Helena Guergis tries to hold back her emotions while speaking to reporters at her campaign office in Collingwood, Ont., Friday, April 15, 2011. (Canadian Press)

The Toronto media establishment is positively giddy over the announcement that the Hon. Helena Guergis—a former MP and  junior minister in the Harper government—has launched a defamation suit against many former colleagues, including the Prime Minister.  Mrs. Guergis is skilfully playing the tearful victim, and the press—as it always does when there is the potential for blood in the water—is lapping it up.

If the press had a reasonable memory—or was prepared to salivate less at the thought of inflicting damage upon the government—it might recall that Guergis and husband Rahim Jaffer may not have committed any criminal acts warranting prosecution, but in the eyes of Parliament’s ethical watchdogs, they fell afoul of professional codes of conduct.  An editorial by the Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin does a good job of summarising the alleged professional misdeeds.

On Jaffer:

In a report released on Monday, [Lobbying Commissioner Karen] Shepherd criticized the actions of Jaffer and his business partner, Patrick Glemaud, who were involved in a political controversy which also snared Jaffer’s wife Guergis, the former Simcoe-Grey MP.

Shepherd said that while Jaffer and Glemaud were unsuccessful in attempts to secure $178 million in federal Green Infrastructure Fund funding, they should have registered as lobbyists.

… This matter has been investigated by the RCMP, which determined there were no grounds for criminal charges.

But Jaffer and Glemaud broke federal rules by failing to register as lobbyists before trying to obtain taxpayers’ money.

– “Jaffer, Guergis still acted contrary to what is ‘right’.”  Editorial, Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin, 17 December 2011.

On Guergis:

Last summer, federal Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson determined that Guergis broke Parliament’s conflict of interest code by sending a letter to Simcoe County officials, encouraging them to hear a presentation from a green waste management firm’s owner, who had business links to Jaffer.

According to the conflict of interest code, politicians are prohibited from using their position to further their private interests, or those of their family members.

Guergis responded to Dawson’s findings by saying there was no proof she had done anything wrong. She was also investigated by the RCMP and not charged criminally

… Part of her responsibility as an MP, however, is to know what the conflict of interest guidelines are and adhere to them. Most politicians know enough to steer clear of any potential conflicts of interests.

– “Jaffer, Guergis still acted contrary to what is ‘right’.”  Editorial, Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin, 17 December 2011.

Anyone who watches police and lawyer shows on television will know that giving the police no grounds to pursue criminal charges is not the same thing as being spotless and squeaky-clean.  In the eyes of the Lobbying Commissioner and federal Ethics Commissioner, there were violations of professional codes of conduct.  Those details will certainly be relevant to the defence in the defamation suit.

It’s all but certain that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is going to spend the next three years tripping over landmines laid down by his own hyperbole, clumsiness and lack of forethought.  His Worship has done rather a lot to erode the goodwill of his supporters and, according to the Toronto Star, is now alienating the swing voters [1,2] on City Council.

I understand the Star‘s distaste for the current mayor; following his first term as mayor of the amalgamated city, I had an overwhelmingly negative view of Mel Lastman (and what I judged to be his appalling lack of vision and competence).  In the 2000 municipal election, I voted for one of Mel’s opponents; the tranny rather than the troubled hippie, mainly because I judged the hippie to be an unserious fringe candidate—and if one is going to vote for an unserious fringe candidate, that person should at least be entertaining.

As I said, I understand there will be opposition; what is less easy to understand is the Star‘s analysis.  Writing for Openfile.ca, John Michael McGrath looks at the newspaper’s methodology and finds it wanting:

If we go to the Ford Council Scorecard (an always-useful resource for council-watchers), we see just how broad a group these [eight swing-vote] councillors are. Moeser has voted with Rob Ford more than 80 per cent of the time, while Bailão (Ward 18, Davenport) has voted with the mayor only 30 per cent of the time. That’s a huge range, which makes the idea of a “swing” bloc questionable.

– McGrath, John Michael.  ”Ford losing the swing votes on council, but what’s a swing vote anyway?”  Openfile.ca, 21 December 2011.

McGrath posits that the swing councillors are more properly those whose votes accord with the mayor around 40-60% of the time, rather than the 30-80% range the Star uses.  In which case there are just three swing voters—not the Star’s eight—on a council of forty-four.

It’s a short piece, but well worth the read.

Many responsible news organs (Globe & Mail, National Post, CBC, CTV—all of whom really ought to know better) repeated the speculation that this was somehow engineered by paterfamilias Wayne Gretzky, who was allegedly displeased by the racy photos made public by his daughter.  To be fair, this supposition and the subsequent media frenzy was initiated by the young lady’s own tweeted revelation: “Having a nice sit down dinner with my dad about social media..haha #SIKEEE [sic]”

If this is in fact the truth of the matter, then I will not stop laughing for a week.  Here for your own examination are a selection of photos culled from Ms. Gretzky’s feed; I have deliberately selected the most revealing—which for our purposes might be called the most “racy”.

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I grant that none of these poses would be commonplace amongst the Ursuline Sisters of the Roman Union, but neither is Ms. Gretzky displaying more of herself than one would for sunbathing in the presence of families at Kew Beach.

No father is bound to greet his daughter’s blossoming sexuality with anything like cheer, but Paulina is 22 after all, and by law, an adult.  Whatever she chooses to put out there is, for better or worse, her own decision.

The supposed displeasure of Paulina’s famous dad is all the richer because of the ah, road to fame taken by her mother, Janet Gretzky—or as the readers of the March 1987 edition of Playboy would know her, Janet Jones.  Here, for purposes of comparison, is a brief selection of photos of the then-26-year-old Ms. Jones.

NOTE: Links to these images will be deprecated after 15 days to protect the copyright of the original publisher.

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I leave it to you, the discerning reader, to determine which is the more prurient in nature.

1987 was also the year that Wayne Gretzky ended a seven-year relationship with Canadian singer Vikki Moss.  Details are a little hazy as to whether things with Moss had officially ended before or after the fateful Gretzky-Jones meeting at an L.A. Lakers game.  According to the 19 February 1997 episode of Howard Stern’s radio show, Gretzky and Jones hit it off right away, and consummated the relationship that very night.  Author Stephen Brunt has chronicled the essential elements:

It happened fast—as he would confess to radio DJ Howard Stern a few years later, everything happened very fast.  (“That’s why they call you The Great One,” Stern said.)  There was a post-game dinner at a restaurant in the San Fernando Valley with Thicke and a few of his friends.  (Two years later, when Jones and Gretzky were married in Edmonton, Thicke brought the chairs from the restaurant where they had sat that first night, and gave them as a wedding present.)  The next morning, Gretzky phoned one of his buddies.  “You’re not going to believe this,” he said.  “You know that chick from The Flamingo Kid?”  Soon enough, Moss was history, and at the training camp for the Canada Cup tournament the following September, Gretzky went public with the fact that there was a new woman in his life (which, in Edmonton at least, was treated as very big news).

– Brunt, Stephen.  Gretzky’s Tears: Hockey, Canada, and the Day Everything Changed.  Toronto: Random House of Canada, 2010. Print.  p. 100.

We may surmise, then, that Gretzky pater did not find it objectionable that his future bride disrobed for a men’s magazine—to say nothing of getting intimate on the first date.  I would also like to enter into evidence Janet Jones’ 1998 interview with Sports Illustrated‘s Jeff Pearlman:

Right before the nuptials, newspapers asked Wayne about the March 1987 issue of Playboy, the cover of which was graced by his nearly naked bride-to-be. (“You can’t see anything,” he said at the time. “I showed it to my mother; she loved it.”) That wasn’t good enough for the press. What was she thinking, they cried? Where were her morals’?

– Pearlman, Jeff.  “A Tough Post-nup.”  Sports Illustrated, 20 February 1998.

As something of a curmudgeon, I lean toward the cynic’s view that Paulina Gretzky’s Twitter shutdown was a calculated effort to gain attention for the lacklustre offspring of a famous parent.  Otherwise, one would have to conclude that Wayne Gretzky is a patronising hypocrite, denying his adult daughter the very liberties that he and his wife were happy to exploit for their own benefit.

Nodar Kumaritashvili crash, 12 February 2010. (AFP/Getty Images)

The Globe & Mail is reporting that a year ahead of the 2010 Winter Olympics, the president of the International Luge Federation (FIL) wrote concerned letters to both VANOC chief John Furlong and the luge track’s designer.

“[FIL President] Mr. Fendt noted that the Whistler sliding track was recording historic sled speeds that were nearly 20 kilometres an hour faster than the track designer had projected.

