This has been a hard week. It opened with news that one of our dear friends had passed away, and closed with the emotional conviction and sentencing of a cop killer. I don't want to dwell on the latter, but I do want to say something about the passing of my friend, Greg Nearing. This is my column from the November issue of the Law Society newsletter:
I first met Greg in court when I was a reporter in the early 1990s. Greg was an exceptional criminal defence lawyer, and while he often had the higher profile cases on the docket, he was just as ready to go full bore for someone accused of a simple assault or shoplifting. He was a passionate believer in legal aid, and for a time served on the F/P/T working group on legal aid while he was with the Legal Services Board of the NWT.
Born in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Greg was a proud X-man who earned a BA from St. F/X in 1982, and graduated Dalhousie School of Law in May, 1986. He moved to Yellowknife shortly thereafter to article at what was then Richard, Vertes, Peterson & Schuler under his principal, Ted Richard, and swore his Oath to become a member of the Law Society on September 11, 1987 before Justice de Weerdt.
His career would eventually take him to both Departments of Justice here, although the bulk of his time was spent with Legal Aid, where he eventually became Executive Director. In 2002, he returned to private practice, moving to Nunavut when his wife Diane was offered a position with the Nunavut government.
Service to the profession was a big part of who Greg was. He was President of the CBA NWT branch in 1996-97, Treasurer of the Law Society in 1998, and President in 1999. He was also a loyal member of the discipline committee in 2001-2002, and even ended up chairing the social committee in 2001, when he was the only volunteer (until Linda donated the services of that year’s articling crop to help out). After moving east, Greg continued to serve the profession as Treasurer of the Law Society of Nunavut in 2004-2005. As our Law Society President, Greg holds the record for chairing the shortest AGM, at 45 minutes, in 1999. It is likely a feat that will never be repeated.
Greg was a complicated guy who faced a lot of challenges in his life, but when he was on, no one was quicker on his feet or more fun to be around. I never had an opportunity to run a file or do a circuit with Greg, but I got to know him in social contexts, him with his omnipresent diet cola in hand, always foraging around for snacks. While it was impossible for him to sit through an entire movie without taking at least one break to go play videogames in the lobby, he somehow amassed an encyclopaedic knowledge of film. In the ‘90s, Diane and I took sailing lessons together one summer, and got in the habit thereafter of renting a sailboat on weekends to putter around the bay. Greg was a constant presence, frequently called upon to assemble lunch below decks or haul on some rope to hoist a sail. He was unfailingly good humoured about his role on these excursions, and together as we drifted past Dettah, we would often comment on the hounds baying at the morning sun.
For my birthday in 1996, Greg arrived at the party with cards he had created listing out a couple dozen suitable topics for dinner conversation. Alongside the serious - the link between individualism and the disintegration of American society (such as it is) – were more fanciful subjects, like the role of underwear in safety consciousness, memories of grade 4, and the colour yellow. I have kept a copy of that card framed in my home office ever since, and every time I read it, it makes me laugh. It was an awesome gift and so totally Greg.
A couple of years later, during my first year of law school, Greg and Karan Shaner were in Montreal for meetings and called upon me to show them around the city. What followed was a wild afternoon and evening involving haunted houses, bakeries, cobblestoned streets, a strip bar, and a bank security guard alarmed at our use of Greg’s newfangled digital camera (pre-9/11, you could alarm a security guard without being thrown in jail). For obvious reasons, I’m adopting a “what happens on the road stays on the road” approach to the details, but suffice to say it is one of my fondest memories of spending time with Greg.
Gregory Charles Nearing was 48 when he died unexpectedly.
He will be missed.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Hmmm...
Well now. This is embarrassing.
In late May when I came back from my European vacation, I promised a bunch of posts - and promptly executed precisely one. And now I find myself getting ready to go on another vacation next week without having caught up yet. I'd like to say I have a good excuse, but other than the usual - work was busy, summer was entertaining, etc - I've got nothing to offer. Except a promise that I will do better in the coming months. I may even backtrack and get those Europe posts up and running before 2010. Because this is what it has come down to. It's not like I didn't enjoy my trip - in fact, I enjoyed it so much I had a hard time figuring out how to separate it into finite posts. And then I didn't execute. Hmmm....maybe next time. My bad.
In late May when I came back from my European vacation, I promised a bunch of posts - and promptly executed precisely one. And now I find myself getting ready to go on another vacation next week without having caught up yet. I'd like to say I have a good excuse, but other than the usual - work was busy, summer was entertaining, etc - I've got nothing to offer. Except a promise that I will do better in the coming months. I may even backtrack and get those Europe posts up and running before 2010. Because this is what it has come down to. It's not like I didn't enjoy my trip - in fact, I enjoyed it so much I had a hard time figuring out how to separate it into finite posts. And then I didn't execute. Hmmm....maybe next time. My bad.
