The Citizen, 2006-10-05, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2006. PAGE 5.
Other Views
From your roving robo reporter
Half the jobs I've held in my life don't
exist anymore. When I was a kid I
spent a few summers `stooking' hay
on my brother-in-law's farm. It meant trudging
through a field, pitchforking sheaves of new-
mown hay into teepee-like stacks to dry in the
sun. Nowadays, farmers use big, smelly
combine-balers which vacuum the hay up
from the field, bind it in tight, snug bales and
spit it out in a tenth of the time.
I also worked, years ago, as a plumber's
gofer, humping heavy cast-iron pipe from
truck to jobsite.
That job's gone. Cast-iron pipe is history,
replaced by light-weight plastic.
And do ocean —going vessels even employ
lookouts anymore?
As a deck cadet on an oil tanker back in the
'60s, I spent many a lonely four-hour stint on
late-night 'watch' — standing on the bridge
peering with red-rimmed eyes out into the
darkness, looking for lights — or the hulk of
anything adrift that might do us harm. Radar
takes care of that chore nowadays.
I'm not complaining. Those were jobs best
left to mechanical devices with nothing better
to do.
Still, it's humbling to realize that you can be
replaced by an assemblage of nuts and bolts
hooked up to an engine.
Remember the folk song about that 19th
century "steel-drivin'" man, John Henry? He
was, so legend has it, the strongest, fastest man
ever to swing a sledge hammer. One fateful
day he faced off against a steam-engine spike
driver to see whether man or machine was
better at laying railroad track.
John Henry won — sort of.
Died with a hammer in his hand, poor boy
Died with a hammer in his hand
Ah, well. It wasn't too much later in my life
that I laid down my pitchforks and binoculars
in favour of a typewriter and became a
Newspaper Guy. After all, it would be a rainy
Ontario's political parties are promising
to take the high road to next year's
election, but already slipping toward
some detours in the valley.
The politicians said they would avoid
negatives and personal name-calling after a
nasty by-election in which voters seemed to
warn they would not support those who use
such tactics.
The Liberals under Premier Dalton
McGuinty had dug under rocks and revealed
the New Democrat candidate sold drugs while
living on the streets and expressed sympathy
for a notorious killer, but this backfired and
they lost the seat.
McGuinty acknowledged there had been
faults in his party's approach. The Progressive
Conservatives and NDP could not be blamed
in this case, except for provoking the Liberals
with hard-hitting attacks.
The parties, now the legislature has resumed
sitting, are having difficulty keeping their
promise. The Liberals since being elected to
govern in 2003 have tried to deflect almost
every criticism by saying former Conservative
premier Mike Harris caused the problem,
because he cut services to reduce taxes.
It is not sleazy or negative to say a former
government did a poor job, but endless
repetition of it — McGuinty would mention it if
he was asked what the weather is like —
suggests the government wants to avoid taking
responsibility for current concerns and frays
tempers.
McGuinty's first words, after Conservative
—leader John Tory asked in his first question
what his government would do to help autistic
children, were that it already has done a lot
day in Osoyoos before any machine could
replace a reporter, right?
Not right.
Thomson Financial, an American news
service that supplies market info to
newspapers, television and radio stations
across North America, has just introduced its
latest crack team of news writing staff
members.
It's a bank of computers.
The machines have been programmed to
intercept, interpret, write and transmit
automated articles on stockmarket news. They
can scan developments on, say, a corporation's
earnings report, interpret the data with
reference to current conditions and previous
history — and publish an actual news story on
the event within 0.3 seconds.
A Thomson spokesman said it's not about
replacing reporters. It's "about delivering
information to customers so they can make an
immediate trading decision."
Sure. That's what the railway barons told
John Henry.
Come to think of it, I once knew the
newspaper equivalent of John 'Henry. His
name was Jiggs O'Brian, one of my early
mentors in journalism.
Jiggs was riding a copy desk at a struggling
bi-weekly newspaper when I met him,
winding up a downwardly-spiraling 40-year
career. Jiggs had seen it all and written about
most of it, big and small, from coronations to
long-lost-brother-reunion stories, wedding-
ring-in-a-lake-trout stories, and kitten-up-a-
more than Harris.
The premier was asked why he has not
found a permanent solution to a dispute in
Caledonia, where Natives who claim
ownership of a planned building site have
occupied it for months, and he again brought
back Harris.
McGuinty said Ipperwash Provincial Park
has remained occupied and unavailable to the
public since 1995, when police moved in to
evict native demonstrators and shot one dead.
The Liberals are waiting expectantly, because
a judicial enquiry will rule soon whether
Harris set off the chain of events by ordering
police to evict them.
Health Minister and new Deputy-Premier
George Smitherman added that hospitals have
problems because they suffered "under the
Conservative torment of Mike Harris," who
failed to tackle problems, and, going back
more than a decade, under the NDP.
Elizabeth Witmer, a health minister under
Harris, protested that "after three years in
government, it is time for the Liberals to stop
blaming other parties for the problems that
exist today."
Smitherman also quickly labeled Tory as
having been a backroom politician, which
tree stories.
Was Jiggs jaded and cynical? No. Ozzie
Osbourne is jaded and cynical. Jiggs
was...something else.
I remember how he handled fire stories.
Most reporters would relish the chance to
chase a clanging fire engine and write a first-
person I-was-there story. Not Jiggs. He had
special forms he kept in the bottom left hand
drawer of his desk, right behind the 26-er of
Captain Morgan.
