HIGGINS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-04-07 published
Canada's
Catholic leader,
CARTER dies at 91
By Michael
VALPY
Religion And
Ethics
Reporter Monday, April 7,
2003 - Page A1
Three weeks ago, John
TURNER met Gerald Emmett
CARTER for their
annual St. Patrick's Day drink. The former prime minister held
the glass for his friend of 50 years while he sipped his Irish
whisky through a straw.
When the retired cardinal archbishop of Toronto died yesterday
morning at the age of 91, a reputation as richly coloured as
the scarlet of his soutane died with him.
Canadian Roman Catholicism will probably never see his like again:
a prince of the church who, while never unmindful of the meek
and the poor, made no bones about being comfortable rubbing elbows
with fellow princes of politics and business.
He was the close friend of prime ministers and premiers. He enjoyed
socializing in the corridors of power with people like Conrad
BLACK,
Hilary and Galen
WESTON and Fredrik
EATON. He displayed
an unabashed fondness for Progressive Conservative Party gatherings.
("I think at one Christmas party, I was the only Liberal there,"
Mr. TURNER said in an interview.)
Yet academics and religious and business leaders also spoke yesterday
of a man with an acute understanding of Canada and its history.
They described an intense, intellectual democrat who believed
he should speak out forcefully on the moral and political issues
of the day and who welcomed debate with those who disagreed with
him. And they talked of a cleric who profoundly understood the
nature of the church and who welcomed ecumenism and Canada's
emerging pluralism.
"He felt the institution of religion should have a public voice
and he was not shy about exercising it," said Michael
HIGGINS,
principal of St. Jerome's University in Waterloo and co-author
of My Father's Business, the 1990 biography of Cardinal
CARTER.
"Whenever he spoke, his voice was strong, clear, public, undiluted
and welcomed by political leaders even when they disagreed with
him. It is an unfortunate circumstance that the marginalization
of religious debate occurred at the same time as he was eclipsed
by a stroke, retirement and age, at a time when his church needed
him. He embodied a certain kind of churchman we probably won't
see again."
Cardinal CARTER suffered a stroke in 1981 and retired in 1990.
Cardinal Aloysius
AMBROZIC, his successor as archbishop of Toronto,
said Cardinal
CARTER "wanted to know what the movers and shakers
were doing."
Cardinal AMBROZIC described him as a man totally engaged with
his church and with his society -- an advocate for the poor,
for immigrants and for the homeless.
"What I admired about him, what I found so instructive about
him, was his sense of responsibility for the church and for society
at large. He was very much a man of Vatican 2 [the church's 1962-65
ecumenical council] and he knew what the Catholic Church was
about."
There was also, said Cardinal
AMBROZIC, "his own personal style.
He had panache."
The priest who rose from a working-class Montreal background
to become the most powerful cleric in Canada met Mr.
TURNER when
the former prime minister was a young lawyer in Montreal doing
legal work for the church. "He was a great human being who understood
the balance between the religious and secular worlds," Mr.
TURNER
said.
"He loved tennis, and he had a wicked serve."
Former prime minister Pierre
TRUDEAU consulted him on the Constitution
in the early 1980s and became a close friend. At the celebration
of Cardinal
CARTER's 75th birthday in 1987, instructions were
given that an entire pew was to be reserved for Mr.
TRUDEAU in
Toronto's St. Michael's Cathedral.
Mr. TRUDEAU delayed his arrival until just before the cardinal
entered the church. "All eyes were trained on
TRUDEAU until Cardinal
CARTER arrived," said Dr.
HIGGINS. "It was symbolic of the close
relationship they had."
Toronto's
Anglican
Archbishop, Terence
FINLAY, who first met
Cardinal CARTER when they were both bishops in London, Ontario,
in the 1970s, said the Roman Catholic Church in Canada had lost
a great leader.
"He enabled us to bring our churches closer together. I certainly
counted on him as a friend and colleague. He had an impressive
understanding of Canada's history and political situations. He
knew who we were."
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HIGGINSON o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-03-26 published
Lumber king of the Ottawa Valley
For 75 years, he dominated logging in the region and provided
all the wood for Inco mineshafts
By Randy RAY
Special to The Globe and Mail Wednesday, March 26,
2003 - Page R9
Ottawa -- Hector
CLOUTIER/CLOUTHIER never let his age stand in the way
of a day's work. In 1928, at age 12, he was working full-time
for his father's logging company in the Ottawa Valley near Pembroke,
Ontario, and by 14 was running his own operation.