Monday, August 31, 2009
A Final Roar
I was going to post today about the passing of Teddy Kennedy, but I came upon this post by John McCain's daughter Meghan that sums up exactly how I feel about contemporary politics, and how this contact sport has completely lost touch with the crucial component of political life, public service. Enjoy.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-08-31/why-the-lion-of-the-left-was-right/?_r=1&em
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-08-31/why-the-lion-of-the-left-was-right/?_r=1&em
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
And that's the way it is
There will never be another Walter Cronkite, and that says as much about our era as it does about his.
There will be no commemorative issue of People Magazine, no cover story in Rolling Stone, no week of endless speculation by pundits on news channels about his cause of death. And that is how he would have wanted it.
Mr. Cronkite died Friday at the age of 92, after an unparalleled career in journalism.
It is hard to remember in this age of Twitter and internet and 1000 channels of round-the-clock news yammering for our attention, that once, not so long ago, if you wanted to know what happened in the world today, you had to sit down at 7 p.m. EST for a half hour of news, presented by Walter Cronkite. No taping it and watching it later; no surfing the satellite receiver to take in a different regional feed; no CNN, no Headline News, no Newsworld. 7-7:30, or read the paper the next morning. Those were your options.
In our house, Walter Cronkite was God. Most nights my parents and I would eat our dinner off TV trays in front of the behemoth black and white television console with the fairly tiny screen. There was absolutely no talking during the news; if you had a story to tell about your day and it didn't squeeze into a commercial break, it would have to wait another 8 minutes to be finished in the next break. Walter came first.
Sitting in front of the TV, I learned about Vietnam and the space program. He was the person who told us when Martin Luther King was shot, and when President Kennedy died. It is an oft-repeated story in my family that pretty much the first thing I ever saw on TV was Walter Cronkite breaking into the live soap opera As the World Turns to announce President Kennedy had been shot. My mother adored President Kennedy - it was a simpler time, far easier to believe in the image, sheltered from the reality - and she learned her dream died while ironing the laundry, from the most trusted man in America. It was a short, sharp shock to everyone's system, and I was two months old, propped up on the couch pillows, facing the TV.
Walter Cronkite was an incredible reporter. Unlike contemporary anchors, he had no formal presentation training, having started in newspapers before TV had been invented, and while he became a polished presence on camera, he never lost his sincerity or his slightly rough edges. There was no doubting this was a man who had ink under his nails, and who had covered big stories from the ground up. He didn't start out that way, of course - he was a cub reporter in Houston while still in high school, and had a paper route delivering the Houston Post, sometimes with his articles inside. He moved on to announcing football games on local radio, before catching on as a regional reporter with UPI as a stringer. And then came World War II. Unlike the sanitized "embedded" reporting we are now subject to from the front, if we are allowed to see a snippet of what's happening at all, Cronkite rode along with Allied Troops in big events - the invasion of North Africa, the Battle of the Bulge - and every day events, like bombing runs over Germany. It wasn't safe, and he wasn't protected, but he was lucky, and every plane he was on came back to base. He rejected a job offer from Edward R. Murrow to stay with UPI and cover the Nuremberg war crimes trials, but finally accepted Murrow's offer 7 years later and made the move to CBS, and television in 1950.
During the 1960s through the mid-1970s, Cronkite anchored not just the evening news, but every blastoff of an Apollo mission. My father, who was born the summer Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic, and was named Charles in his honour, was fascinated by the idea of men going into space, so every time a mission was set to launch, he would get me out of bed - those launches tended to happen around 5 in the morning - and we would watch the live broadcast from Cape Kennedy, Cronkite explaining what we were looking at. And then I would go back to bed for a couple of hours before I had to get up for school.
Those mornings with my dad and Walter also gave me a context and an appreciation of science, and the world beyond my suburban existence. They also indirectly got me interested in reading as a child, as my parents subscribed to National Geographic, which featured the space program heavily in every issue back then. There was a symbiotic correlation between the magazine and Mr. Cronkite in my tiny world back then, and I reveled in it.
I had the enormous good fortune to meet Walter Cronkite once, when I was about seven or eight. My father had been working in New York, as Canadian banks were starting to expand internationally in the 1960s, and my father was part of the Bank of Montreal's team setting up the U.S. head office. He would be gone weeks at a time, and sometimes, instead of flying him home to Montreal, the Bank would fly us to New York instead. On one of those trips, I can't remember where we were exactly, but I know we were getting into an elevator in Manhattan, and as the doors opened, there was Walter Cronkite, going our way. All three of us, my parents and I, were mesmerized to see this icon out of the tiny box in our living room and in the flesh. Evidently used to this sort of reaction, he very politely said hello and started the small talk. It came out that "I" was a big fan, and then he reached into his inside jacket pocket, pulled out a business card, signed it, and handed it to me.
In the four decades since then, I have moved several dozen times, back and forth across a vast country. Yet as I write this, I have that business card tucked into a corner of my computer screen. It says, simply, "Walter Cronkite - Correspondent" with the CBS News address and phone number. It isn't flashy or pretentious. It is the epitome of Walter Cronkite on a 1.5 x 3 inch piece of paper - clear, concise, solid, informative.
