Category Archives: Canada

No News is Bad News

Posted on by
close up shot of keyboard buttons
Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán on Pexels.com

The other week I got a message from my oldest daughter sadly mentioning the fire at Ricky’s All Day Grill here in Victoria, a restaurant we used to frequent every now and then when our girls were small. I immediately went to CHEK News’ website to find out about it.

What was curious to me was that my daughter knew about it before I did. I’m a news junkie myself and usually start my day reading the paper and perusing news websites.

So I asked her where she found out about it.

She told me that one of her coworkers saw the story on Facebook in a community called What The Hell Just Happened. Well, that was news to me.

It’s an interesting thing, where our adult children get their news and information these days.

When I was a kid (oh, here she goes!), there was radio and there was television. And, of course, there were newspapers. Radio would have more up-to-the-minute news, usually at the top of the hour. My parents always had the radio on.

My husband’s father was a radio announcer and a news director at various stations, so the radio was definitely always on in their house.

Typically, we would find our parents with their faces buried in the local paper every morning or evening, depending on when they had a chance to read it.

When our family got a television sometime in the 60’s, the news was something you watched at around 6pm every night. So as it turned out, you didn’t know about a lot of events that had happened in the rest of the world until that time.

And of course, during our parents’ youth, back from the 1920’s to the 40’s, sometimes it was weeks or months before they learned about what was going on somewhere else in the world.

Imagine that. Not knowing about a war or an earthquake somewhere far away until long after it had happened.

These days, we have tweets and videos immediately after, or right at the moment of something happening.

And as we have learned over the last few years, this leads to a lot of MIS-information. Sometimes it’s innocent, sometimes not.

This is exactly why we need to be able to trust who is giving us the information. Radio, television and newspaper reporters are trained to research the heck out of any information they pass on as news. Sometimes they get it wrong too, of course, but not for lack of trying.

Sadly, the trend these days appears to be fewer and fewer traditional sources, especially of local news. Smaller newspapers are shutting down everywhere, and television and radio stations are disappearing off their respective “dials”.

The recent news about the 1,300 positions being cut, and the selling or shuttering of 9 radio stations at Bell Media, is a shock. But then it’s not.

Business models are changing as the internet and social media are taking over. So the federal government has passed Bill C-18 in order to force companies like Meta and Google to pay for the news they allow and/or distribute on their platforms.

But now these very rich, mega companies are fighting back and threatening to block Canadian news from their websites. Heaven forbid they should share their gobs of money!

I mean, on the one hand, the advances in technology can be exciting. I read my paper digitally. I can even read the New York Times online because I have a library card from the Greater Victoria Public Library!

I can keep up with what’s happening by following local news accounts on social media. But I’ll watch it on TV too. Because I’m old. Make that “older”.

So is traditional news gathering on its way out? I sure hope not. Losing local news and dedicated, educated journalists and reporters is bad for all of us, young and old.

Which is why I’ll make a little adjustment to that age-old idiom.

No news is, in fact, “bad” news.

post

The Day I Met The Queen. Kind of.

Posted on by

Like many others, I was not surprised, but still a little shocked when Queen Elizabeth II recently passed away. We knew she had been suffering from various maladies for some time. And, of course, she was 96 years old.

But watching her welcoming the new UK Prime Minister, Liz Truss at Balmoral, I thought the Queen still looked pretty well. I did remember wondering if this would be the last Prime Minister of her reign.

Then, only two days later, Queen Elizabeth II was gone.

Oddly enough, I had been watching a documentary series on her life in the days leading up to that. I admired her dedication and commitment, and certainly her endurance. Actually, I find the history of the British monarchy rather fascinating.

My father, however, had no use for them.

I remember when Charles and Diana arrived in Victoria after the opening ceremonies of Expo ’86. My Dad was visiting us at the time.

I packed my baby daughter in the car and and convinced Dad to come with us down to an area where I knew the Royal entourage would pass by on their way from the airport. I parked the car and carried my daughter down to the street corner to watch, but my father refused to get out of the car.

He would have nothing to do with them.

His Royal resentment stemmed from his younger days, back in time when Remittance men were sent from Britain to somewhere else in the Empire, usually Canada, Australia or New Zealand.

A Remittance man was, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia, “a term once widely used, especially in the West before WWI, for an immigrant living in Canada on funds remitted by his family in England, usually to ensure that he would not return home and become a source of embarrassment.”

