FISCHER o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-11-19 published
Mary Elizabeth
McHARG "
Bette"
In loving memory of Mary Elizabeth
McHARG "
Bette" who passed away peacefully at the
Manitoulin Health Centre, Little Current on November 11, 2003 at the age of 80 years.
Bette was the assistant clerk for the town of Little Current, and the
Justice of the Peace for many years. Born on September 12, 1923 to
Thomas and Elizabeth
(HOWE)
TRIMBELE.
Predeceased by husband
Raymond. Loving mother of John. Cherished by grand_son Matthew.
Will be missed by sister Peggy
FISCHER (husband Homer predeceased,)
brother Thomas (predeceased) and wife
Jenette
TRIMBELE.
Remembered
by cousins Thomas and wife Sandi
FISCHER, Madelene
CAVE, Judy
MILLER
and Jane FISCHER.
Memorial service was held on Friday, November 14,
2003 at Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Little Current. Cremation.
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FISCHER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-07-21 published
KUHN, Tillo E., Professor Emeritus of Economics, York University,
B.Sc. L.S.E., PhD. McGill
Born November 1, 1919 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, died July
18, 2003 in hospital in Gatineau, Quebec after a series of strokes.
He leaves to mourn him his wife Naomi, sons Roland, Oliver and
Christopher, daughter Nicola, daughters-in-law Susan and Tulimah,
son-in-law Neil, and his grandchildren Alexander and Thomas
KUHN,
Sophia and William
KUHN, and Holly and Josh
JANNA.
Tillo will
be missed also by his niece Dagmar
FORGET and nephew Hatto
FISCHER,
brothers-in-law David and John
KIRKWOOD, and cousins in Germany
and England, as well as many Friends, former colleagues and students.
He was predeceased by his beloved sister Brigitte
FISCHER and
cousin ''like my brother'' Hatto
KUHN.
From 1949 to 1954 Tillo
lived in England, where he was the first student from post-war
Germany to enter the London School of Economics. In 1954 he emigrated
to Canada to begin work in transportation economics in Montreal
and then Ottawa. The summer of 1955 found him in a cottage ''up
the Gatineau'' at Gleneagle, where he began a lifelong love affair
with that area as well as with a cottage neighbour, Naomi, whom
he married in 1956. After receiving Canadian citizenship in 1959,
Tillo accepted an invitation to join the faculty of the University
of California, Berkeley. Four years in Berkeley were the beginning
of his twin careers of university teaching and international
development assignments for the World Bank and other international
agencies. In 1966 he became a member of the new Faculty of Administrative
Studies at York University in Toronto, his employer until retirement
in 1989. Tillo was proud to have worked in 13 different countries.
Some of the longer and most exciting projects were in Honduras
1962, Dahomey (now Benin) 1967, Paraguay 1968, and Kenya 1970-72,
where he was director of a Canadian International Development
Agency team working with the Kenyan Ministry of Finance and Planning,
coupled with a training program for Kenyans at York. His favourite
country after Canada to live and work was Greece, where he spent
1964-65 in a research centre, 1980-82 working in the finance
ministry under both a conservative and a Papandreou-led government,
and 1985-87 teaching in the business school of the University
of Athens. In 1989 Tillo retired to his house Tirconna at Gleneagle
on the Gatineau River, the same site where Tillo and Naomi met
in 1955. Cremation has taken place. Memorial service, burial
of ashes and reception to celebrate Tillo's interesting life
will follow in September in Wakefield, Quebec. Date to be announced
later. Funeral arrangements c/o Hulse Playfair and McGarry, Wakefield.
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FISCHER - All Categories in OGSPI
FISHER o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-11-12 published
Glenn Vernon
PELTIER
Glenn Vernon
PELTIER of Wasaga Beach, formerly of Wikwemikong passed away at
Wasaga Beach on Thursday, November 6th, 2003 in his 47th year.
Beloved son of Eugene
PELTIER and Stella
PELTIER née
RECOLLET predeceased.)
Beloved step-son of Honorine
(CORBIERE)
PELTIER.
Loving
brother of Ron (Beatrice), Brian (Catherine), Linda (Byron), Arlene (Dale),
Warren (Jackie), Wayne (Christi). Survived by uncles Robert
PELTIER, Tommy
PELTIER, Norman
RECOLLET, Isadore
RECOLLET and aunt Bella
PITAWANAKWAT.
Predeceased by aunts, Yvonne
McRAE, Rosemary
FISHER, Margaret
RIVERS and
uncles, Wilfred
PELTIER, Eli
RECOLLET, Philip
RECOLLET and Sam
RECOLLET.
Will be sadly missed by nephews and nieces, Yvette, Joe, Jennifer, Binaysi,
Ying, Cheyene, Jade, Steven, Anais, Nicholas and Jeana. Special aunts and
uncles, Thomas (predeceased), Boniface and Mary Ann, Glen and Joanne, Doreen
and Clement, Theresa and Leonard, Shirley, Carroll, Danny, Timmy (predeceased) and Cecilia.
Friends called at St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church, Buzwah from 4: 00 p.m.
on Saturday, November 8th until the Funeral Mass on Monday, November 10th at
11: 00 a.m. also at St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church, Buzwah with Father
McCARTHY officiating.
