SPOOKY STORIES:

Chilling (yet completely true) events from Canadian history 

Most Halloween stories involve ghosts, monsters or other unprovable phenomena. This may be fine for other countries, but Canada is at times a giant expanse of fog, snow, isolation...and madness: We generally don’t need tall tales to get creeped out.

Below are 11 events pulled directly from the pages of Canadian history that aren’t just bone-chilling, but entirely true.

Buried alive

Go to any historical graveyard in Canada and it’s likely that some of the coffin lids will feature scratch marks. Before the advent of modern medical monitoring, a few hours of unconsciousness could be all your loved ones needed to consign you to the nightmare of premature burial. A particularly chilling case was documented in Woodstock, Ontario in 1886. As the New York Times reported, a “girl named Collins” was being exhumed in order to move her to another burial place. When the coffin lid was removed, exhumers gazed in horror at evidence of dreadful torture. “Her shroud was torn into shreds, her knees were drawn up to her chin, one of her arms was twisted under her head,” the report stated.

Invasion of ghosts



Owen Beattie The perfectly preserved hand of John Torrington, an early Franklin Expedition casualty who largely dodged the total horror of the expedition's final months. 

The small party of Inuit camped at the southern end of King William Island around 1850 could count themselves as one of the most isolated people on earth: They had never met white people, they had never met Dene and they barely encountered other Inuit. So it was a uniquely terrifying experience for them to hear the sound of footsteps outside their igloo and find themselves facing a crowd of lurching figures with eyes vacant, skin blue, unable to talk and barely alive. These were the last remnants of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, the 1845 British voyage of Arctic exploration that ended with the death of all aboard. As ragged bands of expedition survivors split up and trudged south in a desperate bid to flee the Arctic on foot, Inuit throughout the region faced a real-life invasion of the walking dead. They saw men raving wildly, they saw camps strewn with emaciated corpses and they saw the Europeans begin to eat their dead. “They’re not Inuit; they’re not human,” was how one witness described their arrival, according to Inuit oral history.

The ghost soldier

A portrait of Canadian First World War soldier Lt. George B. McKean, painted while McKean was reportedly gripped with the haunted look of a shell shock victim. 

Canadian soldier Will Bird is one of the most celebrated memoirists of the First World War, with veterans often citing his work as the most realistic portrayal of trench warfare. Bird also believed that he fought his First World War in the constant company of ghosts. His brother Stephen had been killed on the Western Front in 1915, and Bird wrote that he decided to enlist after the spectre of Stephen appeared before him on a Saskatchewan farm in full uniform. In an even more fantastical occurrence, Bird was a corporal serving in France in 1917 when he reported being shaken awake by Stephen’s ghost. “Get your gear,” the ghost told Bird before leading him on a short meandering walk down a trench. The next morning Bird discovered that his original sleeping spot had been shattered by a high explosive shell, and he forever credited his survival to the watchful hands of his dead brother. Canadian historian Tim Cook found that Bird’s experience was not unique, and that many soldiers returned from the Western Front with the belief that they too had served time in an ethereal land of the dead. As one Canadian infantryman put it:“You could feel the pulse of the thousands of the dead with their pale hands protruding through the mud here and there and seeming to beckon you.”



A seascape of corpses, Nova Scotia Archives: Crew members of the recovery ship CS Minia pulling a lifebelted Titanic victim from the sea. 

Most survivors of the RMS Titanic never fully glimpsed the carnage of the sinking’s aftermath. Lifeboats had spent the night vigorously rowing away from the wreck and were well outside the main debris field when picked up by rescuers. Instead, the awful spectre of 1,500 floating bodies would be left for Canadians to encounter. Four ships were chartered out of Halifax to recover the Titanic’s victims, fating crew members to spend days living and working in a lonely patch of the North Atlantic inhabited only by endless fields of open-mouthed lifejacketed corpses. “Started to pick up bodies at six a.m. and continued all day till five thirty p.m.,” reads the diary of a crew member on the Mackay-Bennett, a cable ship that would handle more than 300 Titanic victims.

The Kaiser’s UFOs

Every day, Canadians phone in an average of three sightings of unidentified flying objects, according to the Canadian UFO Survey. One hundred years ago, the country was experiencing a similar rash of UFO encounters. All across Ontario and Quebec came sightings of low-flying objects emitting guttural drones and sweeping the landscape with powerful searchlights. Parliament Hill was put into lockdown in February 1915 by reports of four of the objects cruising toward Ottawa dropping “light balls” as they went. In 1916, railway guards in Tillsonburg, Ontario opened fire on a shadowy figure they believed had been brought by one of the flying machines. Canadians didn’t think these were extraterrestrials; they thought they were Germans. German aircraft of the age could barely cross the English Channel and yet Canadians were convinced that the Kaiser’s airmen were threatening Canada from secret bases in the United States. Subsequent analysis of the sightings concluded that they had been sparked by little more than boat motors, kites and even straight-up hallucination.

The ship of the dead

Site historique maritime de la Pointe-au-Père: The recovered bodies of Empress of Ireland victims. 