He believed a half hour newscast once a day wasn't enough time to truly inform viewers about all the complicated things going on in the world, and after he retired in 1981, he reportedly hated how newscasts were now stuffed full of soft features that told us nothing much about anything other than the reporter's vanity in front of the camera. We now live in world of a seemingly endless information and delivery options, but what are we really learning? Too much of what passes for news now is celebrity gossip, repeated ad nauseum between commentators who pass as reporters, or opinion based on nothing more than ignorance, fear or polling results. Television news, at least, has become a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Hardly a meaningful tribute to the remarkable legacy of a pioneering newsman.
There will be no commemorative issue of People Magazine, no cover story in Rolling Stone, no week of endless speculation by pundits on news channels about his cause of death. And that is how he would have wanted it.
Mr. Cronkite died Friday at the age of 92, after an unparalleled career in journalism.
It is hard to remember in this age of Twitter and internet and 1000 channels of round-the-clock news yammering for our attention, that once, not so long ago, if you wanted to know what happened in the world today, you had to sit down at 7 p.m. EST for a half hour of news, presented by Walter Cronkite. No taping it and watching it later; no surfing the satellite receiver to take in a different regional feed; no CNN, no Headline News, no Newsworld. 7-7:30, or read the paper the next morning. Those were your options.
In our house, Walter Cronkite was God. Most nights my parents and I would eat our dinner off TV trays in front of the behemoth black and white television console with the fairly tiny screen. There was absolutely no talking during the news; if you had a story to tell about your day and it didn't squeeze into a commercial break, it would have to wait another 8 minutes to be finished in the next break. Walter came first.
Sitting in front of the TV, I learned about Vietnam and the space program. He was the person who told us when Martin Luther King was shot, and when President Kennedy died. It is an oft-repeated story in my family that pretty much the first thing I ever saw on TV was Walter Cronkite breaking into the live soap opera As the World Turns to announce President Kennedy had been shot. My mother adored President Kennedy - it was a simpler time, far easier to believe in the image, sheltered from the reality - and she learned her dream died while ironing the laundry, from the most trusted man in America. It was a short, sharp shock to everyone's system, and I was two months old, propped up on the couch pillows, facing the TV.
Walter Cronkite was an incredible reporter. Unlike contemporary anchors, he had no formal presentation training, having started in newspapers before TV had been invented, and while he became a polished presence on camera, he never lost his sincerity or his slightly rough edges. There was no doubting this was a man who had ink under his nails, and who had covered big stories from the ground up. He didn't start out that way, of course - he was a cub reporter in Houston while still in high school, and had a paper route delivering the Houston Post, sometimes with his articles inside. He moved on to announcing football games on local radio, before catching on as a regional reporter with UPI as a stringer. And then came World War II. Unlike the sanitized "embedded" reporting we are now subject to from the front, if we are allowed to see a snippet of what's happening at all, Cronkite rode along with Allied Troops in big events - the invasion of North Africa, the Battle of the Bulge - and every day events, like bombing runs over Germany. It wasn't safe, and he wasn't protected, but he was lucky, and every plane he was on came back to base. He rejected a job offer from Edward R. Murrow to stay with UPI and cover the Nuremberg war crimes trials, but finally accepted Murrow's offer 7 years later and made the move to CBS, and television in 1950.
During the 1960s through the mid-1970s, Cronkite anchored not just the evening news, but every blastoff of an Apollo mission. My father, who was born the summer Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic, and was named Charles in his honour, was fascinated by the idea of men going into space, so every time a mission was set to launch, he would get me out of bed - those launches tended to happen around 5 in the morning - and we would watch the live broadcast from Cape Kennedy, Cronkite explaining what we were looking at. And then I would go back to bed for a couple of hours before I had to get up for school.
Those mornings with my dad and Walter also gave me a context and an appreciation of science, and the world beyond my suburban existence. They also indirectly got me interested in reading as a child, as my parents subscribed to National Geographic, which featured the space program heavily in every issue back then. There was a symbiotic correlation between the magazine and Mr. Cronkite in my tiny world back then, and I reveled in it.
I had the enormous good fortune to meet Walter Cronkite once, when I was about seven or eight. My father had been working in New York, as Canadian banks were starting to expand internationally in the 1960s, and my father was part of the Bank of Montreal's team setting up the U.S. head office. He would be gone weeks at a time, and sometimes, instead of flying him home to Montreal, the Bank would fly us to New York instead. On one of those trips, I can't remember where we were exactly, but I know we were getting into an elevator in Manhattan, and as the doors opened, there was Walter Cronkite, going our way. All three of us, my parents and I, were mesmerized to see this icon out of the tiny box in our living room and in the flesh. Evidently used to this sort of reaction, he very politely said hello and started the small talk. It came out that "I" was a big fan, and then he reached into his inside jacket pocket, pulled out a business card, signed it, and handed it to me.
In the four decades since then, I have moved several dozen times, back and forth across a vast country. Yet as I write this, I have that business card tucked into a corner of my computer screen. It says, simply, "Walter Cronkite - Correspondent" with the CBS News address and phone number. It isn't flashy or pretentious. It is the epitome of Walter Cronkite on a 1.5 x 3 inch piece of paper - clear, concise, solid, informative.
