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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 QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk