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HAWKES o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-03-10 published
Japan Camera co-founder dies in car accident
John Asa was a passenger in his wife's car when he fell out and hit head, reports say
By Colin FREEZE With a report from Jennifer LEWINGTON Monday, March 10, 2003 - Page A10
John ASA, a boyhood survivor of the Hiroshima bombing who grew up to co-found the Japan Camera retail chain, died after falling from a car said to have been driven by his wife.
"All of us are just waiting to find out what happened, really, said Mr. ASA's nephew, Bryan, in an interview last night.
He said the entire family is grieving for his uncle, whom he described as an inspiring and visionary Canadian entrepreneur who never tired of building his business or of taking snapshots.
According▲ to CFTO News,▲ Mr.▲ ASA had just left his home in the hamlet of Leaskdale, northeast of Toronto, about 8: 30 a.m. on Thursday when he saw his wife of two years driving the other way.
According to the report, they pulled over to the side of the road and he got into her car. But after about 15 metres, he fell out of the passenger side and hit his head.
An witness who came on the scene told the Uxbridge Times Journal that "when I saw the amount of blood I was surprised he was still alive."
Mr. ASA died of the head wounds in hospital.
Police in Durham Region are investigating the case. Constable Robert HAWKES, the lead officer, said he expects to get a reconstruction of the incident tomorrow. The Durham homicide squad is not involved in the probe.
Bryan ASA, who is a Japan Camera vice-president, described his uncle as the youngest and most charismatic of three brothers who overcame hardships early in life.
John ASA was born in Canada but was brought to Japan as a child shortly before the Second World War started.
When he was about 7, he and his older brothers heard the U.S. bomber Enola Gay fly over their small village about 10 kilometres from Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, then saw the tremendous mushroom cloud engulf the city. The explosion killed his mother, who was travelling, but the radiation-filled smoke blew away from his village.
With▲ his two older brothers, Kenji and Roy, Mr. ASA made his way to Canada in 1954. They settled in Toronto, where their first jobs were picking mushrooms.
As a teenager, John ASA went on to become his high-school class president. He and his brothers opened the first Japan Camera store near Yonge Street in 1959.
Twenty years later, the enterprise had grown into a leading chain with outlets across Canada.
Japan Camera was the first company in North America that allowed customers to have their photos developed within an hour.
For the last 20 years, Mr. ASA had lived in Leaskdale, a tiny village in the community known as Uxbridge. His first wife died five years ago, and he had remarried.
Bryan ASA said his uncle never stopped urging people to take pictures.

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HAWKINS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-01-16 published
Bluesman made his mark
Canadian harpist's brush with greatness was frustrated by his battle with the bottle
By Bruce Farley MOWAT Special to The Globe and Mail Thursday, January 16, 2003, Page R9
He will be remembered for creating some of the high water marks in the history of popular music in Canada. Blues harpist Richard NEWELL, also known as King Biscuit Boy, has died. He was found dead at his house in Hamilton on January 5.
Richard NEWELL's story is the stuff of legend, but not legendary. The Oxford Canadian Dictionary defines legend as "a traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as historical, but unauthenticated."
Nearly all the career anecdotes surrounding King Biscuit Boy have been verified. Yes, he really was recruited for the Allman Brothers in 1969, for Janis JOPLIN's Full Tilt Boogie Band in 1970 and for a mid-seventies session with Aretha FRANKLIN. The stellar Houston blues guitarist, Albert COLLINS was recording a version of Mr. NEWELL's Mean Old Lady, before he died in 1994.
Mr. NEWELL, though, would rarely volunteer to offer up such information, unless you prodded him for it. He didn't think it was important.
He was born the son of Lily and Walter (Dick) NEWELL, an Royal Air Force airman stationed in Canada during the Second World War. Richard NEWELL developed an early interest in music, from the country of Hank WILLIAMS Sr. to the jump blues of Louis JORDAN, to the frenetic sounds of such original rock 'n' rollers as Little Richard. At age 12, he purchased his first harmonica after discovering the blues via late-night AM radio.
Mr. NEWELL spent seven years rehearsing his ever-expanding collection of blues 45s, which he purchased on regular hitchhiking forays to Buffalo. Few of his Friends at the time were even aware that he played harmonica and guitar.
In 1963, Ronnie COPPLE's sock-hop rock 'n' roll group, the Barons, recruited Mr. NEWELL as its lead singer. Mr. NEWELL had heard a recording of their instrumental original, Bottleneck, and came by with an record by the prototypical American electric blues slide guitarist, Elmore JAMES.
Within weeks of his joining, the group was transfigured into the flat-out, deep blues band, The Chessmen Featuring son Richard. The sound was guitar driven and harmonica-heavy, certainly not the type of thing you'd find at the average mid-sixties Southern Ontario teen dance. The band made it to Europe the following summer, playing successful shows at U.S. Army bases to predominantly black audiences.
Back in Canada, Mr. NEWELL would go on to become the lead singer of Richie Knight and The Mid Knights in 1966. He also made his debut professional recording at this time, as a session harmonica player on a recording by country singer, Dallas HARMS, best known for writing such hits as Paper Rosie for American country singer Gene WATSON.
When ex-Mid Knight and future Full Tilt Boogie band member Rick BELL was recruited for the Ronnie HAWKINS band in 1968, Mr. NEWELL's name came up. After one audition, he was hired on the spot and rechristened with the royal King Biscuit Boy moniker, a title he was never totally comfortable with.
Back in his native Arkansas, HAWKINS had rehearsed in the basement of the old KFFA radio station where blues harpist, Sonny Boy Williamson 2nd (Rice MILLER,) did his King Biscuit Flour Hour broadcasts. To HAWKINS, Mr. NEWELL must have sounded like a letter from home.
When JOPLIN scooped BELL and guitarist John TILL from HAWKINS's band early in 1970, Mr. NEWELL and drummer Larry ATAMANUIK were left with the task of re-assembling the band. That group would become the first King Biscuit Boy-led outfit, Crowbar. In a fit of pique, HAWKINS had inadvertently given the band its name in an exchange of parting shots at the Grange Tavern in Hamilton. "You guys are so dumb," he yelled, "you could fuck up the moving parts of a crowbar."
As the bandleader, singer, harmonica player and guitarist on Official Music, Mr. NEWELL was responsible for building a razor-sharp and singularly intense sound. The rehearsals for these sessions were apparently tension-laden affairs, but the payoff came when the album muscled its way on to the Canadian charts, (without the benefit of Canadian-content regulations), the fastest-selling domestic release to date.
Mr. NEWELL and the band would part ways after King Biscuit Boy and Crowbar had scored on the singles chart with the traditional piece, Corrina, Corrina. In 1971, Crowbar (without King Biscuit Boy) earned a place on the bestseller charts with a song that was to become a perennial Canuck rock anthem. Oh, What a Feeling was the first domestic single to take advantage of the newly legislated Canadian-content rules for broadcasting.
Fate intervened throughout the following years to rob Mr. NEWELL of his career momentum. The backing band he assembled to promote Good 'Uns, the 1971 followup to Official Music, was beginning to work on a third album, when the funding for it ran out.
With the momentum lost, that unit disintegrated, with guitarist Earl JOHNSON leaving to form the hard-rock outfit, Moxy.
In 1974, sessions produced by Allen TOUSSAINT, the architect of many a New Orleans Rhythm and Blues classic, would culminate in the Epic label release of a self-titled recording. Mr. NEWELL would tour the United States the following year with The Meters (featuring future members of the Neville Brothers) as his backup band. When the Epic label cleaned house later that year, though, he was one of the acts dropped.
In 1972, Mr. NEWELL wed Jacqueline WILLETTS but found that married life did not curb his increasingly frequent drinking binges. The couple divorced in 1979. Alcoholism was also the source of most of his professional woes for the better part of his life, as key shows were either cancelled, or worse, rendered into shambles. Musicians who worked with him tended to admire him, but found it incredibly frustrating that such an enormous talent was being squandered.
At several junctures in his career, Mr. NEWELL managed to quit drinking. Of the three albums he recorded and released in the eighties and nineties, two were the direct dividends of his abstinence. Those recordings earned him Juno nominations, in 1988 for Richard NEWELL aka King Biscuit Boy,and in 1996 for Urban Blues Re: NEWELL. The latter is still in print on Holger Peterson's Stony Plain label. Official Music, along with Good'Uns and Badly Bent, a best-of compilation, are available on the Unidisc label (http://www.unidisc.com). The rest of the King Biscuit Boy catalogue, including the 1980 Mouth of Steel album, is out of print.
In 2000, Mr. NEWELL's mother died and he left regular stage work, preferring the seclusion of his home in the central Mountain neighbourhood of Hamilton. His last recordings include a version of Blue Christmas, available on the Hamilton Hometown Christmas Compact Disk compilation assembled by saxophonist and long-time friend, Sonny DEL RIO. An original composition, Two Hound Blues, along with material recorded by DEL RIO and Mr. NEWELL in the late seventies (the Biscuit With Gravy sessions) is planned for release this year.
Mr. NEWELL, who leaves his father Dick, brother Walter (Randy,) and son Richard James Oddie, made his last public performance in a cameo appearance with The Little Red Blues Gang on September 12, 2002, at Mermaids Lounge in Hamilton. The 60 or so audience members present were treated to a version of his hit, Corrina, Corrina, which is strange, because he never particularly cared for that song.
Richard Alfred NEWELL, musician; born March 9, 1944, in Hamilton died in Hamilton, January 5, 2003.

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HAWKINS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-03-06 published
HAWKINS, Elizabeth
Passed away suddenly at her home, on Tuesday, March 4, 2003, at the age of 57. Beloved wife of Rick. Devoted mother of Joanna and stepmother of Eric. Dear sister of Jolanta. Friends may call at the Turner and Porter Yorke Chapel, 2357 Bloor Street West, at Windermere, east of the Jane subway, on Friday from 2-4 and 6-9 p.m. Funeral Service in the Chapel on Saturday, March 8, 2003 at 1 p.m. If desired, donations may be made to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.