Interment in the Wikwemikong Cemetery. Bourcier Funeral Home Espanola.
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FISHER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-05-10 published
LUCAS,
Professor
Emeritus
Alec
Died, after a lengthy illness, at Island Lodge in Ottawa, on
May 6th, 2003. He was born in Toronto June 20, 1913, the youngest
child of Bert and Emma
LUCAS, and grew up on a farm near Cobourg.
It was here his love of nature and books was nurtured. Schooling
began at Cook's School, a two-roomed school near Cobourg, where
he later taught while studying for a B.A. and M.A. from Queen's.
He obtained a Ph.D. in English from Harvard in 1951. Wishing
to return to Canada, he accepted an offer from University of
New Brunswick and taught English there until 1957 before going
to McGill where he taught for and wrote for the next 30 years.
After retirement he was made an Emeritus Professor in 1984, and
worked part-time, which included a visiting lectureship in Iqaluit.
He continued to write until he suffered a stroke in December
1995. Alec was an early advocate for the importance of teaching
of Canadian literature and was the founding coordinator of the
Canadian Studies Program, the forerunner of The McGill Institute
for the Study of Canada. He wrote extensively on Canadian literature,
including articles for The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature,
and the Literary History of Canada. He published books on writers
such as Hugh MacLennan, Farley Mowat and Peter MacArthur and
edited several anthologies of short stories including the best
selling Great Canadian Short Stories. His passion for literature
and teaching was matched by his concern for and interest in nature
he was an active conservationist and bequeathed most of his woodland
property at Plaisance, Quebec to the Quebec Society of the Protection
of Birds as a nature reserve. He is predeceased by his parents,
and siblings Eva
FISHER,
Vera
FORSYTH, and Leonard
LUCAS. He
leaves his wife, Sharon; former wives Margaret and Coula; children
George
(Charlotte) of White Rock, Suzanne (Allan)
LANGSFORD of
Kingston, and Edward of Halifax, five grandchildren, several
nieces and nephews including Sylvia (Tom)
MIDDLEBRO'of
Ottawa
and Joan (Dick)
MEYER of Barrie and grandnieces and nephews.
A memorial service will be held at the Mackay United Church,
39 Dufferin Road, Ottawa, May 16 at 3 p.m. Ashes will be interned
in Cobourg at a later date. If desired, a donation can be made
in his memory to Island Lodge, 1 Porter's Island Ottawa K1N 5M2
or a charity of choice.
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FISHER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-05-24 published
He ran O'Keefe Centre in its prime
Former accountant was an innovator: He booked a show using surtitles
and a play about an interracial romance
By Carol COOPER
Special▼ to The Globe and Mail Saturday, May 24,
2003 - Page F10
Late one spring night in 1963, a phone call awoke Hugh
WALKER,
the first managing director and president of Toronto's O'Keefe
Centre for the Performing Arts. A police officer wanted to know
if "we had a mad Russian called Nuri-something dancing at the
O'Keefe Centre," Mr.
WALKER wrote in his book, The O'Keefe Centre:
Thirty Years of Theatre History.
After the opening performance of Marguerite and Armand, in which
he starred with Dame Margot
FONTEYN,
Rudolph
NUREYEV had danced
up the centre of Yonge Street, attempting headstands on cars
as he went. Police intervened in the interest of Mr.
NUREYEV's
safety, but after a scuffle, the dancer landed in jail for causing
a disturbance.
Endlessly kind, courtly and patient, Mr.
WALKER notified the
Royal
Ballet with whom Mr.
NUREYEV was performing, and the dancer
was released.
Mr. WALKER, the man who smoothed the way for the stars appearing
at the O'Keefe as overseer of its operations and who had previously
supervised its construction, has died at the age of 93.
O'Keefe Centre, now named the Hummingbird Centre, opened on October
1, 1960, with the first performance of Camelot in the country's
first Broadway musical. The show starred Richard
BURTON,
Julie
ANDREWS and Robert
GOULET and played to a glittering crowd.
In The Toronto Star, Gordon
SINCLAIR wrote: "A salaam to Hugh
WALKER for bringing the O'Keefe Centre home on time after 30
months of strain on his patience, nerves and humour."
Mr. WALKER had, in fact, developed an ulcer during the centre's
construction, and the strain didn't end with its opening. Shortly
after the curtain, his wife, Shirley, smelled smoke. It turned
out to be a burning escalator motor, and after the fire was extinguished,
Mary JOLLIFFE, the centre's publicist, ran to a hotel across
the street for air freshener. The audience came out at intermission
none the wiser.
It took royalty to solve another problem. At the time, temperance
sentiment remained strong in Toronto, and teetotallers criticized
the fact the O'Keefe was funded by, and named for, a brewery.
Mr. WALKER set about to gain acceptance for the centre. Learning
that the Queen was visiting Canada in June of 1959, he convinced
her aides that she should stop briefly at the construction site
and view a model of the building.
Before an audience of arts patrons and the press, the Queen inspected
the model and showed such an interest that she overstayed her
schedule, delaying the start of the Queen's Plate, her next stop,
by half an hour.