Rammed by a coal ship in the St. Lawrence River in 1914, the Empress of Ireland took only 14 minutes to go down, taking 1,012 people with her. Located in only 40 metres of water near Rimouski, Que., the ship has been a well-known site for salvage divers almost from the beginning. But anyone entering the wreck knows they must navigate hallways and staterooms utterly choked with the bodies of men, women and children who spent their last moments in the frantic, clawing terror of a pitch black tomb quickly filling with icy water. The first brass-helmeted divers to explore the ship in 1914 reported shining their dim lanterns at crowds of bloated pale faces contorted in horror. Today, the victims are skeletons, and lie so thick within the wreck that divers have nicknamed it “the boneyard.”

The vanished airplane

San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives: A Lockheed Lodestar similar to the one lost over Vancouver in 1947. 

In April, 1947 the Vancouver airport received a routine radio call from Trans Canada Flight 3 from Lethbridge: The plane was banking over the Pacific Ocean for its final approach and would be touching down shortly. But the plane, a Lockheed Lodestar with 15 passengers and crew aboard, never emerged from the clouds. A search the next morning revealed no signs of violence: No wreckage, no smoke, no witnesses who could report hearing the telltale sound of a plane slamming into the ground. A twin engine plane had vanished from the sky overtop the largest city in Western Canada and nobody had seen a thing. It was only in 1994 that Vancouverites discovered the truth: Flight 3 had spent nearly 50 years in the city’s very backyard of the North Shore mountains.

The occult prime minister

Library and Archives Canada: Shirley Temple and W.L. Mackenzie King launch a war bond on Parliament Hill, Oct. 21, 1944. 

It’s often said that Mackenzie King believed he could communicate with the ghost of his dead mother. This didn’t used to be all that unusual: Spiritualism was the yoga of its day, attracting devotees ranging from author Arthur Conan Doyle to Mary Todd Lincoln. But what is less known is just how much faith King put in the world of the occult. He took leadership advice from the ghost of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was obsessed with patterns, basing momentous decisions on, say, the symmetry of a nearby clock face. In a particularly unhinged moment, King travelled to Nazi Germany in a euphoric haze believing that he alone had been placed on earth to meet Adolf Hitler and bring peace to an unsettled Europe. Almost none of King’s unorthodox beliefs were known to the millions who voted for him. It would be akin to finding out that Brian Mulroney had decided to implement the GST after being instructed by secret messages hidden in Beatles records.

The mad trapper

The Mad Trapper of Rat River wasn’t just any fugitive: He was a fugitive with seemingly supernatural powers. He held his own in two shootouts with RCMP patrols. He survived the total destruction of his cabin by dynamite. He slipped pursuers by climbing a 2,100 metre mountain in a blizzard with no mountaineering equipment. He moved 46 kilometres per day over rough Canadian wilderness in minus 50 temperatures while eschewing cookfires, living off the land and deftly covering his tracks. “The men seemed to be fighting a demon rather than a human being,” observed author Dick North in his definitive account of the 1932 manhunt. And the man known only by the pseudonym Albert Johnson had become Canada’s most wanted man for no reason: The RCMP had merely been looking to question him about a suspected trapping dispute when he opened fire without warning. Although the Mad Trapper would ultimately be brought down by a fusillade of Mountie bullets in the eastern Yukon, to this day nobody knows who he was, where he came from or even what he sounded like. Reportedly, the only sound Johnson uttered during the chase was an echoing laugh after he fatally shot Mountie Edgar Millen.

The hooded figurine

Deborah Sabo and George Sabo: A medieval Inuit carving of a non Inuit visitor. 


As they dug into the foundations of an ancient proto-Inuit house on Baffin Island, archaeologists George and Deborah Sabo were turning up the usual artifacts: Bones, baleen, harpoon heads, bits of wood. But then, their tools unearthed something downright eerie: A faceless man in a hooded robe with a simple cross emblazoned on his chest. To any modern Westerner the figure was instantly recognizable as a member of the Roman Catholic clergy. But to nomadic Thule people living at the time of the Middle Ages, it should have been a figure as alien as a Martian. To the Sabos, the eerie figurine was proof that the mythical Helluland mentioned in Viking sagas wasn’t mythical at all; it had been in Arctic Canada all along. Vikings had indeed walked these lands, met the inhabitants and left an impression — before vanishing as mysteriously as they had come.

The phantom terror attack

In May, 2004 a mysterious, olive-skinned man disembarking Vancouver’s number 98 bus offered an eerie remark to the driver. “How’s your day going?” said the man. When the driver replied that it was going well, the man replied “it won’t be for long.” Ten kilometers later, the bus driver was overcome by nausea and threw up. With other passengers reporting similar symptoms, the driver pulled over and radioed for help. Paramedics arrived on scene and they too fell ill. The whole episode carried the trademarks of a new and terrifying form of chemical terror attack. But Vancouver’s Chief Medical Health Officer, John Blatherwick, concluded that the true cause of the incident was weirder still: Nothing. There was no chemical and there were no terrorists, a cryptic comment had simply plunged an entire group of Vancouver strangers — including trained emergency personnel — into a state of sudden mass hysteria.

SOUTHAMPTON CHURCH GOES TO THE DOGS WITH A BLESSING SERVICE

"Getting to know you” … Lewis and Molly were dressed for the weather

Rev. Ann Veyvara-Divinski carried out a special ‘Blessings of the Animals’ at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Southampton last Sunday.

Thelma Kennedy’s Bailey snuggled up
 to Rev. Ann

“Saint Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of animals,” explained Veyvara-Divinski. “It is an opportunity to demonstrate our love and appreciation of our furry, feathered or fin friends who are our companions and to recognize the human-animal bond that exists.”

In October, Christians worldwide celebrate the Feast of Saint Francis with a blessing of animals and prayers for creation that goes back to ancient times. St. Francis is the patron of Animals, Merchants & Ecology and is also considered the all-inclusive patron saint against dying alone; patron saint against fire; patron saint of animal welfare societies; patron saint of animals, patron saint of the environment and many others.

(With thanks to Sandy Lindsay)

A SPECIAL HI TO MY TIM HORTONS FRIENDS MURIEL & DAVE...GLEN TOO

...See you folks there.

WAS JOHN GIBBONS JUST TALKING CLAPPTRAP?

By means of update for a few of my blog followers who are baseball fans...Former Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Ed Sprague was reportedly interviewed for the job of manager of the major league baseball club last week and a subsequent Sportsnet report had the list of candidates narrowed down to five, four of whom were believed to be Joe Espada (the Houston Astros bench coach), David Bell (the San Francisco Giants’ farm director), Rocco Baldelli (the Tampa Bay Rays’ major-league field co-ordinator), and Brandon Hyde (the Chicago Cubs’ bench coach).

Sprague is currently the co-ordinator of instruction for the Oakland Athletics, the team the Jays traded him to in 1998, and is known to be well respected in the Toronto organization.

John Gibbons

I was kind of surprised however, when at the end of the 2018 playing schedule, out-going Jays manager John Gibbons more or less nominated Stubby Clapp for the managerial job.  Knowing of Gibby's sense of humor, one has to wonder if he was being a bit flippant and off-handed after word of his firing was made public. No denying, it was an out-of-the-blue suggestion.

Stubby Clapp

Clapp himself was certainly taken aback when he received the news..

“My phone blew up,” Clapp said of the reaction he got. “No. 1, I thank him (Gibbons) for even thinking of me. Coming from Gibby, I have a lot of respect. It’s a tip of the cap and coming from him is special. He understands the game and you look at what he’s done.”

There is a little history between the two. Gibbons was actually the manager for an Arizona Fall League team that Clapp played on back in 2000. After two seasons of coaching with the Houston Astros, Clapp was hired as a hitting coach for Blue Jays and he spent four seasons in the organization. “I would stick my head in his office and he always had time to talk,” Clapp said. “We’ve kept a decent relationship.”

But Clapp left the organization two years ago to become manager for the AAA Memphis Redbirds, which is the top farm team of the St. Louis Cardinals. Under Clapps' management the Redbirds are repeat league champions.

A Canadian by birth (Windsor native), Clapp was a 36th-round pick by St. Louis in the 1996 MLB Draft and eventually reached the majors with the club in 2001. A second baseman/outfielder, he was a regular member of the Canadian national baseball team for a number of years. He spent a big chunk of his minor-league career in Memphis and the club retired his number in 2007.

“It’s a great organization, great people and they gave me the opportunity,” Clapp said of the Cardinals. But he doesn’t deny he wants to get back to the majors.

“It’s not a secret I want to be in the big leagues,” Clapp said. “If I do it, I want to do it to the best of my ability and at the highest level...That’s why I work so hard.”

But don’t expect the Blue Jays to announce a new manager anytime soon and, if the club is indeed interest in Clapp, there’s still a protocol to follow.

The 45-year-old Clapp is still under contract with St. Louis until the end of October.

“No. 1, there’s tampering rules,” Clapp said. “Usually, you have to wait for the season to end and if a team is in the playoffs, you usually have to wait until they’re done. It’s a courtesy.”

Clapp isn’t the only name being thrown out. Eric Wedge, who is a player development advisor for the Blue Jays and was American League manager of the year in 2007, is also thought to be in the running.

We'll just have to stay turned and wait to see if John Gibbons' pick is given consideration by Blue Jays brass. They could do worse!

A GUEST POST ON PUBLIC DISCOURSE

I could not let another day go by without republishing the following Saugeen Times item written by Rev. Bob Johnston.  I have often quoted Rev. Bob on Wrights Lane and once again he presents a rational and clear perspective on the all-too-common people "clashes" that are errupting in society today.

“Bridges or Barriers?”

By Rev. Bob Johnston

-October 21, 2018

Since the surprising 2016 election of Donald trump, I have been searching in vain for someone with whom I might share a calm, rational conversation about the 45th president of the United States. So far, no luck.

I raise that name, not to provoke yet another loud argument, but to point out that even normally reasonable people have difficulty listening to any positive opinion of Trump. I may not be a fan of the President but I would enjoy hearing a pro-Trump perspective if it were thoughtfully presented.

