HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2015-04-23, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 2015. PAGE 5.
Ever dreamed of robbing a bank? Of
course you have. The fantasy is
irresistible. You’ve got a building just
down the block where employees rifle through
more money in an hour than you’ll earn in a
lifetime.
And for all their professed frugality, they’re
not that careful with it – or even good
at it. According to The Globe and Mail, the
Bank of Montreal missed three of four
‘performance targets’ last year. For most
businesses that would qualify as an epic fail.
Not at the BMO. The bank gave its CEO, Bill
Downe, a raise.
Of half a million dollars.
Well, it’s only fair. There was Bill trying to
scrape by on an annual salary of only $9.48
million. This raise brings his salary up to
almost $10 million a year, which means he
won’t have to pack a lunch from home
anymore.
Seeing money get tossed around like that can
have an effect on people who have to actually
earn their keep. That’s why bank robbers
bubble up in the public consciousness every
once in a while.
We’ve had some famous ones – Jesse James,
Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson.
Canadians too – The Boyd Gang, The
Stopwatch Gang. And women – Patty Hearst,
Bonnie Parker.
Whatever their sex or their citizenship, they
owe their inspiration to a nondescript chap
named Edward Smith, the first bank robber
in North American history. Ed was a penny-
ante crook who ran a small shoe store in
downtown Manhattan back in the early 1800s.
One day a ring of keys came into his
possession.
And not just any keys. These were duplicate
keys to the door and the strong room of the
City Bank on Wall Street.
Ed used the keys and made off with
$245,000 in cash and Spanish doubloons.
(This was in 1831, mind, when a couple
of hundred thousand dollars was the
equivalent of, well, Bill Downe’s annual salary
almost.)
But Ed commenced to do everything wrong.
He went on a spree, burning through $60,000
in less than a week. He moved into a boarding
house under the incredibly imaginative alias of
‘Mr. Jones’ and started to go weird. His
landlord observed that ‘Mr. Jones’ was a tad
paranoid over three small trunks that he’d
dragged up to his room, refusing offers of
assistance. When he left with one of the trunks,
the landlord called the cops. The police came
and, not overly concerned with legal niceties
like Probable Cause or search warrants, picked
the locks on the remaining two trunks. Inside
they found $170,000 in bank notes. Serial
numbers on the bills identified it as the missing
bank loot.
Justice moved a little more nimbly in 1831.
Edward Smith had a one-day trial. He was
found guilty and sentenced to five years
breaking rocks at Sing Sing.
Financial institutions have improved
security since Smith’s day. Now bank safes are
uncrackable, controlled by locks with
combinations that are just about impossible to
decode. Flat out bank robberies are a rarity. A
modern bank loses 10 times more money to
cheque fraud than they do to gunsels leaping
over the counter with a gunny sack yelling
“Fill ’er up!”
The chances of getting away with a bank
heist are slim and the take for successful
robberies are meagre. Less than $8,000 on
average.
But when you open your newspaper
tomorrow there will be a story of somebody
somewhere trying to knock over a bank
because…
Ever heard of Sutton’s Law? It’s a medical
axiom. It proposes that doctors, when
diagnosing a condition or disease should first
consider the obvious rather than the esoteric.
It’s named after Willie Sutton, a career bank
robber who was once asked by a reporter why
he robbed banks.
Sutton looked at the reporter and replied,
“Because that’s where the money is.”
If you don’t believe Willie, you could ask
Bill Downe.
Arthur
Black
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
The photo to the right is one of the few
that doesn’t involve what has become a
trademark of mine: my hat.
Maybe it was because there are and were so
relative few of us, but, when I was younger,
cheering for the Montreal Canadiens was hard.
I guess it started in my own home where my
father cheers for the Boston Bruins and just
extended from there.
Huron County is in a pretty unique situation
when it comes to cheering for national
sports teams because we have a lot to choose
from.
Looking at hockey alone, we’re within three
hours of the Detroit Red Wings, the Buffalo
Sabres and the Toronto Maple Leafs. If you
expand beyond that, between three and seven
hours you have the Ottawa Senators, the
Pittsburgh Penguins and my Canadiens.
(As far as the Bruins, it’s almost a 10 hour
drive to TD Garden in Boston, so I don’t know
what my dad is thinking... or Pastor Mark
Royall from Huron Chapel Missionary
Church, also a Bruins fan, for that matter.)
I guess I could have cheered for the Leafs
and fit in a little better in my youth but, for
some reason, I had it in my head that the
Canadiens were better. Maybe it was
because, in my formative years, they had
Patrick Roy backing them up. Maybe it was
the rich history the team had (and the fact that
they had managed a Stanley Cup win in my
lifetime).
Who knows? What matters is I have always,
and likely will always cheer for the Canadiens.
Notice that, above, the term fan didn’t come
into play. I have a lot of trouble with that word
as of late.
Everyone is likely aware of this but the term
fan was, originally, a short form of the term
fanatic and it seems more and more that people
aren’t fans in the modern sense of the word but
in the oldest sense of the word: “a person filled
with excessive and single-minded zeal”.
I’m often embarrassed by the antics of
Montreal Canadiens fans and I think it’s
because they feel, or they believe, that they are
better than other fans in the league.
Sure, I’ll take a swing at the Make-Me
Laughs or the Bruins every once in awhile (For
example: Why don’t the Leafs drink tea?