These guys were the black sheep, trouble makers, the male failures whose rich families wanted to get them out of sight and out of mind. Sometimes the poor little rich boys redeemed themselves in the countries they were sent to. Sometimes not.

My father had mentioned the history of the Remittance men to me several times as I was growing up. He hated the fact that Canada was a dumping ground for the British elite’s undesirables, and he blamed the British monarchy.

And let’s face it, the British Royals have a long and very complicated history.

But I was oblivious to all of this in 2002 when I decided to watch the parade of cars carrying the Queen and Prince Phillip as they visited Victoria during her Golden Jubilee.

I drove to Blanshard Street near Hillside and parked. I saw a group of people standing along the sidewalk, so I joined them and waited. There were maybe 20 or 30 of us.

Police motorcycles rolled up to stop traffic along the intersection, so we knew the motorcade was coming.

And then we saw it. The Queen’s car apparently spotted our little group, so they drove up and stopped right in front of us. The Queen was in the back seat, her window rolled down, but I couldn’t quite see her face.

There was only stillness.

The silence made me feel awkward. Everyone just stood there quietly, and the Queen simply sat. I wanted to be welcoming and share my enthusiasm for her visit.

So it was with the best of intentions that I, in my most Monty Python-esque voice, called out “Helllooooo!”

I had no idea about protocol. You’re not supposed to speak to the Queen until she speaks first.

Doh.

The car pulled away and that was that.

I’m sure Queen Elizabeth had to endure many similarly awkward moments over the years, and the one I created would be soon forgotten by her.

But not by me. I’ll never forget the day I met the Queen. Kind of.

Save Juno Beach

Posted on by
Juno Beach, June 6, 2017

On an early morning in June a few years back, my husband and I got up to catch a train from Paris to Caen, a town in the Normandy region of northern France. From there, we were to meet up with a tour bus that would take us to Juno Beach, one of the beaches invaded by allied forces on D-Day.

My father, a history buff who served in the RCAF during World War II, had mentioned D-Day many times to me when I was younger. But it took this visit to make the events of that day very real for me.

The Allied invasion of the north coast of France in 1944 included Juno, Utah, Omaha, Gold and Sword beaches, involving U.S., British and Canadian forces.

It just so happened that our little tour bus rolled into Juno Beach on the anniversary of D-Day, June 6th. The weather on our tour was apparently similar to the weather leading up to the invasion, with a lot of wind and rain showers.

The beach itself is huge, and the area includes several bunkers, tanks and monuments, along with the Juno Beach Centre, which is a museum and memorial. Along the beach you’ll also see Canada House, which was the first house to be liberated by allied troops on that day.

We stood at the bunkers imagining the terror and the pain that these young men must have endured, and we walked along the beach where so many of them lost their lives. We choked up as we stood and sang Oh Canada inside the Juno Beach Centre during a ceremony to mark the anniversary.

As the rain and wind kicked up on our walk past Canada House, we were invited inside. This was a rare experience, we were told. Tourists aren’t usually allowed inside, but they felt sorry for us because of the inclement weather.

The moment that really stood out for me, however, happened when we were returning to our tour bus at the end of the day. An older man who lived nearby walked up to us and asked us if we were Canadian. When we told him we were, indeed, he thanked us and our country for our part in D-Day.

And as we drove through the streets of Courseulles-sur-Mer up behind Juno Beach, we saw houses with little Canadian flags on their lawns to mark the occasion. The entire day was a profound experience for both my husband and I.

But I was floored recently when I read a story of how local French developers want to build 70 condos on this historic site. A “questionable” municipal land deal handed these developers a large piece of land right next to the Juno Beach Centre.

There has been plenty of local opposition to it, and two years’ worth of litigation, which has all been paid for by the Centre. But to no avail.

A website called savejunobeach.ca has been set up to encourage Canadians to write to our MPs and to donate to the Juno Beach Centre Association so that they can continue to fight for this historic site. As we all know, once development starts, it doesn’t stop.

It was through the hard work of veterans that the Juno Beach Centre was built in the first place, and it is solely supported by volunteers and donations. And now, as the website says, “The legacy that our veterans built for future generations may disappear entirely.”

We need these sacred places, if only to remind us of the past and what those generations before us sacrificed for us. While the world witnesses a brutal invasion by another mad man, the saying “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is more relevant than ever.

We have to save Juno Beach. Let we forget.