These days it seems as if public discourse, locally and nationally, is quickly heating up just as the weather slowly descends into the damp cold of November. In my town (Saugeen Shores) a recent meeting about the proposed location and design of a new building suddenly turned contentious. Many of us became reluctantly addicted to the bitterly-fought Kavanaugh hearings in Washington. An angry war of words erupted this week in our own House of Commons. Bipartisan consensus in the American Senate is becoming a distant memory and in the nation itself. Viewers and presenters on Fox News Channel and CNN at times seem to inhabit different planets.

When did we assume ”the other side” of any issue no longer has anything of value to contribute to the common good? Historically, the “commons” was a place where ideas could be freely shared, but more importantly were actually listened to and considered on merit. Many Renaissance towns and cities were redesigned to include a public square where the concept of free speech gradually became permitted then ultimately, over following centuries, guarded zealously as a fundamental right.

Universities have traditionally been bastions of free expression. Now, across North America, ideas which are deemed to be too unpopular are increasingly being disallowed on campus. Conservative speakers have had guest lectures disrupted or invitations hastily rescinded by nervous administrators.

Assuming most citizens, locally and nationally, at least pay lip service to the concept of free speech, how can this disturbing trend be reversed? Consider these reasonable steps:

—-recognize we do not possess the only truth on every issue.

—-offer our own opinions thoughtfully but without assuming our listener is automatically agreeing with us. Why do we always presume everyone present in a group shares our anti-trump tirade, position on abortion, immigration or our religious views? Their silence may not be assent but rather reflects a fear of being unfairly labelled should they voice an opposing viewpoint.

—-invite other opinions and listen without prejudging the presentation.

—-be open to changing our mind.

—-agree to disagree if necessary, rejecting the opposing argument but not the person presenting it.

—-recognize there is likely much more that unites us than divides us. What do we hold in common?

Of course, there should be exceptions to this approach toward bridge-building. Barriers can and should be erected against hate speech, libel and defamation. Some opinion is too odious to be given the light of day. Yet most ideas which radically differ from our own strongly held views need to be respected and encouraged to be given voice. This surely is the essence of democracy and a free society.

WANNA TRY PLAYING HOCKEY GOALIE KID? HERE'S A PROGRAM FOR YOU!

I enjoy passing stories and interesting initiatives along to my readers who, for various reasons, might otherwise miss them. Here is one that meets that criteria.

In an effort to support kids who have dreams of becoming a hockey goaltender, once again the Ontario Minor Hockey Association (OMHA) Goalie Assist Program is providing a new set of CCM goalie equipment for select associations to loan to 5-7 year old players interested in trying out the position.

Now in its 7th year, the OMHA Goalie Assist Program has provided 330 full sets of goalie equipment. This season, there were more than 140 applications received from OMHA-member associations, with 40 sets being distributed across the province. While there is a formal application process, selection of recipients basically operates on a rotating basis.

Among the local associations in my area (Grey, Bruce and Huron counties) that were recipients of the program this year were Bruce Peninsula, Listowel, Lucknow, South Bruce and South Huron.

“The idea is to continue the positive cycle of introducing new goalies to the position,” says OMHA Executive Director Ian Taylor. “Hockey is a late-specialization sport and the Goalie Assist Program helps introduce the position to players who may not have otherwise had the opportunity. The equipment helps give every player a chance to try being a goaltender without families making the financial commitment.”

Each set of equipment will be retained by the local minor hockey associations at the conclusion of the hockey season to loan to players in following years, all in order to continue the positive cycle of introducing new goalies to the position.

The OMHA believes this program helps break down some of the barriers that may exist for new goalies. Being a netminder is a very unique position in hockey and requires specific equipment that may not always be readily available.

“A player who wants to be a goalie should not be discouraged for any reason and this program helps alleviate some of those worries,” adds Taylor. “The Goalie Assist Program could be the first time a player is able to try out net-minding.”

Each kit is equipped with a set of CCM youth pads, catcher/blocker, stick, chest protector and bag. Catching hands and sticks are available with common left/right combinations.

The Ontario Minor Hockey Association, founded in 1935, is a leader in community sport and oversees a participant base of more than 300,000, consisting of players, coaches, trainers, officials, hockey volunteers and parents across the province. The OMHA works with its 223 local minor hockey
associations and annually coordinates 28 leagues to create the best minor hockey experience in Canada.

THE CAN'T-WIN NATURE OF SOCIAL MEDIA EXCHANGES

With thanks to the Social Media Toolkit

You've seen it happen dozens if not hundreds of times. You post an opinion, or a complaint, or a link to an article on Facebook. Somebody adds a comment, disagreeing (or agreeing) with whatever you posted. Someone else posts another comment disagreeing with the first commenter, or with you, or both. Then others jump in to add their own viewpoints. Tempers flare. Harsh words are used. Soon enough, you and several of your friends are engaged in a virtual shouting match, sometimes with people you've never even met.

Admittedly, I've been there and done that!

There's a simple reason this happens, it turns out: We respond very differently to what people write than to what they say -- even if those things are exactly the same. That's the result of a fascinating new experiment by U.C. Berkeley and University of Chicago researchers. In the study, 300 subjects read, watched video of, or listened to arguments about such hot-button topics as war, abortion, and country or rap music. Afterward, subjects were interviewed about their reactions to the opinions with which they disagreed.