Mr. WALKER didn't know that the Queen or the O'Keefe would be
in his future when he became executive assistant to Canadian
Breweries and Argus Corp. owner E. P.
TAILOR/TAYLOR in 1955.
It was only after his hiring that he learned that Mr.
TAILOR/TAYLOR
had responded to a challenge made by Nathan
PHILLIPS, then mayor
of Toronto, for industry to build a desperately needed performing
arts theatre in the city. For the project, Mr.
TAILOR/TAYLOR gave $12-million
and the services of his new assistant.
With the slogan "To bring the best of live entertainment to the
greatest number of people at the lowest possible prices," the
3, 211-seat multipurpose theatre, designed by modernist architect
Peter DICKINSON, quickly became a predominant Canadian venue,
predating the Place des Arts in Montreal and the National Arts
Centre in Ottawa.
Pre-Broadway shows, musicals, ballets and plays from around the
world came to the O'Keefe and it replaced Maple Leaf Gardens
as the Toronto venue for the Metropolitan Opera. International
stars such as Louis
ARMSTRONG, Paul
ANKA, Tom
JONES, Diana
ROSS
and Harry BELAFONTE performed there.
During one of Mr.
BELAFONTE's many performances at the centre,
he experimented with a wireless mike. Accidentally, he tuned
into the police frequency. "The O'Keefe audience had the unusual
experience of listening in on a lot of police messages, while
the police were able to enjoy hearing
BELAFONTE sing Ma-til-da!,"
Mr. WALKER wrote.
Another O'Keefe story concerned Carol
CHANNING.
When the performer
appeared at the centre in Hello, Dolly, she needed to make a
number of quick costume changes. Since there wasn't enough time
for Ms. CHANNING to run backstage to her dressing room, the crew
put up a roofless tent in the wings.
From the fly bridge, the stagehands looked down on Ms.
CHANNING,
remaining quiet while they watched her change. After her last
performance, she looked up at them and said, "Well, boys, hope
you've enjoyed the show. 'Bye now."
Other more critical events are associated with the O'Keefe. In
1964, while awaiting her divorce from Eddie
FISHER,
Elizabeth
TAILOR/TAYLOR stayed with Richard
BURTON while he starred in Sir John
GIELGUD's production of Hamlet at the centre. One weekend between
performances, the couple stole off to Montreal and married.
And in 1974, ballet dancer Mikhail
BARYSHNIKOV arranged his defection
from the Soviet Union at the centre.
During the early 1960s, the O'Keefe became home to the National
Ballet of Canada and the Canadian Opera Company. In his book,
Mr. WALKER credits the centre with allowing the companies' artistic
growth.
Still, not everyone spoke so kindly about the O'Keefe. Many critics
denounced its acoustics and less-than-intimate size.
For that, Mr.
WALKER had a ready answer. In 1985, Herbert
WHITTAKER,
then The Globe and Mail's drama critic, wrote: "Against the fading
chorus of these ancient complaints, I hear an echo, the rather
quiet British tones of Hugh
WALKER: 'We know it [O'Keefe Centre]
is too large for legitimate theatre, Herbert, but think of all
the things Toronto would have missed if E. P.
TAILOR/TAYLOR hadn't built
it when he did?' "
Born on March 2, 1910, in Scotland to Brigadier-General James
Workman WALKER, who fought in the Middle East during the First
World War, and Jane
STEVENSON,
Hugh
Percy
WALKER was the middle
of three children. After earning a B.A. at Cambridge University,
he became a chartered accountant.
Mr. WALKER worked with firms in London, Palestine, Quebec, Scotland
and Michigan before being employed by Mr.
TAILOR/TAYLOR.
Although a great lover of theatre, upon his appointment as the
O'Keefe's managing director, Mr.
WALKER had little experience
with its business side. This led to some innocent faux pas, such
as when he booked a photo shoot with the Camelot stars at 10
in the morning, impossibly early for actors. In response, Mr.
BURTON exclaimed: "What, in the middle of the night?" Ms.
JOLLIFFE
said.
Still, director and theatre critic Mavor
MOORE said Mr.
WALKER
dealt with difficulties well. "He was very smooth," Dr.
MOORE
said. "He was very expert at handling people and situations.
He was a calm man."
Mr. WALKER trusted his staff, Ms.
JOLLIFFE said. "He was willing
to take direction from staff people who had already been in the
business, and that was unusual."
And he was gracious and courteous. "He gave great dignity to
the performing arts profession and he treated people wonderfully,"
Ms. JOLLIFFE said. "He was a perfect model of a former era
of English gentlemen."
Known for his hospitality, Mr.
WALKER always visited the stars
in their dressing rooms before opening night and entertained
them afterward at First Nighters' parties with Mrs.
WALKER.
When the
WALKERs took Leonard
BERNSTEIN to the Rosedale Country
Club, Mr. WALKER tolerated Mr.
BERNSTEIN's sending back the wine
three times, Ms.
JOLLIFFE said.
Along with bringing in commercial performances from the United
States and Britain, Mr.
WALKER showed some daring in booking
shows. In 1961, Kwamina, the story of a romantic relationship
between a white woman and a black man, played the O'Keefe.