On a cold February morning 73 years later, Mr.
CLOUTIER/CLOUTHIER, who
was known as Hec Sr., drove 150 kilometres to his family's lumber
camp near Mattawa. He toured the site and chatted with his sons
and two of his grandchildren who run the family owned business,
before driving home in his pickup truck, accompanied by his spaniel.
Three days later, on February 9, Mr.
CLOUTIER/CLOUTHIER suffered a heart
attack and died at his Pembroke home. He was 87.
"To the day he died, he was an integral part of the company,
said his son Hector
CLOUTIER/CLOUTHIER
Jr.
During his 75-year association with the logging business, Mr.
CLOUTIER/CLOUTHIER operated lumber operations in the Ottawa Valley and
as far north as Sturgeon Falls and Blind River, Ontario For a
time, Hector
CLOUTIER/CLOUTHIER and Sons was one of the largest local employers.
Mr. CLOUTIER/CLOUTHIER also built the Northwood Hotel near Pembroke and
owned Northwood Stables, which bred, trained and raced pacers
and trotters. At one point, he had 150 horses.
Born in Petawawa in February 1, 1916, his beginnings as an Ottawa
Valley success story began in the early 1920s when a shortage
of money in his family forced him to leave elementary school
to work at his father Thomas's lumbering operation. Within two
years, he bought a horse and started his own business, delivering
logs to the Pembroke Splint Lumber Co.
In his first year in business, the red and white pines felled
by Mr. CLOUTIER/CLOUTHIER's company produced 400,000 board feet of lumber,
double his father's production.
"He said his father's operation was nice and neat and tidy but
that it wasn't making enough money, " said Hector Jr., who is
a former Member of Parliament for the riding of Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke
and is now an adviser to Prime Minister Jean
CHRÉTIEN.
In the 1930s and 40s, the diminutive Mr.
CLOUTIER/CLOUTHIER expanded the
business and modernized his equipment. His operation prospered
during the Second World War. In 1945, he married Molly
SMITH,
a nurse from the Ottawa Valley community of Pakenham. The couple
raised 10 children on their 375-acre farm located between Pembroke
and Petawawa.
His company continued to operate in Renfrew County until about
1950 when he moved north to the Sturgeon Falls area to launch
a new operation that employed 160 workers and cut enough trees
to yield 10 million board feet of lumber a year. Later, he opened
a second near Elliot Lake, Ontario, employing an additional 140
employees and producing another 10 million board feet of lumber
annually. For many years, his company provided all of the pine
for the shafts at the Inco mines in Sudbury. Eventually, the
company diversified into pulpwood and, in the 1980s, provided
kits for building log homes.
In 1960, the family returned to Pembroke so that the children
would have easier access to schools. Sadly, 11 years later, Molly
CLOUTIER/CLOUTHIER died, leaving her husband to raise their children.
He never remarried.
"We used to tease him about that and he'd say: 'Are you crazy?
I couldn't find a woman crazy enough to look after you kids,
' " Hector Jr. said.
During his years in the logging industry, Mr.
CLOUTIER/CLOUTHIER saw horses,
broad axes and crosscut saws replaced by trucks, power saws,
skidders and tree fellers that could cut and delimb trees in
a matter of minutes. Over time, technology reduced crews from
200 to 30.
"The mechanization saddened him because he always felt the bush
was kept cleaner with horses, and he felt good about employing
so many people, " Hector Jr. said.
Mr. CLOUTIER/CLOUTHIER
Sr., a skilled log driver, was known as an innovator.
Among his inventions was a device he nicknamed the "submarine."
Using a winch, a generator and a floating wooden platform, it
replaced dynamite as a way of breaking up logjams that blocked
rivers. The submarine was soon adopted by competitors after premature
detonations had killed log drivers.
Mr. CLOUTIER/CLOUTHIER also had a passion for horses that stemmed from
a love for the hard-working animals that for years had pulled
his logs out of the bush.
He bought his first horse in 1951 for $100 and raced it at the
Perth Fair where he got into an accident and broke his arm. He
began breeding horses in 1955 and at one point had more than
150 racehorses. Among his most noted pacers was Barney Diplomat,
which raced successfully for trainer Keith
WAPLES in the mid
1950s and JJ's Metro, which won purses totalling $350,000.