He believed a half hour newscast once a day wasn't enough time to truly inform viewers about all the complicated things going on in the world, and after he retired in 1981, he reportedly hated how newscasts were now stuffed full of soft features that told us nothing much about anything other than the reporter's vanity in front of the camera. We now live in world of a seemingly endless information and delivery options, but what are we really learning? Too much of what passes for news now is celebrity gossip, repeated ad nauseum between commentators who pass as reporters, or opinion based on nothing more than ignorance, fear or polling results. Television news, at least, has become a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Hardly a meaningful tribute to the remarkable legacy of a pioneering newsman.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Finally, you say!
Part of the joy of traveling is the way it takes you out of your every day routine and forces you to do something a bit different for the duration of the trip. Unfortunately, when you return, the routine does as well, until one day you look up from the pile of files on your desk and realize you've been back in Canada for five weeks and have not yet blogged a peep about your fabulous spring vacation in Europe.
So - here we go, part one of a multi-part saga.
This trip was mostly about visiting friends. The last time I was in Europe was three years ago, for Lindsey and Serge's wedding. Now I was off to visit them and their adorable toddler, Jules.
A few things had changed since the last time, other than acquiring progeny, most obviously the simple location - they were no longer living in Geneva, but were now in the countryside outside London, England. In "Harrt-fird-shuur" as the passport control officer kindly corrected me upon my arrival. I was soon to recognize that although the words look like English the way they're spelled out, it's a totally different language in the way they are pronounced.
Hertfordshire is what I like to think of as typically English, full of 500 year old houses, narrow rambling lanes with highway speed limits and blind corners, a cow (or sheep) in every field, and a pub on most every corner. The next village over has a train station with a relatively short commute into downtown London, making this a pretty sweet locale for a week's vacation, so long as I didn't have to drive.
We quickly settled into a domestic routine that usually began with Jules offering me a toy, sometimes at speed, as I lay sleeping on the world's most comfortable pullout couch in the living room. This was quickly followed by coffee and breakfast and chat, more coffee, more toys, a shower, and more chat.
It was an arduous week.
I can hear some of you questioning my ability to enjoy an entire week in the presence of a child. I offer you proof Jules is not like other children - he liked me back:
I have to say that if one could clone children, and be assured of their temperament, I would seriously consider raising a totlet like Jules, because he is almost never unhappy with anything, even while he is teething. He is the sweetest-natured child I have ever met. He is the mellow 60s surfer dude of children. Without the weed, of course.
He is also an intent little observer of the world - he can sit watching everyone for long stretches of time, and you can see the wheels turning. I am fairly sure he will grow up to be quite the handful, but not my handful. I just get to drop in at random intervals for a short visit and flit off again, which is probably best for everyone.
On our first day, we drove into a nearby village to play on the village green, which is also outfitted with a kickass gym set that Jules never tires of trying out:
This lovely space also included a large pond, with many birds just sitting at the edge of a well-traveled footpath. Here we've got a pair of Canada geese with 8 goslings, 3 mute swans, a pair of dozing mallards, and some exotic Euro-duck I haven't been able to identify yet (there will be an entire post later on about birds, mark your calendars).
Spring being the season of young creatures learning new skills, Jules also took this opportunity to try to get the hang of some stairs - he isn't looking too sure of himself:
A stroll around the village later, I was beginning to understand that a slower pace can be a good thing.
Next up: Linds and I do the culture thing in the Big Smoke, and we all drive up to Bath for the day.
UPDATE: The Euro-duck is actually a Eurasian Coot. Thanks Vicki!
So - here we go, part one of a multi-part saga.
This trip was mostly about visiting friends. The last time I was in Europe was three years ago, for Lindsey and Serge's wedding. Now I was off to visit them and their adorable toddler, Jules.
A few things had changed since the last time, other than acquiring progeny, most obviously the simple location - they were no longer living in Geneva, but were now in the countryside outside London, England. In "Harrt-fird-shuur" as the passport control officer kindly corrected me upon my arrival. I was soon to recognize that although the words look like English the way they're spelled out, it's a totally different language in the way they are pronounced.
Hertfordshire is what I like to think of as typically English, full of 500 year old houses, narrow rambling lanes with highway speed limits and blind corners, a cow (or sheep) in every field, and a pub on most every corner. The next village over has a train station with a relatively short commute into downtown London, making this a pretty sweet locale for a week's vacation, so long as I didn't have to drive.
We quickly settled into a domestic routine that usually began with Jules offering me a toy, sometimes at speed, as I lay sleeping on the world's most comfortable pullout couch in the living room. This was quickly followed by coffee and breakfast and chat, more coffee, more toys, a shower, and more chat.
It was an arduous week.
I can hear some of you questioning my ability to enjoy an entire week in the presence of a child. I offer you proof Jules is not like other children - he liked me back:
I have to say that if one could clone children, and be assured of their temperament, I would seriously consider raising a totlet like Jules, because he is almost never unhappy with anything, even while he is teething. He is the sweetest-natured child I have ever met. He is the mellow 60s surfer dude of children. Without the weed, of course.
