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LAWEE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-11-15 published
GENSER,
Bonnie
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our mother,
grandmother, and great-grandmother, Bonnie
GENSER, who died on
Sunday, November 29th, 2003. She died peacefully, without pain,
with her family by her side. She was predeceased by her husband
Harold GENSER who died in 1980, and her siblings Rebecca
JAUVOISH,
Lottie BECKMAN, Bessie
MELEMADE, David
LEVIN, Rosie
LEVIN, Esther
POLLOCK and Harry
LEVIN.
She leaves to grieve her death and celebrate
her life, three daughters, Naomi
COHEN
(Jared
SABLE,) Toronto,
Barbara BUTLER, Winnipeg, Susan
STARR (Don
STARR), Toronto, London,
six grandchildren, 6 great-grandchildren. In addition to her
immediate family, she is remembered by her sisters-in-law Esther
Genser KAPLAN,
Myrna
LEVIN, Beverley
LEVIN and Marion Vaisley
GENSER, and many nieces and nephews.
Bonnie served in a leadership capacity in various areas of the
community; president of the Bride's group, National Council of
Jewish Women, president of Lillian Frieman Chapter of Hadassah,
founder of the Shaarey Zedek Girl Guides, and later as a commissioner
of the Manitoba Girl Guides. During her many visits to Israel
she served as a volunteer in areas of agriculture, education,
archaelogy, and social services.
She lived life to the fullest, and will be remembered for her
dynamic personality, wit, charm, generosity, and infectious smile
which made everyone feel special.
We wish to thank Vangie, Claire, Amy, and Ruth for their loving
care.
Pallbearers were her grand_sons Scott
COHEN,
Paul
RAYBURN, Josh
BUTLER,
Sheldon
POTTER, granddaughters Hally and Misha
STARR,
and nephews Michael and Daniel
LEVIN.
Honorary pallbearers were
Don STARR,
Jared
SABLE, Perry
RAYBURN, and Mayer
LAWEE.
Rabbi Allan
GREEN officiated and her granddaughter Leanne
POTTER
spoke on behalf of the family. Donations in Bonnie's memory may
be made to The Bonnie Genser Fund in the Women's Endowment Fund
of the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba, C-400-123 Doncaster Street,
Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3N 2B2, (204) 477-7525 or www.jewishfoundation.org
or the charity of your choice.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-01-08 published
Photographer, reporter and royal press attaché
After years at The Globe and Mail, he went on to craft speeches
for William
DAVIS and to co-ordinate royal tours
By Allison
LAWLOR
Wednesday,▼
January▼ 8, 2003, Page R5
John GILLIES, a former reporter at The Globe and Mail, who later
served as press attaché for the royal tours in the 1970s, died
recently at his home in Mississauga, Ontario He was 74.
Known as "a two-way man," Mr.
GILLIES was both a reporter and
photographer at The Globe throughout the 1960s. He travelled
extensively around Ontario, covering everything from fires and
train derailments to inquests and trials.
Reporting was in his blood, said Rudy
PLATIEL, a fellow two-way
man who worked with Mr.
GILLIES at The Globe.
He loved digging up stories and talking to people, Mr.
PLATIEL
recalled.
"For John, the worst time was when nothing was panning out, and
he didn't get a story.
"We were sort of the generalists in the sense that we were ready
to take on any story," Mr.
PLATIEL added. "I think he enjoyed
not knowing what was coming up next."
After more than a decade at The Globe and Mail, Mr.
GILLIES left
the paper for a job with the Ontario government.
Working as a communications officer in the Ministry of Education,
his job, among others, was to field media calls and write speeches.
He frequently wrote them for William
DAVIS -- who would later
become the Premier of Ontario -- when Mr.
DAVIS was the education
minister. Mr.
GILLIES spent 20 years working for the government
before retiring in the late 1980s.
Of all the press officers at Queen's Park at the time, Mr.
GILLIES
was the most up-front, said Rod
GOODMAN, a former ombudsman of
The Toronto Star.
"If he knew something, he would tell you," Mr.
GOODMAN said.
"He was very straight and very honest."
During the 1970s, on leaves from the Ministry of Education, Mr.
GILLIES served as press co-ordinator for the royal tours to Canada.
He would ride on the press bus, following the Royal Family on
their visits to various parts of the country, arranging interviews
and ensuring that things ran smoothly for the press.
"Several times, he got to meet the Queen," said his daughter,
Laurie SWINTON. "He always said Prince Philip was a real card."
Her father was not known for his impeccable style: Ms.
SWINTON
recalls a photo taken of him standing with the Queen, wearing
a rumpled $29 suit from a local department store. It was not
uncommon for Mr.
GILLIES to be seen with a crooked tie and untucked
shirt. "He was probably one of the only guys at Queen's Park
that dressed worse than me," said author and broadcaster Claire
HOY.
John GILLIES was born in Toronto on March 4, 1928, the only son
of George and Sarah
GILLIES.
The family lived in a tiny row house
in the city's west end. His father worked in the rail yards,
and his mother in a chocolate factory, often bringing home boxes
of candy for her only son.
Not fond of school, Mr.
GILLIES dropped out in Grade 10.
Later, in search of work, he walked into the office of the weekly
newspaper in Port Credit (now a part of Mississauga), telling
them he needed a job and would do anything. It just so happened
that they required a sports editor and hired him.
"He just sort of fell into writing," Ms.
SWINTON said.
In 1954, when Hurricane Hazel ripped through Toronto, killing
81 people, Mr.
GILLIES's instinct was not to seek shelter in
the basement of his home, but to hit the streets to talk to people
and gather stories.
When Mr. GILLIES reached an area of the city where a number of
new townhouses had been wiped out, a police roadblock met him,
recalled his son, Ken
GILLIES. A friend who was with him at the
time pulled a badge from his coat pocket and flashed it at the
officer. After police let the pair through, Mr.
GILLIES turned
to his friend and asked where he got the badge. "From my kid's
Cheerios box this morning," his friend replied.
An avid golfer, it was on the greens in Port Credit that Mr.
GILLIES met Frances
SMITH, a woman who shared his passion for
golf.
The couple married in 1954, and later had three children. Ms.
GILLIES died of cancer in 1984.
A helpless optimist when it came to golf, Mr.
GILLIES was known
to go out under the most dire conditions. He would look at a
dark, looming sky and declare that it was clearing, Ken
GILLIES
recalled. By contrast, said Mr.
HOY, the task of getting Mr.
GILLIES on the greens when he hadn't scheduled a golf game was
next to impossible.
"I don't know anyone else who was that structured," Mr.
HOY added,
noting that his golfing buddy stuck to his weekly schedule, where
each day was dedicated to a particular task. For example, shopping
was done not on Thursday but on Saturday. "He had this one little
idiosyncrasy," Mr.
HOY joked.
A good-hearted man who was also a big lover of dogs, Mr.
GILLIES
was known to carry a stash of dog biscuits on his daily walks
to give to the neighbourhood pooches. "He was a very simple guy,"
said his son Ken. "He didn't like a lot of ceremony and fanfare."
Mr. GILLIES leaves his three children, Don, Ken and Laurie, and
two grandchildren, Corey and Grace.
John GILLIES, reporter / photographer, communications officer
born in Toronto on March 4, 1928; died in Mississauga, Ontario
on December 4, 2002.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-01-09 published
Last fighter pilot of the Great War
Canadian aviator, a bankteller in peacetime, was 'just doing
his duty'
By Allison
LAWLOR
Thursday,▼
January▲▼ 9, 2003, Page R7
Henry BOTTERELL, the last of the fighter pilots that fought in
the First World War, has died in Toronto. He was 106.
Mr. BOTTERELL, who up until in his late 90s was swimming almost
every day, died peacefully at the Sunnybrook Veterans Hospital,
now part of Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre,
on Friday, less than two months after celebrating his 106th birthday.
One of 16 surviving Canadian veterans of the First World War
profiled in a Globe and Mail series in November, Henry
BOTTERELL
was believed to be the last fighter pilot from the 1914-1918
conflict, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Mr. BOTTERELL declined to take part in the series of interviews,
but at a special air-force celebration four years earlier he
recalled his days as a fighter pilot.
"I had good hands," he said then. "I didn't have the fighting
acumen of some, like Billy
BISHOP. I was just a bank clerk. I
wasn't one of the very best, but I had my share of action."
On August 29, 1918, Flight Lieutenant
BOTTERELL flew his Sopwith
Camel over Vitry, France. After dropping four bombs on a railway
station, he was heading back to his airfield when he encountered
a German observation balloon. He fired 400 rounds into the balloon
with his aircraft machine gun.
With the balloon ablaze, the soldier leaped from the basket and
opened his parachute. As the flaming remains of the balloon fell
to the ground, Mr.
BOTTERELL had enough time to swing around
and shoot his enemy, but didn't. Instead, he snapped him a chivalrous
salute before heading back to base. The moment was captured by
aviation artist Robert
TAILOR/TAYLOR, in his painting Balloon Buster.
"He was an adventurer," said Jon
STRAW, a friend and former director
of the Great War Flying Museum in Brampton, Ontario Mr.
STRAW
is also working on a book on Canadian pilots who served in the
First
World
War with Allan
SNOWIE, a retired naval aviator who
is now a pilot with Air Canada.
Like many of the veterans from the First World War, Mr.
BOTTERELL
didn't consider his war efforts to be heroic.
"He didn't think it was any big deal, he thought he was just
doing his duty," Mr.
STRAW said.
In 1916, Mr.
BOTTERELL was working for the Bank of North America
(now the Bank of Montreal) when his older brother Edward, who
played football for the Toronto Argonauts, was killed overseas
by a sniper. A few months later, Henry, then 20, enlisted with
the Royal Naval Air Service and was sent to England to train
as a fighter pilot.
His sister, Edith, who worked as a secretary for an admiral at
the time, had helped him get what she thought would be a safer
assignment in the war. But that didn't prove to be true. At one
point in the war, new pilots had a life expectancy of three weeks.
Mr. BOTTERELL's flying career got off to a difficult start. Engine
failure caused him to crash on only his second takeoff in September,
1917, at Dunkirk, France. He suffered head injuries, a fractured
leg, and broken teeth and spent six months in hospital. He was
eventually demobilized as disabled and discharged. But he later
re-enlisted and qualified as a fighter pilot again and returned
to France in early 1918.
His flight log reveals that he was attached to the 208th Squadron
serving in France from May 11 to November 27, 1918. His records
show that during that time, he flew patrols and fought over places
including Serny, Estrées and Arras. He then transferred to Belgium,
according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Wing
Commander
Neil
MEADOWS, the commanding officer of Royal
Air
Force 208 Squadron, said in his condolences to Mr.
BOTTERELL's
family that Henry "remains, an inspiration to our trainee pilots.
I do feel that we have lost a tangible part of what we are, and
what we aspire to be.
"Undoubtedly, he did not view his actions as out of the ordinary,
but his courage and dedication to duty are an example that I
hope our trainees will emulate in their own flying careers,"
he wrote on behalf of the squadron. "I am sure, therefore, that
his spirit will live on with the young pilots that continue to
serve on 208 Squadron."
During his war service, Mr.
BOTTERELL flew a variety of planes,
but the Camel, which got its name from the hump created by two
machine guns imbedded under its cowling, was his favourite. He
had one particular close call, when on a flight a bullet ripped
through his ear and smashed his goggles.
"I went out like a light for a few minutes, and I recovered just
before I crashed," he once said.
Henry
John
Lawrence
BOTTERELL was born in 1896 in Ottawa to Henry
and Annie BOTTERELL.
His mother raised him after his father died
of pneumonia when Henry was a young boy. Henry attended Lisgar
Collegiate Institute in Ottawa. An athletic young man, he played
football like his older brother and remained physically active
throughout his life.
"He was a loner," said his son Edward
BOTTERELL, adding that
his father enjoyed sports he would do alone such as swimming,
cross-country skiing and sailing. In 1919, he returned to Canada
and to banking as an assistant chief accountant. He remained
with the Bank of Montreal until his retirement in the 1960s.
As a souvenir from the war he brought back a Belgian fence post
that had snagged the wing of his Camel on a low-level flights.
It is now in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.
In 1929 he married and moved with his wife Maud to Montreal.
They raised two children before his wife died in 1983 after suffering
several strokes. During the Second World War, Mr.
BOTTERELL commanded
an Air Cadet Squadron, in Quebec, though he himself never took
to the air. After returning home in 1919, he gave up flying.
In 1999, Mr.
BOTTERELL was the guest of honour at a mess dinner
commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air
Force. That same year he celebrated his own 102nd birthday at
a hotel in Lille, France, where he and other Canadian veterans
were marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the War.
Despite his failing memory, his son Edward said his father was
"moved by the experience."
Mr. BOTTERELL is survived by daughter Frances
MARQUETTE of Houston,
Texas, and son Edward
BOTTERELL of Mississauga, Ontario
Henry BOTTERELL, aviator and banker; born in Ottawa on November
7, 1896, died in Toronto on January 3, 2003.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-01-28 published
The architect of Canada's basic wage
By Allison
LAWLOR
Tuesday,▼
January▲ 28, 2003, Page R7
The man who more than anyone else modernized working conditions
for most Canadians has died. George
HAYTHORNE spent his career
in the federal Department of Labour, serving as deputy minister
from 1961 to 1969, died last month in Ottawa. He was 93.
Raised on a Prairie farm in Salisbury, Alberta, a rural community
just outside Edmonton, Mr.
HAYTHORNE began his career as a civil
servant in Halifax in 1938. At the age of 29 he became secretary
of the Nova Scotia Economic Council. Four years later, he moved
to Ottawa where he joined the Department of Labour as associate
director of the National Selective Service.
After the war years, he worked his way up through the labour
department, becoming director of the economics and research.
In 1961, he was made deputy minister.
"George was an extremely hard-working and creative deputy minister
who had excellent working relations with the Canadian labour
movement," said retired senator Allan
MacEACHEN, who served as
Canada's Minister of Labour between 1963 and 1965.
Mr. HAYTHORNE was also actively involved in the International
Labour Organization in the 1950s and 1960s, serving in various
capacities, including chairman of the organization's governing
body.
"I had tremendous respect for him," Mr.
MacEACHEN said. "He was
a straight shooter."
Mr. HAYTHORNE was part of significant change and growth in the
Department of Labour, which at the time had responsibility for
areas such as training and employment programs that have since
been transferred to Human Resources Development Canada.
In 1965, Mr.
HAYTHORNE saw the Canada Labour (Standards) Code
establish not only minimum wages, but also minimum work hours
and vacation pay for workers.
"He was always wanting to see the workers get their share of
what was going around," said George
HAYTHORNE's wife, Ruth
HAYTHORNE.
"He pushed for programs that would ensure this."
George Vickers
HAYTHORNE was born in 1909, the second of two
sons to Frank and Elizabeth
HAYTHORNE.
His parents, who were
both raised on farms in northern England, arrived in Canada in
1906 and bought a piece of virgin land just outside Edmonton.
As a child, Mr.
HAYTHORNE and his older brother Tom regularly
attended the nearby West Salisbury Church, where his mother and
father taught Sunday school.
At the University of Alberta, Mr.
HAYTHORNE became involved in
the Christian Student Movement and was later an active member
in the Unitarian Church.
"There was a spiritual foundation to his life," Mr.
HAYTHORNE's
son Eric said, adding that it shaped his approach to life and
his work. "His life was one of purpose."
Growing up on a Prairie farm, Mr.
HAYTHORNE never lost his interest
in agriculture, and later studied agricultural and labour economics.
After graduating from the University of Alberta with a Masters
of Economics in 1932, he went to McGill University in Montreal
to the study farm labour situation in Ontario and Quebec. The
findings of the study were subsequently published in a book of
which he is the co-author.
After completing his fellowship at McGill, he became a research
assistant at Harvard University in 1937 and eight years later
earned his PhD there.
After finishing his duties as deputy minister of labour, Mr.
HAYTHORNE was appointed to the federal Prices and Incomes Commission,
serving until 1972.
He spent the next year as a senior visitor at Churchill College,
University of Cambridge before becoming director and professor
of development management at the Institute of Development Management
based in Gaborone, Botswana. He remained there until 1979.
Mr. HAYTHORNE leaves his wife
Ruth; children Elinor and Eric
and brothers Donald and Owen.
George Vickers
HAYTHORNE, civil servant; born in Salisbury, Alberta,
on September 29, 1909; died in Ottawa on November 22, 2002.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-02-07 published
The unsung hero of Walkerton
The public-health inspector issued a boil-water advisory and
personally drove samples to a distant lab as the crisis unfolded
By Allison
LAWLOR
Friday,▼
February▼ 7, 2003, Page R13
David PATTERSON, the public-health inspector who sounded alarm
bells about tainted water in Walkerton, Ontario, where seven
people died of E. coli poisoning in May, 2000, has died. He was
He died of rare complications related to rheumatoid arthritis,
said his wife, Sharon Patterson.