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HAWKINS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-04-29 published
MacRAE, John Ross
Died peacefully on April 26, 2003 at North York General Hospital after a brief illness. He was 84. Ross was born in Winnipeg in 1918, and later moved to Regina when his father, D.B. MacRAE, became editor of the Regina Leader-Post. Ross was a musical prodigy, learning the violin, trumpet and piano, and even during the Depression as a teenager he earned money as a classical violin performer and with a swing band he started. He worked as an announcer at CKCK radio in Regina, then briefly in radio after moving to Toronto before getting a job at the Cockfield-Brown advertising agency, where he remained until his retirement in 1978. At Cockfield, Ross was one of the pioneers in television advertising, and with old friend Brian HAWKINS, created the Expo 67 commercials that became television works of art. When he retired he was a vice-president and in charge of the agency's outstanding radio and television unit. But active life didn't end then. For many years Ross played violin with the semi-professional North York Symphony Orchestra, and later with the East York Symphony (now part of Orchestra Toronto), and with a string quartet. He was also an ardent golfer right to the end of his life, and rarely missed the annual Maxville Highland Games in Glengarry County, where his family's ancestors first settled in Canada in the early 1800s. Above all, Ross had a love of life and a sense of humour backed by an apparently endless fund of stories that endeared him to everyone he met. He will be greatly missed by his sons, Paul and Scott (Denise), their mother Phyllis, daughter-in-law Sherry BRYDSON, and grandchildren David, Kevin, Sean, Gaye, Duncan, Cameron and Holly; by nephew Bruce MacDOUGALL (Lucy WAVERMAN) and their children, Alexander, Emma, Katie and Robyn; by the family of Ross's sister Isobel LEES who, with sisters Margaret and Betty, predeceased him; by the family of Eunice McGILLIS, Ross's second wife, who predeceased him; by his good friend Mary MacMILLAN and her family; and by Ross's many Friends, former co-workers, and fellow golfers and musicians. The family has only thanks and praise for the work of the doctors, nurses and staff at North York General Hospital, who cared for Ross during and after his abdominal surgery. A memorial will be held in Toronto on Saturday, May 24, at 5 p.m. at The Elmwood Terrace Room, fourth floor, 18 Elm Street. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to Orchestra Toronto and/or the North York General Hospital.

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HAWKINS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-30 published
SEAGRAM, Campbell L.E. (Cam)
July 12, 1935 - December 28, 2003. Died peacefully, after a brief period of declining health, at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre. son of the late Beryl and Campbell A. SEAGRAM. He leaves his beloved wife Janet ALLEN; sons Campbell W., Philip A., Andrew B. (Linda HAWKINS) and Mark A. (Amy;) and his grandchildren Austin, Georgia and Mac. Loved brother of Robert P. SEAGRAM and Shirley BREITHAUPT. A private service will be held.

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HAWKSHAW o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-04-11 published
MUNNS, Diane (JARVIS)
Of Wellesley Hills, died April 8, 2003, peacefully at home. She had been married to Robert T. MUNNS for fifty years. Besides her husband, she is survived by her three daughters and their spouses: Robin and Tony HAWKSHAW of Vancouver, British Columbia Janet and Tom TUMILTY of Wellesley, Massachusetts; and Lesley and Dave OSBORN also of Wellesley; nine grandchildren, Michael, Meghan, Stephen, and Gordon Hawkshaw, Katie, Allie, and Meri TUMILTY, and Anne and Scott OSBORN. A private family goodbye was held at home, Thursday, April 10, 2003.

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HAWORTH o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-10-11 published
Creator of Savage God
Theatre director was a Canadian nationalist, a fan of the avant garde and a champion of playwright George Ryga. He was also seen as a kook, a dilettante and a street fighter
By Tom HAWTHORN Special▼ to The Globe and Mail Saturday, October 11, 2003 - Page F9
John JULIANI was a provocateur in life as on stage. A man passionate about the possibilities of theatre, he roused reverence in some, antipathy in others.
His most infamous act was to challenge the Stratford Festival's newly hired artistic director to a duel. Robin PHILLIPS's offence was that he is British when Mr. JULIANI and others were certain a land as grand as Canada was capable of producing a director for its Shakespearean theatre.
What he called a "romantic gesture with tongue in cheek" earned cheers from Canadian theatre directors and sneers from much of the theatre establishment.
Mr. JULIANI, who has died at the age of 63, was an unabashed Canadian nationalist, a dedicated fan of the avant garde, an ardent defender of the right of actors to a decent living, a champion of playwright George Ryga and a tireless figure so commanding as to develop an intense loyalty among acolytes.
At the same time, he was seen as a kook, a dilettante and a street fighter. One critic called him "the Tiger Williams of Canadian theatre," his pugnacious approach earning him comparison to a notorious hockey goon. In his defence, Mr. JULIANI explained that he was merely a "true believer" with opinions on controversial subjects.
Mr. JULIANI's credits were long and varied, including spontaneous Sixties street happenings such as the staging of his own wedding as a theatrical performance and brief appearances on such 1990s television dramas as The X-Files.
From▼ 1982 until 1997, Mr. JULIANI was executive producer of radio drama for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio in Vancouver. He helped to bring to air many celebrated productions, including the brilliant and provocative Dim Sum Diaries by playwright Mark LEIREN- YOUNG.
Mr. JULIANI also possessed a head-turning beauty, with a profile as striking as a Roman bust. Radio host Bill RICHARDSON commented on his handsomeness at a raucous memorial after his death, calling him a "hunka hunka burnin' love." Some said he had the looks and bearing of a Shakespearean king.
John Charles JULIANI was born in Montreal on March 24, 1940. Raised in a working-class neighbourhood, he attended Loyola College and was an early graduate from the fledgling National Theatre School.
He spent two seasons as an actor at Stratford before being hired as a theatre teacher at Simon Fraser University in 1966. The new university atop Burnaby Mountain east of Vancouver was a hotbed of radicalism in politics and the arts. Mr. JULIANI bristled at an imposed curriculum and so infuriated the administration that he was banned from the campus in 1969.
Mr. JULIANI was heavily influenced by the writing of Antonin Artaud, a Surrealist who championed a theatre based on the imagination. He long sought to erase the barrier between scripted text and sensory impression, between performer and audience, to mixed success.
After▼ moving to the West Coast, Mr. JULIANI launched a series of experiments in theatre. He credited these productions to Savage God, which was less a troupe in the traditional sense than a title granted to any performance involving Mr. JULIANI. The▼ name came from William Butler Yeats's awestruck reaction to Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi: "After us, the Savage God?"
Savage God defied explanation, though many tried and even Mr. JULIANI offered suggestions. Savage God was "an anthology of question marks," he once said. (It was, after all, the 1960s.) "Savage God is simply the Imagination," he told the Vancouver Sun, "insatiable, unrelenting, fiercely energetic, wary of categorization, fond of contradiction and inveterately iconoclastic."
In January, 1970, Mr. JULIANI married dancer Donna WONG, a ceremony conducted as a Savage God performance at the Vancouver Art Gallery. He repeated the process at the christening of his son. Ms. WONG- JULIANI would be his domestic and drama partner for more than three decades.
In 1971, the streets of Vancouver were the scene of several spontaneous and sometimes incomprehensible -- performances under the aegis of PACET ("pilot alternative complement to existing theatre.") The $18,000 project, funded by the federal government, incorporated Gestalt therapy sessions in street performances.
Theatrical events took place willy-nilly across the city, including malls, the airport, the library and Stanley Park. Admission was not charged, nor did all spectators appreciate their role as audience to avant-garde performance. A scene in which bicyclists wearing gas masks pedalled along city streets left many scratching their heads in puzzlement.
In 1974, Mr. JULIANI moved to Toronto to set up a graduate theatre-studies program at York University.
He called the program PEAK (" Performance,▼ Example,▼ Animation,▼ Katharsis") and perhaps should have found an acronym for PEEK, as the instructor and his class stripped naked to protest against a lack of classroom space.
The challenge to the new Stratford artistic director in 1974 was written on a piece of parchment and delivered in London by Don RUBIN, a York colleague. Alas, Mr. RUBIN could not find a proper gauntlet and wound up ceremoniously striking Mr. PHILLIPS with a red rubber glove, an absurd note to a theatrical protest.
In 1978, Mr. JULIANI took the stage in a Toronto production of Children of Night, portraying Janusz Korczak, a doctor and teacher who ran an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto. The critics were appalled.
Gina MALLET of the Toronto Star said Mr. JULIANI's performance sullied Dr. Korczak's memory. Jay SCOTT of The Globe and Mail, noting "the dreadfulness" of Mr. JULIANI's acting, said the production robbed the dead of their dignity.
From▼ the stage, Mr. JULIANI challenged the Star's critic to a public debate on the aesthetics of theatre. He also wrote a letter to the editor, noting that Holocaust survivors in the audience had wholeheartedly embraced the production.
Mr. JULIANI wound up in Edmonton, where he continued to condemn the "exorbitance, elitism and museum theatre" of the establishment.
In 1982, he directed and co-wrote Latitude 55°, a feature film with just two characters -- a slick woman from the city and a Polish potato farmer -- set in a snowbound cabin. "It is filled with a passionate conviction that evaporates in pretentious pronouncements," The▼ Globe's▼ Carole▼ CORBEIL wrote, "filled with truthful moments that evaporate in the desire to use every narcissistic trick in the book."
In a 1983 book examining the alternative theatre movement in Canada,▼ author Renate USMIANI devoted most of a chapter to Mr. JULIANI, a decision that got her a scathing rebuke from a reviewer who considered him worthy of little more than a footnote.
"His works are curiosities; at best, they are worthy experiments in Artaudian theory," Boyd NEIL wrote in a Globe review. "But they are neither popular... nor influential."
Mr. JULIANI's years at Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio in Vancouver were both productive and successful. Among the many projects he directed was a three-part adaptation of Margaret Laurence's▼ The▼ Diviners;▼ King Lear, starring John COLICOS; a 13-part series titled, Disaster! Acts of God or Acts of Man?" and, famously, Ryga's The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, with Leonard GEORGE portraying a role once assumed on stage by his late father, Chief Dan GEORGE. The▼ surprise selection of Mr. GEORGE was typical of Mr. JULIANI's often brilliant casting.
Mr. JULIANI directed a 1989 production of The Glass Menagerie at the Vancouver Playhouse with Jennifer Phipps and Morris Panych. Globe▼ reviewer Liam LACEY praised a production that "opens up the play like an old treasure chest, and lets in some fresh air without rearranging or disturbing the work's original grandeurs and caprices."
Four▼ years later, Mr. JULIANI was directing a production of the mystery thriller Sleepwalker when actor Peter HAWORTH took sick shortly before opening night. The director suddenly found himself as the male lead. "Not even the most colossal egotist would want to do this," he said.
Dim Sum Diaries, a series of monologues written by Mr. LEIREN- YOUNG, received protests when aired by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio in 1991. One episode, entitled The Sequoia, in which the white vendor of a luxury home launches a tirade against the Hong Kong immigrant who cuts down two rare and spectacular trees on the property, was accused of being racist. The playwright's well-intentioned exploration of stereotyping was charged with fostering those very prejudices.
After▼ directing Dim Sum Diaries, Mr. JULIANI urged the playwright to tackle an issue that was dividing his church. Mr. LEIREN- YOUNG remembers replying: "You're talking same-sex marriage in the Anglican church and you want a straight Jewish guy to write this?"
The resulting play, titled Articles of Faith: The Battle of St. Alban's, was staged at Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Vancouver to great acclaim.
The collaborations between young playwright and veteran director succeeded in achieving Mr. JULIANI's goal of inspiring dialogue through theatre.
Mr. JULIANI had a reputation as a demanding taskmaster for novice and veteran actors alike. Rehearsals were jokingly called "Savage God Boot Camp."
He maintained a breakneck pace, both in the theatre and in the boardroom. He was artistic co-director of Opera Breve, a small company dedicated to nurturing young singers; president of the Union of British Columbia Performers (Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists); and, a former national president of the Directors Guild of Canada, among many boards on which he served.
Feeling▼ fatigued in early August, Mr. JULIANI was diagnosed with liver cancer. The end came swiftly. He died on August 21 at Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver.
He leaves his wife of 33 years, Donna WONG- JULIANI, and a son, Alessandro JULIANI, an actor. He also leaves brothers Richard and Norman.
(Wit▼ was long a part of the JULIANI mystique. The family pet, a canine named Beau Beau, was referred to in the family's paid obituary notice as a Savage Dog.)
For▼ one who roused such passions, Mr. JULIANI felt that he led a conservative life. "I have always been a square," he once said.
A theatrical farewell to Mr. JULIANI attracted hundreds to St. Andrew's Wesley Church in Vancouver on Labour Day, a Monday and traditionally a quiet date on the theatre calendar. Those in attendance were encouraged to write remembrances on Post-It notes, which were then stuck to the church's pillars.
The City of Vancouver has declared next March 24, which would have been Mr. JULIANI's 64th birthday, to be Savage God Day.