He is also an intent little observer of the world - he can sit watching everyone for long stretches of time, and you can see the wheels turning. I am fairly sure he will grow up to be quite the handful, but not my handful. I just get to drop in at random intervals for a short visit and flit off again, which is probably best for everyone.
On our first day, we drove into a nearby village to play on the village green, which is also outfitted with a kickass gym set that Jules never tires of trying out:
This lovely space also included a large pond, with many birds just sitting at the edge of a well-traveled footpath. Here we've got a pair of Canada geese with 8 goslings, 3 mute swans, a pair of dozing mallards, and some exotic Euro-duck I haven't been able to identify yet (there will be an entire post later on about birds, mark your calendars).
Spring being the season of young creatures learning new skills, Jules also took this opportunity to try to get the hang of some stairs - he isn't looking too sure of himself:
A stroll around the village later, I was beginning to understand that a slower pace can be a good thing.
Next up: Linds and I do the culture thing in the Big Smoke, and we all drive up to Bath for the day.
UPDATE: The Euro-duck is actually a Eurasian Coot. Thanks Vicki!
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Patience is a virtue
Remember that.
I have been back from a wonderful trip to Iceland and England for about 10 days now, and people want to hear all about it and see some photos. I appreciate that, and I'm working on it. There were a couple of thousand pictures to download (now done). I still have to go through them and make a small selection, and then I have to figure out how to describe my trip. I have also been trying to catch up at work, and I seem to have imported a bug from overseas, which hasn't helped. Anyway, the point is, in the coming days, I will be posting a series of entries about my trip, each with a few photos to whet your appetite for travel. Bear with me, I'm doing what I can! Thanks for being interested!!
I have been back from a wonderful trip to Iceland and England for about 10 days now, and people want to hear all about it and see some photos. I appreciate that, and I'm working on it. There were a couple of thousand pictures to download (now done). I still have to go through them and make a small selection, and then I have to figure out how to describe my trip. I have also been trying to catch up at work, and I seem to have imported a bug from overseas, which hasn't helped. Anyway, the point is, in the coming days, I will be posting a series of entries about my trip, each with a few photos to whet your appetite for travel. Bear with me, I'm doing what I can! Thanks for being interested!!
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Two down...
The first round of the NHL playoffs are well underway and we've already seen two teams eliminated in four games straight, Montreal and St. Louis. I guess a long summer of golf lies ahead for these guys as they ponder their respective futures, but I will say that their teams seem to be going in completely opposite directions.
The St. Louis - Vancouver series was classic, exciting hockey. OK, the Blues didn't win a game, but after a nervous debut in game 1, they really ought to have picked up at least one, if not two, of the remaining three games. It's not their fault they ran into Roberto Luongo, who is looking unbeatable. Which is good for the Canucks, since the Blues seriously outplayed them in games 3 & 4, they just couldn't score. St. Louis, with its core group of young talent, is going to be in the playoff hunt for years to come. They play an exciting, offensive style of hockey that makes the final score almost unimportant.
My hometown Habs, however, WTF? It's no big surprise after the disastrous season they had, but really? This is what the 100 year legacy comes down to? A bunch of paycheck cashers and a non-existent defense that left their goalie hung out to dry, actually being booed by the hometown crowd? Appalling. I have some sympathy for Carey Price. Sure, he hasn't played as well this year as he did last year, but he was actually pretty good for most of the series with Boston. It is impossible for any goalie, even the revered Luongo, to stop every possible shot when nobody is playing defense, taking their man, or clearing the slot. At one point in tonight's game, a Bruin walked right in on three (!!) Habs standing still in front of Price, making no effort to do anything to stop the shot. No surprise Price was beaten from 20 feet out. And yet somehow, the crowd blames him alone. This will not be a fun summer inside the organization, and I expect next year's team will look significantly different from the team that lost tonight.
You'll notice that I said "hometown Habs" above, and not "my Habs". People often assume I am a Canadiens fan because I am originally from Montreal, but from the earliest time I can remember, it's been nothing but the black and gold of the Bruins for me. Now, when I was a kid in the late 60s and early 70s, the Bruins were the team of Orr, Esposito, Cashman, Buyck, Hodge, Cheevers and my all time favorite, Derek Sanderson. But for a long stretch between those glory years and now, it has been a cold, hard slog to support a team eking out barely 30 wins a season.
It's a dirty little hockey secret that there are many of us born into hockey towns who actually root for teams other than the hometown one. My dad, for example, was a lifelong Red Wings fan. In Montreal, Boston is a close second in popularity. It's an Original Six thing, I think, but going to games at the old Forum the jerseys in the stands were nearly 50-50. THAT makes for an atmospheric game! BTW - you will NEVER see a Maple Leafs fan who was born in Montreal. Just doesn't happen. Montrealers have standards when it comes to sports teams, unlike Torontonians.