…“The red flags would have gone up, absolutely,” [Mr. Svein Romstad, Secretary General of the FIL] said in an interview. “Our goal is always to have tracks around 135 kmh, and that was what the designer projected. Instead, we suddenly got to 154 kmh. That was never our intention.”

– Mickleburgh, Rod and Jeff Blair. “VANOC feared injury ‘or worse’ year before luger’s fatal crash.” Globe & Mail, 6 February 2011.

With respect to the Globe, that is all fascinating but irrelevant. Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili died because he struck a steel pole at trackside while travelling at 143.6 kmh. Hitting the same pole at a slightly slower 123.6 kmh would have been equally as fatal.  The problem is not track speed, but placing steel structural elements immediately adjacent to the track.  The pole was there to support a sun visor, meant to preserve the track’s surface; there’s no reason it couldn’t have been designed and equipped with greater shielding/padding or further separation from the track.  Which, by the way, is exactly what organisers did after the accident.

WHISTLER, BC - FEBRUARY 13, 2010: New boarding is installed along turn 16 of the luge course, where Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed. (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

MEMRI does the Lord’s work by uncovering incredible new evidence of war crimes at the monstrous and illegal Guantanamo Bay detention facility.  In an interview with Al-Jazeera (Qatar), a former inmate makes some preposterous astounding claims: namely that Jews used witchcraft on prisoners, and nearly caused him to be sodomised by a cat.  The interviewer asks “But there wasn’t really a cat there?” to which the former inmate replies “Absolutely not.”

Which begs the question of how one can identify a cat as the perpetrator if it can’t be seen or heard.  Prior experience, perhaps.

In giving way to such tendencies we partake in what Jean-François Lyotard called “memorial-forgetful history”; this is the construction of a historical narrative which distorts the story of the past into its own present image, conveniently forgetting all that might be contradictory.  I’m a little disappointed that Craig and Mark Kielburger—men who have earned one of the country’s highest honours for merit, the Order of Canada—seem to engage in this practice.  Writing in the National Post‘s Full Comment blog, Mr. Matt Gurney takes the Toronto Star‘s Kielberger brothers to task for having a particularly narrow view of Canadian history.

There’s a lot to pick apart in their column, but let’s start where they did. Here’s their intro:

Last month, archaeologists unearthed a street lined with sphinxes in the Egyptian city of Luxor. We have to wonder if they found any remnants of Canada’s once-strong record on foreign policy down there.

Maybe that’s a little harsh. Nonetheless, Canada’s prominence on the international stage started back in 1956 when Lester B. Pearson launched the world’s first peacekeeping mission during the Suez Crisis.

… the contention that Canada sprang into being the moment Mr. Pearson accepted his Peace Prize, while much beloved of starry eyed progressives, kind of skips over a few chapters of Canadian history. History isn’t for everyone, of course, so while I might not expect them to know much about the Reciprocity Treaty, it’s not unfair to expect to them to know that there were two really big wars — world wars, very much on the “international stage” — that Canada played a major, disproportionately large role in. Right?

– Gurney, Matt. “Would it be wrong for the Kielburgers to learn some history?” National Post, 15 December 2010.

Mr. Gurney’s snark-meter is turned up a little, but it is worth reading for the impressive list of achievements in Canadian arms and influence.  There’s a lot of history that is poorly taught, dimly understood, or willfully ignored because it is contradictory to the prevailing political or popular winds.  In Canada it is generally our martial history which tends to get papered-over, in our vain rush to convince the world (and ourselves) that we were born a post-modern nation, free of the bloodshed, strife and sins of the Old World.  The danger in intentionally forgetting our past—even the unpleasant bits—is that at some point, a future generation will be forced to relive it—but without any benefit of hindsight, since we will have struck any potential lessons from their collective memory.

RELATED: Another little-known episode in our military history, Canada’s occupation of Iceland.

Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa Z-Force occupation patch, from the collection of Hinrik Steinsson.