Their general response was probably very familiar to anyone who's ever discussed politics: a broad belief that people who don't agree with you are either too stupid or too biased to know better. But there was a distinct difference between those who had watched or listened to someone speak the words out loud and those who had read the identical words as text. Those who had listened or watched someone say the words were less likely to dismiss the speaker as uninformed or heartless than they were if they were just reading the commenter's words.

That result was no surprise to at least one of the researchers, who was inspired to try the experiment after a similar experience of his own. "One of us read a speech excerpt that was printed in a newspaper from a politician with whom he strongly disagreed," researcher Juliana Schroeder said in an interview. "The next week, he heard the exact same speech clip playing on a radio station. He was shocked by how different his reaction was toward the politician when he read the excerpt compared to when he heard it." Whereas the written comments seemed outrageous to this researcher, the same words spoken out loud seemed reasonable.

This research suggests that the best way for people who disagree with one another to work out their differences and arrive at a better understanding or compromise is by talking to one another, as people used to do at town hall meetings and over the dinner table. But now that so many of our interactions take place over social media, chat, text message, or email, spoken conversation or discussion is increasingly uncommon. 

It's probably no coincidence that political disagreement and general acrimony have never been greater. Russians used this speech-versus-text disharmony to full advantage by creating Facebook and Twitter accounts to stir up even more ill will among Americans than they already had on their own. No wonder they were so successful at it.

So what should we do about it? To begin with, if you want to make a persuasive case for your political opinion or proposed action, maybe you're better off doing it by making a short video (or linking to one by someone else) rather than writing out whatever you have to say. That is especially difficult for me because I am a more effective writer than I am a speaker and I tend to fall back on what I do best.

At the same time, whenever you're reading something someone else wrote that seems outlandish to you, keep in mind that the fact that you're seeing this as text may be part of the problem. If it's important for you to be objective, try reading it out loud or having someone else read it to you. Also try asking for clarification, so that you better understand what the other person is saying.

In the end, however, do not be surprised if a well-intended written offer of advice or rationality based on moral grounds is dismissed by the playing of the easy-to-fall-back-on sanctimonious card. That is a sure sign of dismissal when rebuttal wanes. People are selective in what they want to hear and who it is supposedly preaching to them, if ever that is the case.

Then again, perhaps it is just better to let matters drop altogether. In my experience, even though it may be fun trying, you may be batting your head against a brick wall.  

Of course, this is all very easy for me to say with my contradictory passive-aggressive, activist doer, devil's advocate, tongue-in-cheek personality. Still, I do not give up easily and that in itself may be another part of the problem.

CAREFUL OF HOW LONG YOU SLEEP...YOU MIGHT MISS SOMETHING

Oh my God...I'm a modern-day Rip Van Winkle, I thought to myself as I woke up the other afternoon and looked at the clock on my night table.  The red digital light flashed 3:11 p.m. -- a new record for me.

I had already missed half of the day.

It should be explained, however, that I did not hit the hay until 3:30 that morning.  Being the night owl that I am, I had lost track of time while working at my computer in the wee small hours of the morning. But no matter how you look at it, 11+ hours is still a pretty good night's/day's sleep. Guess I needed it!

In truth, when I first woke up during that marathon stretch of slumber it was just past 8 a.m. Matilda was still snoring beside me and I thought "what the heck", rolled over and went back to sleep.  Four hours later (roughly noon), I awoke again and thought "I'll just lay here for a few minutes before I get up."

Those "few minutes" somehow stretched into another unbelievable three hours. Miraculously, Matilda had not moved a muscle and I marvelled at how our bladders had held out that long.

As I sat at the kitchen table peeling an orange while the coffee percolated, I found myself taking stock of the things that I may have missed during that extended sleep. To my relief, I could not think of a single thing...Nothing important anyway. That's the upside, I guess, of living a single life with no particular commitments or responsibilities. The world keeps on rolling whether I'm in it or not.

That is also where my earlier spontaneous comparison to Rip Van Wrinkle ended. Countless changes took place in Rip's world during his 20-year sleep, and by golly that's the hidden message in that old yarn.

The story "Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving is set in the mid-1700s, before the American Revolution in an unnamed village in the Catskill Mountains of New York. It is a tale that has fascinated me since early childhood.

The story could mean many things to different people. One might read it and think about a certain lesson, while another reads it and comes up with a totally different meaning and lesson. But a common moral most readers find in 'Rip Van Winkle' is the that time goes on and things keep changing, whether a person is conscious or not. In the story, Rip takes a 20-year nap, but time does not stop--the world keeps changing around him. Even though Rip is not aware of all of the changes going on, they still happen.

When he awakes, Rip finds that there are some changes that he likes. For example, he no longer has to answer to his wife (because she has died) and he does not have the same responsibilities and burdens that he used to. However, there are also some changes that he does not like, such as his dog getting older and his children growing up. Even though Rip was upset that he missed a lot of important events, the moral of the story is that time does not wait--the world will keep moving forward and changing whether we are ready or not...With us, or without us.