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HAWRELAK o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-03-24 published
Sailor mom had Northern Magic
An early experience with skin cancer led her to contemplate her life and make the decision to set off from Ottawa on a four-year family voyage around the world
By Allison LAWLOR Monday, March 24, 2003 - Page R7
Diane STUEMER dared to dream big and in doing so she captured the country's imagination.
The Ottawa woman, who sailed around the world with her husband and three sons and captivated Canadians back home with her weekly newspaper reports from faraway places, has died of cancer. She was 43.
"She touched people, said her younger sister Linda MASLECHKO. "When you read her stories, you felt that you were part of her family. She was unabashedly human."
The family odyssey began on September 11, 1997, when Ms. STUEMER, her husband Herbert, and their three sons Michael, Jonathan and Christopher, all under the age of 12, left Ottawa in their 42-foot steel sailboat named Northern Magic and headed down the St. Lawrence River.
When they left, the sum of their sailing experience consisted of a handful of summer afternoons on the Ottawa River.
"Finally, we all wanted to leave, just to get it over with. So when every contingency had been thought of, prepared for and fretted over, when we were as ready as we ever would be, we set off. All we could do now was pray."
Over the next four years, they would visit 34 countries and travel 35,000 nautical miles. When they returned home, in the summer of 2001, 3,000 people were there to welcome them.
Throughout the trip, Ms. STUEMER wrote 218 weekly dispatches for The Ottawa Citizen, chronicling every aspect of their journey from their lost cat to seasickness to travelling through pirate waters along the coast of Somalia.
"It's been a long time since the cold grip of fear has clenched me in my gut, and I was not the only one on board to shiver beneath the touch of its icy fingers, Ms. STUEMER wrote, before heading into waters where there had been at least seven attacks on private yachts in the past 12 months, two of which involved gunfire.
Ms. STUEMER subsequently published a book about their adventures called The Voyage of the Northern Magic.
Before setting sail on their epic journey, Ms. STUEMER and her husband fantasized about travelling the world, but like a lot of people they considered putting it off until their retirement.
"In the hustle and bustle of living our lives, with the business and the home and the kids and everything else, the travel part of our ambitions just got forgotten, " she once said in a television interview.
But a brush with skin cancer in 1994 persuaded her to re-evaluate her life. She and her husband decided it was time to start following their dreams. Soon after, they sold their advertising business, rented out their Ottawa-area home, bought and renovated Northern Magic, a modest 37-year-old sailboat.
"She taught people that you have to find a way to make your own dream come true, said Diane KING, a close friend.
The STUEMERs began their journey by sailing down the eastern seaboard of North America, through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific Ocean, eventually reaching Australia. From there, they travelled to Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and across the Indian Ocean to Zanzibar. They sailed the Red Sea and up through the Mediterranean to Gibraltar, from where they set out across the North Atlantic homeward bound.
At times they travelled for weeks without seeing land. The music of Canadian folksinger Michael MITCHELL frequently echoed through Northern Magic, calming frayed nerves during stormy weather or reminding them of home as they sailed into a new port.
Back home in Canada, Mr. MITCHELL read about their trip. "I almost felt I was on the journey with them, " he said.
The family encountered many close calls on their voyage. At one point, the family boat was docked in Yemen only a few hundred metres away from where suicide bombers blew a gaping hole in the U.S.S. Cole.
The trip was not just one of adventure. Along the way they met remarkable people, many of whom were living in poverty. Touched by these people, the family set out to make a difference. Ms. STUEMER's work, along with her popular columns, has managed to raise more than $50,000 so far for humanitarian causes in Africa and Southeast Asia.
The money was raised to help pay for student tuitions and school supplies in Kenya and to help protect orangutans in the jungles of Borneo.
Diane STUEMER was born on June 23, 1959, in Sarnia, Ontario Not long after, her family moved to Edmonton. From there they moved to Calgary, where she spent her formative years. As a teenager, Ms. STUEMER was working at the Calgary Stampede when she met a young German man who would later become her husband. Born in Berlin, Herbert STUEMER came to Canada with the intention of travelling and working throughout North America. But after meeting Diane, he decided to stay put in Calgary. The couple married there in 1981.
From Calgary the couple went to Ottawa, where Ms. STUEMER studied journalism at Carleton University. After earning her degree, she went to work for the federal government in various positions, including briefing the Environment Minister for Question Period.
In 1988, she quit her government job and bought a faltering advertising company. She turned it around to become a successful business. She also wrote a biography of her grandfather, William HAWRELAK, a former mayor of Edmonton, and helped her father, Frank KING, write up his memories of his experience organizing the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics.
"Whenever she put her mind to something, she did it intensely, Ms. MASLECHKO said.
During her life, Ms. STUEMER followed 11 basic rules. "Live your life with passion. Dare to dream big dreams, " was rule No. 1.
"Begin immediately, even if you are not ready, " rule No. 4 states.
Last Boxing Day, Ms. STUEMER became ill, and suffered from persistent headaches. But it was not until February 6 that the malignant melanoma that took her life was discovered. In the last month of her life, she was surrounded in the hospital by family and Friends, whom she kept laughing with her wonderful sense of humour, said her sister.
"She said: 'I got a wake-up call and thank goodness I listened. I changed my life. I fulfilled who I was meant to be', " her sister Ms. MASLECHKO recalled. "She made the most of it and that's a lesson to all of us."
Ms. STUEMER was recently presented with the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal. The Medal is given to Canadians "who have made a significant contribution to their fellow citizens, their community or to Canada."
The City of Ottawa also has plans to name a park and beach area on the north shore of Petrie Island Stuemer Park, in honour of Ms. STUEMER. The Ottawa River island, close to where the STUEMERs live, is the place from which they departed on their journey and returned to four years later.
News of her death attracted a flood of messages to the family Web site (http: //www.northernmagic.com). Some admirers had followed Ms. STUEMER's exploits for years. Long-time reader Carol LAVIOLETTE wrote: "I followed your adventure from the very start; I laughed and cried through all of the stories in the Citizen. I prayed for your safe return and cried tears of joy when the five of you returned to Canada.
"I am a mother of three myself and could not imagine going on that kind of adventure, I don't have the strength of character to undertake something of such magnitude. But I lived it through your tales. Thank you and God bless you."
Ms. STUEMER died in an Ottawa hospital on March 15. She leaves her husband Herbert and their three sons Michael, 16, Jonathan, 14, and Christopher, 11, her mother and father, sister and two brothers.
"Diane was like a little girl who, in all her innocence, really truly believed she could change the world, Ms. KING wrote in a eulogy. "Who would dare tell her that she couldn't?"

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HAWTHORN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-03-31 published
Royal Canadian Air Force pilot won Distinguished Flying Cross for bombing mission
By Tom HAWTHORN Monday, March 31, 2003 - Page R7
Surrey, British Columbia -- John ROSE, who won the Distinguished Flying Cross for completing a bombing mission over Germany in a damaged aircraft, died March 9 at his home here. He was 79.
Mr. ROSE was a flight lieutenant when assigned to join an attack on Munich in January, 1945. His bomber suffered serious damage from enemy fire and became difficult to fly, although Mr. ROSE decided not to abort the mission. On his return, the port outer engine failed, causing the bomber to lose altitude rapidly. Mr. ROSE regained control at 1,000 feet and nursed his plane home. Earlier in the war, he had survived a midair collision with another bomber.
Richard John ROSE, who was born in Toronto on June 9, 1923, had been working as a clerk when he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941. After the war, Mr. ROSE spent 32 years as a pilot and instructor with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. Late in his career he flew for Suriname Airlines.
He died of liver failure on March 9. He leaves his wife Erica and six children.