]]> http://taylorempireairways.com/2010/12/avoiding-history/feed/ 1 http://taylorempireairways.com/2010/12/bbdo-geae-wright-2003/ http://taylorempireairways.com/2010/12/bbdo-geae-wright-2003/#comments Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:34:00 +0000 Chris Taylor http://taylorempireairways.com/?p=8417

Canadian war correspondents in a jeep, Modica, Italy, 13 July 1943. (L-R): Peter Stursberg, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; Ross Munro, Canadian Press; Captain Dave MacLellan, Public Relations Officer; Lieutenant Al Fraser, Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit. (Capt. Frank Royal / Canada. Dept. of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA-204808)

Matthew 'Matt' Halton, CBC war correspondent making a recording in Sicily on 20 August 1943. (CBC/Library and Archives Canada)

Engineer Paul Johnston of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation setting up equipment to record a broadcast by CBC correspondent Matthew Halton, Catangora, Italy, 14 September 1943. (Capt. Frank Royal / Canada. Dept. of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA-206169)

War correspondent Peter Stursberg of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recording a radio broadcast, Potenza, Italy, 22 September 1943. (Capt. Frank Royal / Canada. Dept. of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA-145343)

War correspondent Benoit Lafleur of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation near San Vito Chietino, Italy, 8 April 1944. (Sgt. J. Ernest DeGuire / Canada. Dept. of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA-197554)

A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reporter interviewing two parachute-qualified officers, one from the Royal 22e Régiment, who are part of the First Rotation Leave, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 8 December 1944. (Canada. Dept. of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA-213625)

I gave up on CBC Radio right around the time my twenties disappeared into the rear-view mirror. A decade and a half ago CBC’s radio services were much more interesting and thoughtful than they have become in recent times.

But I have to wonder, on behalf of everyone who still tries to practice honest-to-God journalism at the Mother Corp, did they run out of actual radio journalists sometime in the past year? Joe Canadian (of the worst beer money can buy) is the best you could do?

7:00 am — X-Carriers (60min, TV-PG, CC)

From super-computer design facilities to liquid-metal cooled, nuclear propulsion systems, the top secret future of the U.S. Navy’s most dangerous weapons are revealed.

8:00 am — Mega-Carrier, Episode 1 (60min, TV-G, CC)

Over 18,000 men and women have been brought together to build the world’s most technologically sophisticated aircraft carrier: The U.S.S. George H.W. Bush. From initial construction, to its first day at sea, follow the story of its builders.

9:00 am — Toughest Carrier Jobs (60min, TV-PG, CC)

The Toughest Carrier Jobs highlights the skill, training and commitment of the men and women who have the honor of working on what is essentially a floating city: A U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier, which is full of amazingly difficult jobs.

10:00 am — Carrier – Fortress at Sea (60min, TV-G, CC)

Life aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson is thrilling, tedious, demanding and dangerous all at the same time. En route from San Francisco to the Persian Gulf, the crew’s extraordinary adventure unfolds.

11:00 am — Mega-Carrier, Episode 1 (60min, TV-G, CC)

Over 18,000 men and women have been brought together to build the world’s most technologically sophisticated aircraft carrier: The U.S.S. George H.W. Bush. From initial construction, to its first day at sea, follow the story of its builders.

12:00 pm — Sinking of an Aircraft Carrier (60min, TV-PG, CC)

Nearly a quarter of a ton of explosives are set to sink the Oriskany Aircraft Carrier during the world’s largest non-military exercise to sink a ship. Bad weather, flooding, short tempers, and grueling labor conditions threaten to halt the project.

1:00 pm — Extreme Machines – Carriers (60min, TV-G, CC)

Footage of the Navy’s huge floating fortress, the John C. Stennis, demonstrates the sophistication and complexity of today’s carriers.

2:00 pm — A Supercarrier is Burning: The U.S.S. Enterprise (60min, TV-G, CC)

A fire aboard a supercarrier detonates the ship’s weapons. The harrowing minutes that follow are packed with terror, heroism, sacrifice and courage. There are 18 detonations, 15 aircraft destroyed, 17 damaged, 28 dead and 343 wounded.

3:00 pm — City of Steel: Carrier (60min, TV-PG, CC)

The construction of the new aircraft carrier, the Reagan, vividly illustrates the remarkable scale of these floating cities and the weapons onboard. A new carrier, the Truman, is put through its paces on its maiden outing.

I like aircraft carriers as much as the next guy, but holy mackerel, that’s nine solid hours of carrier junk. Four hours devoted to carrier design and construction, three to day-to-day operations.

Enough is enough, fellas. Every single one of these shows has been aired a half-dozen times already, and they are not what we would call current. Some still feature the F-14 Tomcat, a fighter that was retired from USN service four years ago.

I seriously wonder how the channel manages to retain viewership.