Acknowledging
Toronto's
Italian population, Mr.
WALKER arranged
for Rugantino, the biggest musical hit in Italian history, to
play at the O'Keefe in 1963. It was the first foreign-language
attraction in North America to use "surtitles," and although
plagued with technical difficulties, it played to 60-per-cent
capacity.
Things changed for Mr.
WALKER and O'Keefe Centre in the late
1960s. Initially, the centre had been a subsidiary of the O'Keefe
Brewing Co., owned by Canadian Breweries, and was never intended
to make a profit. The company wrote off its operating losses
and property taxes.
When Mr. TAILOR/TAYLOR retired in 1966, directors of Canadian Breweries
decided that they could not continue to pay the O'Keefe's high
taxes. To resolve the situation, Metropolitan Toronto was given
the centre in 1968.
A new and inexperienced board of directors brought a new way
of doing things, and the centre's losses began to mount.
Mr. WALKER wrote that after the disastrous 1971-72 season, "what
followed was not the happiest part of my 15 years at the O'Keefe
Centre, and I would like to forget some of the things that happened."
In his final working years, Mr.
WALKER dealt with both the centre's
internal changes and rising competition from the Royal Alexandra
Theatre, the St. Lawrence Centre and emerging alternative theatres.
After his retirement in 1975, he spent 10 years at the Guild
of All Arts in Scarborough, Ontario, as the director of Guildwood
Hall, curating former Guild Inn owner Spencer
CLARK's historical
architectural collection of artifacts, writing and illustrating
a booklet on them, curating Mr.
CLARK's art collection, making
a film and lecturing.
He and his wife lived on the Guild's grounds for four years in
the now-demolished Corycliff, where they hosted parties whose
guests included many stars from the O'Keefe days.
Along with writing the O'Keefe Centre history while in his 80s,
Mr. WALKER golfed.
Sue NIBLETT, who worked with him at the Guild, recalls seeing
Mr. WALKER nattily attired in golf clothing and Wellingtons standing
in two feet of snow driving balls into Lake Ontario.
"He had a love of life that I've never experienced or met in
anybody before," Ms.
NIBLETT said. "He didn't waste a day of
his life as far as I could see."
Mr. WALKER died on May 2 and leaves daughters Katrina
PARKER
and Zoë ALEXANDER and two grandchildren. Another daughter, Sarah
CHENIER/CHENÉ, and his wife, Shirley, predeceased him.
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FISHER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-05-26 published
Eileen KRIEGER
By Lesley KRIEGER, Karen
McDONALD and Bob
SILVERMAN Monday, May
26, 2003 - Page A14
Daughter, granddaughter, niece, sister, dancer, student leader.
Born January 5, 1981, in Ridgeway, Ontario Died January 20, near
Belleville, Ontario, in a car accident, aged 21.
Eileen grew up in a small town where she spent most of her time
either dancing at her mother's dance studio or running wild on
her grandmother's farm. "Eileen the Bunny Queen" was an early
nickname that reflected her love of rabbits. But she spent time
with more that just rabbits -- there were also all of those raccoons,
squirrels, chickens, turkeys and, of course, horses. Later, she
even managed to integrate cats, dogs and rabbits into her university
life.
She grew into a beautiful young woman with a dazzling smile and
what seemed to be boundless energy. She once told her housemate
that she found sleep boring. As she matured she became immersed
in myriad activities but family remained at the centre of her
life. She was a loving daughter to her father Charlie, and a
mentor to her younger brother Karl and sister Meaghan.
Eileen's interests and those of her mother meshed to a greater
extent than they do for many mothers and daughters. One of those
passions was dance. Her final performances were in Casa Del Sol,
Spain. An extraordinary bonding took place among the dance Friends
as they travelled and worked together.
Eileen's high school years left their mark on her teachers. One
teacher, Ken
GIBBONS, found working closely with her at the student
leadership camp to be "a joy and learning experience for me.
She was a natural teacher who knew the material and showed a
genuine concern for those she was leading. The greatest thrill
for a teacher is to know even one person like Eileen." Hugh
O'BRIAN,
founder of Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership, recalls Eileen's qualities
at the World Leadership Congress, calling her "a true achiever
and a great representative of Canada."
This straight-A student somehow managed to spend a year as president
of her high-school student council, stay involved in sports,
and receive the 1999 Award for Excellence and the Principal's
Leadership Award before entering Queen's University in 2000 where
she majored in Development Studies and Sociology.
While at Queen's she took a job as a waitress at Summerhill (the
principal's official residence, which is used for entertaining).
There, her poise, self-confidence and engaging personality resulted
in her meeting and getting to know many people, including members
of Queen's Board of Trustees, honorary-degree recipients, and
Members of Parliament.
From her first year on campus Eileen became involved in the Canadian
Student Leadership Conference (now known as Withinsight) which
is a Queen's student-run initiative. This annual conference takes
place in Ottawa and attracts students from across the country
who come to hear government, business and other community leaders
speak or lead workshops. It was at that conference one year,
that Eileen met Richard, who became her true love.