This has been one of the best overall hockey seasons in the past 15 years. With the salary cap and some judicious drafting and player development, the parity between most teams is palpable. There are a half-dozen young teams who will be making noise for many seasons to come. Joining St. Louis on that list? Chicago, playing firewagon hockey with heart against Calgary; Columbus, currently being trounced by Detroit, but with the most exciting goalie to come along in a long time; Boston, who may well take the Cup this year; and two teams that didn't quite make it this season, but for whom I have high hopes - Edmonton and Phoenix.
After the dry, boring defensive trap system that made the 90s a jail sentence for fans, this plethora of young talent clustering in a few hot cities is making the game exciting to watch again. And that works out for everyone, especially the fans like me.
The St. Louis - Vancouver series was classic, exciting hockey. OK, the Blues didn't win a game, but after a nervous debut in game 1, they really ought to have picked up at least one, if not two, of the remaining three games. It's not their fault they ran into Roberto Luongo, who is looking unbeatable. Which is good for the Canucks, since the Blues seriously outplayed them in games 3 & 4, they just couldn't score. St. Louis, with its core group of young talent, is going to be in the playoff hunt for years to come. They play an exciting, offensive style of hockey that makes the final score almost unimportant.
My hometown Habs, however, WTF? It's no big surprise after the disastrous season they had, but really? This is what the 100 year legacy comes down to? A bunch of paycheck cashers and a non-existent defense that left their goalie hung out to dry, actually being booed by the hometown crowd? Appalling. I have some sympathy for Carey Price. Sure, he hasn't played as well this year as he did last year, but he was actually pretty good for most of the series with Boston. It is impossible for any goalie, even the revered Luongo, to stop every possible shot when nobody is playing defense, taking their man, or clearing the slot. At one point in tonight's game, a Bruin walked right in on three (!!) Habs standing still in front of Price, making no effort to do anything to stop the shot. No surprise Price was beaten from 20 feet out. And yet somehow, the crowd blames him alone. This will not be a fun summer inside the organization, and I expect next year's team will look significantly different from the team that lost tonight.
You'll notice that I said "hometown Habs" above, and not "my Habs". People often assume I am a Canadiens fan because I am originally from Montreal, but from the earliest time I can remember, it's been nothing but the black and gold of the Bruins for me. Now, when I was a kid in the late 60s and early 70s, the Bruins were the team of Orr, Esposito, Cashman, Buyck, Hodge, Cheevers and my all time favorite, Derek Sanderson. But for a long stretch between those glory years and now, it has been a cold, hard slog to support a team eking out barely 30 wins a season.
It's a dirty little hockey secret that there are many of us born into hockey towns who actually root for teams other than the hometown one. My dad, for example, was a lifelong Red Wings fan. In Montreal, Boston is a close second in popularity. It's an Original Six thing, I think, but going to games at the old Forum the jerseys in the stands were nearly 50-50. THAT makes for an atmospheric game! BTW - you will NEVER see a Maple Leafs fan who was born in Montreal. Just doesn't happen. Montrealers have standards when it comes to sports teams, unlike Torontonians.
This has been one of the best overall hockey seasons in the past 15 years. With the salary cap and some judicious drafting and player development, the parity between most teams is palpable. There are a half-dozen young teams who will be making noise for many seasons to come. Joining St. Louis on that list? Chicago, playing firewagon hockey with heart against Calgary; Columbus, currently being trounced by Detroit, but with the most exciting goalie to come along in a long time; Boston, who may well take the Cup this year; and two teams that didn't quite make it this season, but for whom I have high hopes - Edmonton and Phoenix.
After the dry, boring defensive trap system that made the 90s a jail sentence for fans, this plethora of young talent clustering in a few hot cities is making the game exciting to watch again. And that works out for everyone, especially the fans like me.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Only perfection need apply
Russ Germain died Monday night. He was 62.
For those of us who grew up listening to CBC Radio One, Russ was the voice of the World At Six. Cool, unflappable, with a deep, smooth voice and the professionalism of the consummate newsman, he would be appalled by the structure of this sentence. For Russ, precision in language and clarity of structure were paramount. In radio, after all, listeners only got one chance to understand what you were saying to them, so it was incredibly important to be clear and precise. A pretty good approach for any news person, really, but one that is rarely instilled through constant emphasis and monitoring by one's editors.
When I worked for the Mother Corp. in the mid-90s, I either started my shift by reading the news on the morning show, or ended it with the 5:30pm newscast. This is how I came to know Russ.
Although he was based in Toronto, one of his responsibilities was to monitor all the regional newscasts for consistency, proper use of language, and accuracy. He was a language enforcer, as it were, insisting on perfection. Any slip of the tongue during a seven minute cast and you knew there would be an email or voicemail the next day kindly pointing out the error (in case you hadn't noticed) and offering an improvement.
Those of you who have never been in the news business probably don't realize that every major outlet has their own style guide, and each has their own quirks. Staff are expected to conform to their organization's guide, regardless of what the everyday usage of a word might be. The Mother Corp. was a particular stickler for specificity of pronunciation. Many words in the English language have more than one acceptable pronunciation - tomato, to-mah-to, kill-o-mee-ter, kil-oh-meh-ter, etc. Only one of these is correct for a CBC broadcaster.
