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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2009-03-26, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 2009. PAGE 5. Bonnie Gropp TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt Internet answers American applauds with glee the highest climber of the tree. Englishman has half a mind the tree is not the proper kind. Canadian with tiny frown takes an axe and chops it down. Apoet by the name of Robin Skelton wrote those lines. Mister Skelton was a Cambridge graduate who flew with the Royal Air Force in India. He was also an authority on Irish literature, a poet, a world-class translator of ancient Greek and Roman and a practising witch. In most countries, Robin Skelton would have been a household name. Alas, he chose Canada for a homeland and died largely unknown. We don’t do heroes well in this country – unless they carry a hockey stick. As someone once said, “Americans remember where they were when Kennedy was shot; Canadians remember where they were when Henderson scored.” You don’t need hockey smarts to be a hero in America. Take the case of Chesley Sullenberger. Just a short while ago, Mister Sullenberger – Sully to his friends – was a quiet, retiring commercial pilot for U.S. Airways. But then on Jan. 15 the engines on the plane he was flying from New York to Charlotte, North Carolina sucked in a couple of Canada Geese and seized up. Against advice from the experts, Sully landed the plane in the Hudson River. All 153 people on board survived. And Chesley Sullenberger’s life changed overnight. He was A Certified American Hero. He got a tickertape parade in his hometown of Danville, California. He was a guest on Larry King. The program 60 Minutes did a profile on him. All because he fulfilled part of his job description: he landed his plane safely. How, one wonders, would that have been handled if it had happened in Canada? We don’t have to wonder. We have Air Canada Flight 143. On July 23, 1983,AC 143 was en route from Montreal to Edmonton with 61 passengers and eight crew aboard. About half way through the flight – over Red Lake, Ontario at 41,000 feet – the cockpit crew heard something no cockpit crew wants to hear: a warning buzzer indicating a fuel pressure problem. Seconds later, another buzzer indicating another fuel pressure problem followed by complete failure of one engine. No problem. They could easily divert to Winnipeg and execute a single-engine landing. All pilots are trained for that. Then came another warning buzzer followed by a sound no one in the cockpit had heard before. It was a loud, ominous BONNNNNNNNG. It was the “All Engines Out” alarm. The instrument panel dimmed and went blank. The Boeing 737, all 200 feet of it, was flying – gliding – over northern Ontario wilderness. A hundred-plus tons of steel, people and Samsonite luggage does not a good glider make. Even though it was eight miles up, the plane was settling fast. They’d already dropped 5,000 feet while covering just ten nautical miles. It didn’t take the cockpit crew long to figure out that the plane would never make it to Winnipeg. But Flight 143 had two aces in the hole: the pilot, Captain Robert Pearson was a former glider pilot. And the first officer Maurice Quintal knew the area. He used to fly out of Gimli, Manitoba, which was a lot closer than Winnipeg. Quintal radioed Winnipeg suggesting the air force base at Gimli as an alternative. Which would have been a no-brainer if there still was an air force base at Gimli, but the base had been decommissioned and turned into a local dragstrip. What’s more today was “Family Day” meaning car races on the former runway surrounded by Winnebagos, station wagons, picnic blankets, barbecues and lots of civilians. Not exactly a perfect landing site, but the only one they had. Miraculously, using all his glider training skills, Captain Pearson wrestled the stricken, lumbering airliner down the strip. He blew out two tires, scraped up the plane’s nose and gave several hundred picnickers the thrill of a lifetime. But not one spectator and, aside for a few bumps and bruises, not a single passenger or crew member was hurt. The Canadian twist? Flight 143 had run out of fuel in midair. Why? Because Canada was in the process of converting to the metric system at the time. Someone had screwed up. Instead of 22,000 kilograms, they took off with 22,000 pounds of fuel. Enough to get them almost halfway to their destination. Actually there was another Canadian twist to the story. Remember the hero treatment America gave Chesley Sullenberger for landing his plane in the Hudson? Air Canada rewarded Captain Pearson with…a six-month suspension. First Officer Quintal was suspended for two weeks. Well, it’s their own fault for working for Air Canada. Now if they’d played for the Edmonton Oilers… Arthur Black Other Views Canada: tall poppies prohibited T he big debate in Ontario’s Progressive Conservative party is whether it should return to the far right in choosing a leader. It should tread lightly. Since John Tory, a party moderate, failed to win a seat in the legislature for a second time and resigned as leader, both of those most actively collecting support behind the scenes to succeed him have some right-wing credentials. Tim Hudak, the party’s finance critic, was a cabinet minister under Mike Harris, the extreme-right Conservative premier from 1995-2002, whose policies a sizeable number of Conservatives yearn for as the good old days. Hudak has the backing of some of Harris’s former, non-elected aides, a group into which he married, and his wife, Deb Hutton, was close enough to Harris in opposition and government that when she spoke it was taken as coming from Harris. Hudak also showed his extreme right leanings by co-chairing an unsuccessful campaign in 2004 to get former Ontario finance minister and now federal finance minister Jim Flaherty chosen provincial leader. Flaherty was the furthest right of the candidates and a little to the right of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. He pushed for tax credits for parents