His Northwood Stables and the Northwood Hotel were located across
from each other on what is now County Road 17 west of Pembroke.
His daughter Sandra and Hector Jr. drove horses for their father's
stable.
Mr. CLOUTIER/CLOUTHIER was a past president of the Quebec Harness Horseman's
Association, was one of the longest serving directors of the
Canadian Standardbred Horse Society and helped found the Ontario
Harness Horse Association, which in 1961 began representing the
interests of horse owners, drivers, trainers, grooms and their
families on matters such as track conditions, pension plans,
disability insurance and purses.
"Hec Sr. was one of the founding fathers of organized horsemen
in Ontario who helped negotiate purses so that people could have
a career in horse racing, said Jim
WHELAN, president of the
Ontario Harness Horse Association in Mississauga. "He was a pioneer.
A strong secondary interest after racing was fishing. When he
was not working, Mr.
CLOUTIER/CLOUTHIER often disappeared to fish favourite
lakes with a favourite dog.
Mr. HIGGINSON, who knew Mr.
CLOUTIER/CLOUTHIER for 35 years, said his
friend had a soft spot for children who loved sports but couldn't
afford the equipment.
"If a kid needed new skates, all of a sudden there would be a
pair of skates for that child and nobody ever said where they
came from. That side of him developed from what went on in his
own family that was not well off at the start. Hec knew what
it meant to be scratching out an existence -- he was interested
in what was going on around him."
Mr. CLOUTIER/CLOUTHIER was predeceased by his wife, four sisters and seven
brothers. He leaves five sons and five daughters. Sons Tom, Willy
and Jimmy, plus grandchildren Clyde and Shannon, run the family
logging company.
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HIGUCHI o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-12 published
A sleeping tiger of baseball
Founded in 1914, the Asahi team made history. This year, largely
because of the efforts of its catcher, the team made the Canadian
Baseball Hall of Fame
By Tom HAWTHORN,
Special to The Globe and Mail Friday, December
12, 2003 - Page R17
Victoria -- Ken
KUTSUKAKE was a catcher for the storied Asahi
baseball team of Vancouver, which disbanded when its Japanese-Canadian
players were interned during the Second World War.
Mr. KUTSUKAKE, who has died in Toronto, aged 92, helped keep
the team's memory alive over the years. He organized an Asahi
reunion at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre in Don Mills,
Ontario, in 1972, ending, if only temporarily, a diaspora of
the diamond that had seen players sent to work camps, ghost towns,
sugar-beet farms, and, in a handful of cases, Japan.
Earlier this year, the amateur club was inducted into the Canadian
Baseball
Hall of Fame in Saint Marys, Ontario Mr.
KUTSUKAKE attended
the ceremonies in June, even taking part in a golf tournament.
The
Asahi roster shortens with each passing season. Mr.
KUTSUKAKE
is the third player to die since the induction. He was predeceased
by outfielder Bob
HIGUCHI, 95, of Pickering, Ontario, and pitcher
George YOSHINAKA, 81, of Lethbridge, Alberta. The Asahi are disappearing
like runners left stranded at the end of an inning. Only six
players and a team official are believed to still be alive, the
lone survivors as the club approaches the 90th anniversary of
its founding in 1914.
The Asahi drew their players from the Little Tokyo neighbourhood
surrounding their home field at the Powell Street Grounds (today's
Oppenheimer Park) in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The Asahi
were physically slight compared to their opponents, among whom
were beefy longshoremen, so they depended on slick fielding,
larcenous base running and hitting so precise that it was said
they could bunt with a chopstick. They were nimble Davids competing
against slugging Goliaths.
The team (asa for morning, hi for sun) sometimes won games in
which they failed to record a hit. Their style of play, which
came to be called Brain Ball, earned them a following among discerning
Caucasian fans. In Little Tokyo, they were gods in woolen flannels.
"We were the toast of the town," Mr.
KUTSUKAKE told me earlier
this year. "To be an Asahi ballplayer meant lots to a lot of
people."
It all ended so quickly. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, it was
heard around the world. In British Columbia, all people of Japanese
ancestry were ordered removed from the coast as enemy aliens.
A neighbourhood team lost its neighbourhood and the Asahi never
played again.
Kenneth Hisao
KUTSUKAKE was born in Vancouver on May 25, 1911.