"He was extremely dedicated. I feel he gave his life to public
health for 33 years," said Jim
PATON, the Grey Bruce Health Unit's
director of health protection and Mr.
PATTERSON's long-time colleague
and friend. Mr.
PATTERSON worked at the health unit for 30 years.
He retired just a few months after the E. coli tragedy hit the
Western Ontario town.
"He has been described as the unsung hero of Walkerton," Mr.
PATON said.
When a worried local doctor alerted him about cases of diarrhea
in people from Walkerton, Mr.
PATTERSON launched the initial
investigation to determine the cause of the illness.
Although he initially suspected a problem with bad food, the
common source for E. coli infections, Mr.
PATTERSON also called
the manager of the municipal water supply and asked if there
were any problems with the water. The manager, Stan
KOEBEL, repeatedly
assured him that the town's drinking water was fine.
As the illness spread through the community, Mr.
PATTERSON became
convinced that the municipal water supply was the only plausible
source of the infection.
He quickly wrote out a boil-water advisory for the town on the
afternoon of May 21, 2000, the Sunday of the Victoria Day weekend.
The advisory, urging residents to boil their tap water, was not
lifted until December 5, 2000.
Later on May 21, Mr.
PATTERSON and his wife drove 21 samples
of Walkerton water to a laboratory in London, Ontario, arriving
after midnight. On their trip home, in the dead of night, they
almost hit a deer.
Tests confirmed that the municipal water system was contaminated
with E. coli and fecal coliform bacteria.
"It was just astounding what that man did," said Dr. Murray
McQUIGGE,
the former medical officer of health at the Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound
Health Unit, who left the health unit in March, 2002. (The health
unit changed its name in 2001.)
In addition to the seven people who died from the E. coli infection,
2,500 people in Walkerton became ill, some seriously.
"I believe he did the very best he could have under the circumstances,"
Bruce DAVIDSON of the group Concerned Walkerton Citizens said.
Mr. PATTERSON confronted Mr.
KOEBEL to find out what had gone
wrong. The details of how Walkerton's water became contaminated
with E. coli were revealed at a public inquiry that opened in
the town in October, 2000, five months after the contamination
came to light.
"When Mr. KOEBEL learned from test results for the samples collected
on May 15 that there was a high level of contamination in the
system, he did not disclose the results to the health officials
in the Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound Health Unit who were investigating
the outbreak of illnesses in the community. Instead, he misled
them by assuring them that the water was safe," Mr. Justice Dennis
O'CONNOR wrote in Part 1 of his report of the Walkerton inquiry.
Mr. PATTERSON's meticulous record-keeping and detailing of the
events around the tragedy proved to be a valuable source of information
at the inquiry. In the first weekend that the water crisis unfolded,
he compiled close to 80 pages of notes, documenting the times
and contents of each conversation he had, Mr.
PATON said.
While Mr. PATTERSON was scheduled to take early retirement in
the fall of 2000, he remained with the health unit on contract
to help with the exhaustive inquiry. Taking the stand at the
inquiry was emotionally difficult for Mr.
PATTERSON, particularly
when lawyers tried to attack his credibility.
"He was a gentleman during the inquiry," Dr.
McQUIGGE said, adding
that his colleague often had to bite his tongue.
A quiet and private person, Mr.
PATTERSON didn't seek the spotlight
and said little to the mews media during and after the inquiry.
"Walkerton took its toll on everybody," Dr.
McQUIGGE said. "It
was tremendously taxing."
David PATTERSON was born on November 2, 1950, in Owen Sound,
Ontario He was the second of four children to Fred and Mary
PATTERSON.
He was raised in the small community of Tara, south of Owen Sound,
where he also raised his family. His father owned a business
installing tile drainage for local farmers. As a teenager, Mr.
PATTERSON worked with his father during the summers.
It was as a young teen that he developed his lifelong hobby of
restoring old cars to mint condition; most of them were 1932-34
Fords. He enjoyed taking his cars out to local fairs and other
events and last fall chauffeured his daughter to her wedding
in one.
After graduating from Chesley District High School, he attended
Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto, where he studied
public-health inspection. He graduated in 1970, and the same
year passed the tests to become a certified public-health inspector.
That year, he also married his high-school sweetheart Sharon.
They had two children.
Mr. PATTERSON started work at the age of 19 at the health unit
in Owen Sound, where he worked the length of his public-health
career.
He began as a public-health inspector and was promoted to a supervisory
position first in 1982 and then in 1989, when he became assistant
director of health protection with the Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound
Health Unit.
In the mid-1990s, Mr.
PATTERSON and the health unit were involved
in a high-profile court case in which they took a local farmer
to court for selling unpasteurized milk. Mr.
PATTERSON couldn't
stand the thought that people could be put at undue risk for
drinking the unpasteurized milk, Dr.
McQUIGGE said.
"This [public health] was his calling," Dr.
McQUIGGE said. "He
was passionate about it."
After the Walkerton inquiry wrapped up, Mr.
PATTERSON left the
health unit and went to work for the local conservation authority
reviewing people's applications for government grants to improve
their water systems.
Mr. PATTERSON preferred life in small-town Ontario to that in
a big city. He enjoyed the outdoors and frequently went on canoeing,
hiking and hunting trips with his family.
"He felt strongly about protecting the outdoors," said Sharon,
his wife. "He was just a very dedicated person -- he really believed
in things."
Mr. PATTERSON leaves his wife, son Michael, daughter April and
his parents.
David PATTERSON, born on November 2, 1950, in Owen Sound, Ontario,
died on January 10, 2003, in Owen Sound.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-02-12 published
Man of peace died with his boots on
Christian-based, stop-the-war mission to southern Iraq ended
in tragedy for Canadian peace activist
By Allison
LAWLOR
Wednesday,▲▼
February▲▼ 12, 2003, Page R7
He was an educator who tried to stop a war before it began. Instead,
George WEBER, a former Ontario high-school teacher who was touring
Iraq as part of an effort to stave off a war, died there in a
road accident. He was 73.
Mr. WEBER was killed instantly when the vehicle he was travelling
in as a passenger rolled on an Iraqi highway between Basra and
Baghdad.
When the left rear tire blew out of the Chevrolet Suburban, the
truck hit the shoulder of the road and flipped over before rolling
to a stop upside-down beside the road, said Doug
PRITCHARD,
Canadian
co-ordinator for the Christian Peacemaker Teams, a church-based
group dedicated to non-violent activism.
Mr. WEBER, who was travelling in the back seat, was thrown from
the vehicle and sustained massive head injuries. Two other activists
with the group were injured in the accident.
An investigation has shown that on the day of the accident, the
vehicle was in excellent condition, the tires were new and the
truck was travelling on a six-lane, lightly travelled highway
on a clear day, Mr.
PRITCHARD said.
Mr. WEBER, a retired high-school history teacher from the town
of Chesley in southwestern Ontario, was among 17 Canadian and
American peace activists who arrived in Iraq on December 29.
They were committed to living up to a mission statement of the
Christian Peacemaker Teams of reducing violence by "getting in
the way," Mr.
PRITCHARD said.
The group travelled to the country despite warnings from the
Department of Foreign Affairs advising Canadians to stay away
from Iraq for security reasons. With war looming there, antiwar
activists from around the world have been heading to Iraq to
act as "human shields" if the bombs start falling, and in solidarity
with Iraqis.
"He was a student of world politics," said Reverend Anita Janzen
of the Hanover Mennonite Church, where Mr.
WEBER and his wife
Lena attended. "He was very upset [by] the threat of war [in
Iraq]."
Mr. WEBER felt he wouldn't be able to live with himself if war
broke out in Iraq and he had failed to do anything, she said.
Yet, when people told him they thought his actions were courageous,
his reply was: " 'I'm no hero,' " said his wife Lena. "It was
what he felt he needed to do," she said.
In Iraq, Mr.
WEBER and the Christian Peacemaker Team visited
hospitals, farms and schools to talk to Iraqis about the Persian
Gulf war, the United Nations sanctions and the current possible
U.S.-led war.
Shortly after arriving in Baghdad, he made a trip to the marketplace
to have a local tailor make him a suit. He had planned to pick
it up after his trip to Basra but he never made it back to the
marketplace. But someone else did. Mr.
WEBER wore the suit at
his funeral.
Having the suit made in Baghdad fit with Mr.
WEBER's personal
philosophy of trying to help those most in need. It was not uncommon
on his various travels to developing countries to seek out the
most decrepit taxi, saying it was that driver who was the most
in need of the fare, Lena
WEBER said.
"He was really kind of an unassuming and a genuinely humble man
who in a quiet way lived his beliefs," said Jim
LONEY, a fellow
Canadian who was in the truck but escaped serious injuries. Mr.
LONEY accompanied Mr.
WEBER's body back to Canada from Iraq.
Mr. WEBER had been scheduled to return home on January 9. "He
was a deeply committed Christian, and deeply committed to peace."
Mr. WEBER's trip to Iraq wasn't his first with the Christian
Peacemakers Team. After retiring from teaching, he applied to
take part in a Peacemakers mission to Chiapas, Mexico. In his
application in 1999, he noted that throughout his life he had
been interested in current events and was aware that it was the
poor and disadvantaged people in the world who end up suffering
the most.
"I think that most of the calamities that befall ordinary folk
could be alleviated if it were not for the selfishness and greed
that motivate the power structures, which are in place throughout
the world.
"But there are also many people of goodwill who wish to treat
everyone fairly and with charity. I try to be among this group,"
he wrote.
He was part of a two-week delegation to Chiapas in February,
2000. This trip was followed by another six-week mission to Hebron
in the West Bank in 2001, and another six weeks there in 2002.
In the West Bank, Mr.
WEBER was particularly moved by the plight
of the Palestinian children and would accompany them to school
through military checkpoints ensuring that they arrived safely.
Mr. WEBER had also been a member of the Peace Justice and Social
Concerns Committee of the Mennonite Conference of Eastern Canada
between 1994 and 1998.
George WEBER was born on July 28, 1929, and grew up on a farm
near Elmira, Ontario He was the fifth of seven children born
to Ion and Geneva
WEBER.
After his father died when he was in
his 50s, George was left to take over the family farm. A young
man, just 20, he helped his mother raise his younger siblings.
When George felt one of his younger siblings was able to take
over the farm, he got on a boat headed for Europe. It was during
his travels that he decided he would like to one day attend university.
He returned to Canada in his mid-20s and enrolled in the history
department at the University of Toronto. After graduating with
a degree, he went into teaching. His first job was teaching history
at Western Technical-Commercial School in Toronto.
It was through the Mennonite church that he met Lena
FREY.
The
couple married in 1959 and not long afterward went to Africa.
Mr. WEBER taught in Ghana and Nigeria during the 1960s for the
Mennonite Board of Missions teaching school and his wife worked
as a nurse.
After returning to Canada, he taught at a Toronto high school
before settling in Chesley, Ontario, where he taught history
at a local high school, farmed and was active in the Hanover
Mennonite Church.
"George was a very critical thinker," said Barry
WOODYARD, a
retired vice-principal at Chesley District High School. "He used
to challenge his students not to accept anything they heard on
the news," or from politicians. "He felt they needed to do their
own thinking."
A quiet, hard-working man, he was known among his colleagues
for having a particular talent for forming relationships with
the difficult students the other teachers often didn't want to
deal with.
"If people needed help he would help them," Mr.
WOODYARD said.
Mr. WEBER leaves his wife
Lena, children Reginald and Tania and
four grandchildren. He also leaves two brothers and one sister.
George WEBER, teacher, farmer, missionary, born on July 28, 1929,
in Elmira, Ontario; died near Basra, Iraq, on January 6, 2003.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-02-18 published
His voice resonated on airwaves
Veteran read news, hosted shows on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Radio and television for four decades
By Allison
LAWLOR
Tuesday,▲▼
February▲ 18, 2003 - Page R7
Harry MANNIS, a popular Canadian Broadcasting Corporation announcer
and host whose warm, deep voice graced the country's airwaves
for four decades, died last month in Toronto. He was 82.
Mr. MANNIS started his career with the Canadian Broadcasting
Corp. in Halifax at the end of the Second World War. He was known
across the country, not only for reading the radio news, but
hosting a number of programs including Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation radio's Themes and Variations and Anthology. His
voice was also often heard on the Project, Stage and Fourth Estate.
"He had that great resonance that I envied, " said his long-time
friend and former radio personality Max
FERGUSON. "As an announcer
I have always considered him the best."
Mr. MANNIS preferred radio but also ventured into television,
reading the Toronto metro news and hosting What's New?, a news
magazine geared toward youth, which was launched in 1972.
In radio, he said, you had the option of sitting at the microphone
in an old T-shirt (although Mr.
MANNIS himself was most often
smartly dressed in a turtleneck sweater and dress coat). He also
found it less stressful than television. "It's easier on the
nerves. Only one thing can be a problem -- reading, " he said
in an interview in 1975.
A modest, unassuming man, who stood at just over six-feet tall,
Mr. MANNIS admitted to still having a bout of nerves after almost
three decades in the business.
"Even after 29 years I haven't been able to conquer this feeling,
" he said in 1975.
"When I was doing the Toronto metro television news, I had a
recurring nightmare that when I'd go on the air, all the pages
of the news would be mixed up. It's never happened, but you never
know, " he said.
It was that same fear that prompted him to meticulously check
his work before sitting down in front of the microphone. If he
didn't know a word, or its proper pronunciation, instead of guessing
and taking the risk of being wrong on-air he would head right
to the public broadcaster's man in charge of language and make
sure he got it right.
"Harry never mispronounced a word, Mr.
FERGUSON said.
But like any new radio broadcaster, Mr.
MANNIS, who didn't lack
a wry humour, had a couple of small announcing mishaps in the
early years. One day in Halifax, the city experienced a power
failure. The show still having to go on, Mr.
MANNIS was forced
to read the news from the master control room with someone holding
a flashlight over his shoulder.
Another time, when his microphone was switched on for a station
call he happened to be looking at a drama producer whose last
name was Appleby. Before he knew it, the words coming out of
his mouth were: "This is
CBH,
Applefax."
"Relax for a minute and it's fatal, Mr.
MANNIS said in the
1975 interview. "The minute a mike is turned on, I visualize
a million pairs of ears glued to their radios or television sets,
all eagerly awaiting to pounce on my slightest mispronunciation.
Is it any wonder the tongue cleaves to the palate, the eyes become
glazed, the hand holding the script trembles like a leaf in a
gale?"
Harry MANNIS was born in Toronto on April 11, 1920. He was the
youngest of three children born to Jessie and Benjamin
MANNIS,
who owned a furrier shop. Harry attended Oakwood Collegiate Institute
and met his wife Elizabeth when she moved in two doors down.
The couple married in 1942 and later had a daughter.
"He was like any nice young man, Elizabeth
MANNIS said. "He
was private. He wasn't flamboyant."
After high school, Mr.
MANNIS briefly attended the University
of Toronto before leaving to join the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Stationed in England during the war, he returned home to Canada
in 1946. Uncertain about what to do next, he decided to enroll
in a radio-announcing course at Toronto's Ryerson Institute of
Technology (now Ryerson University).
"We all liked the way he read things at home, " said Elizabeth
MANNIS, who was one of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's first female announcers.
Impressed with his voice quality and enunciation (which was untrained),
they told him not to bother with school and sent him to Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation for an audition. He was hired the next
day for an announcing job in Halifax. Within two weeks of his
audition, he was reading the radio news on the East Coast.
"I just happened to be in the right place at the right time,
Mr. MANNIS said of his quick entry into the radio world.
He had had a brush with the airwaves before the war. After learning
to play the piano, violin and clarinet by ear as a child, he
decided to try his hand at singing, fancying himself a pop star
one day.
When he was 17, he appeared on an amateur radio hour show singing
a pop song. He thought he had found the key to his success until,
as he put it, "the pianist refused to play slowly, and I refused
to sing fast, and the result was pandemonium."
"Music came naturally to him, " Elizabeth said. "The same with
announcing, he didn't have to struggle with it."
Mr. MANNIS remained with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
until his retirement in the mid-1980s. He was widely liked and
respected by his colleagues, who called him a "class act." Judy
MADDREN, host of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio's World
Report, wrote in a condolence note to his family that Mr.
MANNIS
was a "true gentleman" who always treated her with respect and
without condescension.
An animal lover, Mr.
MANNIS and his wife took in stray animals
and supported a local organization called the Toronto Wildlife
Centre, which helps rehabilitate injured wildlife.
Mr. MANNIS died of cancer on January 2 in a Toronto hospital.
Besides his wife, he leaves daughter Kate and two grandchildren.
Harry MANNIS, born in Toronto on April 11, 1920; died in Toronto
on January 2, 2003.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-03-19 published
'His heart was always in the labour movement'
United Auto Workers director and Canadian Labour Congress president,
he was one of labour's most influential leaders
By Allison
LAWLOR
Wednesday,▲▼
March▼ 19, 2003 - Page R7
He went from the assembly line to the lofty heights of union
leadership. Dennis
McDERMOTT, who died last month at age 80,
was one of Canada's most influential labour leaders throughout
the 1970s and 1980s as Canadian director of the United Auto Workers
and later president of the Canadian Labour Congress.
