Some Grey Cup Memories #1

My hometown team is in the Grey Cup this year.

As a kid, when I first became interested in the Canadian Football League, I thought the Hamilton Tiger Cats were in the “Annual Classic” every year.   

That was because from my earliest memory of the CFL they were.  I’m pretty sure the first game I watched was the ‘57 affair- the first of three where the Cats tangled with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.  Cats took this one but the Bombers won the next two.

This seven year old watched the Ti-Cat victory from my grandparents’ home, as my parents were out at a Grey Cup party.  Weren’t all parents out at a Grey Cup parties in those days?

Of course, the Tiger Cats weren’t, in fact, in the game every year missing out with a feeble 4-10 record in 1960. They returned in 1961, though, where they lost to Winnipeg again.  Strangely, perhaps, I remember less of this one than the Eastern Final conference played over two games in the lead up to the championship.  (Memory is assisted with my well-thumbed copy of Football Today and Yesterday penned by Tony Allan, former Sports Editor of the Winnipeg Tribune.)   

Bernie Faloney #92

In front of a record crowd of 33,161 fans at the Canadian Exhibition, my team had been badly beaten in the first game by the hated Argos.  In those days, the Eastern Championship was decided in a two game total point home and home series.  The Cats needed to overcome this 18-point deficit in the second match.  They had actually done that by the third quarter.

But then, with one minute to go the Argos tied it up.  Hamilton was stuck deep in its own end.  Bernie Faloney (a first round draft choice of the San Francisco 49ers who had come to Canada for better pay) was intercepted.

“All the Argos had to do was boot the ball to the dead-line, which was in with easy range for a kicker like Dave Mann –and it is was in the bag,” wrote Allen. 

Instead, the Argos chose to kill time and actually lost fifteen yards.

Mann, who had a punting average of 48 yards that season, then put the ball into the end zone.  It was returned by Ti-Cats kicker Don Sutherin.  Mann kicked it back and Bernie Faloney had the ball in his hands.  

“This time Faloney brought it out to safety and then with illegal blocks being thrown all over the place (blocks on punts were illegal in those days) raced the length of the field with it,” wrote Allen in 1962.

At this point, my family was startled as our neighbour, in excitement and inebriation, ran out of his house and discharged his shotgun.  Such behaviour was not a regular occurrence in the evolving suburban, semi-rural Burlington of 1961.

It  was all sorted out, at the game, that is.  Faloney’s run didn’t count. The Ti-Cats prevailed in overtime.  You can imagine that the Grey Cup was a bit of an anti-climax for me this year. 

Ian Sunter kicks game
winning field goal
in 1972 Grey Cup

The 1972 game in Hamilton (Ti-Cats 13 - Saskatchewan 10) was the most memorable from my perspective.  I was at this one. One of the game’s stars, Ti-Cat QB Chuck Ealey was 22 that year as was your blogger.  

My keen interest, however,  waned after this game partly as a result of an unnerving incident when my, then, young girlfriend (now, long suffering, wife of nearly forty-six years) and I were leaving Ivor Wynne  Stadium.  A bottle,  hurled irresponsibly from the north stands struck and injured someone on the street quite close to us.  From then on, football spectating seemed like less fun.

I was “back” again in 1989 though.  Tony Champion had a terrific game in the Hamilton’s 43-40 loss to the Green Riders.  You’ll remember this  catch.                                      https://www.facebook.com/watch/?                                                                             v=627010781143924

I had a minor involvement in the post-game “near victory” parade.  At the time, I was working in a small feminist oriented social service agency in downtown Hamilton.  I was the only male staff on duty the day of the parade.  Earlier, my female colleagues had been clear about their lack of interest in the game in particular and North American professional sports more generally. 

The parade  was being marshalled  a short block from our office when I returned from visiting a client at his home.   My  K-car was stuck behind the last float - Tony Champion’s open convertible.  I followed slowly,  immediately behind the Champion car.  

As the end of the motorcade passed in front of the office,  I was surprised to see my previously disinterested colleagues lined up at the window.  Pretending to be part of the parade, I waved, as heroes do.  They laughed.

No Grey Cup Party this year for this parent.  I’ll be potatoing on the couch,  witnessing a certain Ti-Cat victory while sharing the experience with my Twitter friends.

Sarah's Journey is Back

Simcoe writer David Beasley has produced many well-researched books of fiction and of non-fiction.

An early work, A Hamilton Romance, took a critical look at Canadian society as it was in 1945.

Beasley “discovered” Canada’s first great novelist Major John Richardson in The Canadian Don Quixote: the Life and Works of Major John Richardson. 

He took on the role of his ancestor Richard Beasley, first settler in Hamilton Ontario, in From Bloody Beginnings.

