obituary

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Thursday, May 8, 2014By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday, May 8, 2014

Death of an Original Hipster

Farley Mowat, one of Canada’s best-known authors and a noted environmentalist, has died at age 92.

Mary Shaw-Rimmington, the author’s assistant, confirmed his passing to CBC News on Wednesday afternoon. Mowat died at his home in Port Hope, Ont.

Mowat, author of dozens of works including Lost in the Barrens and Never Cry Wolf, introduced Canada to readers around the world and shared everything from his time abroad during the Second World War, to his travels in the North and his concern for the deteriorating environment.

Pierre Berton 1920-2004

More than 17 million copies of his books, which have been translated into dozens of languages, have been sold worldwide. The gregarious writer was a consummate storyteller, whose works spanned non-fiction, children’s titles and memoirs.

Describing Mowat as “a passionate Canadian,” Prime Minster Stephen Harper touted the writer as “a natural storyteller with a real gift for sharing personal anecdotes in a witty and endearing way.” (Source: CBC News)

Meanwhile, we may have reached “peak beard frequency,” according to research published in the journal Biology Letters recently.

Men’s facial hair trends may be guided by Darwinian selection, researchers hypothesized. So they asked women and men to rate different faces with “four standard levels of beardedness.” The faces that were rarer were rated as more appealing. It’s an evolutionary phenomenon known as “negative frequency-dependent sexual selection.”

“The idea is that perhaps people start copying the George Clooneys and the Joaquin Phoenixs and start wearing those beards, but then when more and more people get onto the bandwagon the value of being on the bandwagon diminishes, so that might be why we’ve hit ‘peak beard’,” study author Prof Rob Brooks told the BBC.

“Peak beard” is reached when the most men in professions not usually associated with facial hear sport beards. The BBC suggests that may have happened in January when a Newsnight

Some say the Rubicon was crossed in January when Jeremy Paxman, the BBC Newsnight presenter, shaved his beard off, saying “beards are SO 2013.”

When “peak beard” frequency is reached, the pendulum swings back toward lesser-bristled chins — a trend we may be witnessing now, the scientists say. (Source: Discovery.com)

SOCIAL MEDIA

Friday, April 11, 2014

Friday, April 11, 2014By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, April 11, 2014

Jim Flaherty’s personal touch was a rarity on Parliament Hill: Greg Weston

Jim Flaherty was promising improvements to a federal disability savings plan that helps parents of special needs children when the tears started welling behind his glasses, a few drops at first, then more and more until the nation’s finance minister was openly sobbing on live television.

“The politician lost to the parent on that one,” he later told a friend.

Thursday, it was his critics’ turn to cry.

One after another, opposition MPs who have made a career of publicly savaging Flaherty across the floor of the Commons were dissolving in tearful grief over the sudden death of a man they now call a friend.

It was an extraordinary sight rarely seen in Canadian politics, MPs of all political stripes clearly mourning more than the loss of a fellow parliamentarian.

In Jim Flaherty, their loss seemed deeply personal.

Jim FlahertyNDP leader Tom Mulcair completely choked up when he got to the words: “He was a good person.”

NDP MP Charlie Angus, a well-known Commons scrapper, started to tell a story about Flaherty, but fell apart in tears before he could finish.

Liberal finance critic Ralph Goodale said Flaherty had the extraordinary ability to get into a no-holds-barred donnybrook in Parliament “but somehow managed to leave you more chuckling than angry.”

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said tearfully: “I disagreed with his policies, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t very, very fond of him.”

One of Flaherty’s long-time loyal aides, Chisholm Pothier, says in many ways the affable former finance minister was “an old-style politician,” a throwback to the days when MPs could be foes in the Commons and still be friends at the bar.

Pothier says Flaherty wouldn’t hesitate to invite one of the opposition finance critics out for a drink. He liked most of them. And they liked him. (Source: CBC News)

 

Friday, March 8, 2013

Friday, March 8, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, March 8, 2013

Canadian music legend Stompin’ Tom Connors dead at 77

In a final message to fans released after his death on Wednesday night, Canadian country music star Stompin’ Tom Connors issued an appeal for Canadians to “keep the Maple Leaf flying high.”

“It was a long, hard, bumpy road, but this great country kept me inspired with its beauty, character, and spirit, driving me to keep marching on and devoted to sing about its people and places that make Canada the greatest country in the world,” said Mr. Connors in the message, which was posted to his website. “I must now pass the torch, to all of you, to help keep the Maple Leaf flying high, and be the Patriot Canada needs now and in the future.”

Mr. Connors died in Peterborough, Ont., at the age of 77 from “natural causes,” according to spokesman Brian Edwards.

Mr. Edwards said the musician, rarely seen without his signature black cowboy hat and stomping cowboy boots, knew his health was declining and had written the message shortly before his death.

On Wednesday night, in one of the first of many online tributes, Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the musician a “true Canadian original.”

Born Thomas Charles Connors, the musician earned the name “Stompin’ Tom” for his propensity to pound the floor with his left foot during performances and will probably be best remembered for The Hockey Song, a 1973 hit that remains on standard rotation at hockey arenas around the world. (Source: National Post)

Saturday October 20, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Saturday October 20, 2012

Lincoln Alexander 1922-2012

He was never one to sell himself short, to shrink into the background and idly watch.

Lincoln Alexander, who has passed away at the age of 90, always knew he was a politician, not a policy wonk. But he also knew he was a politician whose skin colour would lend his every move, his every accomplishment, the weight of history.

“I have no qualms about saying I don’t think anyone can work a room better than I can,” he once told an interviewer.

“I’ve never really been in awe of anyone. When you’re 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds and good lookin’, you know, you’re not in awe of too many people.”