Eileen became the national director of the 2003 conference, but
she did not get to see the results of her hard work; the accident
that took her life occurred three days before the conference
was to begin. Her executive team members were devastated by her
loss but came together to run a very successful conference in
her honour. In future conferences, there will be an annual award
offered in her name.
Upon hearing of her death, Al
FISHER, a professor of music at
Queen's, wrote: "I found her (to be) a vital, intelligent and
accomplished young person. The cruelty of a sudden, violent death
for such a treasure is profoundly numbing."
Lesley KRIEGER is Eileen's mother, Karen
McDONALD her aunt; Bob
SILVERMAN,
Dean of Arts and Science at Queen's, a friend.
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FISHER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-05-29 published
CHRISTMAS,
Patricia
Died peacefully, at Sandringham Hospital, Victoria, British Columbia,
on Sunday, May 18, 2003. She is survived by her son Robin and
her life partner, Art
FISHER. Born Patricia Ethel
POITIER in
London, United Kingdom July 13, 1920, she came to Canada in 1948
with her husband actor Eric
CHRISTMAS and two sons, Robin and
Stephen. She enjoyed a life-long love of the theatre and successfully
toured as part of a two- woman show in the fifties. She held
court at 15 Beech Avenue in Toronto for many years, serving as
a beacon for a generation of artists and young people. Her sharp
wit and joie de vivre will be sorely missed.
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FISHER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-06-28 published
Lacrosse champ endured racism
Legendary player was subjected to slurs, but he didn't respond.
'It's because you were beating them they were saying it'
By Carol COOPER
Special▲ to The Globe and Mail Saturday, June
28, 2003 - Page F9
Before every Brantford Warriors lacrosse game in 1971, Ross
POWLESS,
the team's former player and coach, a member of the Canadian,
and later, the Ontario lacrosse halls of fame, crossed the floor
to speak with coach Morley
KELLS.
As they chatted, Mr.
POWLESS wagged his finger at Mr.
KELLS,
now an Ontario Member of Provincial Parliament. To the spectators
above, it looked as if he were advising the coach on the upcoming
game.
"I kind of laughed, because I knew what was taking place," Mr.
KELLS said. "You could always see them up in the stands nodding,
thinking, 'Ross has things straightened out.' I didn't mind a
bit."
Known for his sense of humour as well as his playing and coaching,
Mr. POWLESS died recently at the age of 76.
From 1945 to 1961, he played intermediate and senior level lacrosse
in British Columbia, New York State and Southern Ontario, scoring
294 goals and 338 assists during his Senior A career. He contributed
to three Mann Cup wins, lacrosse's national championship, for
the Peterborough Timbermen from 1951 to 1953.
During the 1953 Cup finals, Mr.
POWLESS won the Mike Kelly Award
as the most valuable player of the series. Also, he was twice
given the Tom Longboat Award as the top Indian athlete in Canada.
Born a Mohawk on the Six Nations Reserve of the Grand River Territory
in Southwestern Ontario, Mr.
POWLESS came from a family of talented
players. One of his grandfathers, his father and several uncles
played on Six Nations teams or with the travelling Mohawk Stars,
according to lacrosse historian Stan
SHILLINGTON.
And Mr. POWLESS was patriarch to another. Four of his sons played
Senior A lacrosse. One of them, Gaylord, joined him in the Canadian
Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1990, making them the only father and
son pair in the hall.
Ross POWLESS played what his people call "the game the Creator
gave us" with skill and ease.
"He was a great, great player," said close friend and former
teammate Roger
SMITH, also a member of the Canadian and Ontario
lacrosse halls of fame. "He could do it all. He could play defence,
offence. He scored a lot of goals, he was a great team player,
a great checker, a good corner player, a good loose-ball man.
He was one of the best."
A large man, standing above six feet and weighing more than 200
pounds, Mr.
POWLESS played an especially strong defensive game.
"He wasn't fast, but he knew where to cut you off at the pass,"
said Mr. KELLS, who played against him.
"Ross's attitude was that sooner or later you had to show up
heading for the net, so he would be there waiting for you. If
anyone had a natural understanding of how the flow of the game
should be and how to control it, it was him."
Mr. POWLESS played with handmade hickory sticks, disdaining the
later mass-produced plastic sticks as "Tupperware."
A gifted coach who got the best out of his players, he led many
teams to divisional and national championships. One of his prouder
moments came when he coached six of his sons, including Gaylord,
on the 1974 Ontario First Nations Team. The team won the All-Indian
Nations Lacrosse Tournament in B.C.
Born on September 29, 1926, in the log cabin his carpenter father
built in Ohsweken, Ontario, Alex Ross
POWLESS was one of eight
children. Although the family lived without running water or
hydro, he later told his children that he never felt poor because
there was always food on the table.
After his mother died in 1932, Mr.
POWLESS attended residential
school in nearby Brantford until Grade 8 and then high school
for one year. In 1945, at the age of 18, he headed to Vancouver
to play on Andy
PAULL's Senior North Shore Indians team.
For the next five years, Mr.
POWLESS played for intermediate
teams in Buffalo, Brantford and Huntsville, Ontario, taking seasonal
jobs to support himself. In 1951, he joined the Senior A Peterborough
Timbermen.
