HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2007-05-03, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MAY 3, 2007. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
Skirmishes between Ontario’s political
parties less than six months before an
election are being called a phony war,
but don’t tell that to Liberal Premier Dalton
McGuinty.
The term is being applied because the party
leaders have not taken off in their tour buses,
turned on their flood of campaign
commercials destined to be slightly larger than
Niagara Falls, or unveiled all the policies on
which they will ask people to vote.
The biggest guns are not firing yet, but there
is a lot of hand-to-hand infighting going on in
the current front line trenches, the legislature,
which could affect the result.
The opposition parties have broken through
Liberal government defences in two areas.
The first is their failure to get to grips
quickly with the discovery some retailers of
provincial lottery tickets were cheating
ticket buyers. The Liberals have not been
able to answer satisfactorily and refused
to let the issue be investigated by a
legislature committee and the opposition
parties have made the most of the issue
by rather dramatically comparing it to
Watergate, the spying on political opponents
that cost U.S. president Richard Nixon his
job.
The Progressive Conservatives, who are not
normally brimming with joy, have even had
fun with the affair by labeling McGuinty “cut
and run Dalton” and saying his favourite meal
is duck.
The Liberals have counter-attacked by
accusing the opposition of faking outrage and
indignation and indulging in “gotcha politics,”
but mostly have been in retreat.
The opposition parties have pushed
hostilities further by showing the Liberals
have been more prone to give grants to groups
that help immigrants run by Liberals, which
adds to a growing feeling they are as partisan
as the others.
Conservative leader John Tory has been
given some openings to scoff that McGuinty is
not a reliable manager and has “never run a
two-car parade before.” Tory was a chief
executive officer in big business and the few
commercials he has put out so far have tried to
show he was good at it.
Tory has said McGuinty has set a record for
breaking promises, starting with one not to
increase taxes as his first act as premier, which
suggests he intends to keep this issue alive in
the election.
The Liberals also have indicated they will
attempt to beat back the New Democratic
Party, which has increased its strength in
recent by-elections. Cheri DiNovo, one of the
NDP winners, has charged McGuinty is using
money “stolen” from poor people to pay for
his massive pay raise for MPPs, which
suggests how hard the NDP will push to make
this a major issue.
NDP leader Howard Hampton has accused
fellow-northerner and Natural Resources
Minister David Ramsay of being “the minister
responsible for shutting down northern
Ontario,” where rivalries will be high in the
election.
The Liberals among their counter-attacks
have charged that the NDP has opposed
increasing social assistance benefits and
protecting tenants from unfair landlords, when
clearly it shied from supporting legislation on
them because of its fine print.
The Conservatives have raised again the
case of Harinder Takhar, who remains a
McGuinty minister despite having failed to
sever himself from his former business and
being criticized by the integrity commissioner.
The Liberals have recalled Tory entered
Ontario politics claiming he wanted to make it
more civilized, but said he is now the gutter,
and reminded he ran an infamous,
unsuccessful campaign to re-elect prime
minister Kim Campbell in which his party
aired TV commercials stressing Jean
Chrétien’s facial deformity.
Parties are so eager to slug it out with each
other that in a one-hour period Speaker Mike
Brown had to ask the legislature to come to
order eight times, complain he was having
incredible difficulty hearing, urge MPPs to
show more respect for their institution and
warn four times he would kick some of them
out.
This has all happened in a few weeks in a so-
called phony war – what sort of casualties can
we expect in a real one?
The legacy they left
They say a picture is worth a thousand
words, but whoever said it was
seriously low-balling the powers of the
visual.
A picture – as in a photograph – can be
worth ‘way more than that. Here’s the story of
three photographs, one of which turned the
course of a war; another of which destroyed an
industry; and a third which torpedoed the
career of a would-be prime minister of
Canada.
What’s more, the photographs were lies.
Or rather, they misrepresented what they
showed.
Harry Callaghan, a famous American
photographer once said “a photographer is
able to capture a moment that people can’t
always see.” Which is true, but it’s also true
that a photographer can sometimes produce a
picture that completely misrepresents reality.
Consider one of the iconic photos on the
20th century – the fiery explosion of the
Hindenburg zeppelin over Lakehurst, N.J., in
1937. The photo looks like something Goya
might have painted. It shows showers of
sparks and flames billowing out of the cigar-
shaped craft as it drifts earthward like a
stricken whale.
The photo made the front pages of
newspapers around the world.
It also killed the zeppelin business stone
dead.
Before the Hindenberg crashed, zeppelins
were considered the safest and by far the most
pleasant form of air travel around. Regular
flights ran between Europe and the U.S.
Passengers dined on white linen with real
silver and listened to dance bands as their
crafts wafted back and forth over the Atlantic.
There was talk that zeppelins would soon
replace luxury liners – even trains.
One photograph changed all that.
The irony? The Hindenberg disaster wasn’t
that big a deal. Only 35 of the 97 passengers
on board died. New Jersey’s highways
routinely claimed more lives on an average
holiday weekend.
The fact is, if there hadn’t been
photographers on the scene to record the
horrific explosion, zeppelins would probably
be a commonplace sight in our skies today.
Flash forward to 1968. Again, one morning
the front pages of newspapers around the
globe carry a single, stark, horrifying
photograph. It is taken on the streets of Saigon
and shows a man in combat fatigues calmly
putting a bullet in the head of a Vietnamese
who is young, handcuffed and incongruously
wearing a plaid, short-sleeved shirt.