Mr. McDERMOTT's life in the labour movement began in 1948 when
he started work as an assembler and welder at the Massey Harris
(later Massey Ferguson) plant in Toronto. He joined United Auto
Workers Local 439 and quickly rose through the ranks.
"He had a lot of pizzazz, said Bob
WHITE/WHYTE, former president
of the Canadian Auto Workers and the Canadian Labour Congress.
"He had a good sense of what was good for working people."
After a 38-year career in the Canadian labour movement, Mr.
McDERMOTT
was made Canadian ambassador to Ireland in 1986 by Prime Minister
Brian MULRONEY.
Mr.
McDERMOTT received some criticism within
the labour movement for the appointment, but he made no apologies.
"I didn't cross the floor and become a Conservative. I am a social
democrat and will continue to be a social democrat, " he said
at the time. "I will continue to act and speak as a trade unionist,
Mr. McDERMOTT said in 1986 after accepting his appointment.
Mr. McDERMOTT was known for his sharp tongue and had a particularly
abrasive relationship with former prime minister Pierre
TRUDEAU.
He fought against the anti-inflation policies of the Trudeau
government, in particular wage and price controls.
On November 21, 1981, Mr.
McDERMOTT led a massive rally on Parliament
Hill, said to be the largest such demonstration in Canadian history.
About 100,000 people protested against the oppressive burden
of high interest rates that created high unemployment and economic
instability.
Behind his combative style, Mr.
McDERMOTT had a strong intellect
and a talent for building consensus. As Canadian Labour Congress
president, he was able to reach out to other groups and build
a coalition among various social interests in Canada in pursuit
of common goals.
"I am confrontational. When I have to play hardball, I play hardball.
But I can be just as conciliatory as anyone else. I can walk
with the bat or I can walk with the olive branch. It depends
on what's happening, Mr.
McDERMOTT once told a reporter.
Dennis McDERMOTT was born on November 3, 1922, in Portsmouth,
England. He was the eldest of three children to his Irish parents
John and Beatrice
McDERMOTT.
Growing up poor, Mr.
McDERMOTT learned
firsthand about some of life's injustices. As a young boy in
the church choir, Mr.
McDERMOTT remembered being left behind
on the bus while the rest of the choir performed at a concert
because his family was too poor to buy him a uniform, said his
wife, Claire
McDERMOTT.
Mr. McDERMOTT left school at age 14 to become a butcher's helper.
Two years later, he joined the Royal Navy. During the Second
World War, he served on a destroyer escort travelling on convoy
duty to different parts of Europe and sometimes to the Russian
port of Murmansk. In 1947, he left the navy to work in a Scottish
coal mine before coming the Canada.
After landing a job at Massey Harris in Toronto, Mr.
McDERMOTT
quickly became involved in the United Auto Workers. Small in
stature, but with a quick mind and wit, he became a budding leader.
"He was very impressive, said Bromley
ARMSTRONG, a civil and
human-rights activist who worked with Mr.
McDERMOTT at Massey
Harris. "He held rapt attention."
During his first year in the union, Mr.
McDERMOTT worked on the
Joint Labour Committee to Combat Racial Intolerance, which successfully
lobbied to help bring about Ontario's first piece of human-rights
legislation, the Fair Employment Practices Act of 1948.
His work in human rights continued throughout his career. He
later served on the executive of the Toronto Committee for Human
Rights and as a member of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
He was awarded the Order of Ontario for his work in the trade-union
and human-rights movements. After serving in several positions
in the United Auto Workers Local 439, Mr.
McDERMOTT became a
full-time organizer for the union in 1954. He was made subregional
director of the Toronto area in 1960, a position he held until
being elected Canadian director of the United Auto Workers in
1968. During his first year as Canadian director, he moved the
union headquarters from Windsor, Ontario, to Toronto.
"He started down the road towards more autonomy for the Canadian
union, and he reached out to all points of view inside the union,
Mr. WHITE/WHYTE said. (In 1985, the Canadian arm of the United Auto
Workers broke away to form its own union -- the Canadian Auto
Workers,)
"Dennis McDERMOTT raised the profile of the Canadian labour movement
to new heights, said Canadian Auto Workers president Buzz
HARGROVE.
"He was a tough and effective negotiator at the bargaining table,
but he also took on the key social and political issues of the
day."
Mr. HARGROVE added that his friend and colleague "always had
a vision for the movement."
Mr. McDERMOTT was a strong supporter of American Cesar
CHAVEZ
and the United Farm Workers. He led a contingent of Canadians
to California and also organized a march in Toronto to raise
money for Mr.
CHAVEZ.
Elected
Canadian
Labour Congress president in 1978, Mr.
McDERMOTT
served in that position until his retirement in 1986. When asked
by a reporter what he considered his prime accomplishment, he
pointed to the labour congress. "I think putting the Canadian
Labour Congress on the map. Before I came there, it was pretty
low profile. You never heard of it. I was kind of proud of that,
Mr. McDERMOTT said in a 1989 interview with The Toronto Star.
McDERMOTT also broadened the Canadian Labour Congress's role
in international affairs. He was a member of the executive board
of the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers and served
as vice-president of the International Confederation of Free
Trade Unions.
"His heart was always in the labour movement, Ms.
McDERMOTT
said. During his three years as ambassador to Ireland in the
late 1980s, Mr.
McDERMOTT made headlines when he lashed out at
Irish government officials for giving better treatment to singer
Michael Jackson's pet chimpanzee than the
McDERMOTT's Great Dane,
Murphy. Mr. Jackson's chimp was whisked into the country while
Murphy had to endure six months of quarantine. The dog died shortly
after being freed.
Mr. McDERMOTT enjoyed both writing and painting. While in Ireland,
he sold a few of his paintings. One of his short stories, about
his war experiences, was published in The Toronto Star as part
of the newspaper's short-story contest.
Returning from Ireland, Mr.
McDERMOTT retired and spent his time
between a home near Peterborough, Ontario, and a place in Florida.
He continued to paint and write. His letters to the editor frequently
appeared in newspapers.
"He lived an incredible life if you think of where he came from,
Mr. WHITE/WHYTE said. "He would be the first to say that he was fortunate."
Mr. McDERMOTT died on February 13 in a Peterborough hospital.
He had been suffering from a lung disease. He leaves his wife
Claire and five children.
A memorial service will be held on March 24 at 1 p.m. at the
Toronto Centre for the Arts, 5040 Yonge Street, Toronto.
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LAWLOR 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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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-04-02 published
An active life of kindness and empathy
The wife of former Globe and Mail editor and senator always reached
out to others
By Allison
LAWLOR
Wednesday,▲▼
April 2, 2003 - Page R7
In Florence
DOYLE,
Friends and family saw someone who throughout
her life actively lived her Catholic faith and embodied the qualities
of kindness and compassion.
"My mom was always very concerned about the people in her immediate
reach," said her daughter Judith
DOYLE. "
Her sense of empathy
and concern for others guided her. People felt safe near her."
Whether it was chauffeuring her family around or taking an elderly
neighbour on an outing to the horse races, Mrs.
DOYLE, wife of
former Globe and Mail editor and senator Richard (Dic)
DOYLE,
was always conscious of others. Mrs.
DOYLE died on March 20 in
a Toronto hospital after suffering a stroke. She was 78.
Known as Flo to family and Friends, Mrs.
DOYLE also earned the
affectionate nickname of "Sarge" from her family for her knack
of keeping watch over their schedules and well-being. At one
point, she was the only family member with a driver's licence
and would faithfully drive her husband to work and their children
to various places. She also kept track of the family's money
matters and would ensure at tax season that everyone filed on
time. Later, she nursed her husband through a bout with throat
cancer and with diabetes.
"Her family was the centrepiece of her life," said Colin
McCULLOUGH,
a former Globe reporter and newspaper publisher.
Sharing in her husband's professional life, Mrs.
DOYLE travelled
with him, attended functions and opened their home to Friends
and colleagues. "I didn't enjoy myself without her," Mr.
DOYLE
said.
Aside from her responsibilities at home and at church, where
she helped with various charitable works, Mrs.
DOYLE enjoyed
a good game of cards. Her bridge club met regularly for 40 years.
One favourite memory was from a trip she and Mr.
DOYLE took to
China in the early 1980s, when she travelled down the Yangtze
River playing cards with their guides.
Florence Barbara
CHANDA was born on November 30, 1924 in Lynedoch,
Ontario, the youngest of six children to farmers Frank and Franis
CHANDA.
Her early ancestors had cleared the land in this southwestern
part of the province using workhorses. They grew turnips and
later tobacco. Mrs.
DOYLE was very close to her mother, who considered
her last child "a gift" because she had her later in life, Judith
DOYLE said.
After her father was killed in a car accident when she was about
eight years old, Florence was put to work in the tobacco fields
and remained on the farm until her older brother took over and
she and her mother moved to nearby Chatham. In town, she attended
a Catholic high school but soon suffered another tragedy when
her mother died. Left without parents, she moved into a local
boarding house run by a generous woman remembered as Mrs. Con
SHAY/SHEA.
After high school, she found work at Libby's Foods and rose to
the rank of office manager. Around that time, she met Dic
DOYLE,
a young reporter at The Chatham Daily News. The couple married
in Chatham in January, 1953.
Not long after they were married, Mrs.
DOYLE moved to Toronto,
where her husband was by that time at The Globe and Mail. Hired
as a copy reader on the news desk in 1951, Mr.
DOYLE became editor
and then the paper's editor-in-chief from 1963 to 1983.
Judith DOYLE remembers her parent's house as an open and welcoming
place. Late at night after Mr.
DOYLE and his colleagues left
The Globe's office, they would often venture over to the house
to talk and unwind from a busy day.
Cameron SMITH, a former editor at The Globe, said of Mrs.
DOYLE:
"She was one of the most welcoming people that I've known. She
made me feel good about whatever I was doing."
Judith will never forget the only Christmas she experienced away
from her mother. It was the early 1980s and Judith was in Nicaragua
to make a documentary. Mrs.
DOYLE managed to track her down and
sent a Christmas cake. When the cake arrived, Judith remembers
the joy of slicing it into slivers for a group of foreign journalists.
Years later when Judith made another documentary about an Ojibway
reserve in Northern Ontario, Mrs.
DOYLE befriended some of the
people from the reserve when they visited Toronto.
Mrs. DOYLE extended her kindness to animals. Working in the garden
of her Toronto home, Mrs.
DOYLE could be heard chattering away
to the birds and animals, Judith said. The family has photographs
of her feeding foxes in the backyard.
"She was the kind of person who had raccoons following her around,
" Judith said.
After Mr. DOYLE was appointed to the Senate in 1985, the couple
moved to Ottawa. Their years in the capital were among their
happiest. They made close Friends and Mrs.
DOYLE enjoyed heading
across the river to Hull with a friend and a few rolls of quarters
to do some gambling. "She had the capacity for developing Friendships
that went on throughout her life," Mr.
DOYLE said. "She was
interested in people."
Florence DOYLE leaves her husband Richard, sister Clara
HILLIARD,
son Sean and daughter Judith.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-05-02 published
Architect had a passion for museums
He won Governor-General's Award for a high-rise called 'a superior
project' and helped to put the Royal Ontario Museum on the map
By Allison
LAWLOR
Friday,▲▼
May▼ 2, 2003 - Page R11
For
Toronto architect Henry
SEARS, working in museum-exhibit
planning and design proved to be the perfect fit. What better
place for a man interested in the world to delve into the fine
details of everything from fossils to Meissen china?
"He had an inquiring mind, "said Doreen
SEARS, his wife of 51
years. "[Museums] fed his natural curiosity in the most wonderful
way."
Mr. SEARS, who died on March 19 at the age of 73, began his museum
work in the mid-1970s at the Royal Ontario Museum when he was
hired to be part of a task force to plan future expansion of
the Toronto institution.
"Our job was to reimagine the Royal Ontario Museum, "said Louis
LEVINE, director of collections and exhibitions at the Museum
of Jewish Heritage in New York. At the time, Mr.
LEVINE was a
curator at the Royal Ontario Museum and part of the task force.
"He was the one who made us think. He wouldn't take fuzzy answers
from us, "Mr.
LEVINE said.
Mr. SEARS relished his job. Mr.
LEVINE recalled how his good
friend would show up at meetings unable to contain his enthusiasm.
With the excitement of a young child, he would describe to the
group, many of whom were academic archeologists, what he had
learned on his travels through the museum.
"He was hungry for information. He wanted to know how things
work, "said his son Joel
SEARS.
The task force produced an influential publication called Communicating
With the Museum Visitor in 1976, which became a textbook for
museum work, said Dan
RAHIMI, director of collections management
at the Royal Ontario Museum. The publication put the museum on
the world map as being a leader in museum theory, Mr.
RAHIMI
added.
In subsequent years, Mr.
SEARS continued to work with the Royal
Ontario Museum on various projects ranging from designing travelling
exhibits to gallery space. "He was so sensitive to the content.
He would always ask what is this gallery about? What stories
do they tell?" Mr.
RAHIMI said.
Aside from the Royal Ontario Museum, Mr.
SEARS worked with several
other museums across Canada, the United States and Europe. In
recent years, he and his firm Sears and Russell were working with
the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin in the planning for
a new permanent gallery. Mr.
SEARS also worked with the Nova
Scotia Museum, the Peabody Museum at Yale University and the
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution,
among others.
"I don't think he ever had the sense that he would ever retire,"
said Jeff WEATHERSTON, an architect at Sears and Russell. "He
just loved the work here."
Henry SEARS was born in Toronto on October 30, 1929. After graduating
from Harbord Collegiate Institute in downtown Toronto, he went
on to study architecture at the University of Toronto, from which
he graduated in 1954. While at university he met a young woman
named Doreen on a blind date. The couple married on July 1, 1951,
and later had two sons.
After graduating from university, the young couple headed to
Europe where they spent six months travelling before heading
home. Back in Toronto, Mr.
SEARS went to work for a variety of
architectural firms before heading out on his own. In the late
1950s he and a partner Jeff
KLEIN started the firm Klein and
Sears. They worked on several housing projects in the city, including
the Alexandra Park Co-operative. Built in the 1960s, the large
public-housing project was one of the city's earliest such schemes.
A fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, Mr.
SEARS received a Governor-General's Award for residential design
in 1985. The award was for Cadillac Fairview Corp.'s Bay-Charles
Towers, a mixed-use project designed by Mr.
SEARS.
"A superior project, "the jury selecting the winners said at
the time. According to the jury, the Toronto project shows that
"the basic high-rise type provides opportunities for richness
of expression hitherto rarely explored."
In 1984, Mr.
SEARS created a new firm called Sears and Russell
that was dedicated solely to museum work. Over the years, he
acted as a mentor to several young architects who came to work
for him and others who worked with him in the museum field.
Outside of work, Mr.
SEARS loved to travel, and spent time at
the family's country place near Meaford, north of Toronto, and
on a sailboat on Lake Ontario. An avid sailor, Mr.
SEARS continued
to race even last year. "He was endlessly energetic and enthusiastic,"
Joel SEARS said.
Mr. SEARS, who died following a battle with cancer, leaves his
wife, Doreen, and sons Alan and Joel.
"He was an optimist to the last minute, "Mr.
LEVINE said. "He
added beauty to the world."
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-05-06 published
His passion was coaching
He worked at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children for 40 years,
but his spare time was devoted to training athletes
By Allison
LAWLOR
Tuesday,▲▼
May▲▼ 6, 2003 - Page R7
An era has ended in Canadian track-and-field athletics. Don
MILLS,
coach, administrator and volunteer, died in Windsor, Ontario,
last month. He was 75.
The folklore surrounding Mr.
MILLS, who was most recently an
assistant coach with the University of Toronto's track-and-field
and cross-country teams, was that he never missed a meet, often
attending more than one on a weekend.
Mr. MILLS was at the Canadian Interuniversity Sport championships
assisting with the university's Varsity Blues team when he died
peacefully in his sleep.
"For Don, track-and-field coaching and working with young people
was his passion, said Carl
GEORGEVSKI, head coach of Varsity
Blues track and field.
Mr. MILLS's involvement in track and field began in 1963 when
he co-founded the Toronto Striders Track Club. He went on to
form Track West, in the city's west end, in the 1970s and was
a club coach there until the end of the 2002 season. One of his
highlights as a coach was the 1978 World Cross Country Championships.
Three of the six Canadian junior men there were from Track West.
They took home a silver medal.
"If [a runner] didn't have a coach and needed one they would
saddle over to Don, said Ian
ANDERSON, a friend and fellow
coach at Track West and at the University of Toronto.
Known for devoting hours of his spare time to typing out the
results of athletes' workouts, giving nutritional advice, supervising
workouts and attending what seemed like every track-and-field
and cross-country race in the country, Mr.