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HAWTHORN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-04-07 published
He struck gold at the old Empire games
By Tom HAWTHORN Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail Monday, April 7, 2003 - Page R7
Jim COURTRIGHT, who has died, aged 88, was one of Canada's top track-and-field athletes, winning a gold medal in the javelin throw at the 1938 British Empire Games in Sydney.
Just getting to the meet was a marathon for Mr. COURTRIGHT, an engineering student at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario The price of a train ticket to Vancouver beyond his means, he found work as a prisoner escort, travelling cross-country in a converted box car while handcuffed to a man facing deportation.
In any event, he found his fare and went on to join the Canadian team which arrived in Australia on January 15, 1938.
In the javelin throw, Mr. COURTRIGHT faced formidable competition in Stanley LAY of New Zealand and Jack METCALFE of Australia. LAY, a sign writer by trade, had been a capable cricketer who put his arm to great success. METCALFE was a superb athlete whose specialty was the triple jump, in which he won a bronze at the Berlin Olympics in 1936 and gold at the Empire Games in 1938. In the end, it was the Canadian who prevailed, followed by LAY and METCALFE.
Despite his gold medal, Mr. COURTRIGHT was overshadowed by Eric COY of Winnipeg, who had won two medals and so was awarded the Norton H. Crowe Trophy as Canada's outstanding amateur athlete that year. Mr. COURTRIGHT also trailed Mr. COY and sculler Bob PEARCE in voting for the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada's top male athlete, a prize open to amateurs and professionals. Mr. PEARCE won the trophy.
Later in 1938, Mr. COURTRIGHT unleashed a throw of 62.74 metres, an intercollegiate record at the time that still ranks as the third longest in Queen's University history. He broke his leg in an accident at a gold mine in Northern Ontario in the summer of 1939, yet recovered to play guard for the school's basketball team the following winter.
James Milton COURTRIGHT was born in 1914 to a civil engineer and the daughter of the town sheriff in North Bay, Ontario The family moved to Ottawa and the boy participated in football and field events at Glebe Collegiate.
Mr. COURTRIGHT placed third nationally in the javelin in 1934 while still a student at the University of Ottawa. He finished second the following year behind Mr. COY.
In 1936, the Ottawa student was the best in the land and attended the Berlin Olympics that summer. One of 28 competitors in the javelin, Mr. COURTRIGHT's best throw of 60.54 metres was too short to qualify for the final round. He finished 14th in an event won by Gerhard STOECK of Germany, whose winning toss of 71.84 metres was inspired by chanting crowds at the Olympic stadium, among them Adolf Hitler.
The disappointment of his Berlin performance spurred Mr. COURTRIGHT to greater success in throwing events. In 1937, he was Canada's intercollegiate champion in javelin and the shot put.
In July, he travelled to Dallas to compete at a 200-athlete meet organized as part of the city's Greater Texas and Pan-American Exposition. Mr. COURTRIGHT won the gold medal in javelin at the Cotton Bowl. The success of the meet inspired the organizing of the first official Pan-American Games fourteen years later.
Mr. COURTRIGHT attended postgraduate classes in engineering at Queen's, where he did double-duty as star athlete and track coach. He was also president of the student body in his final year.
After graduation, Mr. COURTRIGHT joined Shell Canada as a refinery engineer in Montreal in 1941. As he was promoted he accepted back-and-forth postings from Montreal to Toronto to Vancouver to Toronto to Montreal to Toronto, including a stint as a public-relations co-ordinator.
He became a vice-principal at Queen's in 1970, a job he held until retirement nine years later.
Mr. COURTRIGHT died on February 21, just days after the 65th anniversary of his triumph in Sydney. He leaves eight children and sister Celina COURTRIGHT of Ottawa. He was predeceased by his wife, Mary (née Roche), and three brothers.
In 1958, a moving van loaded with the family's possessions caught fire and burned, destroying many of Mr. COURTRIGHT's medals and trophies. A prize rescued from the ashes was the gold medal from the British Empire Games. It is now in the hands of a grand_son.

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HAWTHORN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-05-09 published
He was a daredevil footballer in the days of leather helmets
By Tom HAWTHORN Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail Friday, May 9, 2003 - Page R11
Norris LINDSAY, a teammate of Ormond BEACH and Bummer STIRLING on the storied Sarnia Imperials football team, has died in Petrolia, Ontario He was 94.
At 6-foot-3, 220-pounds, he was a big man in the era of leather helmets and earned a reputation for his flying tackles, a daredevil play that has long since fallen out of favour. In lieu of salary as a two-way player, Mr. LINDSAY and his teammates were guaranteed jobs with Canadian Oil Companies Ltd.
Mr. LINDSAY helped the Imperials win the Ontario Rugby Football Union champioship in 1933 and 1934 over Balmy Beach, St. Michael's College and the Hamilton Tigers.
In 1933, the Imperials played host to the 1933 Grey Cup championship against the Toronto Argonauts. Despite his regular-season contributions, coach Pat OUELLETTE did not have Mr. LINDSAY suit up for the big game, which was won 4-3 by Toronto in the lowest-scoring Grey Cup ever played.
Mr. LINDSAY was frustrated again the following year, when coach Art MASSUCCI did not place him on the Imperials' roster for the Grey Cup final. Sarnia defeated the Regina Roughriders 20-12 at Toronto. Among Mr. LINDSAY's teammates wearing the three-starred sweater of the Imperials were Mr. BEACH, a sensational halfback kicker Hugh (Bummer) STIRLING of Saint Thomas, Ontario; rugged snapper Boob MOLLOY; and, the speedy Norm PERRY, known as The Galloping Ghost.
Mr. LINDSAY, who was born in Tupperville, Ontario, near Chatham in southwestern Ontario, was also a gifted golfer who entered the 1940 Canadian Open. "He told me his first shot went out of bounds, said Pat SUTHERLAND, a friend. "By the time he was done, he had shot an 11 on the first hole."
Mr. LINDSAY, an amateur, shot an embarrassing 93 on the par-71 course, following with a 90. The tournament was won in a playoff by the legendary American golfer Sam SNEAD. Shortly after, Mr. LINDSAY joined the merchant marine and was a radio operator during the Second World War. In peacetime, he took over the Blue Bay Lodge near Huntsville, Ontario, which he operated until 1963.
Mr. LINDSAY golfed until late in life. When his local club opened a new clubhouse, he rented the old one and made it his home. He died on March 11 at the Lambton Meadowview Villa in Petrolia, 10 days after marking his 94th birthday. He was predeceased by his wife, Bette, who died in 1965.

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HAWTHORN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-06-03 published
Accidental airline' opened British Columbia coast
Ham-radio operator became salesman, aviator and award-winning author
By Tom HAWTHORN Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail Tuesday, June 3, 2003 - Page R5
Jim SPILSBURY was an itinerant radio salesman and founder of what became known as "the accidental airline." His businesses brought the wider world to the isolated canneries, logging camps, steamer camps and native villages along the rugged British Columbia coast.
Mr. SPILSBURY, who has died at 97, took it as his calling to make life easier for his fellow coast dwellers. He later realized to his dismay that he had contributed to ending a way of life, as many of his customers forsook the hardships of isolation for the city.
The coastal hamlets he visited by boat and, later, plane became a roll call of ghost towns and all-but-forgotten ports of call: Surge Narrows, Blind Channel, Grassy Bay, Squirrel Cove, Whaletown.
"Nowadays the world I knew has all but vanished," he wrote in 1990. "As I cruise the bays and inlets I have known so well, the coast for me becomes a haunted place, haunted by all the people and places that gave it life."
The first of two memoirs written with Howard WHITE/WHYTE was released by Mr. WHITE/WHYTE's Harbour Publishing in 1987. SPILSBURY's Coast became a regional bestseller and the winner of a British Columbia Book Prize.
A second volume, The Accidental Airline, published the following year, was also well received by critics and readers. Pastels of Pacific coastal scenes by Mr. SPILSBURY, an accomplished painter, graced the covers of both books.
Mr. SPILSBURY's arrival by boat was a welcome respite from day-to-day labours for many living and working the fiords along the Inside Passage between Vancouver Island and the mainland.
That he was an accomplished storyteller and superb radio technician made him a legendary character long before his books were published.
Ashton James SPILSBURY was born on October 8, 1905, in the same upstairs bedroom as his father at Longlands, the family's ancestral home at Findern, Derbyshire. His parents had returned to the mother country from British Columbia at the urging of the SPILSBURY clan, which did not wish to have a scion born in the colonies.
His father, Ashton Wilmot SPILSBURY, was a Cambridge-educated gentleman whose modest business schemes were fraught with disaster his mother, the former Alice Maud BLIZARD, was a pants-wearing suffragist with little use for convention. Soon after their son's birth, they returned to their 144-hectare homestead at Whonnock on British Columbia's Fraser River.
After a failed business venture cost the family its land, they resettled on Savary Island, a narrow sandbar in Georgia Strait. The SPILSBURYs made their home in a canvas tent erected on an unused road right of way; they were squatters.
Mr. SPILSBURY got his first formal schooling on the island in September, 1914, a month before his ninth birthday. He would attend classes for only four years. By 1919, he began an apprenticeship with a steamship company, an unfortunate choice, as he was seasick for much of the next six months, before quitting.
He worked on Savary as a swamper and knotter on a log float before earning his donkey engineer's steam ticket. When he joined his father in business as Spilsbury and Son, their letterhead included a lengthy list of talents from well-digging to real-estate sales. They also ran a taxi service.
Mr. SPILSBURY had been fascinated with radio as a teenager, building his first crystal set at age 17. The early days of radio involved communication by Morse code. The advent of voice transmission, including a memorable night in 1922 when he tuned in an orchestra performing live from the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, turned his interest into an obsession.
In 1926, Mr. SPILSBURY set out as a radio technician on the Mary, a leaky codfish boat rented for $1 a day. He scrambled to make a living by trolling coastal hamlets and work camps, much of what little profit he made coming from sweet-talking lonely housewives into purchasing an inexpensively produced lemon-oil polish at 75 cents a bottle.
The business grew over the years, as Mr. SPILSBURY sold brand-name radios, as well as those of his own construction, to people for whom the instrument was their only daily contact with the rest of the world. In 1936, he bought a new boat, which he christened the Five B. R., after his ham-radio call of VE5BR.
As a ham operator, he once stayed awake 40 consecutive hours as part of a relay of operators from Vancouver through Parksville on Vancouver Island to Mr. SPILSBURY on Savary Island to Vernon in the Okanagan in the Interior of British Columbia, where a passenger train had derailed in an ice storm. Mr. SPILSBURY handled 340 messages in three days on his home-built radio.
The Five B. R. was called "the radio boat" and was a fixture along the coast, where Mr. SPILSBURY heralded his arrival by sounding an ear-splitting police siren.
A wartime restriction on gas for boats led Mr. SPILSBURY to purchase a Waco Standard biplane for $2,500. Service calls that had taken days now lasted only minutes. "I knew I would never be able to look at that coastal world in quite the same way," he wrote in SPILSBURY's Coast. "It had become less mysterious, less forbidding, less grand."
Mr. SPILSBURY soon discovered that those in isolated locales wanted not just radios and repairs, but access to his airplane. He got a charter licence, and bought a pair of twin-engine Stranraer flying boats converted into passenger craft, after getting a contract to serve logging companies on the Queen Charlotte Islands.
The ungainly Strannies gave birth to Queen Charlotte Airlines Limited, which took as its slogan, "In the wake of the war canoes." The airline bought so many second-hand aircraft that a separate company was formed to buy and sell equipment. Some said the initials Q.C.A. actually stood for Queer Collection of Aircraft. By June, 1949, only two other companies -- Trans-Canada Airlines and Canadian Pacific -- were flying more revenue miles than Mr. SPILSBURY's accidental airline, which had grown to 300 employees during the postwar boom.
The company replaced the ugly-duckling Strannies with sleek DC-3s, but the airline struggled as Russ Baker of Central British Columbia Airlines, later Pacific Western, lured passengers away. The upstart bought Queen Charlotte Airlines for $1.4-million in July, 1955, by which time Mr. SPILSBURY was a minority shareholder in the airline he had founded. He was out of the airline business just as suddenly as he had gotten into it.
He continued manufacturing communications equipment at a converted warehouse in Vancouver. Spilsbury and Tindall Ltd. was a name known around the globe; their famous SBX-11 portable radio-telephone was used at the North Pole as well as at the summit of Mount Everest.
One is on display at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec
Some of Mr. SPILSBURY's business ventures displayed his father's touch. He lost an estimated $65,000 trying to sell the two-seat Isetta, a microcar nicknamed "the rolling egg."
In 1981, he sold his radio-manufacturing company, by then known as SPILSBURY Communications Ltd.
His two memoirs were followed by SPILSBURY's Album in 1990, also published by Harbour, which recycled some of the anecdotes of his memoirs with photographs of the coast.
Mr. SPILSBURY was named to the Order of British Columbia in 1993. He was also inducted into the British Columbia Aviation Hall of Fame. An award bearing his name is presented annually by the Coast Guard Auxiliary and the Western Canada Telecommunications Council (which he founded) to the person who contributes the most to marine safety through the use of radio.
Mr. SPILSBURY died of pneumonia at Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver on April 20. He leaves three children from his first marriage, which ended in divorce -- daughter Marie LANGTON and sons Ron and Dave SPILSBURY. He also leaves six grandchildren and one great-grandchild. He was predeceased by his second wife, the former Winnifred HOPE.