The executioner looks like a callous
murderer and the photo generates knee-jerk
revulsion and an instinctive backlash against
the Vietnam War and the U.S. role therein.
Everybody feels instant empathy for the poor
young man so summarily dispatched.
Again, irony raises its gnarled head. The
‘poor young man’ is captain of a Viet Cong
terrorist squad which had slaughtered dozens
of unarmed civilians that day. His executioner
is the Saigon chief of police.
But that’s not the story the photo told. From
the moment the picture hit the papers, the
police chief’s life went into a downward
spiral. He lost his job and emigrated to
Australia, where he was shunned like a leper.
He went to the U.S. where he ran a restaurant
for awhile – until his identity was disclosed as
‘that killer in the photo’and he was driven out
of business.
Eddie Adams, the Associated Press
cameraman who took the photo, won a
Pulitzer Prize for it, but it didn’t give him
much pleasure.
As he later said: “The chief killed the Viet
Cong with a revolver; I killed the chief with
my camera.”
Doug Ball could relate to that. He was a
photographer with Canadian Press back in
1974, assigned to Robert Stanfield’s campaign
to become Canada’s 19th prime minister.
On a cross-Canada swing the campaign
airplane landed in North Bay for refueling.
Everybody got out on the tarmac to stretch
their legs. Someone produced a football to
throw around. Stanfield was game. Doug Ball
got out his camera.
He shot an entire roll – 36 exposures – of
Stanfield playing catch. He ran into the
terminal and had Air Canada Express send the
film to CP headquarters in Toronto for
possible inclusion in the next day’s
newspapers.
Most of the photos Ball took showed
Stanfield either throwing or catching the
football with surprising grace and elegance.
Only one of the photos showed him knocked-
kneed, hands grasping empty air and wincing
as the ball squirted out of his grasp.
Guess which photo the newspaper editors
chose.
When The Globe and Mail came out the next
morning, there was the photo splashed across
the front page with the headline “A Political
Fumble?”
Southam columnist Charles Lynch, who was
also on the campaign plane asked Doug Ball if
he’d taken the picture that was on the front
page of The Globe.
“When I said yes,” Ball recalls, “Lynch said,
‘Trudeau just won the election’”.
And he was right.
Eddie Adams, the Pulitzer Prize winning
photojournalist once said: “Still photographs
are the most powerful weapon in the world.”
He was right too.
Arthur
Black
Party skirmishes not phony war
There is a grouping of photographs on the
wall of a room in my home. In them are
my ancestors, whose austere Edwardian
countenances give nothing away, provide no
insight into their characters.
These faces, framed by stiff collars and plain
severe coiffures, fascinate me. I scrutinize
them often, wondering at their experiences,
what life was like for them. Occasionally I see
a feature that connects me, but for the most
part I find it incredible that these erstwhile
people, with whom I share a blood tie, are
strangers to me.
Most of them, that is. For among these faces
are those of my grandparents, not as I
remember them, but there to stir memories.
In this room, I also keep my treadmill. My
long ‘walks’ give me plenty of opportunity to
study these photos and reflect. So it was the
other evening. With MP3 player plugged into
my ears, and my gait set, my eyes drifted to my
forebears’ images. And I thought of my long-
departed, but much loved grandparents and
wondered for what of the me I am now, I have
them to thank, or not.
It doesn’t take long on this Earth to
recognize that time here is a whispered verse
in a masterful soliloquy. None of us is here
forever and we say goodbye to loved ones
many times in our own swift lifetime.
What eases those goodbyes is in recognition
of what part of these people remains with you.
Initially we search for it, but as time goes by
and the sadness is less intense, we don’t
always remember.
It was giving my grandparents their rightful
responsibility in my existence that helped to
wile away my workout the other evening. I
brought forth my memories then translated
those I could to how they affected me.
From my grandfathers I learned that men
can be gentle and sensitive. Both exemplified
the ‘traditional’ male — handy, hard working,
strong. But they were also quiet and kind.
Grandpa Matthews was as happy drawing his
beloved horses as he was working them, while
Grandpa Ott proved a man can still be a man
while letting his wife take charge.
Their wives certainly gave me an early
understanding that the female species can be
just as imposing as any guy. These women
didn’t take life easy, didn’t whine about hard
work, and would tackle any job that
confronted them. They may not have been the
muscle, but they were the strength of the
family. And wise enough to make their men
feel otherwise.
It is also, I suspect, because of the example
they set I take such pleasure in preparing a
meal for my family and seeing them gathered
together around my table.
I believe my paternal grandmother began my
love of music. Whether plunking the organ or
humming in the kitchen, her joy was evident.
The few German words I can utter are
courtesy of my dad’s father. I still see him,
sitting in his kitchen chair, set just inside the
door, chuckling at my inept pronunciation,
smiling proudly at my desire.
When I smell a peony or dig my hands in the
soft soil to plant a seed or flower, Grandma
Matthews is with me. When I bake shortbread
I know she’s keeping a close eye.
The sight of a child bounced on a knee, of
naive eyes wide in wonder and delight at a
story being told, brings my Grandpa Matthews
as close to me as he was those many years ago.
Thinking of them always reminds me of how
short my time with them was. But it was time
well spent. I treasure the memories and the
legacy these grand grandparents of mine left
me.
Other Views You can’t always believe what you see
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
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