affected by the team's fortunes.

British Columbia is scheduled to hold a provincial election on May 12, just about the time the serious contenders in the playoffs make their move. The winner (of the election) will welcome the world to the 2010 Winter Olympics the following February.

No sporting event at those Games will be more closely watched than the men's hockey tournament. One of the likely goaltenders for Team Canada will be a workhorse Montreal-born netminder. That would be Martin Brodeur.

Another likely goaltender for Team Canada will be a workhorse Montreal-born puck-stopper who answers to the name Luongo.

In the coming months, we will be hearing as much about a goalie's groin as we can stomach.

2008 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Mickey Vernon, baseball player (1918-2008)

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
December 27, 2008


They called Mickey Vernon the Gentleman First Baseman. The productive baseball player won two American League batting titles in a career straddling the Second World War. He was a seven-time all-star and one of the most popular players of his era.

Polite, kindly, and graceful on and off the field, Mr. Vernon's enviable reputation only grew after he retired as a coach and manager. He was a frequent guest at banquets, old-timer's games and other charitable events where fans got to meet their childhood heroes.

“Mickey Vernon is as silent as a night watchman, as conservative as a banker and as well-behaved as a vicar,” a baseball writer once said.

With a face as lean as his frame, accentuating a large nose and jug ears, Mr. Vernon's constant half-smile seemed to express delight that he was fortunate to earn a living playing a child's game. The placid demeanour contrasted with that of the mercurial Ted Williams, the great batter he bettered to win his first batting crown.

While resident in the White House, Dwight Eisenhower pronounced Mr. Vernon his favourite ballplayer, the selection receiving bipartisan support. The sure-handed first baseman provided the Washington Senators with a panache they otherwise lacked in the field and at the plate.

Five years ago, Mr. Vernon's hometown erected a life-sized statue of a favourite son on the site where his career began as a sandlot player. A plaque hails him as a “role model, mentor, great guy” and “a gentleman's gentleman.”

After 20 major-league seasons and a long career as a coach and manager, including a stint with the Montreal Expos, Mr. Vernon returned to the county of his Pennsylvania birth, where he lived with the high-school sweetheart who became his wife. Mr. Vernon attended the opening game of the local Little League each spring without fail, taking it as a duty after they named the league for him.

It was while closing out a losing season as manager of the minor-league Vancouver Mounties that Mr. Vernon got talked into a wacky stunt. The clubhouse attendant, a teenaged university student, begged for a chance to pitch. Something of a soft touch, the avuncular manager pencilled the lad in as the starting hurler for the final game of the 1968 season. What happened that day has become part of the city's baseball lore.

Mr. Vernon was born in a working-class town along the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Wilmington, Del. His grandfather, Samuel Vernon, a Civil War veteran, was elected the first burgess, or mayor, of the borough of Marcus Hook, Pa., in 1893. His father, Clarence Vernon, worked at the Sun Oil Co. (Sunoco) refinery. Pinker, as he was known, also starred as a first baseman, part-time pitcher and slugger for the company's semiprofessional baseball team.

An aunt took to calling her nephew Mickey and the name stuck. A tall and skinny boy, he first won attention in the Chester Times newspaper at 15 as a star hitter in a local sandlot circuit. That October, he hitchhiked with three classmates to Washington, where they took in two games of the 1933 World Series. Six seasons later, Mr. Vernon, by then a lean, 6-foot-2, 180-pounder, would be patrolling first base at Griffith Stadium himself.

While attending Eddystone High School, Mr. Vernon won a regional championship with an American Legion team before leading his school to a title of its own. He also earned a spot on the roster with the much older men on his father's old industrial-league team. A sports writer described the “lanky sensation” as a “sure shot for the big time.”

After graduating, he accepted a scholarship at Villanova College, ending feverish competition among scouts. As it turned out, the coach also managed the minor-league Easton (Md.) Browns and he inked the freshman to a professional contract.

Mr. Vernon played for the Greenville (S.C.) Spinners the following season, then earned a promotion to the Springfield (Mass.) Nationals in 1939. He was leading the league in hitting when the parent Senators called him up to the major leagues. Mr. Vernon made his debut in Philadelphia against the Athletics, the team for which he had cheered as a boy. He went 1-for-4.

In 1941, Mr. Vernon married Lib Firth, whom he had met in high school several years earlier. He had been too shy at the time to ask her for a date and their courtship did not begin until he was playing baseball out of town.

Mr. Vernon enjoyed three full seasons as the regular first baseman for the Senators before joining the U.S. Navy at the end of the 1943 season. After basic training, he spent much of the war playing baseball for service teams.

Competition for positions was fierce in 1946, as returning servicemen jostled with the players who held roster spots during the war. Mr. Vernon beat out veteran Joe Kuhel to regain his Senators job. Mr. Kuhel had been the first baseman in the World Series he had seen as a schoolboy. “He was a very good first baseman,” Mr. Vernon told Baseball Digest magazine, “but he was getting near the end of his career.”

At his physical peak and still retaining the speed of youth at 28, Mr. Vernon responded with the greatest season of his career. He hit 51 doubles, eight triples and eight home runs while registering a .353 average for his first American League batting title.

He failed to maintain those numbers in the following two seasons, as his batting average fell precipitously. The Senators traded him to the Cleveland Indians, although Washington got him back just 18 months later.

The Senators struggled to win as many games as they lost in the following seasons, badly trailing the Yankees in the standings. (The musical comedy Damn Yankees, in which a Washington fan makes a pact with the devil, debuted on Broadway in 1955; many years later, a Pennsylvania production was dedicated to Mr. Vernon.) A rare victory celebrated by Senators fans came in 1953 when Mr. Vernon won his second batting title, this time with a .337 average.

Back in Pennsylvania, a newspaper publisher arranged for the batter to receive a state licence plate with his initials and average: MV 337.

With Mr. Eisenhower on hand to throw out the opening pitch of the 1954 season, Mr. Vernon smacked a game-winning two-run homer in the bottom of the 10th inning off Allie Reynolds to defeat the Yankees, 5-3. As he crossed home plate, he was accosted by a man in a suit who identified himself as a member of the Secret Service. He took Mr. Vernon to the grandstand to meet the president.

A month later, Mr. Eisenhower presented a silver bat to his favourite player in honour of his 1953 batting title. Mr. Vernon failed to get a hit that game, but the Senators once again defeated the hated Yankees.

Washington traded him to the Boston Red Sox, where he spent two seasons before being claimed on waivers by the Indians, who in turn traded him to the Milwaukee Braves. Mr. Vernon closed out his playing career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, who signed him as a playing coach for the final month of the 1960 season. He got one single in eight pinch-hit appearances.

The Pirates faced the powerhouse Yankees in the World Series that fall. Ineligible to play in the series, Mr. Vernon assisted manager Danny Murtaugh, who had been a teammate when they were teenagers. Mr. Vernon never did play in a World Series game, but he counted Bill Mazeroski's dramatic series-winning home run as one of his greatest thrills.

He concluded his playing days with several records. He took part in 2,044 double plays at first base, including 10 in a doubleheader played on Aug. 18, 1943. He also set American League marks for first baseman in games (2,227), putouts (19,754) and assists (1,444), according to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“Mickey was so smooth around the bag that he could have played first base wearing a tuxedo,” a minor-league manager once said.

The Senators moved to Minnesota and became the Twins. Mr. Vernon was hired to manage an expansion team playing in the U.S. capital under the old Senators name, but was fired midway through his third season.

In 1968, the minor-league Vancouver Mounties were suffering on the field and at the turnstile. Ernest (Kit) Krieger, the attendant for the visitors' clubhouse, convinced Mr. Vernon to allow him to take to the mound. After observing him in batting practice, the skipper agreed to the stunt. The teenager fared surprisingly well, surrendering a lone run to Hawaii before being pulled after three innings. He even recorded one strikeout. After the game, a Vancouver victory lasting just 64 minutes, the starting pitcher returned to his usual duties, including handling the soiled laundry of the players he had just faced. Mr. Krieger went on to become a high-school teacher and, eventually, president of the B.C. Teachers Federation.

Mr. Vernon's legion of fans have long insisted he deserved a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, N.Y. The 12-man Veterans Committee composed of seven Hall of Famers and five historians considered Mr. Vernon and nine other players whose careers began before 1943. He got five votes, falling short of the nine needed for induction, the hall announced on Dec. 8.

James Barton (Mickey) Vernon was born April 22, 1918, at Marcus Hook, Pa. He died Sept. 24, 2008, a week after suffering a stroke, at Riddle Memorial Hospital in Media, Pa. He was 90. He leaves a daughter, Gay Vernon, of Sharon, Mass. He was predeceased by his wife of 63 years, the former Anne Elizabeth Firth, known as Lib, who died in 2004.

New mayor is familiar face to Victoria's homeless

Dean Fortin photographed by Deddeda Stemler

By Tom Hawthorn

Special to The Globe and Mail
December 24, 2008


VICTORIA

The mayor strolled along familiar streets in search of the homeless.

Snow crunched underfoot. Crisp air reddened ears, the chill demanding gloves, scarves and warm overcoats, at least for those of us who owned some. The mayor's bootlaces slipped loose and he seemed in no hurry to remove his gloves to retie the trailing strings.

Dean Fortin, 49, stopped on the sidewalk in front of the Streetlink Emergency Shelter. Men huddled in knots, some whispering, others shouting.

“Not a good time,” the mayor pronounced. “It's the time of day when they're looking for a fix. They're planning and scheming the next score.”

He returned through Chinatown, cutting across Centennial Square on his way to a soup kitchen a few blocks to the east, when he bumped into a man pushing a cart.

“Hi, Mr. Mayor,” Darren Douglas said.

“How're you doing?” the mayor asked.

“As soon as I find a place to live, I'll be okay.”

Those words, or variations thereof, have been part of Mr. Fortin's working day for much of his life.

He is soft-spoken with the looks and manner of a vicar. A lawyer by education and an elected official by the voters' choice, he does not present himself as a boisterous, backslapping politician.

His face – round like Charlie Brown's, offset by stylish eyeglasses, topped by a laurel wreath of well-trimmed hair – is familiar to passersby. He sees in their eyes that they recognize but can't quite place him. For some politicians not to be recognized and afforded the proper respect would be a small death. Not so for Mr. Fortin. He's in this game for other reasons.

Although new to the mayor's chair, he is only too familiar with the city's most pressing issue. For 17 years, he worked as a community organizer in a poorer corner of the city. The locals included homeless families, two generations living in a car, or couch surfing until the welcome ran out.

One lad who sticks out in memory was a Grade 2 student who had already attended 20 schools. Twenty! The boy lacked a peer group and the only adults in his life were his parents, far from perfect models. The Burnside Gorge Community Centre offered hot meals, a warm place, and structure in a young life sorely in need of some.

“Homeless children,” Mr. Fortin said. “That will break your heart. Wonderful, amazing children.”

In his inaugural address to council earlier this month, the mayor told the gathering his daughter was aware of homelessness, a circumstance he thought unfair for a seven-year-old to contemplate, let alone live.

“I want to be able to tell her that we're doing everything we possibly can to find homes for those in need,” he said then.

The city's previous two mayors, both the choice of the business community, failed to stop downtown streets from turning into drug bazaars. As the situation deteriorated, residents and tourists alike began to avoid sidewalks taken over by those struggling with addictions, mental-health issues and poverty.

Where his predecessors were frustrated, Mr. Fortin says he can deliver results in as little as six months. It is a bold statement. The goal is to first get the hardest to house off the street, since they prey on other homeless folks.

A looming concern is whether Vancouver's homeless will migrate across Georgia Strait if Olympic planning forces them from metropolitan streets.

Mr. Fortin has never lacked for a home himself, though he notes he was brought after birth to a home that was a converted chicken coop at Kamloops. His mother was a nurse, his father “a cowboy, a builder, a miner” who prospected for gold.

“Did he have much luck? Nope. I'm sure even though he's dead he's out there looking still for his lucky strike.”

The boy inherited a sense of social justice from his mother, who took him to a political rally at the height of Trudeaumania.

The future mayor worked the green chain at a mill before moving to Victoria to attend university. He articled in Whitehorse, then joined a Victoria firm. Instead of building a career as a lawyer, he became executive director of the community centre, where he found he could directly help improve the lives of local residents.

After two terms on city council, he made an early announcement of his intention to run for mayor. The move convinced other councillors not to risk losing their seat by challenging the labour-backed candidate, though as it turned out, novice politico Rob Reid, a runner who owns stores selling athletic shoes, nearly scored an upset at the wire.

The short walk, bitter in the cold, at last brought Mr. Fortin to the entrance to the Our Place soup kitchen. The mayor had to introduce himself twice before the staff realized who he was. Usually closed on the weekend, the drop-in centre, with the city's help, had secured extra funds to operate during the cold snap. Inside, about 25 people snacked on oranges, bananas and muffins. Some slept on benches, their bindles beside them.

Mr. Fortin was invited to join a table where sat people who did recognize him. He asked after their health, listened intently as they talked. Karley Smith, a young woman whose shock of red hair seemed all the brighter for the paleness of her skin, told the mayor she is looking for a place to live. Pregnant with her fourth child, she is due to give birth in five weeks. Two of her children live with her mother, while a third has been placed for adoption. She is 22. He took her details and said he would do what he could.

He left the table. “Bad decisions,” he said with a what-can-you-do shrug. “She looks healthy, though. That's good.”

Earlier in the month, his wife, Donna Sanford, the daughter of former NDP MLA Karen Sanford, and his daughter, Sophie, joined him in serving turkey dinners at the annual Mustard Seed family Christmas dinner held at the Armoury.

The mayor believes the homeless situation will be solved by incremental change, one program at a time, one person at a time.

The man with the cart in Centennial Square said he was slowly working towards getting a room of his own. The cart he pushed, decorated by red tinsel found in the street, included brooms and brushes with which he cleans the street.

Mr. Douglas, a logger for 17 years until a falling tree injured his back, is paid $10 an hour by the Downtown Victoria Business Association. His route includes Douglas Street, which, he said, cracking a smile, is his responsibility because it carries his name.

Mr. Douglas told the mayor he was having difficulty getting an apartment because he did not have the extra money needed for a damage deposit. As it turns out, the mayor knows of a program that can help.

“You know where to find me,” the mayor said.

The street cleaner swung an arm, pointing to the red building behind him. “Mayor's office,” he said.

They shook on it.