One of our biggest ongoing battles was with the term harass. Russ, and therefore CBC, insisted upon hah-russ, which always struck me as vaguely British and kind of poncy. I have never heard anyone who wasn't trained at CBC pronounce it as anything other than HA-rass. It became a bit of a running joke in a newsroom constantly covering court stories, many of which involved harassment of one sort or another.
Proper usage of language was the other component to Russ' training. As radio people, we are encouraged to write like we speak, so it will sound natural to the ear for those who are listening. However, most of us speak with contractions, use words in the wrong context, or use expressions that, while commonplace, are inaccurate. For example, how often have you said "added bonus"? A bonus is by nature an addition, so it doesn't need the adjective. Or "completely destroyed"? Something either is destroyed or it is damaged. Destruction connotes completeness. My favorite is "enormity". People often use that to mean really, really big. It doesn't mean that at all. Enormous means huge - enormity means massively devastating, like "the enormity of the concentration camps cannot be overstated". That doesn't mean the camps were physically huge, but that they had a massively devastating effect.
In preparing to read a newscast then, a broadcaster needed to be aware of how the story was written, fix any misuse of language or awkward structure, be aware of timing and sound clips, and mind one's pronunciation, all with no retakes. It was a challenge most days, but in hindsight, knowing Russ was listening, and knowing there was a universal standard to conform to within the Mother Corp, I know I worked harder to master my on-air skills and pushed myself to constantly do better. Working with him, albeit at a distance, I truly learned how to be an on-air reporter. I suspect there are thousands of folks like me across the country, and abroad, who can say they came into their own under Russ' watchful ear during his 29 years with CBC.
For those of us who grew up listening to CBC Radio One, Russ was the voice of the World At Six. Cool, unflappable, with a deep, smooth voice and the professionalism of the consummate newsman, he would be appalled by the structure of this sentence. For Russ, precision in language and clarity of structure were paramount. In radio, after all, listeners only got one chance to understand what you were saying to them, so it was incredibly important to be clear and precise. A pretty good approach for any news person, really, but one that is rarely instilled through constant emphasis and monitoring by one's editors.
When I worked for the Mother Corp. in the mid-90s, I either started my shift by reading the news on the morning show, or ended it with the 5:30pm newscast. This is how I came to know Russ.
Although he was based in Toronto, one of his responsibilities was to monitor all the regional newscasts for consistency, proper use of language, and accuracy. He was a language enforcer, as it were, insisting on perfection. Any slip of the tongue during a seven minute cast and you knew there would be an email or voicemail the next day kindly pointing out the error (in case you hadn't noticed) and offering an improvement.
Those of you who have never been in the news business probably don't realize that every major outlet has their own style guide, and each has their own quirks. Staff are expected to conform to their organization's guide, regardless of what the everyday usage of a word might be. The Mother Corp. was a particular stickler for specificity of pronunciation. Many words in the English language have more than one acceptable pronunciation - tomato, to-mah-to, kill-o-mee-ter, kil-oh-meh-ter, etc. Only one of these is correct for a CBC broadcaster.
One of our biggest ongoing battles was with the term harass. Russ, and therefore CBC, insisted upon hah-russ, which always struck me as vaguely British and kind of poncy. I have never heard anyone who wasn't trained at CBC pronounce it as anything other than HA-rass. It became a bit of a running joke in a newsroom constantly covering court stories, many of which involved harassment of one sort or another.
Proper usage of language was the other component to Russ' training. As radio people, we are encouraged to write like we speak, so it will sound natural to the ear for those who are listening. However, most of us speak with contractions, use words in the wrong context, or use expressions that, while commonplace, are inaccurate. For example, how often have you said "added bonus"? A bonus is by nature an addition, so it doesn't need the adjective. Or "completely destroyed"? Something either is destroyed or it is damaged. Destruction connotes completeness. My favorite is "enormity". People often use that to mean really, really big. It doesn't mean that at all. Enormous means huge - enormity means massively devastating, like "the enormity of the concentration camps cannot be overstated". That doesn't mean the camps were physically huge, but that they had a massively devastating effect.
In preparing to read a newscast then, a broadcaster needed to be aware of how the story was written, fix any misuse of language or awkward structure, be aware of timing and sound clips, and mind one's pronunciation, all with no retakes. It was a challenge most days, but in hindsight, knowing Russ was listening, and knowing there was a universal standard to conform to within the Mother Corp, I know I worked harder to master my on-air skills and pushed myself to constantly do better. Working with him, albeit at a distance, I truly learned how to be an on-air reporter. I suspect there are thousands of folks like me across the country, and abroad, who can say they came into their own under Russ' watchful ear during his 29 years with CBC.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Excuse me?
Sometimes entries just write themselves.
I was reading the New York Times this morning online, as I so often do, trying to wake up and be useful, when I happened upon a story about odd road signs in England, and this photo:
I was now fully awake.
The story http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/world/europe/23crapstone.html?_r=1&em went on to examine, as it were, a number of quirky and suggestive place names in the British Isles, including Titty Ho, North Piddle, Crapstone, and Penistone. My inner eight-year-old started to giggle.