The Asahi had deep roots in the community and he joined the club's
youth team when he was 12 as a Clover (Go-gun). Blessed with
a strong throwing arm even at that young age, he was taught to
play the sport's toughest position. The neighbourhood boys gave
him the sing-song nickname, "Catcha-Catcha-
KUTSUKAKE."
He moved up the Asahi ranks over the years. From 9-to-5, Mr.
KUTSUKAKE worked for a company making boxes. After work and on
weekends and holidays, he could be found on the baseball diamond.
Finally, in 1938, Mr.
KUTSUKAKE became the starting catcher for
the parent club.
Adept at blocking wild pitches, he was known for his throwing
arm, a disincentive for rivals eager to mimic the Asahi on the
base paths.
On September 18, 1941, he went 0-for-2 before being pulled for
a pinch-hitter in his team's final at-bat in a 3-1 loss to a
club sponsored by The Angelus, a hotel. It would be the Asahi's
final game.
A few months later, his home was seized, as was his family's
Powell Street rooming house.
In 1942, Mr.
KUTSUKAKE was ordered by Canadian authorities to
leave his birthplace for the crimes of his ancestry. On that
terrible winter day, when he had to reduce 31 years of life to
a single suitcase, Mr.
KUTSUKAKE packed for an unknown life in
a relocation camp. Alongside family photos, he placed his cleats,
shin guards, catcher's mask, chest protector and his Asahi uniform.
For Mr. KUTSUKAKE, the equipment was a daily reminder that while
authorities could seize his home, deny him his job, and compromise
his freedom, no one could stop him from playing baseball.
He was sent to Kaslo on Kootenay Lake in the British Columbia
Interior, where he was joined by Asahi pitcher Nag
NISHIHARA.
One of their first acts in the camp was to form a baseball team,
an action that was also occurring in other ghost towns and internment
camps.
(Mr. KUTSUKAKE's father, Tsugio, had complained when he was ordered
to leave behind his wife and daughters. The senior Mr.
KUTSUKAKE
was instead sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Angler, Ontario,
where inmates wore dark uniforms with large circles on the back,
a bull's-eye target for sharpshooters should any try to escape.)
On Dominion Day, 1943, four teams of interned players met in
a one-day showdown in Slocan City, British Columbia Lemon Creek
beat New Denver 13-2 for the championship, while Slocan and Kaslo,
featuring a battery of Mr.
KUTSUKAKE and Mr.
NISHIHARA, were
eliminated earlier in the day. More than 500 spectators watched
the tournament.
"Ahhh," said Mr.
KUTSUKAKE, still sore about a loss 60 years
earlier, "Lemon Creek had the most Asahi players. They should
have won."
After the war ended, those of Japanese ancestry were forbidden
from returning to the coast. Mr.
KUTSUKAKE wound up in Montreal,
where he played for the semi-professional Atwater team in 1947.
He moved to Toronto the following year, where he could be found
behind the plate at Christie Pits. He also had great success
as a coach and manager, winning a West Toronto minor championship
with the Westerns midget team in 1950. He later won a city championship
with the Bestway Nisei, a team comprised of the Canadian-born
sons of Japanese immigrants.
In 1956, he managed Honest Ed's Nisei, a mixed-race team, to
a senior city championship. A delighted Ed
MIRVISH feted the
players with a lavish banquet and presented each with a commemorative
wrist watch.
Mr. KUTSUKAKE worked for many years at Iwata Travel in Toronto.
Until recently, he volunteered at a seniors home, providing prepared
Japanese lunches for residents.
Mr. KUTSUKAKE rejoiced in the belated recognition afforded his
old team. He threw out a ceremonial opening pitch at a Toronto
Blue Jays game at SkyDome in May, 2002, and was deeply touched
by induction into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.
"Naturally, I'm honoured," he said. "It was a big surprise. I
never expected such recognition."
Mr. KUTSUKAKE also appears in the recent National Film Board
documentary Sleeping Tigers, which recounts the history of the
Asahi team and its players. The photographs he saved during the
evacuation have been displayed at the Royal Ontario Museum and
included in Pat Adachi's 1992 book, Asahi: A Legend in Baseball.
Mr. KUTSUKAKE died in his sleep on November 22 at Toronto Grace
Hospital, where he was attending his second wife, Rose, who has
been diagnosed with a brain tumour. His wife of 50 years survives
him, as do sisters Satoko and Eiko, both of Toronto. He was predeceased
by brothers Sekio and Ray, an Asahi pitcher. A first marriage
ended in divorce.
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