Marketing Options® » History

Thank You, Mrs. Clinton

Steve Carlson — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 01:00:24 +0000

Hillary Clinton’s position on the Falklands this week provides Canada with an opportunity to right an old wrong imposed by the United States just over a century ago. The American Secretary of State encouraged Argentina and Britain to sit down and talk about their claims and the future of these tiny islands, much to the chagrin of the Brits whose position has been no-way unless the islands’ inhabitants agree to such negotiations. Since Clinton is so gung-ho on talking, Prime Minister Stephen Harper should insist that the Americans look to their own backyard and re-open the issue over the Alaskan panhandle. Canadians who know their history appreciate that blatant travesty of justice this old border dispute represents.

Let me refresh your memory. Around the time of the Yukon Gold Rush, the exact location of the Alaskan border with Canada was fuzzy. As men and equipment poured across the panhandle on their way to the Klondike, it became an issue. Finally in 1903 Britain and the U.S. came to an agreement on how to settle the precise location of the boundary — three judges representing Canada and three representing the U.S. would be appointed by their corresponding countries to settle the dispute once and for all.

Theodore Roosevelt, the cowboy president, was busy overseeing the expansion of U.S. imperialism (Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Philippines) with the support of his big stick. Not surprisingly, he took the sensitive stance that Canada’s position, “is an outrage, pure and simple. They have no more right to the land in question than they have to Maine.” In that spirit of impartiality, the U.S. appointed three politicians who had no doubts as to whose cause was just. In fact one of them, Elihu Root, was the Secretary of War. Root’s appointment was entirely appropriate considering that Roosevelt had secretly informed Britain that if the resolution didn’t go his way, he would “ask Congress for permission to run the line (border) as we claim it,…without regard for the attitude of England and Canada.”

The Canadian contingent included a Toronto lawyer and Sir Louis Jetté, the Lieutenant-Govenor of Quebec, both of whom fought hard for Canada’s position. The fly in the ointment was the third member, Lord Alverstone, Lord Chief Justice of England, who was there because Canada, as a colony, still did not have control over its own foreign policy. Alverstone voted with the Americans and Roosevelt got the border demarcation that he wanted. Canadians were outraged, one prominent citizen, Sir Charles Tupper, summing it up succinctly with, “The whole course of British negotiations with the United States is marked with a line of gravestones under which Canadian rights are buried.”

Considering all this, Canadians should be most appreciative of Mrs. Clinton’s generous new position espousing the merits of “friendly mediation”. I feel certain that a fair and final negotiation would split the Alaskan panhandle in two equal portions, giving the southern half to Canada. And as restitution for this past wrong and to put Sir Charles Tupper finally at rest, the U.S. might just as well throw in Maine, too.

Mighty Miniatures of Quinte

Steve Carlson — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:35:42 +0000

Did you know that until World War II, the only land links spanning Canada from coast to coast were railway tracks? It’s true, the war stimulated the Canadian government to build roads between small towns north of Lake Superior (where I was raised) so motor vehicle traffic could eventually cross the country, too. There were good reasons. Three sets of track stretched over this area. If German saboteurs ever blew up three bridges simultaneously, our country’s only method of land transportation would have been severed, at least temporarily.

Materials, including food, from the west would have had great difficulty reaching the denser populations of southern Ontario and Quebec and eventually crossing the north Atlantic to England and our Allies. Aside from being less efficient, rerouting the trains through the northern United States presented problems. For example, shipping anything resembling war materials early in the war might have been construed as a breach of U.S. neutrality by Germany. Even the seemingly innocuous pulp and paper industry produced materials used for making munitions.

I was raised in two adjacent towns, Geraldton and Longlac. In fact, Longlac was so small it didn’t even rate status as a village. Officially it was an Improvement District. Each town had roads, but from Geraldton you could not drive west to Nipigon and on to Thunder Bay and Winnipeg. From Longlac you could drive east on a logging road for less than a dozen miles but then there was nothing but bush to Hearst. It eventually took 120 miles of new road to bridge that gap. Trains brought in almost everything including the industrial supplies for the gold mines in Geraldton and the logging operations in Longlac.