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HAWTHORN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-08-19 published
MYNARSKI's man FRIDAY
Knocked unconscious, the young bomb aimer was saved when his flight engineer pushed him out of their stricken Lancaster
By Tom HAWTHORN Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail Tuesday, August 19, 2003 - Page R7
Victoria -- A Second World War bomb aimer who survived an ill-fated mission during which his friend Andrew MYNARSKI was later awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for trying the save a trapped fellow crewman has died. Jack FRIDAY, who spent his peacetime career with Air Canada, died in Thunder Bay.
Mr. MYNARSKI's sacrifice awed a generation of children who learned of it in their school readers. Mr. FRIDAY was often asked to recount what happened aboard his doomed Lancaster as it burned over France. What many did not realize was that Mr. FRIDAY only learned the details of Mr. MYNARSKI's heroism after the end of the war.
On June 12, 1944, his Royal Canadian Air Force crew was assigned to bomb the railroad marshalling yards at Cambrai. The mission was similar to others in recent days, as No. 419 (Moose) Squadron attacked German reinforcements being rushed forward to repel Allied forces in Normandy.
Six days earlier, the crew had bombed coastal guns at Longues in the early-morning hours before the invasion fleet landed on D-Day. The Cambrai target -- their 13th mission -- was to be attacked on in the early morning hours of June 13. Later, superstitious survivors would speak of that coincidence as a missed omen.
Their Lancaster lifted off the runway at Middleton St. George in Yorkshire at 9: 44 p.m. on June 12. After crossing the English Channel, the bomber was coned -- caught in searchlights -- but the pilot, Flying Officer Arthur DE BREYNE, managed to manoeuvre his craft out of the dreaded lights.
The reprieve did not last long.
Rear gunner Patrick BROPHY, who sat in an isolated compartment at the rear of the aircraft, spotted an enemy fighter below. "Bogey astern! Six o'clock!" he shouted into the intercom, just before a Junkers 88 attacked.
Mr. DE BREYNE threw the bomber into an evasive corkscrew. In an instant, though, his plane was rocked by three explosions. Both port engines were knocked out and the wing set afire. A hydraulic line in the fuselage had also been severed and the midsection of the plane was burning.
The pilot ordered the crew to evacuate as he struggled to prevent the Lancaster from going into a dive. Mr. FRIDAY's duty as bomb aimer was to release the escape hatch. As he did so, the rushing wind whipped the steel door open, striking him above the right eye.
Flight engineer Roy VIGARS was the first among the other crew to clamber to the hatch.
"I made my way down to the bomb-aimer's position and found Jack FRIDAY slumped on the floor, unconscious," Mr. VIGARS told Bette PAGE for her 1989 book, Mynarski's Lanc. "I rolled him over, clipped on his parachute pack, and slid him over to the escape hatch and dropped him through the opening while holding on to the ripcord."
The act was risky, as the parachute could have wrapped around the craft's tail wheel. Mr. VIGARS saw that Mr. FRIDAY's parachute had opened clear of the bomber. He then jumped, followed by wireless operator James KELLY, navigator Robert BODIE and the pilot, who had recovered control of the bomber and set it on a gentle descent.
Unknown to those men, a terrible drama was being played out at the rear of the flaming craft.
As Warrant Officer MYNARSKI prepared to jump, he looked back to see that Flying Officer Patrick BROPHY was still at his rear-gunner's position.
Mr. MYNARSKI, the mid-upper gunner, crawled through the burning fuselage, his uniform and parachute catching fire. Mr. BROPHY was trapped in his seat and the men struggled desperately to free him.
Finally, Mr. BROPHY told Mr. MYNARSKI to jump without him.
Mr. MYNARSKI crawled back through the fire, stood at the door, saluted his doomed comrade, and leapt into the inky sky with his uniform and parachute in flames.
Aboard the Lancaster, Mr. BROPHY prepared for certain death.
Some miles away, Mr. FRIDAY floated unconscious to earth by parachute, landing near a chateau at Hedauville. A pair of farm workers found him in a vineyard the next morning. He was taken to a local doctor who feared reprisals for treating an Allied airman. The injured man was turned over to the Germans.
Mr. FRIDAY finally regained consciousness on June 17, wakening in a prison cell in Amiens. He feared he had lost his eye. A fellow prisoner peeked beneath Mr. FRIDAY's bandages and saw that a flap of skin was blocking his vision. The wound had not been stitched.
Mr. FRIDAY was reunited with Mr. VIGARS as their captors prepared to transport prisoners to Germany.
The pair were sent to an interrogation centre near Frankfurt, before being transferred to Stalag Luft 7 at Bankau, outside Breslau (now Wroclaw), in Silesia near Poland.
The men were separated again on January 18, 1945, as the Germans marched prisoners out of the camp ahead of the advancing Soviet army. The forced march was arduous. Many died of disease, exposure and exhaustion. Mr. FRIDAY survived by stealing frozen beets and potatoes from farmer's fields. He would later remember the only warm night of the march was spent in a barn, where he snuggled overnight with a cow. Mr. FRIDAY was at last liberated by the Soviets in April.
He returned to England in May, where, as recounted in the 1992 book, The Evaders, he prepared a statement, the brevity of which perfectly captured his sense of the dramatic events. "Took off from Middleton St. George. Do not remember briefing or takeoff. First thing I remember is coming to in a hospital in Amiens."
Only later did he learn what happened aboard the Lancaster. As the bomber crashed, the port wing struck a tree, causing the plane to veer violently to the left. The force freed Mr. BROPHY from his turret prison and he landed against a tree, far away from the burning wreckage. He had survived.
Mr. MYNARSKI, the son of Polish immigrants and a leather worker in civilian life, was not as fortunate. He was found by the French, but was so badly burned that he soon died from his injuries. He was 27.
The other crewmen, including Mr. BROPHY, evaded capture with the assistance of French civilians.
John William FRIDAY was the third son born to a pharmacist in Port Arthur, Ontario, on December 21, 1921. He graduated from Port Arthur Collegiate Institute before joining the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942. He was demobilized with the rank of flying officer. He worked as an Air Canada passenger agent for 31 years before retiring in 1985.
In 1988, he joined his former crew mates in ceremonies marking the dedication of a restored Lancaster at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum at Mount Hope, Ontario The aircraft, which was refurbished in the colours and markings of the crew's plane, has been designated the MYNARSKI Memorial Lancaster. MYNARSKI's name also graces a string of three lakes in Manitoba, as well as a park, a school and a civic ward in his hometown of Winnipeg.
Mr. FRIDAY died of cancer in Thunder Bay, Ontario, on June 22. He leaves Shirley (née BISSONNETTE,) his wife of 54 years, five children and four younger sisters. He was predeceased by two brothers.
Mr. BROPHY, whose life he tried to save, died at age 68 at St. Catharines, Ontario, in 1991. According to the second edition of MYNARSKI's Lanc, Mr. VIGARS, who saved Mr. FRIDAY's life, died in 1989 at Guildford, England; Mr. DE BREYNE died at St. Lambert, Quebec, in 1991; and, Mr. BODIE died in Vancouver in 1994. Mr. FRIDAY's death leaves James KELLY of Toronto as the only survivor.

