A Good Walk Perfected

Sometimes I wonder whether what I’ve written is relevant.  Perhaps at a point in time a piece was newsworthy or interesting.  However, time and current events often catch up and leave your piece as something to be filed under “P” for passed its best before date.

However, this story, basically a report on a presentation on birds and birding, seems more relevant today that when I put fingers to keyboard back in May of 2014. 

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It has been said that golf is a good walk spoiled.

But birding is “a good walk perfected.”  That was the message Jeff Gordon brought recently  to a large group of outdoor enthusiasts at Bird Studies Canada’s (BSC) National Office in Port Rowan just about 400 metres from my residence.

Yes, we have a National Office in Port Rowan. And Gordon, a celebrity in the birding world was a most able and appropriate speaker as spring migration is ramping up here on Ontario’s South Coast.

Gordon heads up the American Birding Association (ABA), a non-profit organization that provides leadership to North America birders and also contributes to bird and bird habitat conservation through its programs.

He was in town to participate as the Celebrity Birder in the annual Baillie Birdathon as well as to speak at this special event billed as a Celebration of Birding.

Gordon is passionate about birding and birds.  He worries, though, that birders need to open up to others who may be interested in nature and the outdoors but are intimidated by the vast knowledge many experienced birders present.  Rather birders need to be “evangelists” about their hobby and help “break down barriers” for newcomers.

Gordon’s presentation included plenty of action shots of birders from around North America including Alvaro Jaramillo. (Jaramillo coined the “good walk perfected” line.)  The ABA head takes these types of pictures because birders are good at taking photos of warblers and eagles and the like but not so good at taking pictures of people enjoying birds.  More images that capture the “grandeur of birding” are needed.

Earlier in the day, local ornithologist Tim Lucas found a rare Kirtland’s Warbler near the entrance to the new Long Point Provincial Park.  This is considered North America’s rarest warbler and is normally found only in a small area in the north central part of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula during breeding season.

Gordon and a dozen or so others were there.  He captured the excitement on his smart phone and shared the footage in the evening presentation thereby reinforcing his key message.

I think Gordon made his point well that night.  The next day another relatively rare bird was located in the area.  Check out this picture from Jody Allair's twitter account and you should be able to share in the enthusiasm with those seeing a Bell’s Vireo for the first time.

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This story was originally published by Forever Young, a Metroland paper.

Update:

**In 2020 Bird Studies Canada changed in name to Birds Canada.  That change is recognition that their work extends beyond the study of birds and encompasses “public engagement, habitat stewardship, education and training, involvement in guiding conservation decisions, and more.”

**If you’re not doing anything on New Year’s Eve, join the American Bird Association (ABA) as they announce the new Bird of the Year at midnight St Pierre et Miquelon time (10 pm EST)

Dispatches from the Front*

“Call them out ... Dunkirk, Tobruk, Alamein, the delaying action in Burma, the last stand at Sollum… Call them out, and then add Moro River …

The attacking Canadians beat two of the finest German divisions that ever marched.” 

Matthew Halton reporting from the ruined town of Ortona, where 2,400 Canadians were killed or wounded. December 28, 1943

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David Halton begins his book Dispatches from the Front with a story from 1987. The author recalls a journalism student heading into the CBC Archives to research an individual she and most of her classmates had never heard of. That would be Halton’s father, Matthew. Matthew Halton is considered to be one of the best war correspondents of World War II.

In his preface, David Halton describes his father as “a more or less forgotten name for all but survivors of the war-time generation.”

I’ll admit to knowing very little of the Toronto Star/CBC journalist. Several years ago I heard a tape of some his dispatches. The reports were riveting and the reason I put Dispatches on my must read list.  I re-read it earlier this month.

Halton, the son, has written an extremely well researched, objective memoir 

of his famous father. It helped fill in some holes in this baby boomer’s understanding of the Depression and Second War history. 

Here are a few facts I gleaned from the book.

1. In a two-month period in the fall of 1933 Halton wrote 30 reports from Germany. Now known as the German Reports, they “chronicled almost every defining aspect of Nazi Germany.” They told truths that most other media were ignoring. Halton held back most of these reports until he was out of the country in order to avoid the harassment from authorities that other journalists were experiencing.  For example, on Oct. 16 he wrote: “Germany is literally becoming a laboratory and breeding ground for war, unless I am deaf, dumb and blind.”

2. Later that October, Halton observed: “The terror goes on unremittingly in the form of a deliberate and implacable intention to wipe the Jews out of the economic and social life of Germany.” 

3. Beginning in 1936, Matthew Halton was critical of then Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) Neville Chamberlain who was later to be Prime Minister. By December of 1939, Halton called for new leadership “who has not only cool determination but also some high strategic vision.” In his view, that new visionary leader was Winston Churchill. Halton’s viewpoint was a controversial one. Churchill had many critics including Mackenzie King. In a diary entry, our Prime Minister described Churchill as “one of the most dangerous men I have ever known.”  King who had an extended 75 minute meeting with Hitler in 1937 described the German dictator as having a very nice sweet (smile) and as “one who truly loves his fellow man.” 

4. But Matthew Halton wasn’t always right in his analysis. For example, Halton   was sympathetic to the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. Perhaps too sympathetic. The war correspondent gave undeserved credit to Barcelona authorities for giving fair trails. However, as the younger Halton notes: “Organized religion was banned in Barcelona and hundreds of priests were summarily executed in Catalonia and dozens of churches burned down.” 

5. Matthew Halton interviewed and/or hobnobbed with many of the most famous people of the time. They included Albert Einstein, Haile Selaise, Gary Cooper, Paul Robeson, Lord Beaverbrook, Grey Owl (Archie Belaney) and the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) to name just a few.

6. Interestingly, we learn that Halton never interviewed Churchill, as the British politician “saved his insights for newspaper articles, which paid him well.”

7. While seldom there, Matthew Halton was proud of the fact that he hailed from Pincher Creek, Alta. Talking in a London nightclub with the Prince of Wales less than three years before he became king, Halton was impressed with the prince’s “informality and desire to shed the stuffier traditions of the monarchy” as well as Edward’s love of the Alberta foothills. The Prince owned EP Ranch near Pekisko Creek, only 150 kilometres from Pincher Creek.

8. Unlike some war correspondents, Matthew Halton actually reported from the front lines. In the desert war in Alamein, with the Canadian forces landing in Sicily, D-Day and many other theatres of war, Matthew Halton was in the thick of it.

9.  The CBC required that sound could not be dubbed in with a voice track unless the reporter had actually been at its source.  That made Matthew Halton’s coverage unique and “more authentic… than some radio and television war reporting today,” wrote David Halton.

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*Dispatches from the Front Matthew Halton, Canada’s Voice at War by David Halton is published by McClelland & Stewart.

Rupert Hotel Fire - 31 Years Ago

Wednesday December 23rd marks the 31st anniversary of the terrible fire at Toronto’s Rupert Hotel.

This past November the City of Toronto took steps to come up with new regulations that would be part of a comprehensive city-wide regulatory framework for multi-tenant houses.  

These regulations would be developed using a human rights lens thus “ensuring regulatory oversight to protect tenant life safety and create liveable,  well-maintained and affordable places to live.” 

You can read a report that talks about this process at http://app.toronto.ca/tmmis/viewAgendaItemHistory.do?item=2020.PH18.2 

This is good news.  Hopefully new polices will be in place soon. 

Meanwhile many in our province continue to live in perilous and dangerous conditions like those that I wrote about last year in Rupert Hotel December 1989*. 

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                         Rupert Hotel December 1989*

         Gordon was sorry

         but it was tough keeping warm

         and he’d had some to drink 

         so setting fire to those papers on the floor in the middle 

         of his second-floor room made some kind of sense.

         At the Rupert Hotel, a three-storey brick walk up 

         in a licensed city rooming house 

         off Queen Street East 

         at Parliament

         those with few options and few dollars could exist, 

         in a way. 

         Gordon’s warming fire soon leapt out of control 

         flames and choking smoke filling the corridors 

         as the fire gained full possession of the hallways.

         The license pinned to the wall wasn’t worth the paper 

         it was printed on as far as the protection it afforded 

         the 31 tenants at the Rupert

         on this wintry December night. 

 

         A sprinkler system might have halted the fire’s progress.

         Perhaps tenants could have taken action 

         if the alarm system had been operable 

         or fire extinguishers stored in the basement were reachable.

 

         It was 17 long minutes before someone called 911.

         When firefighters arrived 

         the whole building was enveloped. 

         Flames leapt out of the top floor windows.

         Firefighters using ladders forced their way 

         into the searing heat of the second floor.  

         Later a witness called it 

         “A Vision out of Hell.”

         As the fire raged people screamed, crying out for friends.

         It took six hours and eighteen crews to subdue the blaze.

         Thankfully, some tenants were saved and many escaped. 

         For days crews chopped through ice and debris to locate bodies. 

         They found nine men. 

         A woman had returned to the building to help a friend 

         Donna Marie Cann died, as had the others, 

         of heavy smoke inhalation.

        Soon an inquest was held.

        Recommendations were made    

        new rules created 

        regulations established

        housing planned.

        After a while all was forgotten.

        Rules and regulations lapsed, 

        were ignored or opposed 

        and the programs ended.

        In the city today austerity policies 

        compel people to rent rooms 

        in perilous and dangerous buildings. 

        Many flee the downtown to illegal suburban homes 

        where life is cheaper.

*According to the Fire Marshal, there were fires at 69 illegal rooming houses in the Toronto area between 2013 and 2017.

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Rupert Hotel December 1989* was published earlier this year in Literature for the People (Editor Raymond Fenech) and received honourable mention in the Norfolk Literary Prize competition.

Getting it Right