Because the Canadiens have all the Cups!) but
it’s not like I honestly believe that cheering for
the Canadiens makes me a better person than
anyone else.
Take, in contrast to my beliefs, the story of
Katie Kerrick.
Kerrick, who is 19 years old, and her 23-
year-old sister Annie are Ottawa Senators fans.
The siblings, decked out in their Senators
gear, expected to be the focus of some
comments, wearing a visiting opponents
jersey, however they weren’t prepared for what
happened at the Centre Bell in Montreal.
The two were assaulted.
Some people may want to split hairs and say,
“Oh someone threw some beer on her and hit
her with the little hand towel, and it’s not that
bad,” but, the simple fact is, that isn’t true.
These two young women were called
derogatory names and assaulted and,
according to reports, found no help from
security when they looked to find help.
It is kind of an unwritten rule that, if you
wear the visiting team’s jersey, you will face
some jeers, however, it is all supposed to be in
good fun.
Rivalries are what make games worth
watching.
I owe my father a few coffees thanks to the
Bruins besting the Habs in the past few playoff
runs (and I swear I’m going to pay up at some
point).
When what is supposed to be all in good fun,
however, turns into something ugly and wrong,
there needs to be comeuppance.
I realize that, in this age of re-selling tickets
through online or other, more nefarious means,
it may be impossible to track down the men
who threw beer at, insulted and hit these young
women.
However, that doesn’t matter.
It was the responsibility of every person
around the incident to stop it and the fact that
they didn’t is almost as bad as the fact that it
happened in the first place.
Both the fact that it happened and the fact
that none of the other fans stopped it frustrates
me. The fact that it continued when the
Canadiens won (which means these slimeballs
were sore winners as well) frustrates me as
well. However, nothing frustrates me more
than the fact that security did nothing to help.
I’ve been to a hockey game at the Centre
Bell. I know that when you walk in there, you
are screened just like you’re trying to get on a
plane.
The centre has the necessary capability to
stop these kinds of actions and it didn’t.
It disgusts me, not only as a Canadiens fan,
but as a Canadian, that anyone from the
country would treat anyone like this over what
is supposed to be our national pastime.
So while I’m not about to stop wearing my
hat or cheering for the Montreal Canadiens, I
think it’s time to declare I’m not a fan, just
someone who enjoys watching a good game
that would like to see the Canadiens win.
Hockey shouldn’t be about separating
Canadians, it should be something we come
together to talk about. One person should not
be excluded because of their choice of team
but should be included to talk about why they
think their team is going to do well.
In the end, it’s okay to cheer, just don’t do it
at the expense of anyone else’s good time.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Being everywhere
As local journalists, reporter Denny
Scott and I are expected, in many
ways, to be everywhere. And while we
could certainly be considered men about town,
we simply can’t be at everything, everywhere,
at all times.
I could go two different ways after making
that statement.
I mean, we have, at times, been given a hard
time over leaving an event before its natural
conclusion. In the world of covering local
events as part of a media outlet with a small
staff, that’s just life. Very often we have
somewhere else to be, as much as we’d like to
stay for the entire concert, dinner, lecture,
performance, there is usually another event of
equal importance happening about a 15-minute
drive away. As I said, don’t hate us, that’s just
the way it has to be – unless, of course,
someone out there wants to fund a
photography department with about eight or
nine employees, but that’s up to you, not me.
But that’s not where I was headed in my
introduction. What I was referring to was the
newly-established Photo of the Day portion of
our new website. It is in this way that we are
quickly realizing that we can’t be everywhere.
In trying to get a Photo of the Day
experiment off the ground, as you can imagine,
a lot of the early pictures have been taken by
us. And it’s through these pictures that we’re
seeing our limited scope.
Slowly but surely, however, reader
submissions are coming in and it’s so great to
see the community and greater Huron County
through your eyes.
The concept has been a long-time wish of
Publisher Keith Roulston, who says he always
thought it would be interesting to create a
photographic journal of life in the community
one daily picture at a time. Three hundred and
sixty five daily pictures later, he says, it will be
amazing to see what life was like in the
community over the course of the year.
So far, I have to say, it has been pretty
interesting and it’s only been a few weeks.
We have had pictures of nice days and some
not-so-nice days, we’ve had pictures of nature
and we’ve had pictures of people. We’ve even
had pictures of horses, and of course, of a beat-
up mailbox.
Most importantly, we’re starting to see the
world through your eyes (as well as our own).
Whether it’s a swelling river or a young man
playing in a sandbox, these are the things that
are happening in the community that may not
be “news-worthy” in the traditional sense of
the word, but that are worth celebrating and
showing to others. And we’re happy to be able
to do that.
In many ways, this project is an extension of
what The Citizen has always tried to do. Of
course, there is always going to be the news
that people want to read and need to know
about. But what we always try to do is offer a
window into the community and its people –
interviews and features that let readers get to
know their neighbours a little bit better.
So, back to Denny and me. Of course, it goes
without saying that we simply can’t be
everywhere. There is just too much to do and
see in this community with all that’s going on.
But that’s where you guys come in. And so far
you’ve been doing a great job. We truly love
what we’re seeing at www.northhuron.on.ca.
Send your submissions to Denny at
reporter@northhuron.on.ca and allow us to see
what you see and be where you are (remotely,
of course) and soon we will have created a
virtual mosaic of life in Huron County through
the eyes of hundreds of residents.
Other Views
A disappointing turn of events
Bank robbery; one way or another