who send their children to private schools, which help particularly the better off, and police “scooping” home- less people off Toronto streets and taking them to shelters, hospitals or jail, as a last resort. Flaherty often said the Conservatives could regain government only by returning to the Common Sense Revolution policies of Harris. Hudak endorsed this to the hilt, saying their party wins only when it stands by its principles and does not water them down. Hudak in his own run for leader presumably will stick to what he has said in the past, which means he will be very like Harris, and those pledging support will expect it. The other potential candidate gathering support is Christine Elliott, an MPP for only three years and – this gets complicated – Flaherty’s wife, a lawyer and capable speaker and MPP in her own right. Elliott has not shown a pronounced far right streak. She has urged Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty to spend more on healthcare and fund Families for a Secure Future, which helps people with disabilities reach their potential. She once said she and Tory had “many more similarities than differences,” a statement wild horses could never drag from her husband, and almost her first act as an MPP was supporting gay rights, against which many in her party including Harris and Flaherty fought a long rear guard action. But Elliott has the family knack of employing strong invective. She said the Liberals are “incapable of being straight with Ontarians and use phony numbers and inaccurate calculations” to pretend they have cut hospital waiting lists. She charged that McGuinty sank to “gutter politics” when he appeared to suggest that complaints he steered funds to immigrant groups with Liberal connections were motivated by racism and tried to “cover up,” a term forbidden in the legislature, the large number of lotteries won by ticket retailers. But her husband is helping her find support. Presumably they exchange political ideas and it would be surprising if some of his enthusiasm for right wing causes does not rub off on her. The many former Harris insiders backing her also suggest they see some of their hero in her. The Conservatives should tread warily, because moderate Conservative leaders kept their party in government without interruption from 1943-85 and Tory was almost level with the Liberals in polls in the 2007 election until he proposed funding more faith-based schools, which ended his chances. When Harris left seven years ago, the public also was fed up with the weakened services his tax cuts caused and confrontational style. Harris probably could not have won another election, although this can never be proved, and the Liberals since have won two elections partly by reminding of his regime. What makes his supporters sure now a Harris clone could win an election? Eric Dowd FFrroomm QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk The blue sky, the distance to the sun, the colour of the grass, the reasons for the rainbow, babies. They are the subjects behind questions that parents and grandparents get asked. Children’s inquisitive minds are always churning, and while some of their thoughts swirl into fairly mundane territory, there are those challenging moments. Adults find themselves searching for answers, hoping to resurrect long-buried science or geography classes, winging it, or trying the often more sensible tactic of evasiveness. I know I called upon them all as a mom. But now, as a grandparent I have found the perfect answer to just about everything. “Google it!” Together with my grandson I have researched the feeding habits of Tyrannosaurus rex (predator or scavenger?), remembered a little about seashells and ruminated on rock formations. We have learned about the rainbow, looked at Spongebob’s website and listened to some music. Together, we both learn something, and I no longer strain my brain to try and answer questions I truly have no answer for in the first place. Obviously, everything one reads on the internet can’t be trusted. But there are reliable sources that have provided us with the opportunity to know something about everything with some tap, taps of the fingertips. I am not a particularly technologically savvy person. I don’t pretend to know much about computers or the internet. But I do know that answers can be found on virtually everything without leaving your own space and that’s kind of nice. The internet has become a useful tool at work linking me to news information, background and research opportunities. Personally, I love that it brings ideas to me. My daughter found a do-it-yourself design for some unique ‘picture-perfect’ centrepieces for her wedding. We were able to shop first on-line for gowns and dresses, then locate the stores that sold the preferred styles. Looking to create CDs of 50s and 60s music for dinner, meant an entertaining evening with You Tube, lots of giggles, some wine — and for this old girl, plenty of nostalgia. From Dean Martin to Otis Redding it was like a personal concert of long-ago favourites. You can get a recipe, unearth some gardening tips, dig up ancient history or get help with genealogy. You can read a book review, unravel the lyrical mystery of Louis, Louis, or find a quote from a Shakespearean sonnet. You can find a location, find a friend, find a date. Now, none of this comes as any surprise to the majority of people reading. But don’t you still find it fascinating? When I consider my parents, who have no idea what I’m talking about here (why change things now), I can’t help but think of the progress in their lifetime and be amazed. My mother was born just months after the first radio news program was broadcast Aug. 31, 1920 by station 8MK in Detroit, Michigan, my dad, one year before the mechanical television. Now I can find that information simply by typing a question. I can also explain easily why the sky is blue and grass is green, how far away the sun is, and what makes a rainbow. The baby question? Well, that one can still be a little complicated to answer even with the internet. Right dominates Tory race