THE TRAGIC CHILD ABUSE STORY OF A HOCKEY STAR IN-THE-MAKING

I wish that I didn't feel compelled to reproduce this story. It is terrible -- almost unbelieveable -- but it cries out for help in a hockey world that would rather ignore it.  "Breaking Away" is Patrick O'Sullivan's story of survival. It's his story of being made an ancillary character to his own life by his father. It's also a story of how we are all capable of being bystanders in someone else's trauma. Somehow, up to now, this story has escaped my attention. Here it is in O'Sullivan's own words.

Now retired, Patrick O'Sullivan played eight seasons in the National Hockey League with 

Los Angeles Kings, Edmonton Oilers, Carolina Hurricanes, Minnesota Wild and Phoenix 

Coyotes, all the while being treated for mental health issues. He was born in Toronto but 

grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His father John O'Sullivan, a Toronto native, 

played for the minor-league Winston-Salem Thunderbirds of the Atlantic Coast Hockey 

League, but never made it to the NHL.

My father used to beat the shit out of me.

I don’t say that to be shocking, or to get your attention. I say that because it’s just a simple fact. He would throw punches. Not like he was hitting a small child — but like he was in a bar fight with a grown man. Whenever some people hear the phrase “child abuse,” it’s very hard for them to think about what’s really happening. They imagine discipline that gets out of hand once in a while, because it’s easier that way.

How many times have you heard someone say this?

“My parents used to give me the belt, and I turned out OK.”

So let me be really clear about what happened to me. From the moment I got my first pair of hockey skates at five years old, I got the living shit kicked out of me every single day. Every day after hockey, no matter how many goals I scored, he would hit me. The man was 6-foot-2, 250 lbs. It would start as soon as we got in the car, and sometimes right out in the parking lot.

By the time I was 10, it got worse. He would put cigarettes out on me. Choke me. Throw full soda cans at my head. Every time I stepped on the ice, I knew that my play would determine just how bad I got it when we got home. I’d score a hat trick, and afterward we’d get in the car and he would tell me that I played “like a faggot” (that was his favorite term, which says a lot).

Picture off innocence...on the surface.

I thought it was normal. As a kid, you just don’t know any better. He would wake me up at 5 a.m. and force me to work out for two hours before school. I remember I had this heavy leather jump rope, and if he thought I wasn’t working hard enough, he would force me to take my shirt off and he’d whip me with it. If the jump rope wasn’t around, he would use an electrical cord.

He always stopped short of knocking me unconscious, because that would defeat his purpose. See, if I was passed out, I couldn’t train.

As strange as it might sound, the routine physical abuse was something I learned to endure. A good day for me was when he beat me like normal. I could prepare myself for that. A bad day was when things got unpredictable. Sometimes I would be asleep and my father would wake me up in the middle of the night and just start hitting me for no reason at all. When you’re sleeping, you’re in your own world. You can’t prepare yourself. You can’t steel yourself for what’s coming. A few times, he locked me out of the house in the middle of winter in my pajamas, because I needed to “toughen up.”

I could go on for thousands of more words about the physical abuse, but there’s no point. When I tell people the insane details of my childhood, they have the same two questions.

Why in the hell would anyone do this to their own son?

And then …

Why in the hell didn’t anyone put a stop to it?

The first question is easy to answer. My father was a low-level pro hockey player who never made it past the minor leagues. He was living his failed dream through his child. As twisted and insane as it sounds, in his mind, everything he was doing was justified. It was all going to make me a better hockey player — and eventually get me to the NHL.

The second question is a lot more complicated. Why didn’t anybody step in and stop the abuse? My story will never reach people like my father. They’re so far off the deep end that it’s too late. But plenty of people witnessed what was happening. Every town has the Crazy Hockey Dad, but my father was so far above and beyond that cliche. I’d come into the locker room with bruises and cuts, and he’d spend the entire game screaming and banging on the glass. He got into brawls with parents from the other team right in the stands, many, many times.

But all I ever got from the other hockey parents was a concerned, “Are you ok?”

And, of course, I’d say, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

That would be the end of it. Nobody called the cops. Nobody ever confronted him. The overall mentality back then, especially in the hockey community, was “whatever happens in their house, stays in their house. That’s their own business.”

But even in my own home, the abuse was ignored. I’ll never forget this moment when I was 10 years old. I was about to leave the house for a game when my mother pulled me aside and whispered, “You better play well out there today, because if you don’t, it’s going to be bad tonight.”

Right then, it dawned on me that my mother was never going to do anything about it. Our neighbors weren’t going to do anything about it. The other hockey parents weren’t going to do anything about it. I was going to have to stop it myself.

That’s a very frightening feeling to have as a 10-year-old kid. I thought, Well, one day you’re going to get big enough to stand up to him. For the next six years, I just tried to survive. Each morning, I’d wake up and think: Here we go again. Just get through it.

The abuse got worse, and I just kept getting better and better on the ice. That’s the truly sick thing. I think part of the reason nobody said anything was because I kept putting the puck in the net.

Professional sports — and let’s be honest, Canadian Junior hockey is professionalized — is a meat market. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s all about performance on the ice.