MILLS made each of
the athletes feel they were the most important.
"You thought you were his only athlete, said Paul
KEMP, a runner
who trained with Mr.
MILLS at both Track West and at the University
of Toronto. But Mr.
KEMP soon realized that the same time and
individual attention Mr.
MILLS gave to him, he also gave to 20
other athletes.
Jerry KOOYMANS, who ran with Track West in the late 1970s and
early 1980s, remembers Mr.
MILLS dropping by his hotel room the
night before a big race to discuss race strategy. Mr.
MILLS would
pull out the list of opponents and discuss their strengths and
weaknesses and how to beat them.
"By the time I got to the starting line, I felt like I was the
best-prepared runner in the race, Mr.
KOOYMANS said in a written
tribute to his old coach.
When he wasn't busy coaching, Mr.
MILLS, who lived in Oakville,
Ontario, west of Toronto, was volunteering with the Ontario Track
and Field Association as an official or meet director. His meticulous
administrative skills and painstaking attention to detail are
widely remembered. It was not uncommon for Mr.
MILLS to travel
across the city on a Sunday night to drop off race results to
an athlete or fellow coach. He received the government of Ontario's
special achievement award for his work as a volunteer administrator.
Mr. MILLS joined the Varsity Blues staff in 1999, where he focused
on men's middle-distance running. But his connections with the
University of Toronto go back to the early 1960s, when he spent
time coaching the men's boxing team. One of the young men he
is reported to have coached was former Ontario premier David
PETERSON.
Outside of coaching, Mr.
MILLS worked at Toronto's Hospital for
Sick Children for 40 years. He started out in biochemistry research
in 1954 and later transferred to occupational health and safety
where he was involved in purchasing radioactive materials. He
routinely ate breakfast at the hospital cafeteria and, even after
he retired, continued to visit the hospital daily and spend time
in its library.
Don MILLS was born on August 29, 1927, in Trois-Rivières, Quebec.
He lived a quiet life, never marrying or having children of his
own. He acted as a father figure to many athletes and maintained
connections with them. Over the holidays, he would often spend
time with the families of former athletes. Not one to talk about
himself, his athletes and colleagues knew little about him. Not
much is known about his own athletic achievements except that
he is said to have played hockey in his younger years. Mr.
MILLS,
however, remained fit throughout his life.
"He was very quiet, Mr.
ANDERSON said. "He was never the centre
of attention."
While his workouts could be tough, Mr.
MILLS knew when an athlete
had endured enough, Mr.
KEMP said. He was not one to yell or
scream.
"He was patient, he was dedicated. He was committed, Mr.
GEORGEVSKI
said.
Renowned for never owning a car, Mr.
MILLS mastered bus and train
routes from coast to coast. Being without a vehicle didn't deter
him from getting to a track meet or practice session, no matter
where it was held. He became legendary for his uncanny ability
to get to meets without driving.
In recent years he refused to fly. Even so, that didn't stop
him from attending a National Cross Country Championship in British
Columbia.
In order to be with his team, Mr.
MILLS left Ontario a week ahead
of schedule to travel across the country by train. Two years
ago, Mr. KEMP flew to Edmonton to attend a tournament only to
be met by Mr.
MILLS, who had arrived earlier by bus.
"He was an individual who cared deeply about all his athletes,
" whether it was a young, struggling runner or one who was performing
among the top at the national level, Mr.
GEORGEVSKI.
A track scholarship has been established in Mr.
MILLS's name
at the University of Toronto. He died on March 16.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-05-15 published
Maker of men: 'The Chief' ran Kilkoo Camp for Boys
For 25 years, Ontario educator ran a wilderness camp for boys
and then helped launch Toronto's Greenwood College
By Allison
LAWLOR
Thursday,▲▼
May▲▼ 15, 2003 - Page R9
John LATIMER's idea of a perfect evening was visiting with young
campers in their cabins at Kilcoo Camp, telling stories and listening
to tales of their day's adventures.
"You haven't seen the Pied Piper in action until you saw John
in action," said his long-time friend David
HADDEN, the head
of Lakefield College School, a private school in Lakefield, Ontario
"The kids just loved him."
Mr. LATIMER's life-long love of Kilcoo Camp, the Ontario boy's
camp he directed for more than 25 years, began in 1938. At the
age of 8, Mr.
LATIMER arrived at Kilcoo, located on the shores
of Haliburton's Gull Lake, about two hours' drive northeast of
Toronto, as a young camper.
He loved the outdoors and became an accomplished canoeist. After
several years as a camper, Mr.
LATIMER moved on to become a leader-in-training,
counsellor and program director at the camp. Then in the fall
of 1955, he bought the camp and became its director.
Mr. LATIMER, along with his wife
Peggy, directed Kilcoo until
1981. It was as director of Kilcoo that he became known as "Chief"
a name that stuck with him throughout his life. After retiring
from Kilcoo, he had a cottage built beside the camp and remained
active in camp life and as a well-known face to the young campers.
Not long after stepping down as the camp's director, Mr.
LATIMER's
eldest son, David
LATIMER, took over and continues to direct
the camp.
Mr. LATIMER later wrote a book called Maker of Men: The Kilcoo
Story, about the place he loved so much. He also co-authored
a camp-counsellor's handbook. With his wide smile and keen interest
in people, Mr.
LATIMER captured people with his enthusiasm.
"He just had this special gift," said Mr.
HADDEN, who considers
Mr. LATIMER his mentor and the reason he pursued a career working
with young people. "No one I know has had a greater capacity
to love so many people."
Mr. HADDEN added: "He had the ability to touch people's souls,
really I believe that."
John Robert
LATIMER was born on October 13, 1930, in Toronto.
After graduating from Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute in north
Toronto, he went on to radio school. He completed his training
and went to work as an announcer at private radio stations in
Guelph, Ontario, and Stratford, Ontario, before joining the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto. At the public broadcasting
corporation, he worked in the film department but continued to
spend his summers at Kilcoo Camp.
"I think he worked to go to Kilcoo," said his long-time friend
John KENNEDY.
At a party of camp Friends, he met his future wife
Peggy
MacDONALD.
The couple married on April 29, 1961, and later had three sons,
who grew up around the camp.
Not long after retiring as director of Kilcoo in 1981, Mr.
LATIMER
went to work in the Ontario government's Office of Protocol.
"He never had any intention of retiring," his wife
Peggy
LATIMER
said. "He always said he didn't like golfing."
As acting chief of protocol, Mr.
LATIMER was responsible for
making sure visits to the province by the Royal Family and heads
of state ran smoothly.
In his role, Mr.
LATIMER and his wife had occasion to meet the
Queen, Prince Philip, the late Queen Mother and several other
members of the Royal Family. The Duchess of York, Sarah
FERGUSON,
spent time at Kilcoo Camp learning how to paddle a canoe.
From the Ontario government, Mr.
LATIMER went to Royal St. George's
College, a private boys' school in Toronto, where he was headmaster
from 1988 to 1996. About three years ago, Mr.
LATIMER and his
son David sat down with Richard
WERNHAM, a lawyer and entrepreneur
who made millions selling his mutual-fund company Global Strategy,
to talk about their dream of starting up a private school in
Toronto.
Together they, along with Mr.
WERNHAM's wife
Julia
WEST, founded
Greenwood College School (the school was named in honour of Mr.
LATIMER's mother, Zetta
GREENWOOD.)
The school, which emphasizes
not only academic achievement but the student's emotional, social
and physical development, opened last September.
"He fully believed in leadership and building leaders," said
David LATIMER, who is the school's director of community life.
"He always believed that through leadership, all kids could be
helped."
An active member of the school, John
LATIMER served on the school's
board of directors and took part in interviewing hundreds of
prospective students for the school's first year.
Having founded the school, which fulfilled a long-time dream,
Mr. LATIMER pursued another goal. He got tickets for his first
rock concert. Sitting in the 11th row of the Rolling Stones concert
in Toronto last year was a spry man in his 70s, said his son
David.
Known as a prankster, Mr.
LATIMER's jokes ran from sending dead
flowers on a birthday, to filling a room full of balloons, to
placing a strange object in a bed.
Mr. KENNEDY can remember finding a plastic rose in his lush rose
garden at his home in British Columbia and opening up his suitcase
after a trip with Mr.
LATIMER to find hundreds of packages of
matches tucked away in shirt pockets, socks and underwear.
About three years ago, Mr.
KENNEDY and his wife joined the
LATIMERs
on a trip to Disneyland in California. The two couples spent
three days going on every ride, and exploring every exhibit.
"He revelled in it -- he loved it," Mr.
KENNEDY said of the
trip. "If there is such thing as an inner child, he had it."
Mr. LATIMER, who died in Toronto on April 22 after a short battle
with cancer, leaves Peggy, his wife of 42 years, their three
sons David, Jeffrey and Michael, and grandchildren Tori, Thomas,
T. J. and Charlie.
"I do not regret leaving this Earth... because my life has been
utterly fantastic," Mr.
LATIMER said not long before he died.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-05-20 published
He helped build a media giant
Newly graduated accountant brought order to Thomson Corp. in
early days
By Allison
LAWLOR
Tuesday,▲▼
May▲ 20, 2003 - Page R7
The astute accountant who provided the financial wizardry to
pull the fledgling Thomson Corp. through its shaky early days
and see it become one of the world's greatest media enterprises,
has died. Sydney
CHAPMAN was 93.
With Roy THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON and Jack Kent
COOKE,
Mr.
CHAPMAN helped transform
a Depression-era Northern Ontario radio station and The Timmins
Press into Canada's largest newspaper group.
By the 1970s, with the aid of Mr.
CHAPMAN's guiding hand, Thomson
Corp. owned 180 newspapers, including The Times of London, 160
magazines, 27 television and radio stations and interests in
North Sea oil.
"He certainly did great things for my father in the early days
when my father desperately needed a right-hand man of his calibre
and his integrity," said Roy
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON's son, Kenneth
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON.
"Of all the things he did, the thing I will be most grateful
to Sid for is the fact that he was there when my dad needed him
and he never, ever let him down."
Mr. CHAPMAN was a newly graduated accountant working at Silverwood
Dairies in London, Ontario, when he answered a help-wanted ad
Roy THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON had placed for a financial man. Soon after being
hired, Mr.
CHAPMAN moved to the northern Ontario town of Timmins
to sort out the finances of the growing media company.
"I didn't have any equity in Silverwood's; I was just an employee
and my superiors were not old," he is quoted as saying in Susan
GOLDENBERG's book The Thomson Empire. "I wanted to join something
that was going somewhere and have equity in it."
At the time, Mr.
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON,
Mr.
COOKE and a secretary shared one
room in a Toronto building. Roy
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON began buying radio stations
and newspapers in Northern Ontario in the 1930s and bought his
first newspaper in Canada, The Timmins Press, in 1934.
"Roy was so busy on the telephone, he could hardly talk to me.
I had been making $40 a week at Silverwood's and Roy agreed to
pay me $45," Mr.
CHAPMAN said of the initial meeting.
Mr. CHAPMAN also insisted on buying $10,000 worth of stock in
the company. Mr.
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON, not keen on the idea of anyone but
himself owning stock in his company, said he would discuss this
proposal with Mr.
CHAPMAN at the end of his first month.
"At that time, he asked if I had the cash and said, 'That settles
it,' when I said I didn't. But I was determined to have that
stock," Mr.
CHAPMAN said.
The young accountant went to the Bank of Nova Scotia manager
in Timmins, where he was working at the time, and asked for a
$10,000 loan. For collateral, he offered his group insurance.
It took more than two decades for Mr.
CHAPMAN's investment to
become worthwhile. "I didn't get any dividends for 22 years but
when the company went public, there was a 30 to one split,"
Mr. CHAPMAN said.
Sydney (Sid)
CHAPMAN was born on January 22, 1910, in Bromley,
England, on the border of London. One of five children born to
Robert CHAPMAN, a house painter who had been wounded in the First
World War, and his wife Sarah, the family scraped by with little
money. When Mr.
CHAPMAN was still a young boy, the family packed
up and emigrated to Canada, making their way to Toronto.
Not long after arriving in the new country, Robert
CHAPMAN decided
he didn't like the place and wanted to return home to England.
His wife decided not to join him. Left to raise the children
alone, Mrs.
CHAPMAN took a job cooking and cleaning for a wealthy
family. Sid got a job as an office boy at what is now Deloitte
& Touche. While working there, he completed his high-school equivalency
through Queen's University and went on to earn his chartered
accountant certificate.
After spending five years at Silverwood Dairies, Mr.
CHAPMAN
began his long relationship with the
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON family. Arriving
in Timmins, Mr.
CHAPMAN found the business affairs of the newspaper
and radio station in less than immaculate order.
Mr. CHAPMAN complained to Roy
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON about the cramped office
space and
CKGB's accounts and files being stacked in the bathroom
and having to keep all his own books in a suitcase.
"Yes, well, that's why we got you up here -- to straighten things
out," Roy THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON replied.
Mr. CHAPMAN did just that. He was so reliable that Roy
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON
put him in charge of his northern business at the end of 1940,
less than a year after he was hired. In the early days, the job
was a balancing act. "I used to say about Roy's motto of 'Never
a backward step, ' that he had better not step backwards or he
would fall in a hole," Mr.
CHAPMAN said in The Thomson Empire.
Mr. CHAPMAN got involved in the northern community through the
Kinsmen service club, eventually becoming its president. It was
in Timmins where he met his future wife Ruby, who was born and
raised in Northern Ontario. The couple married in 1948 and had
two sons. The couple later moved to Toronto with the growing
Thomson company.
Mr. CHAPMAN told his young bride that he intended to work long
hours. Even his honeymoon was a business trip to look into the
purchase of a newspaper in Jamaica, said his son, Neil.
"He loved to work," said Neil
CHAPMAN. "
There was always a love
of what he was doing. There was no way he was going back to being
poor."
His most gratifying business moment was travelling back to England
in the 1960s to be part of the acquisition of The Times of London,
said Neil CHAPMAN. He was so proud to be with Roy
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON and
to be staying at the grand Savoy Hotel after his poor beginnings
in life, Neil
CHAPMAN said.
Mr. CHAPMAN's financial skill extended beyond the balance sheets.
He played a large role in the addition of trucking and insurance
to the Thomson empire. The origin of Dominion-Consolidated Truck
Lines is said to have been linked to Mr.
CHAPMAN's habit of eating
breakfast at Kresge's, a five-and-ten-cent chain, in Timmins
in the 1940s.
"I used to sit at the counter beside a trucker named Barney
QUINN
who wanted my advice on buying the trucking business of Ford
cars from a Windsor widow.
"Although the trucks were rusty, with bald tires, and business
was slow because of the war, I expected a revival in business
and decided to go in on the venture," Mr.
CHAPMAN said in The
Thomson Empire.
Roy THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON tried to dissuade him, saying he didn't know that
business or have the money. After some persuasion, Mr.
CHAPMAN
convinced him to invest. They went on to buy smaller firms and
consolidated them under Dominion-Consolidated.
Mr. CHAPMAN was also a force behind the acquiring of Scottish
and York Insurance, growing out of his belief in consolidation
and lowering expenses.
"He was a good and tough negotiator," said Toronto lawyer John
TORY, who began working for Roy
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON in the 1950s. "He negotiated
a lot of deals for the Thomson group.... He liked to win."
Kenneth THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON said that what he learned most from his early
days working with Mr.
CHAPMAN was his positive attitude toward
life and people. "He was an extremely positive person. He loved
people."
Described as a cheerful and decent man, Mr.
CHAPMAN retired from
the position of senior financial vice-president at Thomson Newspapers
in 1975, but remained as senior vice-president of the Woodbridge
Co. and as a director of Thomson Newspapers until 1982.
After retiring from Thomson, Mr.
CHAPMAN had no intention of
slowing down. He commuted daily into his 80s to a private Bay
Street investment office he ran with his two sons. While he was
extremely hard-working, serious and focused, he did allow himself
to have some fun. He enjoyed golfing and ballroom dancing.
"He loved to dance with his wife
Ruby,"
Mr.
TORY said. "They
danced well together."
Mr. CHAPMAN, who died on May 9, leaves Ruby, his wife of 55 years,
and sons Neil and Glen.
"Dad was a good judge of character and he certainly judged Sid
well indeed," Kenneth
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON said. "He was so dedicated and
so extraordinarily loyal."
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-06-10 published
Stove maker got company cooking
Innovator steered Western Foundry Co. into supplying auto exhaust
manifolds
By Allison
LAWLOR
Tuesday,▲
June▼ 10, 2003 - Page R5
An innovative Canadian businessman who transformed a small family
company that produced iron stoves into the world's supplier of
exhaust manifolds for cars and light trucks, has died. Dick
LEVAN
passed away in Brantford, Ontario, in late April. He was 68.
In 1961, Mr.