Beasley even delved into the crime fiction genre in three books wherein a library detective who carries a gun chases down a missing stamp collection and  kidnappers while finding his way through the shadowy world of big city politics.

I have read a fair number of David’s works.

Sarah’s Journey, soon to be re- released, is probably my favourite.

It is the story of Sarah Lewis,  born a slave In Virginia.  Sarah found her way to freedom to Upper Canada in 1822 where her children make their way among Simcoe’s growing black community made up of escaped slaves and prominent 19th century Simconians.

Here is some information on the book signing and release coming up soon in Simcoe.

                                                 ----------

                           SARAH’ S JOURNEY IS BACK 

                                    Price: $25.00 Cdn. & US 

                         Sponsored by Firefly and Fox Books 

                                Thursday December 9th 

                                8.30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. 

                                     Sabor Espresso,     

                            11 Norfolk Street North, Simcoe ON.,  

                            (Next door to Firefly and Fox) 

                                             ----------

More on David Beasley at http://www.davuspublishing.com/EN/about.php

CPP Investments Should Divest from Fossil Fuels

Lately I have become involved in a senior’s climate action group called SCAN! https://seniorsforclimateactionnow.org/

We are building a seniors’ group that is democratic, accountable, equitable and participatory. 

SCAN! believes we need decisive action to:

*rapidly drive down carbon emissions and eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels and petrochemicals;

*support those whose jobs have been destroyed by the climate crisis and those whose jobs are  threatened by dramatically reducing carbon emissions;

*begin to restore the ecological damage caused by economic growth; and

*transition from an economy:

        -of accumulation to an economy of sustainability

-of extraction to an economy of stewardship

        -of exploitation and inequality to an economy of fairness. 

One of the initiatives SCAN has undertaken is in the area of Pension Divestment.  Here is a piece that the Chair of our Pension Divestment Working Group penned for the Toronto Star. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/10/04/seniors-are-calling-on-cpp-investments-to-divest-from-fossil-fuels.html

Recently, I wrote to John Graham, President and CEO of CPP Investments.  CPP Investments is a global investment management organisation that invests the assets of the Canada Pension Plan.  Incredibly, they have actually been increasing investments in fossil fuels, especially the tar sands fuelling the climate crisis! CPP Investments should be showing leadership by investing heavily in renewable energy. 

A copy of my letter is below.  

Please consider sending a similar letter.

Thanks,

Bob Wood

-----------------------------

John Graham, President and CEO 
and Heather Munro-Blum, Chairperson, Board of Directors
CPP Investments
One Queen Street East, Suite 2500
Toronto, ON, M5C 2W5
contact@cppib.com

Dear Mr. Graham and Ms. Munro-Blum,

I am a senior and a beneficiary of the Canada Pension Plan. As I have grown older, I’ve experienced the growing strength of climate change. I am concerned with the force and severity of the weather we now experience. I am devastated at the destruction of our forests and wildlife from forest fires. I am horrified at so many needless, climate-related deaths. I have become increasingly aware of how marginalized and Indigenous communities are disproportionally affected. I worry about the world my loved ones will inherit.

A recent report from United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes it clear that we must keep fossil fuels in the ground and move quickly to clean, renewable energy. This same body warned us all in 2018 that “limiting global warming to 1.5⁰C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” Three years later, but with still little action from the world’s leaders on the climate crisis, the head of the UN has declared that humanity is in a Code Red situation. 

I am very concerned at what I have learned about CPP Investments’ fossil fuel holdings:

• nearly 20 per cent of its Canadian holdings in Alberta, in fossil fuels;

• extensive holdings in U.S. fracking companies;

• coal investments in China, in spite of Canada’s international campaign to transition from coal;

• a major offshore natural gas investment in Ireland.

But most distressing is that that CPP Investments has actually been increasing investments in fossil fuels, especially the tar sands. You are fuelling the climate crisis! You should be showing leadership by investing heavily in renewable energy.

As someone who has contributed to the CPP I am, effectively, a shareholder. My children are contributors and are therefore future beneficiaries. We insist that our money be used to help solve the climate crisis, not contribute to it.

I try to make environmentally and socially aware decisions, whether about purchases, or household energy conservation, for example. I therefore want to ensure the investments that fund my retirement don’t further endanger our children, future generations, and our planet.

As you are responsible for the largest pension fund in Canada, you must ensure that the CPP is funded in keeping with a 1.5⁰C degree of warming. It is imperative that you not make new investments in fossil fuels and that you divest from existing ones by 2025. You must invest ambitiously in renewable energy – which is extremely profitable – and other climate solutions. You must respect the sovereignty of Indigenous people and invest in a just transition for energy workers and their communities. You must stop betting on dubious technologies like carbon capture and storage.