By 1954, Mr.
POWLESS and his wife
Wilma, whom he married in 1948,
had moved their growing family, which would eventually number
14, back to the family homestead in Ohsweken. There, they lived
without electricity until 1957 and without running water until
a new house was built in 1970.
Mr. POWLESS continued playing Senior A lacrosse for Hamilton
and St. Catharines, and as a pickup player for the Timbermen
in the 1956 Mann Cup finals, then moved to Senior B and intermediate
teams until he retired from playing in 1961.
Lacrosse was important to a lot of people, but it was extra important
to him, Mr.
POWLESS told Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio
in January.
Richard POWLESS, another son from the 1974 team, said: "It opened
up the world to him. Back in those days, there weren't many Indians
playing in the wider world. It got him off the reserve, and he
had the talent to go places, and it was recognized."
Often the wider world greeted Mr.
POWLESS with racial slurs.
The crowd and members of opposing teams called him blanket-ass
and wagon-burner and squirted drinks on him.
"You'd get used it, it wouldn't bother you. They wouldn't be
saying that if they were beating you. It's because you were beating
them they were saying it," Mr.
POWLESS told the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation.
Richard POWLESS said, "He didn't react to it, he didn't respond
to it, it was just part of the burden he had to carry."
Still, Ross
POWLESS credited lacrosse with helping him make white
Friends across the country. Some of them stood up for him. Once
during tryouts for the Timbermen, he entered a bar in Peterborough
with some members of the team. Because he did not have a blue
card indicating that he had given up his Indian status, he could
not drink legally and was refused service.
The Timbermen left the bar saying, "If he's not good enough,
we're not good enough neither," author Donald M.
FISHER quotes
Mr. POWLESS's recollection in Lacrosse: A History of the Game.
Mr. POWLESS was proud of his heritage and maintained its traditions.
However, he did not teach the Mohawk language to his children.
Scarred by his experience in residential school, where he was
punished for speaking his mother tongue, he and his wife decided
not to pass it on. Instead, he told his children that it was
a white man's world, and to live in it successfully, they needed
to excel in English.
At times, Mr.
POWLESS acted politically. In 1959, a group of
Mohawks, including him, tried to reinstate the traditional native
government. "He was a firm believer in our own system and our
own way of doing things," Richard
POWLESS said. "When he believed
in something, it wasn't just talk and that's the way he raised
us."
Mr. POWLESS had settled into carpentry after his return to Ohsweken
in 1954, a trade he practised for the next 30 years.
Earning a reputation as a hard worker, he soon became a foreman
and, among other projects, worked on the Burlington Skyway Bridge.
Always an avid hunter, fisherman and pool player, Mr.
POWLESS
worked as a building inspector on the Six Nations Reserve until
his retirement in 1991, served as a band councillor for eight
years and helped to start Six Nations minor lacrosse and hockey
leagues. In 1997, the Ontario Municipal Recreation Association
gave him a volunteer service award.
Like many players, Mr.
POWLESS was buried with lacrosse sticks.
He had told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation of his intention,
saying, "I want to play with my dad, my sons, my uncles and my
nephews."
Mr. POWLESS died on May 26 in Paris, Ontario, of cancer. Sons
Victor, Gaylord and Gregory predeceased him. He leaves Wilma,
his wife of 55 years, 11 children, 27 grandchildren and seven
great-grandchildren.
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FISHER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-13 published
'What else could it have been but a miracle?'
Rene CAISSE died 25 years ago without gaining the recognition
some cancer survivors believe she deserved. Without Essiac, her
mysterious remedy, they wouldn't be alive today, they tell Roy
MacGREGOR
By Roy MacGREGOR,
Saturday,
December 13, 2003 - Page F8
Bracebridge, Ontario -- These days, when she looks back at her
remarkable, and largely unexpected, long life, Iona
HALE will
often permit herself a small, soft giggle.
She is 85 now, a vibrant, spunky woman with enough excess energy
to power the small off-highway nursing home she now lives in
at the north end of the Muskoka tourist region that gave the
world Norman
BETHUNE and, Iona
HALE will die believing, possibly
something far more profound.
A possible cure for cancer.
Twenty-seven years ago, Mrs.
HALE sat in Toronto's Princess Margaret
Hospital and heard that terrifying word applied to her own pitiful
condition. She was 58, and had already dropped to 75 pounds when
her big, truck-driver husband, Ted, finally got her in to see
the specialists who were supposed to know why she had stopped
eating and was in such terrible pain.
Mrs. HALE remembers awakening in the recovery room after unsuccessful
surgery and being told by a brusque nurse, "You're not going
to live long, you know, dear."
"That's what you think!" she snapped back.
Ted HALE had often heard stories of a secret "Indian" medicine
that an area nurse had supposedly used to cure cancer patients,
but he had no idea where it could be found. He had asked a physician,
only to be told, "That damned Essiac -- there's nothing to it."
When they returned to their home near Huntsville, Ontario --
with instructions to come back in three weeks, if Mrs.
HALE was
still around -- Mr.
HALE set out to find the mysterious medicine.