It’s hard to imagine a man of lesser confidence surmounting so many barriers to African-Canadians in the span of a single lifetime — the first black Member of Parliament, the first black cabinet minister, Ontario’s first black lieutenant-general.

Alexander’s ability to mix courtliness and anger soon came to the fore amid 1971’s “fuddle duddle” scandal, in which Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was alleged to have mouthed an obscenity in the House of Commons, one directed at Alexander and Newfoundland MP John Lundrigan.

“He mouthed two words, the first word of which started with F, and the second word of which started with O,” Alexander told reporters at the time. “Now I think that we’ve reached a point where this type of conduct, it’s not only disgraceful but it’s unacceptable, and I tried to bring that point home.” (Source: Toronto Star) 

 

Wednesday February 8, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Wednesday February 8, 2012

Longtime Spec cartoonist Blaine dead at 74

One of The Spectator’s most colourful and well-known personalities of recent decades has died.

Blaine, who was the newspaper’s editorial cartoonist for 30 years until his retirement in 1993, had been in poor health in recent years after heart surgery and a stroke and was living at Macassa Lodge. He died at Juravinski Hospital Sunday evening. 

He was born in Glace Bay, N.S., with the name Blaine MacDonald. But as he gained profile in the world of cartooning, adopting a style that was strongly influenced by the great Toronto Star cartoonist Duncan Macpherson, he legally changed his name to Blaine. 

Blaine was anything but bland. He had a black belt in karate, played guitar and sang, liked wearing cowboy boots and jewellery and was remembered for driving motorcycles and a Corvette Stingray monogrammed with a drawing of a butterfly on the hood.

The story goes that he once picked up an injured butterfly by the side of the road, nursed it back to health, and then used the experience of releasing it for inspiration to buy lottery tickets. He matched numbers to the letters of the song Butterflies are Free (B=2, U=21 etc.) and won $15,443 in Lottario. 

But that wasn’t the only thing he won during his life. For his editorial cartooning, Blaine received National Newspaper Awards, a Reuben Award and a Salon of Cartoons Grand Prize. Blaine created a national profile for himself and the paper through the syndication of his work. 

 Roy Carless, a local cartoonist who died in 2009, once described Blaine as “probably the most brilliant caricaturist that I ever met. A lot of artists were jealous of him.” 

Other Blaine admirers included Pierre Trudeau, who wrote to Blaine in May 1969, saying: “I am not sure whether it is more foolhardy for a politician to praise the work of a cartoonist, or to refuse to do so — particularly when the cartoonist holds a black belt in karate. In any case, I freely admit to enjoying your drawings, both the lifelike pencil portraits and the imaginative political caricatures. Keep that pencil sharpened. My fellow politicians and I will keep you well supplied with material.”

But actually it was Blaine who owed thanks to the former prime minister. Trudeau was one of the cartoonist’s favourite subjects and Blaine won a National Newspaper Award by depicting him putting his middle finger into a light socket with one hand and holding an illuminated light bulb with the other. The caption: Finger Power. 

Blaine’s caricatures of Trudeau have a special meaning to The Spec’s current editorial cartoonist, Graeme MacKay. Years ago, as a Grade 10 student with a sketchbook tucked under his arm, MacKay went into The Spec’s newsroom to meet Blaine. 

MacKay says he remembers the five-minute meeting with his hero in such detail that he can still play it like a short movie inside his head. It ends with Blaine grabbing a blue pencil and a piece of paper, and in a matter of seconds drawing a cartoon of Trudeau.

“I thought, ‘This guy is incredible,’” MacKay says. “I still have the drawing.”

Blaine’s wife, Ildiko Horvath, said Blaine was “a very hard worker. Sometimes he would get an idea and draw it and later on think of something else. He’d tear it up and start again and he would come home at 10 o’clock or 11 o’clock when he was finally finished.”

Former MP and cabinet minister Sheila Copps said: “He was an unbelievably talented artist, and a great motorcyclist. He gave me my first ride on a bike, home from my summer job at The Spec. His cartoons really captured the essence of the moment. Several of his cartoons about my time in politics are framed prized possessions.”

Former Mayor Bob Morrow said: “He had a following that would turn to see what he had drawn in the paper before turning to anything else. He was a very nice fellow and a great depicter of the events of the day.”

Jack MacDonald, who died in 2010, used to say he treasured the political cartoons that Blaine drew of him during his time as mayor. His favourite was published after an election win and pictured the new mayor crawling into bed with a big ceremonial chain around his neck and his wife, Jessie, remarking, “You can’t wear that thing to bed.”

MacDonald — who wrote a regular column for The Spec in the 1990s, working out of the same editorial page office as Blaine — once told a reporter: “If you knew him, you knew he was a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. If you crossed him, he would be very upset about it. But there was no malice in him. There was humour.”

MacKay says Blaine had a different sense of humour than political cartoonists today. 

“His cartoons weren’t nasty,” he says. “He used more of a whimsical approach. It was kind of a Rich Little kind of humour compared to the more cutting, crass things you see on late-night television.” 

Horvath said recent years had been difficult for Blaine. He couldn’t speak and suffered from partial paralysis. He had been admitted to the Juravinski Hospital because he was having trouble breathing. He died at about 8 p.m. after watching part of the Super Bowl on television.

“You know how some people can predict things? He always used to say that he wanted to live to 74,” she said. “And he did.” 

As well as Horvath, Blaine is survived by a daughter, Tana, and son, Kirk. Visitation will take place Thursday from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. at Bay Gardens Funeral Home, 1010 Botanical Dr., Burlington. The funeral will be held there at 11 a.m. Friday. (Source: Hamilton Spectator) 

 

SaveSave