Finally, in keeping with your biannual public meeting’s emphasis on transparency, I want improved disclosure, so that contributors and beneficiaries can see how you invest our money. 

I look forward to your response.

Bob Wood

Copy: divestmentproject@seniorsforclimateactionnow.org

Rupert Hotel December 1989*

In light of Toronto City Council further delaying making necessary reforms to rooming house regulations I've updated my poem Rupert Hotel December 1989*.  To learn more see John Michael McGrath's piece at https://www.tvo.org/article/why-does-toronto-exist-and-what-is-it-for

 

         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.

thestar.com

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
that license pinned to the wall
wasn’t worth the paper
it was printed on
as far as the protection it afforded
those 31 tenants
at the Rupert
that wintry December night.

A sprinkler system might have helped;
could have halted the fire’s progress.
And the tenants could have taken some action
if the alarm system had been operable
or if fire extinguishers 
stored in the basement were reachable.

Seventeen long minutes passed 
before someone called 911.
When firefighters arrived 
the whole building was enveloped.
Flames leapt out of top floor windows.
Fearless 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, 
cried 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 sifted through debris to locate bodies.
They found nine men
and a woman who had returned to the building 
to help a friend.
Donna Marie Cann died, 
as the others had
from 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.

*There were fires at 69 illegal rooming houses in the Toronto area between 2013 and 2017 according to the Fire Marshal. At a meeting in October 2012 as City Council delayed once again taking action on licensing, it was reported that there have been 16 fatal rooming housing fires in Toronto between 2010 and 2020 and 14 fatalities were in unlicensed rooming houses. 

Not Much Has Changed

(This story was originally published June 07, 2010 on the Hamilton Spectator Poverty Project - No Excuse https://poverty.thespec.com/page/2/ 

A "SHIFT" TO SIDEWALKS FROM SOCIAL SERVICES

The Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund (OMPF) assists municipalities with their social program costs. Recently OMPF reconciled the 2008 allocations against real expenditures and costs and as a result many municipalities received more money. Hamilton got about $3.1 million dollars; the Region of Niagara got $2.1 million.

I became aware of this today when reading a bulletin from CATCH (Citizens at City Hall). CATCH is a volunteer community group that encourages civic participation in Hamilton. The CATCH story focused on the fact that Hamilton councillors were all going to be getting about $250,000 each to spend in their wards on sidewalk repairs. "In a shift from normal practice," they apparently decided not to follow the usual priority setting process for allocating funds. 

This is indeed a shift but it is an election year and you'll see more shifts and other silliness before October 25.

The CATCH story went on to note that $3.1 million of the $3.6 million fund being divvied up by the councillors came from the OMPF reconciliation dollars. 

But shouldn't that money be going back into social services? That suggestion was rejected by council.

I mentioned Niagara. It took its monies and put $600,000 into Emergency Medical Services and the remaining $1.5 million into an account to offset the Community Services net deficit. That makes sense; seems logical.   

Up in Thunder Bay, the city got $1.3 million back. Government member Michael Gravelle, the MPP for Thunder Bay-Superior North, was "absolutely delighted about this additional funding for social programs and other services."

Hamilton politicians seem to be marching to a different drummer here. Or am I missing something?

Paul Martin and the Common Sense Gang

I recall standing with a one-term Ontario New Democratic MPP on Pine Street in Burlington.  It is a beautiful spring day in 1995.  A newly built non-profit housing project, Wellington Terrace, was celebrating its grand opening.  Balloons, refreshments and there is a ribbon is ready to be cut. 

“You know if we aren’t reelected there will be no more places like this built,” he told me.

No more built, I thought.  While I was sympathetic to his perspective, the view seemed more self-serving hyperbole than realistic forecast.

But the MPP was right. You know the story. 

Following World War II the federal government jumped into the housing field in a big way. Polices were slanted towards home ownership. While social housing and creation of rental housing weren’t high priorities, there were some initiatives.

Major cuts to government funding for social housing began in 1984. The Brian Mulroney government slashed national affordable housing spending by almost $2 billion. In 1993, Mulroney’s successor, Kim Campbell, cancelled all new funding for affordable housing.

Then things worsened with Paul Martin’s 1995 budget. 

Paul Martin

On February 27 that year, Martin put on his budget boots and kicked responsibility for social housing down to the provinces.  He cancelled all spending on new social housing projects. The Finance Minister hung his hat on many of the popular clichés of the day calling for “hard choices” and “real change,” “smaller and smarter government,” bucking the status quo and “simple common sense.” 

The rhetoric mattered not at all to those who were struggling to find housing that was safe and affordable. What really mattered, as we have discovered, was that Canada now had no housing strategy; the only developed country without such a plan. 