As the life line to both communities, trains were constantly present in my early life. The tracks ran just behind our house in Geraldton and, on Saturdays in my pre-school years, the teenage daughter of our neighbour would carefully walk my younger brother and me over the tracks to the Strand Theatre. The matinees always seemed to include one film starring Hopalong Cassidy or Johnny Weissmuller. After we moved to Longlac, my walk to public school was often interrupted by massive black steam locomotives pulling long lines of box cars, each car splashed with the name of some remote railroad company operating in North America. My chums and I always waived at the engineers and never once did we fail to receive a reply. My awe of rail became a love affair during the four years of college when I travelled regularly on CNR’s Super Continental to Toronto. The dining car with its white table clothes, polished silver, impeccable service, and ever-changing view set my life-long standard for elegance. Memories of some of the amazing individuals I met over a cut-throat game of bridge have stayed with me for over 40 years.

So, not surprisingly, I spent a few hours last Saturday at Quinte’s 14th Annual Christmas Model Railroad Show in a Belleville secondary school. The show sprawled over a number of rooms and hallways and it was jammed with people and exhibitions. Flu season is a lousy time to spend elbow to elbow, but I was quickly lost in my own fascination with the detail and scope of the tiny miniatures. Little towns, accurate in tiny detail. One exhibit even had a peephole inviting you to see the activities happening underground. Striped railroad caps were ubiquitous, one exhibitor was dressed in the full regalia of a train conductor. No doubt one of his pockets hid his magical ticket punch that grants permission for lofty passage through panoramas that the finest picture books can never capture.

Some day at a model train show, I know I’ll see an engine meticulously labelled The Orient Express. I’ll lean over and check each passenger car for the lilliputian visages of Finney and Bacall, Bergman and Gielgud, Bisset and Widmark, Redgrave and Connery. They will be frozen in time endlessly playing out, at least in my mind’s eye, a murder-most-foul. Such can be your own pleasures, too, and you don’t want to miss ‘em. Here are exhibitions coming up in southern Ontario that I garnered from brochures scattered over one of the tables:

Woodstock Model Train Show, January 3, www.woodstockshow.com
17th Annual Port Hope Model Railway Show, February 6 and 7, contact Dave (905) 885-7190 or toyshow@kwic.com
Cobourg Model Train Show, March 6, Cobourg Lions Centre, 10:00AM to 4:00 PM
Kingston RailORama Model Train Show, March 30 and 21, contact Brian West (613) 962-7731 or ovlov7@yahoo.ca
The 36th Annual Lindsay Model Railway Show 2010, April 10 and 11, contact Don McClellan, weekdays (705) 328-0474, weekends (705) 454-2746 or donald.mcclellan@sympatico.ca
Midland District Railroad Club’s 21st Annual Model Railroad Show, May 29 and 30, contact Vern Jamieson (705) 527-5307 or midlanddrc@yahoo.ca

Remembrance Day, 2009

Steve Carlson — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:15:21 +0000

I picked up my poppy this year on November 9 from an attractive, middle-aged lady who was standing outside my local Valu-Mart. It was closer to Remembrance Day than usual but, like I do every year, I had waited to see if I could get my poppy from a war vet. They’ve always been easy to spot with their medals and all and, when they have been willing to talk, I like to ask them about their war experiences. But this year, every place I went the only people offering poppies for Remembrance Day were younger members of Legion who clearly didn’t qualify as vets.

I mentioned this to the lady and she smiled pleasantly at me. Then she said, “My grandfather fought in World War II and my great-grandfather was at Vimy Ridge. Perhaps that is enough to let me qualify for you this year?”

I should have picked another bill out my wallet and given it to her, but I didn’t. I’m sure she knew from the expression on my face that what she had said was much more than enough. Vimy Ridge! The Canadian soldiers took heavy losses attacking that fortification. The ridge was so important in World War I that the final German offensive which came later might have succeeded had the Allies not held it.

I don’t know what you’ll be doing at 11:00 AM this morning, but I’ll be in my eye doctor’s office. Whether there is an official two minutes of silence there or not, I know what I’ll be thinking about. It’s the same for me every Remembrance Day: the words to In Flanders Fields.