It seems most of these names date back to when words had different meanings than they do currently. I could have written a serious post on the evolution of language, but the eight-year-old wouldn't let me.
Butt Hole, it turns out, probably referred to a well. Not nearly as much fun now, is it? Damn reason. Gets in the way of all the best stories.
So I got to thinking about Canada's equivalent, and of course, Dildo, Newfoundland popped into my head. It is not terribly far from the trio of Heart's Delight, Heart's Desire, and Heart's Content, which run down the Bay Roberts coast within about 20 kilometres of each other. (I drove through them last year and they are lovely, if wee.) But of course these three aren't nearly as salacious and provocative.
I'm asking all nine of you who read this blog - can you think of any other risque Canadian place names? We have lots of quirky ones, like Moose Jaw, but are there any other Butt Holes, Dildos, or Penistones out there in Canada? Post your comment below.
I was reading the New York Times this morning online, as I so often do, trying to wake up and be useful, when I happened upon a story about odd road signs in England, and this photo:
I was now fully awake.
The story http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/world/europe/23crapstone.html?_r=1&em went on to examine, as it were, a number of quirky and suggestive place names in the British Isles, including Titty Ho, North Piddle, Crapstone, and Penistone. My inner eight-year-old started to giggle.
It seems most of these names date back to when words had different meanings than they do currently. I could have written a serious post on the evolution of language, but the eight-year-old wouldn't let me.
Butt Hole, it turns out, probably referred to a well. Not nearly as much fun now, is it? Damn reason. Gets in the way of all the best stories.
So I got to thinking about Canada's equivalent, and of course, Dildo, Newfoundland popped into my head. It is not terribly far from the trio of Heart's Delight, Heart's Desire, and Heart's Content, which run down the Bay Roberts coast within about 20 kilometres of each other. (I drove through them last year and they are lovely, if wee.) But of course these three aren't nearly as salacious and provocative.
I'm asking all nine of you who read this blog - can you think of any other risque Canadian place names? We have lots of quirky ones, like Moose Jaw, but are there any other Butt Holes, Dildos, or Penistones out there in Canada? Post your comment below.
Farewell...
Last Friday, a truly remarkable woman passed away in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.
Helen Maksagak was the first female Commissioner of the Northwest Territories, from 1995 to March 1999, when she was appointed Commissioner for the newly-created territory of Nunavut. To the best of my knowledge, she is the only person to ever serve as the Queen's representative in two different jurisdictions (for those of you reading from non-Northern locations, the Commissioner is to a territory what the Lieutenant-Governor is to a province. Yes, we do have a different word for everything).
Mrs. Maksagak was a quiet, friendly Inuk woman, born in a traditional camp at Bernard Harbour in 1931, and raised in the Mackenzie Delta communities of Aklavik and Tuktoyaktuk. In her early 30s, she moved to Cambridge Bay with her family, and raised six children there with her husband John.
Mrs. Maksagak was, perhaps, four foot nine. She was tiny, dainty, and impressive. She reminded me of one of those apple granny dolls popular in Quebec, where the head of the doll is made from a shriveled apple. She opened meetings with prayer, befitting a Christian woman, and was fluently bilingual in Inuktittut and English. During her entire life, she worked tirelessly for the benefit of her community, particularly youth. She cared passionately about the environment long before being green was cool, and was a leader in the endless fight on drug and alcohol addiction in the North.
She also had a wonderful sense of humour and loved to laugh. One of her proudest days was when Nunavut was created in 1999, and the Inuit had an official homeland.
In 2002, all of her selfless efforts resulted in her being named to the Order of Canada. She was an exceptional woman, and she will be deeply missed.
Helen Maksagak was the first female Commissioner of the Northwest Territories, from 1995 to March 1999, when she was appointed Commissioner for the newly-created territory of Nunavut. To the best of my knowledge, she is the only person to ever serve as the Queen's representative in two different jurisdictions (for those of you reading from non-Northern locations, the Commissioner is to a territory what the Lieutenant-Governor is to a province. Yes, we do have a different word for everything).
Mrs. Maksagak was a quiet, friendly Inuk woman, born in a traditional camp at Bernard Harbour in 1931, and raised in the Mackenzie Delta communities of Aklavik and Tuktoyaktuk. In her early 30s, she moved to Cambridge Bay with her family, and raised six children there with her husband John.
Mrs. Maksagak was, perhaps, four foot nine. She was tiny, dainty, and impressive. She reminded me of one of those apple granny dolls popular in Quebec, where the head of the doll is made from a shriveled apple. She opened meetings with prayer, befitting a Christian woman, and was fluently bilingual in Inuktittut and English. During her entire life, she worked tirelessly for the benefit of her community, particularly youth. She cared passionately about the environment long before being green was cool, and was a leader in the endless fight on drug and alcohol addiction in the North.
She also had a wonderful sense of humour and loved to laugh. One of her proudest days was when Nunavut was created in 1999, and the Inuit had an official homeland.
In 2002, all of her selfless efforts resulted in her being named to the Order of Canada. She was an exceptional woman, and she will be deeply missed.
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