Back to that spring day in 1995:  As I enjoyed the opening of one of the last non-profit housing communities built in Ontario, we were just months away from more cuts from the new Mike Harris government.  Their idea of common sense (in fact, they called it a revolution) included the cancellation of 17,000 units of co-op and non-profit housing that had been approved but not completed.

A Preventable Crisis

I recall standing with a one-term Ontario New Democratic MPP on Pine Street in Burlington.  It is a beautiful spring day in 1995.  A newly built non-profit housing project, Wellington Terrace, was celebrating its grand opening.  Balloons, refreshments and there is a ribbon is ready to be cut. 

“You know if we aren’t reelected there will be no more places like this built,” he told me.

No more built, I thought.  While I was sympathetic to his perspective, the view seemed more self-serving hyperbole than realistic forecast.

But the MPP was right. You know the story. 

Following World War II the federal government jumped into the housing field in a big way. Polices were slanted towards home ownership. While social housing and creation of rental housing weren’t high priorities, there were some initiatives.

Major cuts to government funding for social housing began in 1984. The Brian Mulroney government slashed national affordable housing spending by almost $2 billion. In 1993, Mulroney’s successor, Kim Campbell, cancelled all new funding for affordable housing.

Then things worsened with Paul Martin’s 1995 budget. 

On February 27 that year, Martin put on his budget boots and kicked responsibility for social housing down to the provinces.  He cancelled all spending on new social housing projects. The Finance Minister hung his hat on many of the popular clichés of the day calling for “hard choices” and “real change,” “smaller and smarter government,” bucking the status quo and “simple common sense.” 

The rhetoric mattered not at all to those who were struggling to find housing that was safe and affordable. What really mattered, as we have discovered, was that Canada now had no housing strategy; the only developed country without such a plan. 

Back to that spring day in 1995:  As I enjoyed the opening of one of the last non-profit housing communities built in Ontario, we were just months away from more cuts from the new Mike Harris government.  Their idea of common sense (in fact, they called it a revolution) included the cancellation of 17,000 units of co-op and non-profit housing that had been approved but not completed.

New Book

Recently I flashed back to that day in 1995 while reading Denise Davy’s book Her Name was Margaret - Life and Death on the Streets.

Margaret Jacobson died after falling and hitting her head in a Mr. Sub, where she'd gone to keep warm.  She was 51. 

The author gained access to nearly 900 pages of Margaret Jacobson’s medical records going back to the sixties.  Davy is able to show the impacts of deinstitutionalization quite well by doing this. I knew a few specifics about the impacts of this process/policy of discharging people into the community but had never seen it all laid out like this as she has done by using the medical records of one individual.

Her Name was Margaret is a difficult read because it is a reminder of how we lack political will to solve a solvable problem. As the author writes: “If society is judged by the way it treats its most vulnerable, then the way Margaret was treated shows how we have failed.”

Margaret was a child with great potential who developed mental health issues as a teen.  She had the misfortune of entering into the Ontario mental health system when the new idea of deinstitutionalization was the order of the day. Eventually, 80% of psychiatric hospital beds in Ontario were closed.  The thinking was that people with mental health issues could be better served in the community. However, without appropriate supports available in the community the idea was doomed to failure. 

 Margaret and many others were discharged to rundown unregulated boarding houses (later called second level lodging homes and more recently known as residential care facilities).  She bounced around in this world for 23 years.  Her health did not improve.

Through this, Margaret’s parents were of no help. In a letter, her father put her problems down to her “unwillingness to be delivered from the bondage of Satan….”

Denise Day winds up her book with reasons to hope that things can improve.  She cites various successful Housing First programs running in Canada and around the world.

‘Housing First’ is a recovery-oriented approach to ending homelessness that centers on quickly moving people experiencing homelessness into independent and permanent housing and then providing additional supports and services as needed.   That is how the Homeless Hub, part of a research institute devoted to homelessness in Canada, defines Housing First.

While working with people experiencing homelessness some thirty years ago, we didn’t have this rather wordy rationale for our work. I seem to recall something more like “if people just have stable. safe and affordable housing they will better able to cope with life’s challenges.”    It just makes sense.

Denise Davy asks if Margaret would have responded to those kinds of Housing First programs if they had been available to her. Her answer is yes.

This brings me back to that opening of Wellington Terrace in Burlington more than 25 years ago – the same year that Margaret Jacobson died on the streets of Hamilton.  

Wellington Terrace functions today offering 126 units of housing for older adults. Forty of those units offer some level of support.

That is the kind of support that could have helped Margaret and others.  It was needed then and is needed now but its availability has been greatly reduced by governments’ badly thought out policy and funding decisions.

As Davy says, “The mess that exists today was entirely man-made and preventable.” 

Her Name Was Margaret: Life and Death on the Streets by Denise Davy, Wolsak & Wynn, 2021, 300 pages.