LEVAN joined the Western Foundry Co. Ltd., now called
Wescast Industries Inc., as a young engineer with little knowledge
about the foundry business. At the time, the company, which now
has more than 2,000 employees, had 32 employees who worked with
primitive equipment in run-down buildings in the small, southwestern
Ontario town of Wingham.
Fifty-eight years earlier, Mr.
LEVAN's maternal grandfather Richard
VANSTONE had been one of the first businessmen in Wingham to
buy five shares, valued at $100 each, in the new foundry. Today,
the LEVAN family is the company's major shareholder.
"It was his passion that has driven the growth of the company
for the past 42 years," said Mr.
LEVAN's son-in-law Edward
FRACKOWIAK.
"He made things happen. He didn't wait around for things to happen
to him."
Mr. FRACKOWIAK succeeded Mr.
LEVAN, who stepped down as the company's
chairman of the board in March. He was diagnosed with liver cancer.
In his early years with the company, Mr.
LEVAN faced several
challenges. In 1964, the same year he was elected president by
the board of directors, replacing his father William
LEVAN, the
company got a contract to manufacture radiators for the Toronto
Separate School Board. After a summer spent making the cast-iron
hot-water radiators, they were installed, but when they were
turned on, they leaked.
The company not only lost $64,000 replacing the radiators but
their credibility in the cast-iron heating business. But Mr.
LEVAN was determined to turn the company around. He steered the
company toward the auto industry and in the late 1960s it started
manufacturing auto parts. "He was a leader," said Clyde
McBAIN,
chairman of Winnipeg-based Ancast Industries Ltd. "He was a hard
driver. He was tough."
Mr. LEVAN found himself faced with another tough challenge in
1978 that could have forced the foundry into bankruptcy. Ford
Motor Co. recalled 65,000 Bronco transmission extensions that
year, according to Wescast. The foundry took partial responsibility
and worked with Ford to address the problem. As a result of the
recall, Mr.
LEVAN became determined to build quality control
into the foundry's production system.
"He capitalized on this low point," Mr.
FRACKOWIAK said, adding
that today the company has an enviable safety record. "I think
that was one of the remarkable things about Dick. When faced
with a critical issue he could do something about it."
By the early 1990s, the company was a major supplier of manifolds
for the Big Three auto makers. Under Mr.
LEVAN's guiding hand,
the company continued to grow over the next decade. Based in
Brantford, Wescast now operates seven production facilities in
North America. It also has a joint-venture interest in Weslin
Autoipari Rt., a Hungarian-based supplier of exhaust manifolds
and turbocharger housings for the European auto market.
Last year, Wescast announced that it had acquired Georgia Ductile
Foundries L.L.C., a privately held auto-parts maker also in the
cast-iron business, which manufactures suspension and brake components.
Richard LEVAN was born in New Rochelle, New York on May 30, 1934,
but grew up in the town of Arnprior, west of Ottawa. He attended
Trinity College School, a private school in Port Hope, Ontario,
and went onto study engineering physics at the University of
Toronto. He graduated in 1956 and two years later married Jane
RYERSON.
They had four children.
As a young engineer fresh out of school, Mr.
LEVAN went to work
for a refrigeration company in Brantford, Ontario, before moving
to Wingham to join Western Foundry at his father's urging. Known
as a demanding employer, Mr.
LEVAN was respected for his hard
work, directness and leadership abilities. He was someone who
had an ability to "cut to the chase," Mr.
FRACKOWIAK said.
An astute businessman, one of Mr.
LEVAN's favourite expressions
was, "Don't let your short-term greed get in the way of your
long-term greed."
Over the years, his good sense of humour and ability to laugh
at himself served him well. Just before an important meeting
in Flint, Michigan., with executives from General Motors Corp.,
Mr. LEVAN discovered he had forgotten his suit. A colleague came
to the rescue, offering to lend him an extra suit.
Mr. LEVAN arrived at the meeting the next day wearing the borrowed
suit, the pant legs just short of his ankles. When the General
Motors executives arrived, Mr.
LEVAN decided to make light of
the situation. "We had a lot of rain in Wingham last night,"
he told them.
Described as "fanatical about improvement," Mr.
LEVAN was always
looking for new ways to improve the company's products, which
meant talking to employees and visiting them on the foundry floor,
especially in the early years. On one such visit, an employee
approached Mr.
LEVAN complaining that he didn't have the right
tools for the job. Mr.
LEVAN went directly to the employee's
supervisor and suggested that the problem be corrected. The supervisor,
trying to play down the employee's complaints, told him the tools
were fine. After listening to the supervisor, Mr.
LEVAN looked
at him and said: "You have to give people good tools if you want
the job done properly."
Later, despite the company's success and his own personal wealth,
Mr. LEVAN remained unpretentious and at his core a small-town
family man.
"He liked to have the family around," said Mr.
FRACKOWIAK.
The
family not only worked together but often spent vacations together.
Several family members continue to work at Wescast, including
Mr. LEVAN's son William
LEVAN, who is the company's vice-president
of technology.
Outside work, Mr.
LEVAN golfed, fished and was an accomplished
pilot. He flew a Cessna 206 for years.
"Dick was never quiet," Mr.
McBAIN said. "He liked to have fun."
Mr. LEVAN served on several boards, including Trinity College
School, to which he donated generously. He also served as past-president
of the Canadian Foundry Association and as past director of the
American Foundrymen's Society. In Brantford and Wingham, his
philanthropy was well known at local hospitals, churches and
golf courses.
Mr. LEVAN, who died at his home in Brantford on April 29, leaves
his wife Jane, their four children Sally, Bill, Bruce and Ginny,
and nine grandchildren.
"He was more than a guy who knew business," Mr.
FRACKOWIAK said.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-06-19 published
Principal was 'a girl's best friend'
The head of Toronto's elite girls' school raised women's issues
long before the rise of feminism
By Allison
LAWLOR
Thursday,▲
June▲ 19, 2003 - Page R9
Catherine STEELE, a dedicated educator who influenced thousands
of young women during her 20 years as head of Havergal College,
has died at age 93.
When Miss STEELE was appointed principal of the private school
for girls in North Toronto in 1952, she became its first Canadian
principal. The earlier principals were British, "typical of private-school
education," Miss
STEELE once said. She held the position until
1972, but remained closely connected to the school long after
her retirement.
Miss STEELE had a lifelong relationship with the school, being
herself a Havergal "old girl." She attended from 1923 to 1928,
and taught history there in the 1940s.
"She was just a remarkable woman. A woman that truly lived her
values," said Susan
DITCHBURN,
Havergal's current principal.
"She understood that schools like ours couldn't just stand still."
Considered ahead of her time, Miss
STEELE was talking about women's
issues during the 1930s and 1940s, long before feminism was popular.
She encouraged her young female students to use their talents,
and to try to make a difference in the world. She told them to
be ready to take on leadership roles, at a time when men held
most of the top positions.
"I believe," Miss
STEELE once said, "that when we realize we
are world citizens, we shall be on the road to winning the peace."
Inside the walls of Havergal, Miss
STEELE was admired and feared
by the girls. "She wouldn't tolerate nonsense," said her long-time
friend and colleague Marcelle
DEFREITAS.
Yet behind the imposing
presence was a quick and mischievous sense of humour. One morning,
as she took her usual place at the lectern in the school's assembly
hall for morning prayer, she looked down and found a dead mouse
that some of the girls had left for her. She quietly picked up
the mouse and scanned the room for the biology teacher. "I think
this is for you," she said.
After learning that the students had given her the nickname "Stainless
STEELE," she posted on her office door a magazine picture of
a young girl with a mouthful of shiny new braces. The caption
below the picture read: "Stainless [
STEELE] is a girl's best
friend."
Catherine Irene
STEELE was born in Toronto on March 31, 1910.
She was the only daughter of Irene Wilson
STEELE and Robert Clarke
STEELE, who built up a successful seed business. She grew up
with her three brothers in the affluent Forest Hill neighbourhood
and was sent to Havergal in 1923.
Miss STEELE went on to study at the University of Toronto and
the Ontario College of Education. After graduating in the 1930s,
she spent a summer travelling and then she went to teach at a
private girls' school in England.
Back in Canada, she returned to Havergal, this time as a history
teacher. She taught for several years there as well as at St.
Clement's, another girls' school in the city. In between, she
decided to further her education. After saving up enough money,
she headed to New York, where she completed her master's degree
at Columbia University.
At the onset of the Second World War, England was desperately
short of teachers, and Miss
STEELE answered the call. She boarded
a ship and headed to London, where she taught in the East End
during the Blitz.
She returned to Toronto after the war and found herself without
work. Prospective employers often told her that, at age 35, she
was just too old. Eventually she found a job at Ryerson Rehabilitation
Centre, where she taught veterans.
"I never taught more eager pupils," Miss
STEELE said.
Wanting to help a man who had been blinded during the war, Miss
STEELE read him the entire history course. He passed.
From there, Miss
STEELE went to the Royal Ontario Museum, where
she headed the education department. One of her fondest memories
was loading museum objects into a truck and travelling north
to remote communities to bring the museum objects to children
unable to visit Toronto.
While at the Royal Ontario Museum, she got a call from Havergal
asking her to return, this time as principal. During her 20 years
as the school's principal, Miss
STEELE was a fixture.
"She was a presence that was always there," said Harriet
BINKLEY,
who graduated in 1972. "She lived and breathed the school."
Described as a careful, frugal woman, Miss
STEELE lived on the
school's campus in simple quarters. One of her rituals every
night was to walk around the school making sure all the lights
were turned off.
As principal, Miss
STEELE made efforts to attract girls from
different countries and ethnic and religious backgrounds, broadening
the school beyond its Anglican roots. She also tackled inadequate
staff salaries and pensions, and encouraged teachers to take
leaves and pursue their education.
Miss STEELE "lived a life of service," said Reverend Kevin
FLYNN,
minister at the Church of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields in downtown
Toronto. She encouraged others to do the same. At Havergal, she
urged the girls to become involved in community organizations.
She also had them evaluate the annual reports of different charities
to determine which group had the greatest percentage of funds
going directly to programs.
Outside
Havergal,
Miss
STEELE sat on several boards, including
the Elizabeth Fry Society. She also spent many hours at the Church
of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields, helping with the church's programs
for the poor and homeless.
It was not uncommon to see Miss
STEELE's station wagon loaded
with used clothes and furniture for delivery, Reverend
FLYNN said.
In honour of her lifelong work, Miss
STEELE was given two honorary
degrees from the University of Toronto and York University.
Miss STEELE never married nor had any children of her own. "She
was too busy," Ms.
DEFREITAS said.
Miss STEELE died in a Toronto hospital on April 18. She leaves
her brother, Clarke Wilson
STEELE.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-07-18 published
D-Day vet one of the 'Two Jacks'
Story of two soldiers'daring escape from a German PoW camp inspired
a book of 'amazing adventures'
By Allison
LAWLOR
Friday,▲
July▼ 18, 2003 - Page R13
Jack VENESS, a D-Day veteran whose dramatic account of capture
and escape during the Second World War was chronicled in the
book The Two Jacks, has died at his home in Fredericton. He was
Maritime writer Will R.
BIRD recounted Mr.
VENESS's wartime heroism
in his 1954 book The Two Jacks: The Amazing Adventures of Major
Jack M. VENESS and Major Jack L.
FAIRWEATHER.
When Canadians landed on the Normandy coast of France on D-Day,
Mr. VENESS and Dr.
FAIRWEATHER were there with the North Nova
Scotia Highlanders. By June 7, the North Novas (as they were
known) battled their way inland -- about 13 kilometres -- and
had occupied the villages of Buron and Authie when they were
met by German tanks and gunfire, led by the 12th SS Panzer Division.
A raging battle ensued that left dozens of North Novas dead and
injured and led to the capture of both Mr.
VENESS and Dr.
FAIRWEATHER.
They were among close to 100 who were taken prisoner by the Germans
at the time.
"We thought it was bad luck that we were captured but on the
other hand there were a lot of people who didn't survive," said
Dr. FAIRWEATHER, a retired doctor living in Lewisburg, Pa.
After being forced to walk for close to a week with little food
or rest, the two officers, along with the other prisoners, reached
the gates of "Front Stalag." The German prison was a collection
of worn-out army huts surrounded by three barbed wire fences.
Included in the book The Two Jacks is a card Mr.
VENESS wrote
dated June 16, 1944. "Dear Mother, I am in a German PoW camp.
I am in good health and will write more later. Love, Jack."
The two Jacks would then spend the next six weeks in the prison
camp before being loaded onto a railway boxcar. After spending
at least five days jammed into the crowded car, with bombs dropping
all around them, the two men decided if they were going to escape,
now was the time.
"It was made pretty clear in training... an officer's first duty
when captured is to escape," Dr.
FAIRWEATHER said. "We had that
in the back of our minds."
In the dark of the night, just outside the French city of Tours,
the two terrified men escaped their imprisonment by jumping from
a moving train through a hole in the boxcar.
"Jack said, 'This is our chance, we have to take it,' Dr.
FAIRWEATHER
recalled. "He said, 'Come on, we can do this.' " The two officers
were hidden by a French priest in the belfry of a church (which
Mr. VENESS would later visit in the 1970s with his son and first
wife), and were soon after linked up with the French underground.
"I'm sure we wouldn't have survived without the underground,"
Dr. FAIRWEATHER said. "They hid us and protected us."
The two officers served with the French underground in the German-occupied
Loire district of France for less than two months before they
were able to make a safe return to their regiment in England.
After declining an offer to be re-posted to Canada, both Jacks
rejoined their North Nova units in Europe. This next period would
mark some of the most intense fighting Mr.
VENESS took part in
during the war.
"He was a very courageous and a very brave man," said his friend
and fellow veteran, retired judge David
DICKSON/DIXON of the New Brunswick
Court of Queen's Bench. "He never lacked valour."
John
(Jack)
Mersereau
VENESS was born on November 11, 1922, in
Ottawa to John and Annie
VENESS.
After moving with his family
to Fredericton in 1933, he attended Fredericton High School.
He went on to complete one year at the University of New Brunswick
before joining the Canadian Infantry Corps (North Nova Scotia
Highlanders) in May, 1942, at the age of 19. A year later, he
went overseas and not long after met Dr.
FAIRWEATHER while in
England with the North Novas.
Dr. FAIRWEATHER said he immediately liked his fellow Maritimer's
directness. "He called a spade a spade."
Over the course of his storied military career, Mr.
VENESS would
go on to serve in England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany
and France. After returning to his unit after his capture and
escape, Mr.
VENESS was engaged in fighting in the flooded Scheldt
Estuary in Holland and Belgium, during which time he captured
a German major-general at gunpoint.
In March, 1945, while leading his company in Germany, Mr.
VENESS
was seriously wounded by shrapnel from an exploding shell. After
more than a month in hospital he recovered.
Mr. VENESS retired from the army in 1946 as a major with many
medals, including the War Medal, being mentioned in dispatches,
Croix de Guerre 1940 with Palm, Chevalier of the Order of Leopold
II with Palm (Belgium), The Defence Medal and the 1939-45 Star.
"He had a high respect for the veterans all his life," Mr. Dickson
said. "I really [think] he felt he owed a debt to his fellow
soldiers."
After returning home to New Brunswick after the war, Mr.
VENESS
returned to the University of New Brunswick and graduated in
1950 with a degree in civil engineering. He spent four years
working in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and Banff, Alberta., then
returned to New Brunswick to work for the Department of Highways.
He retired in 1983 as director of traffic engineering.
In 1948, Mr.
VENESS married Jere
WOOD from Saint Martin's, New
Brunswick They had one son. In 1976, after almost 30 years of
marriage, Mr.
VENESS lost both his wife and mother in a tragic
car accident, while the two women were driving home to Fredericton
from St. Andrews, New Brunswick Two years later, Mr.
VENESS married
Freda LOCKHARD.
The couple enjoyed travelling and visited Europe
to pay homage to fallen soldiers at military cemeteries and to
attend commemorative services.
In addition to travelling, Mr.
VENESS was also an active member
of the community. He volunteered with a number of organizations,
including the Young Men's Christian Association, where he served
on the board of directors; the Masons; the Canadian Legion; and
the Fredericton Garrison Club, where he was president.
Mr. VENESS's strict, early military training stuck with him throughout
his life. Mr.
DICKSON/DIXON remembers that a telephone call to his
friend meant a brisk talk to convey a message and no idle chitchat.
"He was a little gruff at times," Mr.
DICKSON/DIXON said.
Mr. VENESS died of a heart attack on June 30 while playing snooker
at his home in Fredericton.
He leaves his wife Freda, son Randy, daughter-in-law Angela and
two grandchildren.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-07-26 published
'She wore a smile all the time'
A nursing 'hero' cared for severe acute respiratory syndrome
victims, became one herself and died not knowing the fate of
her husband
By Allison
LAWLOR
Saturday,
July▲▼ 26, 2003 - Page F10
'I don't think she worried about it," Michael
TANG says of his
mother. "She was very invincible."