With the help of a sympathetic doctor, he discovered Rene
CAISSE,
a Bracebridge nurse who claimed to have been given the native
secret back in 1922. Pushing 90 and in ill health, she agreed
to give him one small bottle of the tonic, telling him to hide
it under his clothes as he left.
Mr. HALE fed his wife the medicine as tea, as instructed, and
it was the first thing she was able to keep down. A few radiation
treatments intended to ease the pain seemingly had no effect,
but almost immediately after taking the Essiac, she felt relief.
When the painkillers ran out and Mr.
HALE said he would go pick
up more, she told him, "Don't bother -- get more of this."
Twice more, he returned to get Essiac, the second time carrying
a loaded pistol in case he had to force the medicine from the
old nurse. He got it, and, according to Mrs.
HALE, "the cancer
just drained away." She returned to Toronto for one checkup --
"The doctor just looked at me like he was seeing a ghost" --
and never returned again.
"What else could it have been," Mrs.
HALE asks today, "but a
miracle?"
There is nothing special to mark the grave of Rene
CAISSE.
It lies in the deepening snow at the very front row of St. Joseph's
Cemetery on the narrow road running north out this small town
in the heart of Ontario cottage country, a simple grave with
a dark stone that reads: "
McGAUGHNEY
Rene
M.
(CAISSE) 1888-1978,
Discoverer of 'Essiac,' Dearly Remembered."
On December 26, it will be 25 years since Rene -- pronounced
"Reen" by locals --
CAISSE died. But in the minds of many people
with cancer, the great question of her life has continued on,
unanswered, well beyond her death. Did she have a secret cure
for the disease?
Ms. CAISSE never claimed to have a "cure" for cancer, but she
did claim to have a secret native formula that, at the very least,
alleviated pain and, in some cases, seemed to work what desperate
cancer sufferers were claiming were miracles.
She had discovered the formula while caring for an elderly Englishwoman
who had once been diagnosed with breast cancer and, unable to
afford surgery, turned instead to a Northern Ontario Ojibwa medicine
man who had given her a recipe for a helpful tonic.
The materials were all found locally, free in the forest: burdock
root, sheep sorrel, slippery elm bark, wild rhubarb root and water.
The woman had taken the native brew regularly and been cancer-free ever since.
Ms. CAISSE had carefully written down the formula as dictated,
thinking she might herself turn to this forest concoction if
she ever developed the dreaded disease. She never did, dying
eventually from complications after breaking a hip, but she remembered
the recipe when an aunt was diagnosed with cancer of the stomach
and given six months to live. The aunt agreed to try the tonic,
recovered and went on to live 21 more years.
The aunt's doctor, R.D.
FISHER, was intrigued enough that he
encouraged Ms.
CAISSE to offer her remedy -- which she now called
"Essiac," a reverse spelling of her name -- to others, and by
1926 Dr. FISHER and eight other physicians were petitioning the
Department of Health and Welfare to conduct tests on this strange
brew.
"We, the undersigned," the letter from the nine doctors read,
"believe that the 'Treatment for Cancer' given by nurse R.M.
CAISSE can do no harm and that it relieves pain, will reduce
the enlargement and will prolong life in hopeless cases."
Instead of opening doors, however, the petition caused them to
slam. Health and Welfare responded that a nurse had no right
to treat patients and even went so far as to prepare the papers
necessary to begin prosecution proceedings.
But when officials were dispatched to see her, she talked them
out of taking action, and for years after, officials turned a
blind eye as she continued to disperse the tonic. She made no
claim that it was medication; she refused to see anyone who had
not first been referred by their regular physician; and she turned
down all payment apart from small "donations" to keep the clinic
running.
Her work attracted the attention of Dr. Frederick
BANTING, the
discoverer of insulin, but an arrangement to work together foundered
when he insisted they test the tonic first on mice, and Ms.
CAISSE
argued that humans had more immediate needs.
Her problems with authority were only beginning. A 55,000-signature
petition persuaded the Ontario government to establish a royal
commission to look into her work, but the panel of physicians
would agree to hear only from 49 of the 387 witnesses: who turned
up on her behalf -- and dismissed all but four on the grounds
that they had no diagnostic proof. The commission refused to
endorse Essiac, and a private member's bill that would have let
her continue treating patients at her clinic fell three votes
short in the legislature.
She quit when the stress drove her to the verge of collapse,
moved north with her new husband, Charles
McGAUGHNEY, and dropped
out of the public eye. But not out of the public interest.
"You need proof?" laughs Iona
HALE. "
Just look at me -- I'm still
here!"
Not everyone in the medical establishment dismissed Essiac. Ms.
CAISSE had permitted the Brusch Medical Center near Boston to
conduct experiments after Dr. Charles
BRUSCH, one-time physician
to John Kennedy, inquired about the mysterious cure. Tests on
the formula did show some promise on mice, and the centre eventually
reported: "The doctors do not say that Essiac is a cure, but
they do say it is of benefit." Dr.
BRUSCH even claimed that Essiac
helped in his own later battle with cancer.
Other tests, though, were less encouraging. In the early 1970s,
Ms. CAISSE sent some of her herbs to the Sloan-Kettering Institute
for Cancer Research in Rye, New York but when early tests proved
negative, she claimed Sloan-Kettering had completely fouled up
the preparation and refused further assistance.
