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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