But Tecla LIN knew the risks far better than most people. She
was among the first to volunteer when West Park Healthcare Centre,
where she was a part-time nurse, set up a special unit to treat
Toronto health-care workers stricken in the city's initial outbreak
of sudden acute respiratory syndrome.
It was dangerous duty, but she knew what to watch for -- especially
the high fever so closely associated with the mysterious disease.
So, whenever she went to sleep, a thermometer could be found
with the face creams and makeup on her bedside table.
Then, on April 4, she realized she had sudden acute respiratory
syndrome symptoms and immediately checked herself into Sunnybrook
and Women's College Health Sciences Centre.
"We didn't think much of it the first week or so," recalls Mr.
TANG, 32. "We remained optimistic."
But Ms. LIN's health started to deteriorate and soon she required
an oxygen mask. For three months she remained in hospital, and
"it got harder and harder for her to breathe," her son says.
Last month she was transferred to the William Osler Health Centre
in Etobicoke, where she died last Saturday morning at the age
of 58.
She probably knew the end was near. What she didn't know was
that Chi Sui
LIN, the husband she had infected, had passed away
just three weeks after she went into Sunnybrook.
Mr. TANG says he and his brother Wilson decided to keep their
stepfather's death from their mother, feeling she needed all
her strength to fight her own illness.
Born on December 18, 1944, in Hong Kong, Tecla Lai Yin
WONG was
the eldest of four children. Her father died while she was still
young, and she became largely responsible for supporting the
family.
"There was a great deal of obligation to help the family and
to help others," Mr.
TANG says.
After graduating from the Government School of Nursing, she began
her career in Kowloon, Hong Kong, in 1968, spending five years
as an operating-room nurse at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
In June, 1968, she married Augustine
TANG, the father of Wilson
and Michael. Five years later, the couple (who divorced in the
mid-1980s) brought their family to Canada, settling in Toronto
and opening a Chinese restaurant.
Ms. LIN worked in the struggling restaurant with her husband
but in 1977 landed a job at the Doctors Hospital, where she worked
there for more than 20 years. In that time, she became a specialist
in dealing with high-maintenance patients. She also went back
to school, to earn her nursing degree from Ryerson University
and to complete a certificate in critical-care nursing.
She started to work part-time at West Park Healthcare Centre
in October, 1999, mainly in the rehabilitation centre's respiratory-services
unit. She also worked part-time at the Toronto Rehabilitation
Institute, often on the night shift.
By working at night, she could spend the day doing the other
things that she enjoyed. She regularly went to the Chinese Community
Centre of Ontario in downtown Toronto with Mr.
LIN, whom she
had married after her divorce from Mr.
TANG in the mid-1980s.
"They were very devoted to each other," says Donald
CHEN, president
of the community centre, where Ms.
LIN became an executive director.
"The two of them would come in together and enjoy the company
of others."
Almost 20 years his wife's senior, Mr.
LIN had lived in Taiwan
before coming to Canada. He served in the air force, Mr.
CHEN
said, and went on to become a teacher and then the head of an
elementary school.
"We called him 'Principal,' " he said.
Mr. LIN was in his mid-70s when he died, and had long been retired.
His own children live in Taiwan, according to Mr.
TANG, who says
he was not close to his stepfather.
At the centre, Ms.
LIN organized such activities for the women
as tai chi, gardening and dancing. But she also had a passion
for mahjong, the popular Chinese tile game, often taking on some
of the seniors at the centre.
"She could play all night," Mr.
TANG said.
Friendly and outgoing, "she wore a smile all the time," Mr.
CHEN
says. "She was very sweet and very friendly," enjoyed the company
of others, and treated people at the centre as "sisters and mothers."
Mr. TANG agrees, saying: "She liked to chat."
She also liked to help. In March, she traded her part-time duties
in West Park's respiratory services for a full-time job in the
new sudden acute respiratory syndrome unit. Fourteen staff members
from Scarborough Hospital (Grace Division), the initial sudden
acute respiratory syndrome epicentre, had been infected and transferred
to the ward for treatment.
The caregivers managed to fight off the infection until last
month, when June, Nelia
LAROZA, 51, of North York General Hospital,
became the first nurse to die. Ms.
LIN was the second. Her death
brought the sudden acute respiratory syndrome fatalities in Canada
to 41, all in Ontario.
Colleagues at West Park Healthcare Centre are in mourning. Last
weekend, the hospital lowered its flag to half-mast, and later
issued a statement saying that Ms.
LIN, "like everyone else who
had worked to contain sudden acute respiratory syndrome and care
for patients under stressful and extreme circumstances, was considered
a hero."
Barbara WAHL, president of the Ontario Nurses' Association, says
that "I certainly heard outstanding things about her nursing
care. She was totally dedicated."
Her death, Ms.
WAHL adds, "is a terrible blow to her colleagues,"
and to her profession.
Those co-workers remember her compassion and generosity.
"Tecla provided a unique mix of skilled nursing and unwavering
compassion for her patients and fellow staff members," the statement
says. "Popular, hard working and beloved by many, she would even
sometimes bring lunch for her colleagues."
She was also, her son says, "known for her resilience and strength."
Even while confined to her hospital bed, she was trying to plan
a wedding -- Wilson, 34, is to be married in September. "She
was really looking forward to it," brother Michael says.
A private funeral service for family, Friends and invited guests
will be held at 10 a.m. on Tuesday at the Hong Kong Funeral Home,
located at 8088 Yonge Street, in Thornhill, Ontario
The public will be received at the funeral home tomorrow from
2 to 6 p.m. and Monday from 5 to 9 p.m.
Tomorrow afternoon at 3, the Chinese Community Centre, located
at 84 Augusta Ave., will conduct a special memorial service for
Mr. and Ms.
LIN, who leaves her mother, a sister and two brothers
in Hong Kong, as well as her sons.
Ms. LIN was an animal lover with two cats. Her family asks that
memorial donations be sent to the Toronto Humane Society.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-07-28 published
He had a passion for big cats
Canadian wildlife biologist pioneered long-running cougar project,
radio-tracked lions in East Africa
By Allison
LAWLOR
Monday,▲
July▲ 28, 2003 - Page R7
Ian ROSS, a Canadian wildlife biologist whose love of big cats
took him deep into the bush in East Africa, has died after his
small plane crashed in central Kenya. He was 44.
Mr. ROSS was radio-tracking lions in Kenya's Laikipia district
as part of a research study aimed at improving the conservation
of large carnivores in Africa, when the two-seater Husky aircraft
he was a passenger in crashed and burned.
The plane, which was flying at a low altitude in order to allow
him to track the animals, crashed in the early evening of June
29. Mr. ROSS and the American pilot who was flying the plane
were killed instantly, said Laurence
FRANK, director of the Laikipia
Predator Project and a research associate at the University of
California at Berkeley.
Mr. ROSS, who arrived in Kenya from Calgary in January, had intended
to stay there working on the project for at least a year.
"He had this real passion for big cats. He wanted to study them
around the world," said Vivian
PHARIS, who sits on the board
of directors at the Alberta Wilderness Association, of which
Mr. ROSS was a member for close to 20 years.
"Large carnivores are interesting because their populations tend
to be the first to suffer from human activities," Mr.
ROSS said
a few years ago in a short article written on the occasion of
a high-school reunion. "They require huge land areas and some
of their characteristics are very similar to and conflict with
our own."
Although Mr.
ROSS had spent considerable time in the field researching
several wild animals, including lions, grizzly bears and moose,
Mr. ROSS was best known for his expertise on cougars.
In the mid-1990s, he and colleague Martin
JALKOTZY, with whom
he ran a small Calgary-based consulting firm called Arc Wildlife
Services, completed a 14-year study on cougars.
The study, considered the longest-running cougar project and
the most intensive of its kind, looked at everything from cougar
population dynamics, to the effects of hunting, to food and habitat
use.
The intensive fieldwork took place in the winter in the foothills
of Alberta. Winter allowed the researchers to follow a cougar's
tracks in the snow. Once a cat was tracked, with the help of
dogs, the animal would be tranquillized before it was radio-collared
and its measurements were taken.
"We worked really well as a team," Mr.
JALKOTZY said. "It was
something Ian did quite well."
The cougar project received wide public attention when Mr.
ROSS
appeared on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio's Morningside
with Peter
GZOWSKI and Arthur
BLACK, the former Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation
Radio host, followed along with Mr.
ROSS and Mr.
JALKOTZY while they radio-collared a cougar. Mr.
BLACK recorded
the event for his program Basic Black.
In the mid-1980s, not long after Mr.
ROSS became involved in
the study, he lost his friend and mentor Orvall
PALL.
Mr.
PALL
was killed in a plane crash while tracking bighorn sheep in Alberta.
At the time of his death he was working with Mr.
ROSS and Mr.
JALKOTZY on the cougar project.
Over the years, Mr.
ROSS, who was described as quiet and unassuming,
made a number of public presentations on the cougar study. He
was especially in demand in 2001 after a woman was killed by
a cougar while cross-country skiing near Banff, Alberta.
"Ian really believed in public education," believing it was the
first step toward conservation, Mr.
JALKOTZY said. Speaking publicly
also helped to raise money, from individual donors, corporations
and other sources, for the independent study.
Mr. ROSS also did a lot of work with Alberta Fish and Wildlife
and was instrumental, along with Mr.
JALKOTZY, in getting the
province to adopt a new cougar wildlife management plan to control
hunting.
Ian ROSS was born on December 16, 1958, in Goderich, Ontario
He was the third of four children born to Burns and Ruth
ROSS.
Childhood was spent in the fields of Huron County near his home,
climbing through muskrat swamps and collecting pelts and animal
skulls.
After high school, Mr.
ROSS left Goderich for Guelph, Ontario,
where he studied wildlife biology. In 1982, he graduated from
the University of Guelph with an honours degree. Soon after,
he packed up his pickup truck with all his possessions and drove
west to Alberta. After a short stint working as a beekeeper in
the Peace River area, he was hired by a small private consulting
firm in Calgary as a wildlife biologist and started studying
grizzly bears and moose.
In 1984, he married Sheri
MacLAREN, also from Goderich. The couple
separated in January, 2002.
Over the course of his career, Mr.
ROSS figured he had captured
and released more than 1,000 large mammals including bighorn
sheep, cougars and grizzlies, for research. Not afraid of large
animals, he captured and collared his first leopard two days
before he died.
Andrew ROSS recalls one time his older brother was injured by
a moose when it kicked him in the face after being sedated. He
was left bruised and with a cracked cheekbone.
"He was extremely meticulous and careful," Dr.
FRANK said, referring
to Mr. ROSS's work.
Through his consulting firm, Mr.
ROSS conducted numerous environmental
impact studies in western and northern Canada for the oil industry
and government. The work required Mr.
ROSS to spend a lot more
time at his office desk instead of in the field where he felt
his true talent was.
"Working with these large animals is very exciting and also very
dangerous," Dr.
FRANK said.
Mr. ROSS loved being in the field but hated what he had to do
to the animals. He knew that by capturing the large predators
he was causing them trauma, but he strongly believed that what
he was doing was for the benefit of research and in the end the
benefit of the animals, Dr.
FRANK said.
"He was just so aware of the animal's experience, the animal's
dignity, if you can put it that way," Dr.
FRANK said.
Mr. ROSS spent the spring of 2002 working in northern British
Columbia capturing grizzly bears for research. The job meant
Mr. ROSS, a man small in stature but strong and wiry, and a pilot
would fly low over an area in a helicopter trying to spot bears.
Once they had, Mr.
ROSS's job was to lean out of the plane, secure
in his harness and dart the animal with a tranquillizer. After
the animal was sedated, they would circle back, land the plane
and eventually radio collar the animal.
"He had great capture skills," Mr.
JALKOTZY said.
Aside from being a committed conservationist, Mr.
ROSS was also
an avid hunter and enjoyed hunting elk, moose and deer. But he
vigorously opposed the trophy killing of wolves, bears and cougars.
Andrew ROSS recalls that when his brother went moose hunting,
deep in the woods, he would only bring three bullets with him.
He figured that if he couldn't kill an animal with those, he
didn't deserve to get one.
"He would often get the moose with one bullet," Andrew
ROSS said.
While he loved to hunt, he never went out in an area he was studying,
considering that to be a conflict of interest, his brother said.
"Ian cared passionately about wildlife and wild country," and
tried to do what he could to conserve it, Mr.
JALKOTZY said.
Next month, Mr.
ROSS's ashes will be dispersed in Alberta's Kananaskis
country, where he had spent so much time with the cougars.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-10-01 published
Journalist, teacher, a 'fountain of information'
Columnist reputed to have been the only person in the Ottawa
Press Gallery who understood the Canada Pension Plan when it
was introduced by the Pearson government in 1966
By Allison
LAWLOR
Wednesday,▲
October 1, 2003 - Page R7
Journalist Don
McGILLIVRAY surrounded himself with thousands
of books. Every nook and cranny of his Ottawa home was filled
with the 15,000 volumes he had collected over his lifetime.
As a national newspaper columnist and journalism professor who
used words for a living, he knew each one of his books intimately.
He could pull one off the shelf and immediately find the exact
reference he was looking for whether it was a few lines of a
T. S. Eliot poem, the history of a word or an obscure piece of
Canadian political history.
A voracious reader all his life, Mr.
McGILLIVRAY, who died in
a Victoria hospital on June 24 at the age of 76, proudly claimed
that he had read all the books in the Moose Jaw Public Library
by age 12. He later became a serious book collector, a mass that
grew over the years until, in the late 1990s, he donated it to
the University of Northern British Columbia. When the time came
to ship the collection, it took 465 boxes to hold the approximately
15,000 books, many of which were devoted to language and etymology.
To his colleagues, Mr.
McGILLIVRAY was a walking resource library.
Mr. McGILLIVRAY, who joined the Southam News Ottawa bureau in
1962 as a parliamentary correspondent, was reputed to have been
the only person in the Ottawa Press Gallery who understood the
Canada Pension Plan when it was introduced by the Pearson government
in 1966, and was constantly in demand from other reporters needing
help understanding a new budget.
"He was a great fountain of information," said his friend and
colleague Tim
CREERY. "He just loved talking about politics and
policies."
Having started his journalism career at The Regina Leader-Post
in 1951 as a reporter and then a city-desk editor, Mr.
McGILLIVRAY
went on to become a national economics and political columnist
for Southam News. Readers of Southam papers across the country
turned to Mr.
McGILLIVRAY's columns to find complex economic
and political policies explained in clear and simple language.
Mr. McGILLIVRAY approached his columns with skepticism and was
always suspicious of authority. "He spent a lot of time examining
things from an opposite point of view," his son, Murray
McGILLIVRAY
said.
That didn't always make him a favourite in Ottawa. But that only
delighted Mr.
McGILLIVRAY, who felt it his duty as a journalist
to expose the flim-flam. He believed journalism's highest duty
was "the revelation of things that politicians would rather keep
hidden," Murray
McGILLIVRAY added.
"He was a very independent minded person," Mr.
CREERY said. "He
sort of questioned everything."
He succeeded in getting himself banned from the Parliamentary
Press Gallery's annual dinner by reporting, and inciting other
journalists to report on, the sometimes bad behaviour and humorous
speeches given there by political leaders and other invited politicians.
While his generation of reporters carried the stereotype of hard
drinkers, Mr.
McGILLIVRAY, a teetotalling Prairie Baptist, didn't
take part in the debauchery and he succeeded in getting the once
off-the-record dinner on the record.
Donald Gerald
McGILLIVRAY was born June 21, 1927, in Moose Jaw,
Saskatchewan., the fourth of five children to Malcolm and Mary
McGILLIVRAY.
For the first years of his life he lived on the
family's "barren, quarter-section" farm in Archive, Saskatchewan.
Mr. McGILLIVRAY left the farm to study economics at the University
of Saskatchewan, before starting his journalistic career in 1951
at The Regina Leader-Post.
In September of the previous year (1950) he had married Julietta
KEPNER, whom he met while working for the summer at a hardware
store in Moose Jaw. The couple had four children. Julietta died
from cancer in 1979.
From
Regina,
Mr.
McGILLIVRAY and his family moved to Winnipeg
in 1955 where he worked as a reporter and columnist for The Winnipeg
Tribune.
In 1962, the family headed east to Ottawa where Mr.
McGILLIVRAY
took a job as parliamentary correspondent for Southam News. From
there he was posted to Washington and then London, where he covered
the Vietnam War protests and the 1967 Six-Day War.
In 1970, he returned to Canada to become associate editor of
The Edmonton Journal, but soon returned east in 1972 as editor
of The Financial Times of Canada. He returned to the Southam
News Ottawa bureau in 1975 and remained there as a national political
and economic columnist until the mid-1990s.
Aside from writing, Mr.
McGILLIVRAY also mentored a generation
of journalists at Montreal's Concordia University and later at
Ottawa's Carleton University.