Through it all, she refused to disclose her recipe -- until a
rush of publicity after a 1977 article in Homemaker's magazine
persuaded her to hand over the formula to the Lieutenant-Governor
of Ontario for safekeeping and to give a copy to the Resperin
Corporation of Toronto in the hopes that, eventually, scientific
proof would be found.
She died without gaining the recognition some cancer survivors
believe she deserved, and in 1982, the federal government declared
Resperin's testing procedures flawed and shut down further studies.
The story of Ms.
CAISSE's medicine carried on, however, with
more and more people turning to the man who would have been her
member of Parliament to see if he could help.
Stan DARLING lives in the same nursing home as Iona
HALE.
Now
92, Mr. DARLING spent 21 years in Ottawa as the Progressive Conservative
member for Muskoka-Parry Sound. He's remembered on Parliament
Hill for his crusades against acid rain, but of all his political
battles, Mr.
DARLING says nothing compares to his fight to gain
recognition for Rene
CAISSE's mysterious medicine.
"So many people came to me with their stories," he said, "that
I couldn't help but say, 'Okay, there must be something to this.'"
Mr. DARLING put together his own petition, 5,000 names, and went
to the minister of health and argued that so many were now using
Essiac it made sense to legalize it.
His bid failed, but he did persuade the medical bureaucrats to
compromise: If Essiac were seen as a "tea" rather than a "drug,"
it could be viewed as a tonic, and so long as the presiding physician
gave his approval, it could be added to a patient's care -- if
only for psychological reasons. "On that basis," Mr.
DARLING
says, "I said, 'I don't give a damn what you call it, as long
as you let the people get it.' "
The doubters are legion. "There's no evidence that it works,"
says Dr. Christina
MILLS, senior adviser of cancer control policy
for the Canadian Cancer Society. That being said, she says, "There
is also little evidence of harmful side effects from it," but
cautions anyone looking into the treatment to do so in consultation
with their physician.
No scientific study of Essiac has ever appeared in an accepted,
peer-reviewed medical journal. But those who believe say they
have given up on seeing such proof.
Sue BEST of Rockland, Massachusetts., still vividly recalls that
day 10 years ago when her 16-year-old son, Billy, sick with Hodgkin's
disease, decided to run away from home rather than continue the
chemotherapy treatments he said were killing him.
He was eventually found in Texas after a nationwide hunt and
agreed to return home only if the treatments would cease and
they would look into alternative treatments, including Essiac.
No one is certain what exactly cured Billy, but Ms.
BEST was
so convinced Essiac was a major factor she became a local distributor
of the herbal medicine.
Rene CAISSE, she says, "spent a whole life trying to help people
with a product she found out about totally by accident -- and
being totally maligned all her life by the whole medical establishment
in Canada."
In some ways, Ms.
CAISSE has had an easier time in death than
in life. Today, there is a street in Bracebridge named after
her, a charming sculpture of her in a park near her old clinic,
and Bracebridge Publishing has released a book, Bridge of Hope,
about her experiences.
The recognition is largely the work of local historian Ken
VEITCH,
whose grandmother, Eliza, was one of the cancer-afflicted witnesses:
who told the 1939 royal commission: "I owe my life to Miss
CAISSE.
I would have been dead and in my grave months ago." Instead,
she lived 40 more years.
Don McVITTIE, a Huntsville businessman, is a grandnephew of Rene
CAISSE and says she used her recipe to cure him of a duodenal
ulcer when he was 19. Now 71 and in fine health, he still has
his nightly brew of Essiac before bed.
"There's something mentally satisfying about having a glass of
it," he says. "I think of it more as a blood cleanser. That's
what Aunt Rene always said it was. I think she'd be disappointed
it hasn't been more accepted."
"Look," Ken
VEITCH says, "this all started back in the 1920s.
And I've said a number of times that if there was nothing to
it, it would be long gone.
"But there is something to it."
Roy MacGREGOR is a Globe and Mail columnist.
The secret revealed
Debate rages in Essiac circles about the correct recipe. The
most accurate rendition likely comes from Mary
McPHERSON,
Rene
CAISSE's long-time assistant. Ms.
McPHERSON, currently frail
and living in a Bracebridge nursing home, swore an affidavit
in 1994 in which she recorded the recipe in front of witnesses.
It is essentially the same preparation distributed today by Essiac
Canada International, which operates out of Ottawa. The formula
appears below:
61/2 cups of burdock root (cut)
1 lb. of sheep sorrelherb, powdered
1/4 lb. of slipper elm bark, powdered
1 oz. of Turkish rhubarb root, powdered
Mix ingredients thoroughly and store in glass jar in dark, dry
cupboard. Use 1 oz. of herb mixture to 32 oz. of water, depending
on the amount you want to make. I use 1 cup of mixture to 256 oz. of water.
Boil hard for 10 minutes (covered), then turn off heat but leave
sitting on warm plate overnight (covered).
In the morning, heat steaming hot and let settle a few minutes,
then strain through fine strainer into hot sterilized bottles
and sit to cool. Store in dark, cool cupboard. Must be refrigerated when opened.
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