By excelling, it was almost like I was reinforcing what my dad was doing. I can just imagine the thought process of the other parents and coaches:

“Well, his dad’s a nutcase, but he’s the best player on the ice, so it can’t be that bad. Hell, maybe that’s what it takes to be the best.”

Guess who's hockey gloves.

The thing is, my success had nothing to do with my father’s over-the-top training regimens. The ice was my safe space. The two hours I had out there was the only time I truly felt free. When I stepped onto the ice, he couldn’t touch me. Everything became easy.

Actually, the main reason I was scared to tell anybody about the abuse when I was young was because I thought my father would find a way to take away the only thing I loved — playing hockey.

When I turned 16, I became the No. 1 pick in the Ontario Hockey League draft. You might assume the abuse stopped there, but in my dad’s mind, his methods “worked.” I was on the path to the NHL. So the abuse only intensified. One night after a game during my first year in the OHL, I was sitting on the bus with my teammates when my dad came storming in and literally grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to his car.

“That’s it, you’re done with hockey. You don’t deserve this. We’re going home.”

I got in the car and he started driving home. And then something in me just snapped. We stopped to pick up my sisters at our grandparents’ house, and I jumped out and said, “This is all stopping right now. I’m not going home.”

We got into a fight. Our first real fight, where I fought back, and didn’t stop. My mom and grandparents watched from the window as we brawled right in the driveway. It went on for minutes, which is an eternity in a fight. I can’t even remember how it finally stopped. I just remember him jumping in the car and driving off. I ran into the house and called the police.

When the cops showed up, they put out an APB for him, but I just shook my head and showed them his photo. “Just come to my next hockey game,” I said. “He’ll be there. He can’t stay away.”

Two games later, he showed up. The cops arrested him at the rink.

When I filled out the police report, I just gave the basics. I could have gone on for hundreds of pages, and I wish I had, because my father got out of jail after a month or two. The restraining order I took out against him said he couldn’t come within 100 feet of me, but it didn’t stop him from showing up to my games.

I’d see him up there in his same spot, watching me.

A few years later, his dream finally came true. I was selected in the second round of the 2003 NHL Draft. The NHL assigned me an entire security team for the day, but I knew it was useless. He made sure he was seated right where I could see him.

So when my name was called and I pulled on the Minnesota Wild sweater, I knew he was in the building watching, and it made me absolutely furious. Not because of all the pain I endured. But because I knew that he believed, in his heart, that all his abuse was validated. He thought he was the reason I made it to the NHL. The ends justified the means.

That’s absolutely ridiculous. You know why I made it to the NHL?

Patrick today.

Because on the weekends, I’d get as far away from him as I could. I would stay out of the house all day by myself, with nothing but a hockey stick and a ball. Deking, deking, deking. Shooting, shooting, shooting. Over and over and over until the stick became an extension of my body.

That’s it. That’s why I made it.

Once you get to the pro level and you witness how fast the game moves, you finally realize that no amount of running or weight lifting or private lessons is going to change one simple question: Do you understand hockey? Do you really understand the game? Do you know where that puck is going next?

Either you have it or you don’t. Screaming at your kid in the car on the way to a hockey game isn’t going to get them to the next level. Having a 12-year-old kid run six miles after practice isn’t going to turn them into Jonathan Toews.

You know when you actually get good at sports? When you’re having fun and being creative. When you’re being a kid. When you don’t even realize you’re getting better, that’s when you’re getting better. If you’re not engaged in what you’re doing, it’s as helpful as taking the trash out. It’s just another chore.

But that’s not what some parents, even normal ones, want to hear. Honestly, that’s not the direction youth hockey is trending. When I was in the NHL, I’d be doing my off-season workouts at the gym with Daniel Carcillo and some other NHL buddies, and we’d look over and see 12-year-old kids doing the same two-hour workout we were doing, with a trainer screaming at them the whole time. Half the time their parents would be there, yelling at them, too.

And it’s absolutely comical. It’s doing nothing.

True story: I played with Drew Doughty his rookie year in Los Angeles. He came into camp and he could barely do one rep on the bench press. He’ll laugh about it now. He was not in shape at all, at least in the way these “Old Time Hockey” blowhards talk about it. Then we’d go out for practice and he’d be the best player on the ice. Doughty was just a pure, natural hockey player with incredible vision and a brain for the game.

He was in hockey shape. He could think circles around you.

Either you have it or you don’t. All this hard ass training stuff is just fluff, and it enables the same culture that allowed my father to treat me like an animal in front of other adults for so many years. It started right in the parking lot. People saw it. They just didn’t have the courage to say anything.

I’m not writing this article for my father. I’m writing it for the people in the parking lot.

Yes, if you say something, you may ruin the relationship you have with that person. You may get embarrassed in front of the other hockey parents. You may have to go through the awkwardness of filing a police report.

I can understand why a lot of people worry, “But what if I’m wrong?”

If you are wrong, that’s the absolute best case scenario. The alternative is that child is a prisoner in his own home. What you’re seeing in the parking lot or outside the locker room — whether it’s a kid getting grabbed and screamed at, or shoved up against a car — could just be the tip of the iceberg.