When Mr. McGILLIVRAY officially retired from Southam in 1992,
he continued to write his weekly political and business columns,
but in 1995 he started showing symptoms of a Parkinson's-like
disease that left him unable to read.
He leaves his children Murray, Peigi Ann, Neil and Fionna, his
sister Marion and brother Allan. He was predeceased by wife Julietta
and brother Archie.
A celebration of Mr.
McGILLIVRAY's life is planned for October
19 in Ottawa.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-10-15 published
Global advocate for workers' rights
His activism in Canada spanned three decades, but labour leader
also brought his message of education and social justice to Europe,
Russia and Latin America
By Allison
LAWLOR,
Special▼ to The Globe and Mail, Wednesday,
October 15, 2003 - Page R7
When Dan BENEDICT set out to work in the machine shop of an aircraft-engine
factory in Lynn, Massachusetts., in the 1930s, his goal was to
connect with the workers there. For the fresh university graduate,
the move was a political statement and the beginning of what
would become a lifetime spent advocating for workers' rights,
education and greater social justice both in Canada and around
the world.
"He was driven by his commitment to justice," said his son, Stephen
BENEDICT, who is a member of Canadian Auto Workers Local 112
and director of the Canadian Labour Congress's international
department. "He was almost single-minded about that. It was almost
the only thing he cared about."
Last month at a Labour Day event in Ottawa, Daniel
BENEDICT,
a retired Canadian Auto Workers staff representative, was honoured
for his pioneering efforts in the labour movement. That day he
continued his advocacy work by giving an impassioned speech about
future generations.
Afterward, a group of kids gathered around, eager to teach him
the latest cool handshakes, Stephen
BENEDICT said. "He was always
more interested in talking about the future than the past," he
said. "He would want to be remembered as someone who cared about
the future."
On September 16, just four days before his 86th birthday, the
outspoken advocate died in an Ottawa hospital. He had been diagnosed
with both colon and liver cancer.
Mr. BENEDICT's lifelong work was recognized in October, 1998,
when he was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada. Part of
his citation reads: "He has devoted a lifetime to the labour
movement. He has advised prominent international trade-union
leaders in Canada, the United States and Europe, and represented
labour on various panels and commissions sponsored by the United
Nations' International Labour Organization."
But for the Canadian Auto Workers, his crowning achievement was
the Paid Education Leave Program, which he developed and implemented
in the late 1970s. (The union was then the United Auto Workers-Canada).
The program is still considered the largest adult-education program
for working people in Canada, according to the Canadian Auto
Workers, and one that is admired by trade unions worldwide.
The program, which now offers courses one-to-four weeks in duration
and covering topics such as collective bargaining, human rights
and workplace reorganization, highlighted Mr.
BENEDICT's belief
that education is needed to allow workers to build skills that
would then help them to create a more just society.
"He had an incredible respect for workers' intellect," said Bob
WHITE/WHYTE, former president of the Canadian Auto Workers and the
Canadian Labour Congress. "He was a great educationalist."
Born on September 20, 1917, in New York, Daniel
BENEDICT was
the only child of Blanche
BENEDICT and Joseph
KAISER, who worked
as a salesman. Not long after he was born, his mother died of
the Spanish flu and he was left to be raised largely by his grandmother
(and he later took his mother's maiden name).
By the age of 14 he had enrolled in university, and later joked
that his grandmother had sent him there while he was still in
short pants. While in university, Mr.
BENEDICT's social activism
was awakened, and after graduation he went off to work in a Massachusetts
factory that produced military aircraft engines.
On the plant floor, he was vocal and rallied for workers' rights.
But when the war broke out, he left the factory and enlisted
in the U.S. Air Force. He was sent overseas as a flight engineer
and spent much of his four years of military service in Europe.
It was on the Mediterranean island of Corsica at a ball held
for the liberating troops that Mr.
BENEDICT met his future wife,
Micheline. In 1947, the couple married in Corsica, despite the
pleadings of her father, who didn't want his daughter near any
Americans.
Following the war, Mr.
BENEDICT returned to Europe after being
decommissioned, and spent four years working with Cooperative
for American Relief Everywhere, Inc., the international humanitarian
organization, helping Europeans recover from the devastating
effects of the war.
He returned to the United States to work with labour leader Walter
REUTHER at the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and then
worked in Mexico with the regional organization of the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
Mr. BENEDICT's career also took him to Brazil, where he worked
for the International Metalworkers Federation, covering Latin
America. He took part in worker education in the region and instructed
union leaders on industrial relations. During the 1950s and 1960s,
he also helped local unions devise strategies to deal with repressive
military regimes in their countries.
Mr. White said.
He later became assistant general secretary of the International
Metalworkers' Federation, and moved his family to Geneva, where
he became a familiar figure as a labour representative on various
panels and commissions sponsored by the United Nations' International
Labour Organization.
"Dan was an outstanding international trade unionist," who was
held in high regard both at home and around the world, Mr.
WHITE/WHYTE
said.
In the late 1970s, Dan
BENEDICT moved to Canada and joined what
was then the United Auto Workers-Canada, the forerunner to the
Canadian Auto Workers. He soon became a Canadian citizen, and
was a passionate defender of the country.
A love of linguistics and a desire to communicate with others
translated into Mr.
BENEDICT learning nearly a dozen languages,
including French, Spanish and German, as well as some Finnish
and Hungarian. Most recently, he was learning Russian and Mongolian.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Mr.
BENEDICT travelled to
Russia, Belarus and Ukraine to help build independent trade unions.
He had also been in Mongolia working with a union representing
sheep herders.
A BENEDICT family story traces Mr.
BENEDICT's gift for languages
back to his childhood bout of jaundice. At the time, he wasn't
allowed to read because he was told it would weaken his eyes
so instead he was left to entertain himself with a stamp collection.
Among his collection were some Russian stamps with which he taught
himself the Cyrillic alphabet.
After retiring from the United Auto Workers-Canada in 1982, Mr.
BENEDICT continued to travel the world and teach wherever the
opportunity arose. Having earned a doctoral degree in economics
from France's Grenoble University, he taught for a time in the
sociology and political-science departments at York University
in Toronto, and was affiliated with the industrial-relations
departments at McMaster, Laval and Concordia universities.
As a senior citizen, he advocated for seniors' groups on a wide
range of issues, from soaring drug costs to nursing-care cutbacks,
and served as chair of the Ontario Coalition of Senior Citizens'
Organizations. He frequently spoke at rallies and conferences
and could often be found at peace marches or protests.
"He had a tremendous amount of energy," said Morris
JESION, the
coalition's executive director.
While in his early 80s, Mr.
BENEDICT was still working on a history
of auto workers in Canada. The endeavour resulted in reams of
research material and a 3,000-page manuscript. The wealth of
material is tucked away in stacks of boxes in the garage of his
Ottawa home.
Mr. BENEDICT leaves his wife, Micheline, their two daughters,
Marie-Blanche and Francesca, son Stephen and four grandchildren.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-10-16 published
Father figure to the Canadian stage
British-trained Stratford character actor never craved starring
roles
By Allison
LAWLOR,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Thursday, October
16, 2003 - Page R11
For
Mervyn "
Butch"
BLAKE, entering a theatre was a magical experience,
something he never tired of during an acting career that spanned
close to three-quarters of a century. Mr.
BLAKE, one of the most
loved members of the Stratford Festival Company, died on October
9 at a Toronto nursing home after a long illness. He was 95.
"Theatre seems to give me life," Mr.
BLAKE said in 1994. "I just
feel marvellous when I enter the theatre... it's one of the things
which keeps me going."
Over his long stage life that included 42 consecutive seasons
with the Stratford Festival of Canada, Mr.
BLAKE "had the distinction
of playing in every single play of Shakespeare's," said Richard
MONETTE,
Stratford's artistic director.
"He had a great life in the theatre," Mr.
MONETTE said.
Adored by both audiences and fellow actors, the veteran actor
was known across Canada for his enormous talent and generosity
of spirit. When he wasn't working at Stratford, he acted on the
country's major stages and in television and film.
For seven seasons, he toured with the Canadian Players, bringing
professional theatre to smaller towns. And in 1987, he won a
Dora Mavor Moore Award for best performance in a featured role
in a production of Saturday, Sunday, Monday at what was then
called CentreStage (now CanStage).
"Everyone loved Butch without exception," said John
NEVILLE,
a former Stratford's artistic director.
Mervyn BLAKE was born on November 30, 1907, in Dehra Dun, India,
where his father was a railway executive.
His father wanted him to become an engineer but after falling
in love with the theatre, Mr.
BLAKE was able to persuade his
father to allow him to study at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic
Art. In 1932, he graduated and soon made his professional stage
debut at the Embassy Theatre in London
During the Second World War, he served in the British Army as
a driver. It was during the war years that he is said to have
got his nickname Butch. A witness to the horrors of the Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp, Mr.
BLAKE was present at the liberation of
the camp by British troops. It was an experience that haunted
him for the rest of his life.
At the war's end, he returned to England and to the stage. He
married actress Christine
BENNETT and spent the years between
1952 and 1955 at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.
There he worked with many of the great British actors such as
Sir Laurence
OLIVIER, Sir Michael
REDGRAVE and Dame Peggy
ASHCROFT.
Despite his success on the British stage, he decided to join
the Stratford Festival of Canada, then in its fifth season. With
his family in tow, Mr.
BLAKE moved to Canada and in 1957 appeared
in a production of Hamlet with Christopher
PLUMMER in the title
role.
"He wasn't a leading actor," said actor and director Douglas
CAMPBELL. "He was a supporting player. As a supporting player
you couldn't get better."
Mr. BLAKE always saw himself as a character actor who never cared
that much about starring roles, said Audrey
ASHLEY, a former
Ottawa
Citizen theatre critic and author of Mr.
BLAKE's 1999
biography With Love from Butch.
"He was one of those actors you never had to worry about," Ms.
ASHLEY said. "You knew Butch was always going to do a good job."
Known for his unfailing good nature and even temper, he enjoyed
re-telling gaffes he had made on stage. Mr.
MONETTE remembers
one performance where Mr.
BLAKE appeared on stage as the Sea
Captain in Twelfth Night. The character Viola asks him, "What
country, Friends, is this?" And instead of responding "This is
Illyria, lady." Out of his mouth popped, "This is Orillia."
To the younger actors at Stratford, Mr.
BLAKE was a father figure.
"He was very fond of the young actors and would take them under
his wing," Ms.
ASHLEY said.
Stephen RUSSELL remembers arriving at Stratford for his first
season in the mid-1970s. He was placed in the same dressing room
as Mr. BLAKE, an experience he still holds close to his heart.
"He was one of the most generous human beings," Mr.
RUSSELL said.
One of the areas Mr.
BLAKE was most helpful in was teaching fellow
actors how to apply stage makeup. He loved makeup and on his
dressing-room table he had an old rabbit's foot that he would
use to apply his face powder, Mr.
RUSSELL said.
Aging didn't stop him from applying his own elaborate makeup.
Playing the role of old Adam in As You Like It required him to
go through the same makeup ritual when he was 70 years old as
it did when he performed the role years earlier as a much younger
man.
Aside from the stage, one of Mr.
BLAKE's passions was cricket.
During his first season in Stratford, he played on the festival's
team and was responsible for starting a friendly, annual cricket
match against the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Each season, members of the two acting companies would come together
for a civilized afternoon of cricket and tea. The Stratford team
still goes by the name of Blake's Blokes.
In honour of his talent and dedication to the theatre, Mr.
BLAKE
was appointed a member of the Order of Canada in May, 1995.
"When he entered, the stage just lit up," Mr.
RUSSELL said.
Mr. BLAKE leaves his wife
Christine
BENNETT; children Andrew
and Bridget; and stepson Tim
DAVISSON.
Details of a memorial service to be held in Stratford, Ontario,
have yet to be announced.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-10-17 published
A true hero of Canadian science
Professor who won 1994 Nobel Prize didn't think his work was
very important but had to change his mind after he got award
By Allison
LAWLOR,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail Friday, October
17, 2003 - Page R13
Canadian physicist Bertram
BROCKHOUSE once likened winning the
Nobel Prize to winning the Stanley Cup.
Dr. BROCKHOUSE, who shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1994
for his work developing a technique to measure the atomic structure
of matter, died on Monday in a Hamilton hospital. He was 85.
After the prize announcement, the visibly abashed emeritus professor
of physics at McMaster University told reporters in Hamilton
that when the Swedish Academy of Science telephoned him at 6: 45
a.m. his reaction was "enormous astonishment."
"It came as a complete surprise," he said. "I would have otherwise
been dressed and ready."
He said at the time he was unaware he had been nominated.
Aside from his own personal achievement, Dr.
BROCKHOUSE is the
only Canadian Nobel laureate who was born, educated and completed
his life's work in this country.
Dr. BROCKHOUSE shared his Nobel prize with Clifford
SHULL, a
former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
who died in 2001 at the age of 85. They were honoured for research
conducted at the first nuclear reactors in Canada and the United
States as early as the 1940s and 1950s.
In announcing the prize, the Royal Swedish Academy said "Clifford
SHULL helped answer the question of where atoms 'are' and Bertram
N. BROCKHOUSE the question of what atoms 'do.'
Much of Dr.
BROCKHOUSE's award-winning work was carried on at
the Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories, a facility operated by
what is now called Atomic Energy of Canada, where he was a researcher
from 1950 until 1962. The original Chalk River reactor, located
190 kilometres northwest of Ottawa, drew curious scientists from
around the globe in the 1950s. Dr.
BROCKHOUSE used the neutron
beams from the nuclear reactors to probe materials at the atomic
level. Using a device he built for his research, known as the
triple-axis neutron spectrometer, he is recognized for improving
the understanding of the way neutrons bounce off atomic nuclei.
His triple-axis neutron spectrometer is still used around the
world and parts of the original device he built are still at
Chalk
River, said Dr. Bruce
GAULIN, who holds the Brockhouse
Chair in the physics of materials at McMaster.
Dr. BROCKHOUSE worked with simple materials like aluminum and
steel. Today the technique he developed, known as neutron scattering,
is used in widely differing areas such as the study of superconductors,
elastic properties of polymers and virus structure.
Scientists had previously relied on radiation from devices like
X-rays to look at the atomic structure of matter. "He is a heroic
figure," Dr.
GAULIN said.
Described as competitive in his scientific endeavours, Dr.
BROCKHOUSE
didn't want to miss a single minute. A colleague at Chalk River
once asked him why he worked so hard. "Every minute of every
day is unique," he replied. "And once that minute is gone, it
is lost forever."
While he had little spare time during his years at Chalk River,
he did use opportunities to take part in a number of amateur
dramatic productions, including three operettas. A great lover
of music, particularly for the works of Gilbert and Sullivan,
Dr. BROCKHOUSE was known for loudly singing excerpts while working
on experiments.
Bertram Neville
BROCKHOUSE was born on July 15, 1918, in Lethbridge,
Alberta. "My first memories are of a farm near Milk River where
I lived with my mother and father and my sister, Alice Evelyn,
and a variety of farm and domestic animals," he wrote in an autobiographical
sketch for the academy.
His parents Israel Bertram
BROCKHOUSE and Mable Emily
(NEVILLE)
BROCKHOUSE had two other children. One son died in infancy and
another went on to become a railroad civil engineer. The family
moved to Vancouver while Dr.
BROCKHOUSE was still a young boy.
He completed high school in 1935 and instead of going to university
went to work as a laboratory assistant and then as a radio repairman.
When the Second World War came along he used his radio skills
as an electronics technician in the Royal Canadian Navy. He spent
some months at sea, but most of his war years were spent servicing
sonar equipment at a shore base.
After the war, he returned to Vancouver to attend university
at the University of British Columbia. He later went to the University
of Toronto where he completed his PhD in 1950 with a lofty thesis
entitled "The Effect of Stress and Temperature upon the Magnetic
Properties of Ferromagnetic Materials".
In 1962, Dr.
BROCKHOUSE joined the department of physics at McMaster
University and remained there until his retirement in 1984. He
and his wife Doris raised their six children in Ancaster, a small
community outside Hamilton, in a house they occupied for close
to 40 years.
At the university, Dr.
BROCKHOUSE was highly regarded as a professor
known for having high expectations of his students and for most
often being deep in thought.
"You had the sense you were in the presence of an unusual person,"
said Dr. Tom
TIMUSK, an emeritus professor of physics and astronomy
at McMaster.
Dr. TIMUSK, who shared an office with Dr.
BROCKHOUSE at McMaster
for some time, said his colleague jokingly told students after
he won the Nobel Prize that he didn't think his work was very
important but that had to change his mind after he got the award.
"I think he genuinely believed that what he did was good work,
but not so important," Dr.
GAULIN said.
Dr. BROCKHOUSE likened himself to an explorer who woke up on
any given morning not knowing exactly what he was going to do,
except follow some vague instinct about what should be explored
next.
He also liked to say that scientists were really just mapmakers
with a greater eye for detail. "The metaphor that I think of
is that of the atlas you're all familiar with. What we work on
in basic science is just a bigger atlas, with places and objects
and so on that are not as familiar."
Dr. BROCKHOUSE leaves his wife, children Ann, Gordon, Ian, Beth,
Charles and James, and 10 grandchildren.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-01 published
'Curtain up, laugh, laugh, laugh, curtain down'
Versatile comic actor appeared in a string of hit revues, as
well as at the Shaw and Stratford festivals, in London and on
Broadway
By Allison
LAWLOR,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail Monday, December
1, 2003 - Page R7
At the mere mention of his name some people would just start
giggling. In fact, wherever the wonderfully comic actor Tom
KNEEBONE
went there was laughter. He loved not only to make other people
laugh but also to let out his own deep laugh, which Friends say
seemed to start in his gut and make its way up through his body,
gathering force as it went.
"Tom could make me laugh longer and harder than anyone else,"
said Gary KRAWFORD, a long-time friend who first worked with
him in the mid-1960s. "He was without a doubt the funniest man
I've ever met in my life."
Mr. KNEEBONE, who has been described by some critics as one of
the world's top cabaret performers, died in a Toronto hospital
on November 15 after suffering a heart attack and other complications.
He was 71.
The versatile performer appeared for many years at the Shaw Festival
and the Stratford Festival of Canada, where during the 1976 season
he played Puck opposite Jessica
TANDY in A Midsummer Night's
Dream. He also performed at London's Old Vic, the Charlottetown
Festival and
on Broadway. He was a guest with the Canadian Opera
Company and the National Ballet of Canada, a company he greatly
admired.
Toronto audiences may remember him best for the string of hit
revues he performed with Dinah
CHRISTIE, which included Ding
Dong at the Dell, The Apple Tree and
Oh Coward! "I was absolutely
in awe of the man," Ms.
CHRISTIE said, recalling the first time
they performed together 38 years ago.
They developed an enduring partnership that resulted in appearances
across the country performing everywhere from cabarets to big
concert halls with symphony orchestras. In Toronto, they performed
together at Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall. Over the years,
working with Mr.
KNEEBONE became like "working with kith and
kin," Ms. CHRISTIE said.
"We made each other laugh," she said, adding that they worked
so well together because they were complete opposites.
While Mr. KNEEBONE was happy living and working in the big city,
Ms. CHRISTIE feels more at home on her farm in rural Ontario
with her animals and open space.
Born in Auckland, New Zealand, on May 12, 1932, Mr.
KNEEBONE
later moved to England to study at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre
School. After graduation, he went with the company on a 1963
North
American tour. When the tour folded in New York, Mr.
KNEEBONE
went out looking for work. He travelled to Toronto and joined
the Crest Theatre Company, where he got a job performing in a
production of She Stoops to Conquer. He later starred with the
Canadian comic actor Barbara
HAMILTON in the hit revue That Hamilton
Woman. The road was paved for him after that and, as he was quoted
as saying, it was 40 years of "curtain up, laugh, laugh, laugh,
curtain down."
Over the years, several critics remarked on Mr.
KNEEBONE's unique
facial features. Walter
KERR in The New York Times once wrote:
"His eyes are all right, but I think his nose is crossed."
In Time magazine, comparisons were made between Mr.
KNEEBONE,
Pinocchio and Charlie Brown. "With leprechaun whimsy, and a pace
as assured as the Dominion Observatory Time Signal, his major
weapon is a wonderfully mobile face that he seems never to have
grown accustomed to. Small wonder," the writer wrote. "His features
might have been drawn by a child. Eyes like silver dollars, a
nose that wobbles to a Pinocchio point, and a mouth tight and
tiny as Charlie Brown's when he is sad."
The moment the sun came up in the morning, Mr.
KNEEBONE was up
and out of bed, opening his curtains and declaring: "Let's get
on with the show," his friend Doug
McCULLOUGH recalled. "You
cannot take the theatre out of Tom," Mr.
McCULLOUGH said. "Tom
was always on stage."
Mr. KNEEBONE was never without a story to tell, whether it was
a tale about the crazy person who gravitated to him on a Toronto
subway or a character he met while performing in a small town.
"Everything had a theatrical dimension," Mr.
McCULLOUGH said.
In recent years, Mr.
KNEEBONE turned his attention toward writing
and directing plays for the Smile Theatre Company. Once again
he and his long-time friend Ms.
CHRISTIE were collaborators.
Together they brought professional theatre to senior citizens'
homes, long-term care facilities and hospitals. Mr.
KNEEBONE
had been the company's artistic director since 1987.
Known for his extensive research, he spent hours combing through
books and old musical recordings at libraries and theatrical
museums collecting information to use in his productions. He
charmed all the librarians at Toronto's public libraries, Ms.
CHRISTIE said.
He loved the process of gathering Canada's little-known stories,
whether it was the tale of a war bride or the country's first
black doctor, and then bringing them to audiences. He also saw
it as a way to give something not only to people whose health
prevented them from getting to the theatre, but to the country
that has accepted him so warmly when he arrived.
Despite his writing and directing, he never stopped performing.
Just weeks before he died, Mr.
KNEEBONE and Ms.
CHRISTIE performed
some of Noël Coward material together for a benefit.
"He was one of the masters of Noël Coward," Mr. Krawford said.
In addition to his stage work, Mr.
KNEEBONE performed in film
and television, including the movies The Luck of Ginger Coffey
and The Housekeeper.
A proud Canadian, Mr.
KNEEBONE was honoured by his adopted country
with the Order of Ontario, and was named a Member of the Order
of Canada in October, 2002.
He leaves his cousin, Robert
GIBSON, in Australia.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-04 published
A painter of real people
Toronto artist sought to get beneath a subject's veneer to achieve
a 'luminous presence'
By Allison
LAWLOR,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail Thursday, December
4, 2003 - Page R11
'She'll paint you the way she wants," David
MIRVISH, patron and
art collector, once said of the Canadian portrait painter Lynn
DONOGHUE.
"She's sensitive to mood," Mr.
MIRVISH, who sat for Ms.
DONOGHUE
on several occasions, told The Financial Post Magazine in 1984.
"She may catch you at a different angle, and not every subject
feels that's the way they want to be seen. The important thing
is whether it's a successful picture or not. You shouldn't expect
to like a portrait."
But what you could expect if you were having your portrait painted
by Ms. DONOGHUE is that you would at the very least enjoy the
process. Sitting for the Toronto-based painter was like having
tea with a lively, old friend.
"You were always chatting about this and that with Lynn," said
Father Daniel
DONOVAN, an art collector and professor of theology
at St. Michael's College in the University of Toronto, who also
sat for Ms.
DONOGHUE. "
She was always vibrant and alive."
Always seeking to get beyond a person's veneer, Ms.
DONOGHUE
enjoyed the process of trying to draw out her subjects. "She
wanted people to [be] open and communicate with her," Father
DONOVAN said.
Mr. DONOGHUE, considered one of the pre-eminent portrait painters
in Canada, died last month in Toronto. She was 50.
"She made a huge impact [in the Canadian art world] and did so
at a very young age," said Christian Cardell
CORBET, founder
of the Canadian Portrait Academy.
"She was at a stage... where she was just about to take off,"
Mr. CORBET said. "What she could have contributed was just cut
short."
Ms. DONOGHUE started showing her work in 1973. Her early work
caused a stir when some galleries refused to show her giant portraits
of naked males. Since then she has had countless group shows
and solo exhibitions. Her work can be found in the Art Gallery
of Ontario, the Ontario Legislature, the National Museum of Botswana,
the Vancouver Art Gallery, and several other private and public
collections.
Ms. DONOGHUE, who was elected a member of the Royal Canadian
Academy of Arts in 1991, did both commissioned and non-commissioned
portraits. One of her notable commissions was of John
STOKES,
the former speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
Last year, Ms.
DONOGHUE completed a portrait of Margaret
ATWOOD
that came was at once celebrated. After approaching the Canadian
literary icon to paint her portrait, Ms.
DONOGHUE set about to
capture Ms.
ATWOOD using bright oil colours. In the portrait,
Ms. ATWOOD, sits with her legs crossed and looks out at the viewer
wearing a vibrant, green shirt.
"She was not afraid of colour," Mr.
CORBET said. "She would take
it [paint] right from the tube."
Three years ago, Terrence
HEATH, the former director of the Winnipeg
Art Gallery, wrote in BorderCrossings following an exhibition
of Ms. DONOGHUE's work at a Toronto gallery: "Each painting...
is a statement in colour. The figures are set in colour fields
that tell you as much about the figure as the likeness and body
position do. Most remarkable about these paintings is their sheer
luminous presence."
"She created honest portraits" and "didn't follow much of a systematic
approach to portraiture," Mr.
CORBET said. "She allowed her spontaneity
and intuition to come through."
Ms. DONOGHUE once said that her historic mentors, such as Frans
Hals, conveyed in their portraits the feeling of people who are
very alive. "Why do people know, when they look at a painting
of mine, that it is a real person?" she told The Financial Post
Magazine in 1984. It was one of her perpetual queries into the
nature of portrait painting.
Lynn DONOGHUE was born on April 20, 1953, in the small community
of Red Lake in northern Ontario, more than 500 kilometres from
Thunder
Bay.
Her father Graham
DONOGHUE was a mining engineer
who moved his family about, including a spell in Newfoundland.
Ms. DONOGHUE finished high school at H.B. Beal Secondary School
in London, Ontario She graduated in 1972 with a special art diploma.
Having lived in England and New York as an artist, Toronto was
home to Ms.
DONOGHUE.
She lived with her 14-year-old son Luca
in a loft in a converted industrial building in the city's west
end. Her loft doubled as her studio. In the cluttered space,
some of her paintings hung on the walls and canvases were stacked
next to the essentials required for daily living. Living off
the sale of her paintings, Ms.
DONOGHUE financially scrapped
by month to month, her Friends said.
Described as vivacious and gregarious, she was "the life of the
party." An active member of the arts community, she could regularly
be seen at gallery openings and art shows around Toronto. Outside
the art world, she was an active community member. Most recently
she helped to organize events for Toronto's new mayor David
MILLER
during the municipal election. She also attended the Anglican
Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, where a painting she had done of
her son's baptism hung on the wall.
An exhibit of Ms.
DONOGHUE's most recent major work is scheduled
to open at the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ontario, in March.
Called the The Last Supper, the large group piece, which Ms.
DONOGHUE started in 2001, consists of 13 portraits encircling
a central table piece, which is itself a triptych. The installation
requires a total wall space of about 5 metres by 10 metres (16
feet by 34 feet).
Father DONOVAN well remembers how he first learned of the project.
One day, he received a call from Ms.
DONOGHUE asking if he would
have lunch with her. She had an idea she wanted to talk to him
about. The idea turned out to be the The Last Supper and Ms.
DONOGHUE said she needed his help. After their lunch, she invited
Father DONOVAN, along with several others, to dinner. While they
were eating and drinking, she photographed them, capturing their
mannerisms and expressions. From the photographs, she made a
series of sketches which she then used to develop the large group
piece.
"She loved what she was doing," Mr.
CORBET said. "There was this
inner drive that said 'go on.' "
Ms. DONOGHUE, an insulin-dependent diabetic, died on November
22 in a Toronto hospital, after suffering from an insulin reaction
that led to a coma.
She leaves her parents Marjorie and Graham
DONOGHUE, her son
Luca LANGIANO and his father, Domenico
LANGIANO and sister Barbara
VAVALIDIS.
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LAWLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-19 published
The voice of Ontario horse racing
For three decades, the announcer added detail and drama to his
calls at Woodbine, Fort Erie and Greenwood tracks
By Allison
LAWLOR,
Special▲ to The Globe and Mail Friday, December
19, 2003 - Page R13
When the great Secretariat burst out of the starting gate at
Toronto's Woodbine Race Track on that dark and miserable day
in late October, 1973, in what would be his final race, Daryl
WELLS was behind the microphone calling the race for fans.
"In a blaze of glory, ladies and gentlemen, he's all yours,"
Mr. WELLS cried as the Triple Crown-winner won the Canadian International
by 12 lengths.
Daryl WELLS
Jr. was there that day in the announcer's booth to
hear what would be his father's most famous call and share his
excitement of seeing the last career race of the horse, considered
by many to be the greatest thoroughbred of all time.
"I thought it was the greatest thing that ever happened," said
Daryl WELLS
Jr., who carried on the tradition and now calls races
at Ontario's Fort Erie track.
Mr. WELLS, the voice of Ontario thoroughbred racing for more
30 years, from just after the new Woodbine Race Track opened
in the spring of 1956 to the summer of 1986, died last Friday
of heart disease in Niagara Falls, Ontario He was 81.
For three decades, Mr.
WELLS was at the Ontario Jockey Club microphone,
describing the thoroughbred races at Woodbine, Fort Erie and
Greenwood, entertaining fans with his calls that were both accurate
and exciting. When the gates opened, fans could often be heard
imitating his familiar, trademark call: "They're off."
Whether it was a small, weekday afternoon race or the prestigious
Queen's
Plate,
Mr.
WELLS made every call dramatic and detailed.
"Every horse got his call," said his long-time friend Gary
ALLES.
Behind the microphone, Mr.
WELLS was a pro who also had a mischievous
streak that could sometimes be seen in the announcer's booth.
Mr. ALLES remembers one day sitting next to his friend while
he was calling a race at Woodbine. A second after telling fans
where their horses were in the race, he switched off his microphone
and asked Mr.
ALLES which horse he had betted on that day. Back
to the microphone, he gave fans a quick update before turning
off the microphone again. This time with the microphone off,
he started giving Mr.
ALLES the call he really wanted to hear
that his horse looked poised to win. But before Mr.
ALLES
could get too excited the microphone was back on again and Mr.
WELLS was giving fans the true account of the race.
"He had a mischievousness that emanated from his eyes," Mr.
ALLES
said.
Daryl Frederick
WELLS was born on December 10, 1922, in Victoria.
As a young boy, he would tag along when his parents went to the
races. "That's what got him interested," said his wife, Marian
WELLS.
By the age of 15, he had entered the broadcasting world as a
disc jockey, after a local radio station allowed him to play
a few records. "It [his career] took off from there," Daryl
WELLS
Jr. said.
Several years later, he headed east and got a job in the sports
department of radio station
CHML in Hamilton, where he worked
in the 1940s and 1950s and later as a sports director for
CHCH-TV.
During the Second World War, he served for a time in Britain
with the Canadian Army.
Ed BRADLEY, a former general manager of Greenwood, Mohawk and
Garden City Raceways, can remember his first introduction to
Mr. WELLS in 1955. Working then as an announcer at Long Branch
track in Toronto's west end, Mr.
BRADLEY recalls one day seeing
a man standing around outside his announcer's booth watching
while he worked.
The next day he saw the same man again. Mr.
BRADLEY was curious
about this mysterious man but thought nothing of him again until
the following spring when the track opened in Fort Erie. He was
in the announcing booth when his manager came to him to tell
him he had a new guy for him to break in.
"The guy walked in and it was Daryl
WELLS,"
Mr.
BRADLEY said.
They got down to work and, right away, Mr.
BRADLEY recognized
Mr. WELLS's voice from his broadcasting work. After three days
of training, Mr.
WELLS was ready to call a race on his own.
"He turned out to be a real pro," Mr.
BRADLEY said, adding that
Mr. WELLS was very descriptive in his calls and got to know what
the jockeys were doing during a race.
During a time when horse racing was among the country's favourite
sports, and fans would regularly stream out of work to head to
the bar to watch a race, Mr.
WELLS was its voice, said Wally
WOOD, a former long-time racing columnist. "He was the poster
boy for the sport," Mr. Wood said. "He was willing to do anything
to promote racing....
"He was very good for racing," Mr.
WOOD added.
A true showman, Mr.
WELLS not only had the voice, but he looked
as though he had just stepped out of an Armani commercial. "Daryl
was show business and he dressed like it," Mr.
ALLES said.
After 30 years as a well-loved fixture in the announcing booth,
Mr. WELLS left Woodbine in July of 1986 amid controversy. His
employers suspended him after the Ontario Racing Commission fined
him for his part in a 1983 wager that returned a $237,598 payoff.
"Touting" (volunteering an opinion on the outcome of a race for
profit) was the official description and is strictly against
the rules. While it was never a case of Mr.
WELLS affecting the
outcome of a race, he was suspended and his career as a horse-race
announcer was over.
"He missed the excitement of the track," Ms.
WELLS said, adding
that it was the people he missed most of all. After he left Woodbine,
he seldom went to the track except on special occasions.
"He always wanted to be surrounded by people," said Ms.
WELLS,
who never knew when she would come home to find her husband throwing
an impromptu party.
Mr. WELLS, who had been living in Lewiston, New York since the
late 1980s, died on December 12 at the Greater Niagara General
Hospital in Niagara Falls. He leaves his wife; children Dana,
Daryl Jr. and Wendy; sister Velda
SCOBIE; and stepchildren Michael,
Kelly and Jeffrey.
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