When someone phoned in a fire report, Jiggs
would take one of the forms, roll it into his
typewriter and start pecking in the blanks.
The form went something like:
City firemen were called out to deal with a
alarm fire that broke out at AM/PM
yesterday/this morning/afternoon
district of
Damage
negligible/substantial/about $
Cause of the fire was faulty wiring/careless
smoking/ lightning/unknown/suspicious.
Good old Jiggs — just slightly ahead of
Thomson Financial.
I should have seen it coming, of course.
When I started out in the newspaper biz, any
reporter worth his byline could write fluent
shorthand. Hand-held tape-recorders came
along and took care of that.
And for at least the past 20 years, my
battered Olivetti has been relegated to duty as
a spider incubation unit on the back shelf of
my closet, replaced by my laptop computer.
Gone are the days of carbon copies and messy,
illegible copy paper.
Nowadays, thanks to technology, I can hand
in spotless, perfectly spell-checked copy that
is literate, rational and
#@&*"%$)**$!!^^# ;>?%%#*^@ !8E8E+
raises suspicion the Liberals in an election will
go even further back to 1993 and recall his
most embarrassing moment.
Tory then chaired a campaign to re-elect
prime minister Kim Campbell and in a giant
lapse in taste ran TV commercials
emphasizing Liberal leader Jean Chretien's
partial facial paralysis with a voice saying the
speaker would be embarrassed if he became
prime minister. These were condemned and
withdrawn.
Liberals would love to recall the incident in
Tory's first general election as leader.
The Conservatives also quickly described
McGuinty as a "serial promise-breaker" and
he has broken promises. But they have gall,
because he made most as opposition leader
when the Conservative government was
claiming in a last bid to get re-elected it had
the province flush with money, while it hid a
$5 billion deficit.
Some Conservatives will be itching to raise
the issue of the rise of gays. McGuilty's
government is the first to have ministers,
Smitherman and neW education minister
Kathleen Wynne, not afraid to say they are
gay.
The New Democrat MPPs now also include
the winner of the vicious by-election, Cheri
DiNovo, a United Church minister who
performed the first legal same-sex marriage in
Canada.
The Conservatives under Tory officially
have accepted gays rights including same-sex
marriage, but some party members would love
to picture themselves as in previous elections
as the only supporters of family values — there
are just some of the issues that could get nasty.
Ahh, 'Yesterday'
,
They say you can't live in the past,
but a little trip back to 'Yesterday' can't
hurt.
A few weeks ago, there was a fan convention
at Toronto's Exhibition Place to celebrate the
40th anniversary of the Beatles' last concert at
Maple Leaf Gardens. According to organizer
Peter Miniaci, who runs Toronto's Beatlemania
Shoppe, Canada is the third-largest Beatles
market in the world per capita, next to Japan
and America.
It wasn't just attendees from that final show
who turned out for the event. The Beatles
performed in Toronto in 1964, 1965 and 1966
and fans who were able to boast seeing them at
any of these performances were also on hand
to celebrate the anniversary.
Despite being a huge fan I never had the
chance to see the Fab Four live. At the time of
their final concert, I was not yet 12 and
Toronto in those days was an exotic Sodom to
small-town Ontario folk, travelled to only out
of necessity. And certainly not to a concert,
with dreary parental suspicions about the
demon rock and roll not yet entirely assuaged.
Too bad really, because while the price of a
ticket then might have been worth a week's
allowance it was do-able. Most of us poor
schmuks can't say that today.
When I heard months ago that Eric Clapton
was coming to Toronto, I decided to check out
ticket prices, fairly certain that I couldn't
afford to see him. But nothing ventured,
nothing gained right?
Suffice it to say, nothing was gained.
Likewise Barbra Streisand. When a friend
called to ask if I'd like to go with her to see the
incomparable diva, I was pretty sure it wasn't
going to happen. A quick check proved me
right as the nosebleed zone tickets were selling
for $175, with the floor seats priced at over
$1,000.
You can catch the Stones for as littie as $300
a seat. Of course, you won't actually be able to
see them on anything besides the jumbotron.
Elton John on the other hand comes cheap.
His tickets start at $138 and only go as high as
$675.
I guess times are tough for these people. You
can't expect them to give the seats away.
When I think that in 1971, I was six rows
away when Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin
performed. Stairway to Heaven, and it cost me
less than $10 to be there, it's kind of pathetic
that I can't afford to park my bottom in a bad
seat at concerts today.
Fortunately, there is plenty of good,
affordable talent out there. A lot of people who
have achieved fame are less deserving than
many who continue to eke out a living as
musicians. The right place at the right time, the
gimmick, the flamboyance have put a lot of
people on stage who really have no business
being there.
On the other hand, there are many not
getting the breaks or recognition they deserve.
They may, therefore, not be able to ask the big
ticket price, but they give their audience a
worthy performance. Look for them. It can be
fun seeking and discovering lesser-known
talent.
As for those lucky concert-goers of 40 years
past I remain as jealous now as then. I did
eventually get to see Paul McCartney, and
don't think I even paid that much to do so, but
it was one-quarter of a good thing.
I also regret that the chances of seeing any
other favourites is a thing of the past.
Which wouldn't be the case if only the
prices were as well.
in the
the
North/South/East/West ward. Fire
Chief/Deputy Fire Chief/Acting Fire Chief
said there were casualties.
was estimated to be
Parties slip from high road