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HAWTHORN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-08-25 published
Pilot 'displayed utmost fortitude, courage and devotion to duty'
By Tom HAWTHORN Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail Monday, August 25, 2003 - Page R5
Jack KESLICK, a pilot who won a Distinguished Flying Cross for his several daring bombing missions over Germany in the Second World War, has died in Richmond Hill, Ontario He was 81.
Mr. KESLICK, a flying officer, had several scrapes with disaster, losing engines on two sorties and being hit by flak on two others.
On August 9, 1944, he lost an engine during an attack on a launch site for the V-1 flying bomb at Prouville, France, but managed to return safely to base at Leeming, Yorkshire, home of No. 429 (Bison) Squadron. The following month, he again lost an engine on a mission. Though he had yet to reach his target at Calais on the French coast, Mr. KESLICK continued with his bombing assignment before returning to England.
Four days later, on September 28, a wave of 38 Lancaster and 214 Halifax bombers was assigned to take out coastal guns at Cap Gris Nez. Many crews had to return with their bombs because of poor weather, but Mr. KESLICK was able to strike the target.
On October 12, Mr. KESLICK's Halifax was hit by flak while joining 95 others in a sortie against oil plants at Wanne-Eickel, Germany. His plane was not seriously damaged.
His crew also took part in the massive attack on the Wilhelmshaven naval base on the night of October 15-16, as 119 Halifaxes and 19 Lancasters dropped more than one million pounds of incendiaries and high explosives on the port city.
From July 28 to November 6, 1944, Mr. KESLICK logged more than 165 hours of flight on 31 sorties, but his most harrowing mission was yet to be flown. On November 24, his bomber was one of a baker's dozen on a mining operation on the Kattegat, the strait separating Denmark and Sweden. His Halifax was hit by flak, damaging the bomb bay and the starboard outer engine. He nursed his Halifax back to Scotland.
John Leask KESLICK was born in Toronto on May 25, 1922. He enlisted on July 29, 1942, and had been promoted to pilot officer by the time he left military service.
He was presented his medal at Government House in Ottawa by Governor-General Vincent MASSEY in 1953, according to research by the military historian Hugh HALLIDAY. The citation noted that Mr. KESLICK had "invariably displayed the utmost fortitude, courage and devotion to duty."
Mr. KESLICK died of congestive heart failure at Richmond Hill, Ontario, on July 15. He leaves a son, a daughter and a sister. He was predeceased by his wife, Evelyn.

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HAWTHORN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-09-17 published
Gallant fighter pilot was war hero
Upper Canada College alumnus received the coveted Distinguished Flying Cross in 1943 for his 'very keen fighting spirit'
By Tom HAWTHORN Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail Wednesday, September 17, 2003 - Page R7
Rowan T. (Bob) HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON was a Second World War fighter pilot who credited his flying mate, Larry DOHERTY, with saving his life at the cost of his own.
Mr. DOHERTY alerted Mr. HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON by radio of an impending attack by three German fighters, shortly before he was shot down and killed in June, 1943.
Mr. HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON escaped a similar fate only by outlasting the enemy in a desperate, 20-minute dogfight.
His friend's warning and his own skill saved Mr. HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON from becoming a wartime casualty. He returned from Europe a decorated pilot and enjoyed a successful business career before dying at home in New Liskeard, Ontario, on June 25, aged 86.
Rowan Theodore HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON, who was called Bob by childhood Friends and Hutch by fellow pilots, was born in Toronto on May 10, 1917, the only child of an accountant father. He attended Upper Canada College before entering engineering studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario
He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force on August 14, 1940, just as the Battle of Britain was underway. After training, he was posted to No. 401 Squadron, flying Spitfires.
In August, 1942, he was transferred to No. 414 Squadron, known as the Sarnia Imperials, which flew Mustangs from a base at Croydon, Surrey.
On August 19, just eight days after arriving, Mr. HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON flew a tactical reconnaissance mission during the ill-fated Dieppe Raid.
The Imperials spent the next 12 months flying defensive patrols over the south coast of England, as well as engaging in daytime strafing raids on targets in occupied France.
Flying Officer HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON returned to Dieppe on the French coast on March 26, 1943, flying low across the English Channel in his Mustang before attacking two locomotives and an electrical transformer.
Typical of the harassment campaign was a mission Mr. HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON and Mr. DOHERTY flew on April 1, as they scoured the French coast from Fécamp to Dieppe, firing on electric power lines and shooting up two freight engines.
On one such raid, Mr. HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON and another partner riddled five locomotives in the Le Havre area.
Another time, a strafing run in the Breton coastal region damaged seven locomotives. A wing of Mr. HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON's Mustang was struck by ground fire. He returned safely to base.
On June 6, 1943, the pair was assigned to escort a naval vessel on a secret mission in the English Channel when Flying Officer DOHERTY spotted a trio of Folke-Wulf 190s just as they launched a surprise attack. His brief radio warning alerted Mr. HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON to the danger, although DOHERTY's Mustang was almost immediately shot down.
"For 20 minutes HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON fought off the three enemy aircraft until the German pilots gave up their attacks and flew away," according to an account published in The Royal Canadian Air Force Overseas, an official 1944 history. "Then, despite the fact that his petrol was almost exhausted, the Mustang pilot resumed his patrol over the naval vessel and saw it safely back to port.
"Thanks to DOHERTY's warning and HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON's gallantry the naval vessel had not been attacked during the engagement."
On landing, it was discovered that Mr. HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON's Mustang had but a thimbleful of fuel.
The Imperials were redesignated as a fighter reconnaissance squadron later that month, as Allied planners began preparations for an invasion of Europe.
They also took airborne before-and-after photographs of the launch sites for V-1 flying bombs.
Once, Mr. HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON and Flying Officer B. B. MOSSING were jumped by eight German fighters, although Mr. MOSSING damaged one with a well-placed burst and three more were shot down by Spitfires which came to the rescue of the reconnaissance Mustangs.
On the morning of the D-Day landings, Mr. HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON's squadron was assigned to spot targets for the naval bombardment of coastal defences stretching from Le Havre to Cherbourg. For Mr. HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON, it was exactly one year to the day since he had tangled with the trio of FW 190s.
The following days were a blur of predawn briefings, as the squadron flew at first light to photograph mosaics of Caen, France, as well as Luftwaffe airfields. Planners were desperate for information on overnight changes in the battle area.
On Dominion Day, 1944, Mr. HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON, by now a squadron leader, was made commander of the Imperials. They moved base from Odiham, Hampshire, to Ste-Honorine-de-Ducy, France, in August, replacing their Mustangs with Spitfires. The squadron moved base every few weeks to keep pace with the army's advances.
One of his final achievements was in providing valuable photographs and reports in August, 1944, as the German Seventh and Fifth Panzer armies tried desperately to escape an encroaching Allied encirclement in an area that became known as the Falaise pocket.
Mr. HUTCHINSON/HUTCHISON was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1943 for his "very keen fighting spirit."
After the war, he was prominent in business in New Liskeard, operating a travel agency, an insurance brokerage and a real-estate company. He sat on the board of directors of the Northern Telephone Company Ltd.
He leaves his wife of 54 years, Rosemary (née KERR,) their daughter and two sons, and two grand_sons.

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HAWTHORN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-10-11 published
Creator of Savage God
Theatre director was a Canadian nationalist, a fan of the avant garde and a champion of playwright George Ryga. He was also seen as a kook, a dilettante and a street fighter
By Tom HAWTHORN Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail Saturday, October 11, 2003 - Page F9
John JULIANI was a provocateur in life as on stage. A man passionate about the possibilities of theatre, he roused reverence in some, antipathy in others.
His most infamous act was to challenge the Stratford Festival's newly hired artistic director to a duel. Robin PHILLIPS's offence was that he is British when Mr. JULIANI and others were certain a land as grand as Canada was capable of producing a director for its Shakespearean theatre.
What he called a "romantic gesture with tongue in cheek" earned cheers from Canadian theatre directors and sneers from much of the theatre establishment.
Mr. JULIANI, who has died at the age of 63, was an unabashed Canadian nationalist, a dedicated fan of the avant garde, an ardent defender of the right of actors to a decent living, a champion of playwright George Ryga and a tireless figure so commanding as to develop an intense loyalty among acolytes.
At the same time, he was seen as a kook, a dilettante and a street fighter. One critic called him "the Tiger Williams of Canadian theatre," his pugnacious approach earning him comparison to a notorious hockey goon. In his defence, Mr. JULIANI explained that he was merely a "true believer" with opinions on controversial subjects.
Mr. JULIANI's credits were long and varied, including spontaneous Sixties street happenings such as the staging of his own wedding as a theatrical performance and brief appearances on such 1990s television dramas as The X-Files.
From▲ 1982 until 1997, Mr. JULIANI was executive producer of radio drama for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio in Vancouver. He helped to bring to air many celebrated productions, including the brilliant and provocative Dim Sum Diaries by playwright Mark LEIREN- YOUNG.
Mr. JULIANI also possessed a head-turning beauty, with a profile as striking as a Roman bust. Radio host Bill RICHARDSON commented on his handsomeness at a raucous memorial after his death, calling him a "hunka hunka burnin' love." Some said he had the looks and bearing of a Shakespearean king.
John Charles JULIANI was born in Montreal on March 24, 1940. Raised in a working-class neighbourhood, he attended Loyola College and was an early graduate from the fledgling National Theatre School.
He spent two seasons as an actor at Stratford before being hired as a theatre teacher at Simon Fraser University in 1966. The new university atop Burnaby Mountain east of Vancouver was a hotbed of radicalism in politics and the arts. Mr. JULIANI bristled at an imposed curriculum and so infuriated the administration that he was banned from the campus in 1969.
Mr. JULIANI was heavily influenced by the writing of Antonin Artaud, a Surrealist who championed a theatre based on the imagination. He long sought to erase the barrier between scripted text and sensory impression, between performer and audience, to mixed success.
After▲ moving to the West Coast, Mr. JULIANI launched a series of experiments in theatre. He credited these productions to Savage God, which was less a troupe in the traditional sense than a title granted to any performance involving Mr. JULIANI. The▲ name came from William Butler Yeats's awestruck reaction to Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi: "After us, the Savage God?"
Savage God defied explanation, though many tried and even Mr. JULIANI offered suggestions. Savage God was "an anthology of question marks," he once said. (It was, after all, the 1960s.) "Savage God is simply the Imagination," he told the Vancouver Sun, "insatiable, unrelenting, fiercely energetic, wary of categorization, fond of contradiction and inveterately iconoclastic."
In January, 1970, Mr. JULIANI married dancer Donna WONG, a ceremony conducted as a Savage God performance at the Vancouver Art Gallery. He repeated the process at the christening of his son. Ms. WONG- JULIANI would be his domestic and drama partner for more than three decades.
In 1971, the streets of Vancouver were the scene of several spontaneous and sometimes incomprehensible -- performances under the aegis of PACET ("pilot alternative complement to existing theatre.") The $18,000 project, funded by the federal government, incorporated Gestalt therapy sessions in street performances.
Theatrical events took place willy-nilly across the city, including malls, the airport, the library and Stanley Park. Admission was not charged, nor did all spectators appreciate their role as audience to avant-garde performance. A scene in which bicyclists wearing gas masks pedalled along city streets left many scratching their heads in puzzlement.
In 1974, Mr. JULIANI moved to Toronto to set up a graduate theatre-studies program at York University.
He called the program PEAK (" Performance,▲ Example,▲ Animation,▲ Katharsis") and perhaps should have found an acronym for PEEK, as the instructor and his class stripped naked to protest against a lack of classroom space.
The challenge to the new Stratford artistic director in 1974 was written on a piece of parchment and delivered in London by Don RUBIN, a York colleague. Alas, Mr. RUBIN could not find a proper gauntlet and wound up ceremoniously striking Mr. PHILLIPS with a red rubber glove, an absurd note to a theatrical protest.
In 1978, Mr. JULIANI took the stage in a Toronto production of Children of Night, portraying Janusz Korczak, a doctor and teacher who ran an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto. The critics were appalled.
Gina MALLET of the Toronto Star said Mr. JULIANI's performance sullied Dr. Korczak's memory. Jay SCOTT of The Globe and Mail, noting "the dreadfulness" of Mr. JULIANI's acting, said the production robbed the dead of their dignity.
From▲ the stage, Mr. JULIANI challenged the Star's critic to a public debate on the aesthetics of theatre. He also wrote a letter to the editor, noting that Holocaust survivors in the audience had wholeheartedly embraced the production.
Mr. JULIANI wound up in Edmonton, where he continued to condemn the "exorbitance, elitism and museum theatre" of the establishment.
In 1982, he directed and co-wrote Latitude 55°, a feature film with just two characters -- a slick woman from the city and a Polish potato farmer -- set in a snowbound cabin. "It is filled with a passionate conviction that evaporates in pretentious pronouncements," The▲ Globe's▲ Carole▲ CORBEIL wrote, "filled with truthful moments that evaporate in the desire to use every narcissistic trick in the book."
In a 1983 book examining the alternative theatre movement in Canada,▲ author Renate USMIANI devoted most of a chapter to Mr. JULIANI, a decision that got her a scathing rebuke from a reviewer who considered him worthy of little more than a footnote.
"His works are curiosities; at best, they are worthy experiments in Artaudian theory," Boyd NEIL wrote in a Globe review. "But they are neither popular... nor influential."
Mr. JULIANI's years at Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio in Vancouver were both productive and successful. Among the many projects he directed was a three-part adaptation of Margaret Laurence's▲ The▲ Diviners;▲ King Lear, starring John COLICOS; a 13-part series titled, Disaster! Acts of God or Acts of Man?" and, famously, Ryga's The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, with Leonard GEORGE portraying a role once assumed on stage by his late father, Chief Dan GEORGE. The▲ surprise selection of Mr. GEORGE was typical of Mr. JULIANI's often brilliant casting.
Mr. JULIANI directed a 1989 production of The Glass Menagerie at the Vancouver Playhouse with Jennifer Phipps and Morris Panych. Globe▲ reviewer Liam LACEY praised a production that "opens up the play like an old treasure chest, and lets in some fresh air without rearranging or disturbing the work's original grandeurs and caprices."
Four▲ years later, Mr. JULIANI was directing a production of the mystery thriller Sleepwalker when actor Peter HAWORTH took sick shortly before opening night. The director suddenly found himself as the male lead. "Not even the most colossal egotist would want to do this," he said.
Dim Sum Diaries, a series of monologues written by Mr. LEIREN- YOUNG, received protests when aired by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio in 1991. One episode, entitled The Sequoia, in which the white vendor of a luxury home launches a tirade against the Hong Kong immigrant who cuts down two rare and spectacular trees on the property, was accused of being racist. The playwright's well-intentioned exploration of stereotyping was charged with fostering those very prejudices.
After▲ directing Dim Sum Diaries, Mr. JULIANI urged the playwright to tackle an issue that was dividing his church. Mr. LEIREN- YOUNG remembers replying: "You're talking same-sex marriage in the Anglican church and you want a straight Jewish guy to write this?"
The resulting play, titled Articles of Faith: The Battle of St. Alban's, was staged at Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Vancouver to great acclaim.
The collaborations between young playwright and veteran director succeeded in achieving Mr. JULIANI's goal of inspiring dialogue through theatre.
Mr. JULIANI had a reputation as a demanding taskmaster for novice and veteran actors alike. Rehearsals were jokingly called "Savage God Boot Camp."
He maintained a breakneck pace, both in the theatre and in the boardroom. He was artistic co-director of Opera Breve, a small company dedicated to nurturing young singers; president of the Union of British Columbia Performers (Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists); and, a former national president of the Directors Guild of Canada, among many boards on which he served.
Feeling▲ fatigued in early August, Mr. JULIANI was diagnosed with liver cancer. The end came swiftly. He died on August 21 at Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver.
He leaves his wife of 33 years, Donna WONG- JULIANI, and a son, Alessandro JULIANI, an actor. He also leaves brothers Richard and Norman.
(Wit▲ was long a part of the JULIANI mystique. The family pet, a canine named Beau Beau, was referred to in the family's paid obituary notice as a Savage Dog.)
For▲ one who roused such passions, Mr. JULIANI felt that he led a conservative life. "I have always been a square," he once said.
A theatrical farewell to Mr. JULIANI attracted hundreds to St. Andrew's Wesley Church in Vancouver on Labour Day, a Monday and traditionally a quiet date on the theatre calendar. Those in attendance were encouraged to write remembrances on Post-It notes, which were then stuck to the church's pillars.
The City of Vancouver has declared next March 24, which would have been Mr. JULIANI's 64th birthday, to be Savage God Day.

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HAWTHORN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-10-28 published
Veteran of First World War dies at 104
By Tom HAWTHORN, Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail with wires Tuesday, October 28, 2003 - Page A10
Victoria -- Myer LEWIS, who served in two world wars and lived in three centuries, has died in California at the age of 104.
Mr. LEWIS, who was known as Jerry, was one of the last Canadian veterans of the First World War.
Last November, The Globe and Mail found 16 Canadian veterans of that war still alive. At least five of the group, which was profiled in The Globe for Remembrance Day, have since died.
Mr. LEWIS enlisted at 19 and was kept from the deadly trenches of the Western Front because he failed a medical test: He had flat feet. Instead, the army ordered him to drive trucks in England.
He had become a U.S. citizen by the time his adopted homeland became embroiled in the Second World War. At 43, he joined the U.S. Navy.
"My part in World War I and World War 2 was very small," Mr. LEWIS said three years ago, "but I was happy to do what I could for these two great countries."
Even though his contribution to the war efforts was admittedly minor, Mr. LEWIS was honoured for his service in recent years. He became a regular at veterans events and served as grand marshal for Memorial Day parades in his home of Cupertino, Calif.
In 2000, Mr. LEWIS was recognized by the Canadian government in a ceremony held at Good Samaritan United Methodist Church in Cupertino. Canadian consul Handol KIM presented him with a Queen's certificate and a John McCrae medallion.
The commemorative medallion, produced by the Royal Canadian Mint, was presented to veterans two years earlier on the 80th anniversary of the end of the war. Because no central record of Great War veterans is kept, Mr. LEWIS was not honoured until after his family and veterans groups contacted the government.
At the same ceremony, he also received awards from the U.S. Navy, and city, county and state governments.
"This is the greatest honour I have received in my 101 years," a nostalgic Mr. LEWIS said after the ceremony.
Myer Gerald LEWIS was born in London on May 24, 1899. His father was a career British army officer, and the boy moved with his family to postings in Malta and South Africa before emigrating to Ottawa in 1910.
He enlisted in 1918 and was posted to Honiton, in Devon, England, where he drove hand-cranked, two-ton trucks for the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps. The private was responsible for clerical and supply duties, a humdrum assignment but one safer than life in the trenches.
Decades later, he enthused about the delirious celebrations in London after the announcement of the armistice.
"The lights had been turned off during the war," he told The Globe's Erin ANDERSSEN last year. "And they turned all the lights on again. It was a big, big thrill."
He returned from the war to work as a clerk in Ottawa. He moved to the United States in 1924, became a citizen in 1932, and married a dietitian in 1933.
In 1942, he signed up with the navy and served with Fleet Air Wing 7, taking part in antisubmarine patrols in the Atlantic. His unit marked V-E Day, on May 8, 1945, by escorting a surrendered German submarine to port.
After the war, he sold stocks and bonds, as well as life insurance, for Metropolitan Life in the Chicago area. He retired in 1965, the same year in which he left the naval reserve, where his rank was Aviation Storekeeper 1st Class.
The couple moved to Florida, where his wife, Emily, died in 1984.
The childless widower then moved to California to be closer to family members. He died of causes associated with old age on October 15 at a retirement home in Los Gatos, Calif. He leaves two nephews and two nieces.
A memorial service was held Sunday.

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HAWTHORN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-11-01 published
Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot won the Distinguished Flying Cross
By Tom HAWTHORN, Saturday, November 1, 2003 - Page F12
Ottawa -- George BURROUGHS was a Mustang pilot whose attacks on enemy installations in the Second World War earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross. He has died in Ottawa and the age of 82.
Mr. BURROUGHS, who had enlisted in Toronto on April 29, 1941, the day before his 20th birthday, served as a flight lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Air Force's No. 414 Squadron. He provided reconnaissance for the Dieppe raid of 1942, as well as for the D-Day invasion of Normandy two years later.
After the war, he attended the University of Toronto, collecting coins from pay phones as a summer job for Bell Canada. He retired from the company in 1983 as a senior executive.
Mr. BURROUGHS died on September 3 after long suffering from Parkinson's disease. He leaves Mary (née ARMSTRONG,) his wife of 59 years a son and two daughters.

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HAWTHORN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-11 published
Pint-sized scrapper 'liked wrestling more than eating'
Stellar career in the ring was marred only by the near-miss loss of an Olympic medal
By Tom HAWTHORN, Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail Thursday, December 11, 2003 - Page R11
He was a Regina stonecutter who used his strength to good effect in the wrestling ring. Vern PETTIGREW, who has died at 95, was an athlete whose career was marred only by the near-miss loss of an Olympic medal.
Competing for Canada, Mr. PETTIGREW finished in fourth place in the featherweight division of the freestyle-wrestling competition at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. The 28-year-old stonecutter with a chiselled physique had dominated his Swedish opponent when the match suddenly ended with Mr. PETTIGREW disqualified for using an illegal hold. The Swede went on to claim the bronze medal, while Mr. PETTIGREW spent the next 67 years contemplating the unfairness of a verdict that denied him Olympic glory.
"One call made all the difference," he told The Regina Leader-Post in 1996. "You can't quarrel, but it was terrible. It was a legal hold, but they said it was illegal. I could have been standing on the podium, but you can't cry about it."
Even before the devastating verdict, Canadian wrestlers had expressed their unhappiness with the officiating at the tournament.
The team felt European officials, versed in the more rigid dictates of the Greco-Roman discipline, were unfamiliar with the rules of freestyle, or catch-as-catch-can, wrestling. For instance, the Canadians relied heavily on leg holds, only to discover the judges did not award points for the manoeuvre. Canada claimed only one of 18 freestyle medals awarded at the 1936 Games, a bronze for Joseph SCHLEIMER, a lightweight from Toronto.
Mr. PETTIGREW retained his amateur status after returning from the Games, continuing to dominate his weight class in Canada. He stepped away from the mat as a competitor in 1940, having won five national championships. He was also known as an eager participant in exhibition matches, willing to take on all comers.
"I liked wrestling more than eating," he once said.
John Vernon PETTIGREW was born on March 30, 1908, in Durham, Ontario He moved with his family to Biggar, Saskatchewan., two years later, before settling in Regina in 1919.
Wrestling was perhaps a natural sport for a pint-sized boy born as part of a baker's dozen brood of PETTIGREWs. He learned the formal rules and tactics of the sport at the old Young Men's Christian Association in Regina, "a stinkin' Y with a pool as big as my kitchen," he told the Leader-Post.
Wrestling was conducted in a small basement room reached by a long flight of stairs. "It was never washed. No wonder we got big scabs on our knees."
He claimed his first Dominion featherweight crown in 1933 and dominated his weight division in Saskatchewan, where he won 10 provincial championships.
He was accompanied on the long journey by train and ocean liner to Germany in 1936 by fellow Regina wrestler George CHIGA. A 210-pound (95-kilogram) heavyweight, Mr. CHIGA dwarfed his featherweight friend, who weighed closer to 134 pounds (61 kilograms).
One of the more memorable experiences in the athlete's camp was Mr. PETTIGREW's first viewing of that science-fiction dream called television. He also met the great American track athlete Jesse OWENS, whose humility and friendliness in trying circumstances Mr. PETTIGREW never forgot. Like many of the athletes, however, Mr. PETTIGREW remained unaware of, or unconcerned about, the intentions of the Nazi regime, for which the Games were a propaganda exercise.
A first-round victory over Karel KVACEK of Czechoslovakia impressed Canadian Press correspondent Elmer DULMAGE, who wrote that Mr. PETTIGREW "gives a pretty fair imitation of lightning."
The Regina wrestler defeated Marco GAVELLI of Italy and Hector RISKE of Belgium, but was pinned at two minutes, 13 seconds of a fourth-round match by Francis MILLARD of the United States. The controversial disqualification against Gosta JONSSON of Sweden eliminated Mr. PETTIGREW from the medals. Kustaa PIHLAJAMAKI of Finland won the featherweight gold, while Mr. MILLARD took silver and Mr. JONSSON got bronze.
Mr. PETTIGREW retired from wrestling not long after joining the Regina fire department in 1939. He retired as battalion fire chief in 1973. He then worked part-time at a local funeral home, which years later would handle his remains.
Mr. PETTIGREW, who died in Regina on October 29, leaves a daughter and two sons. He was predeceased by his wife Jean; by his eldest son, Robert; and by all 12 of his siblings.
In all the years since leaving Berlin, he never quite overcame the sense that he had been robbed of a chance for an Olympic medal. "It always bugs you," he said.

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HAWTHORN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-12 published
A sleeping tiger of baseball
Founded in 1914, the Asahi team made history. This year, largely because of the efforts of its catcher, the team made the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame
By Tom HAWTHORN, Special▲ to The Globe and Mail Friday, December 12, 2003 - Page R17
Victoria -- Ken KUTSUKAKE was a catcher for the storied Asahi baseball team of Vancouver, which disbanded when its Japanese-Canadian players were interned during the Second World War.
Mr. KUTSUKAKE, who has died in Toronto, aged 92, helped keep the team's memory alive over the years. He organized an Asahi reunion at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre in Don Mills, Ontario, in 1972, ending, if only temporarily, a diaspora of the diamond that had seen players sent to work camps, ghost towns, sugar-beet farms, and, in a handful of cases, Japan.
Earlier this year, the amateur club was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in Saint Marys, Ontario Mr. KUTSUKAKE attended the ceremonies in June, even taking part in a golf tournament.
The Asahi roster shortens with each passing season. Mr. KUTSUKAKE is the third player to die since the induction. He was predeceased by outfielder Bob HIGUCHI, 95, of Pickering, Ontario, and pitcher George YOSHINAKA, 81, of Lethbridge, Alberta. The Asahi are disappearing like runners left stranded at the end of an inning. Only six players and a team official are believed to still be alive, the lone survivors as the club approaches the 90th anniversary of its founding in 1914.
The Asahi drew their players from the Little Tokyo neighbourhood surrounding their home field at the Powell Street Grounds (today's Oppenheimer Park) in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The Asahi were physically slight compared to their opponents, among whom were beefy longshoremen, so they depended on slick fielding, larcenous base running and hitting so precise that it was said they could bunt with a chopstick. They were nimble Davids competing against slugging Goliaths.
The team (asa for morning, hi for sun) sometimes won games in which they failed to record a hit. Their style of play, which came to be called Brain Ball, earned them a following among discerning Caucasian fans. In Little Tokyo, they were gods in woolen flannels.
"We were the toast of the town," Mr. KUTSUKAKE told me earlier this year. "To be an Asahi ballplayer meant lots to a lot of people."
It all ended so quickly. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, it was heard around the world. In British Columbia, all people of Japanese ancestry were ordered removed from the coast as enemy aliens. A neighbourhood team lost its neighbourhood and the Asahi never played again.
Kenneth Hisao KUTSUKAKE was born in Vancouver on May 25, 1911. The Asahi had deep roots in the community and he joined the club's youth team when he was 12 as a Clover (Go-gun). Blessed with a strong throwing arm even at that young age, he was taught to play the sport's toughest position. The neighbourhood boys gave him the sing-song nickname, "Catcha-Catcha- KUTSUKAKE."
He moved up the Asahi ranks over the years. From 9-to-5, Mr. KUTSUKAKE worked for a company making boxes. After work and on weekends and holidays, he could be found on the baseball diamond. Finally, in 1938, Mr. KUTSUKAKE became the starting catcher for the parent club.
Adept at blocking wild pitches, he was known for his throwing arm, a disincentive for rivals eager to mimic the Asahi on the base paths.
On September 18, 1941, he went 0-for-2 before being pulled for a pinch-hitter in his team's final at-bat in a 3-1 loss to a club sponsored by The Angelus, a hotel. It would be the Asahi's final game.
A few months later, his home was seized, as was his family's Powell Street rooming house.
In 1942, Mr. KUTSUKAKE was ordered by Canadian authorities to leave his birthplace for the crimes of his ancestry. On that terrible winter day, when he had to reduce 31 years of life to a single suitcase, Mr. KUTSUKAKE packed for an unknown life in a relocation camp. Alongside family photos, he placed his cleats, shin guards, catcher's mask, chest protector and his Asahi uniform.
For Mr. KUTSUKAKE, the equipment was a daily reminder that while authorities could seize his home, deny him his job, and compromise his freedom, no one could stop him from playing baseball.
He was sent to Kaslo on Kootenay Lake in the British Columbia Interior, where he was joined by Asahi pitcher Nag NISHIHARA. One of their first acts in the camp was to form a baseball team, an action that was also occurring in other ghost towns and internment camps.
(Mr. KUTSUKAKE's father, Tsugio, had complained when he was ordered to leave behind his wife and daughters. The senior Mr. KUTSUKAKE was instead sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Angler, Ontario, where inmates wore dark uniforms with large circles on the back, a bull's-eye target for sharpshooters should any try to escape.) On Dominion Day, 1943, four teams of interned players met in a one-day showdown in Slocan City, British Columbia Lemon Creek beat New Denver 13-2 for the championship, while Slocan and Kaslo, featuring a battery of Mr. KUTSUKAKE and Mr. NISHIHARA, were eliminated earlier in the day. More than 500 spectators watched the tournament.
"Ahhh," said Mr. KUTSUKAKE, still sore about a loss 60 years earlier, "Lemon Creek had the most Asahi players. They should have won."
After the war ended, those of Japanese ancestry were forbidden from returning to the coast. Mr. KUTSUKAKE wound up in Montreal, where he played for the semi-professional Atwater team in 1947.
He moved to Toronto the following year, where he could be found behind the plate at Christie Pits. He also had great success as a coach and manager, winning a West Toronto minor championship with the Westerns midget team in 1950. He later won a city championship with the Bestway Nisei, a team comprised of the Canadian-born sons of Japanese immigrants.
In 1956, he managed Honest Ed's Nisei, a mixed-race team, to a senior city championship. A delighted Ed MIRVISH feted the players with a lavish banquet and presented each with a commemorative wrist watch.
Mr. KUTSUKAKE worked for many years at Iwata Travel in Toronto. Until recently, he volunteered at a seniors home, providing prepared Japanese lunches for residents.
Mr. KUTSUKAKE rejoiced in the belated recognition afforded his old team. He threw out a ceremonial opening pitch at a Toronto Blue Jays game at SkyDome in May, 2002, and was deeply touched by induction into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.
"Naturally, I'm honoured," he said. "It was a big surprise. I never expected such recognition."
Mr. KUTSUKAKE also appears in the recent National Film Board documentary Sleeping Tigers, which recounts the history of the Asahi team and its players. The photographs he saved during the evacuation have been displayed at the Royal Ontario Museum and included in Pat Adachi's 1992 book, Asahi: A Legend in Baseball.
Mr. KUTSUKAKE died in his sleep on November 22 at Toronto Grace Hospital, where he was attending his second wife, Rose, who has been diagnosed with a brain tumour. His wife of 50 years survives him, as do sisters Satoko and Eiko, both of Toronto. He was predeceased by brothers Sekio and Ray, an Asahi pitcher. A first marriage ended in divorce.

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