It’s so ironic, because the hockey community loves to talk about toughness and courage. In that world, courage is supposed to mean standing in front of a slap shot without flinching, or taking your lumps in a fight.

But that’s easy. That’s not real courage. Anybody can do that.

I guarantee you there’s hundreds of kids across North America who will get dressed for hockey this weekend with their stomach turning, thinking the same thing I did as a kid:

“I better play really good, or tonight is going to be really bad.”

It just takes one person to act on their instinct and stand up for that child. That’s real courage. The kind we don’t always glorify in the hockey world.

"Living in Naples, Florida, with his wife, Sophie, and two sons, O'Sullivan is a self-aware, no-filter, clear-spoken, 30-year-old man. His mind is nimble and smart. He probably would be an excellent TV analyst. He can navigate sentences and paragraphs to make his point vividly and clearly. In my opinion, he was born mentally tough. It's a skill. His parents contributed ZERO to his mental toughness. He would be mentally tough if he was raised by monks." ~~ Sports writer John Buccigross after an interview with Patrick O'Sullivan in 2015.

NOTE: Patrick has not had contact with his father John since the fight in the driveway of their home. A rift has also developed between his mother and younger siblings in recent years.

Tough stuff, in more ways than one!

ANNE GRAHAM LOTZ INTERVIEW TOTALLY MISREPRESENTED ON INTERNET

 

 Anne Graham Lotz

As many have pointed out, one of the pitfalls of the Internet as a means of communications is that it can be used to spread misinformation as rapidly as accurate information, but all too often the former is set loose to spread far and wide, and correction comes too late, if at all. Here is a case in point of why even a simple memory of a recent event — a television appearance by someone of prominence — spread via e-mail and social media cannot be trusted as accurate. Even though the gist of the message is true, nearly every detail it contains is wrong.

Example: [Collected on the Internet]


Bryant Gumbel recently interviewed Billy Graham’s daughter on the Today Show.Gumbel: “Why didn’t God stop this or do something about this?”

Billy Graham’s daughter: “For years we have told God we didn’t want Him in our schools. We didn’t want Him in our government and we didn’t want Him in our finances and God was being a perfect gentleman in doing just what we asked Him to do. We need to make up our mind — do we want God or do we not want Him. We cannot just ask Him in when disaster strikes.”

Bryant Gumbel was silent.

Now, the Accurate report:

On September 13, Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of the Late Rev. Billy Graham, appeared on on CBS’s Early Show, not NBC’s Today program. She was interviewed by Jane Clayson, not Bryant Gumbel. Neither the question posed to her nor her response is quoted accurately above. Her interviewer was not “silent” after her remarks; the interview proceeded as before after this exchange:


Jane Clayson: I’ve heard people say, those who are religious, those who are not, if God is good, how could God let this happen? To that, you say?

Anne Graham Lotz: "I say God is also angry when he sees something like this. I would say also for several years now Americans in a sense have shaken their fist at God and said, God, we want you out of our schools, our government, our business, we want you out of our marketplace. And God, who is a gentleman, has just quietly backed out of our national and political life, our public life. Removing his hand of blessing and protection. We need to turn to God first of all and say, 'God, we’re sorry we have treated you this way and we invite you now to come into our national life. We put our trust in you.' We have our trust in God on our coins, we need to practice it."


Ms. Lotz did say, in effect, that we cannot simultaneously reject God in our daily lives yet still expect His protection when disaster strikes, but now a paraphrase of one response she made in the course of a longer interview has been offered as a direct quote, and all the details about the context in which she made the remark have been reported incorrectly on Facebook as recent as this weekend. Too bad!

I give credance to what Ms. Lotz said and feel compelled to pass on the accurate information.

BOTTOM LINE: If an Internet story interests you for some reason, take the time to check out its legitimacy on Google for a start. The last thing you want to do is to share incorrect information or to give the wrong impression on important matters that have potential to influence us all.  And do not post a controversial, potentially false item just because it suits a particular bias before determining its validity...You can end up with egg on your face. 

With all-to-frequent solitude, I lingered over a Tim Horton's coffee this afternoon doing what I do best -- people watch. Unlike some others, I do not go to a coffee shop to talk on a cell phone, play iPad games, check emails, do crossword puzzles or read a book...I can do all of that at home. I need people!

As has been the case in recent past, I was particularly taken by the seemingly carefree couples my age (admittedly most were younger) who came in to share their company and a favorite treat or beverage. Certainly a special outing, so easily taken for granted.

I resist the impulse to impose on these folks by saying "I envy the fact that you can be together to share life's small pleasures like this.  You are indeed fortunate...Enjoy every moment of it while you can because, take it from me, it can all be swept away in a flash."

Committed and unconditional love shared by a man and woman is unlike any other kind of love. To have someone love you just because it is you and to love someone in return just because of them, is the ultimate relationship.

You never truly and fully appreciate something until it is gone...forever.

THE WEEK IN REVIEW...WITH TONGUE IN CHEEK.

Photo Credit

OTTAWA – As Canadian families from coast-to-coast gathered together for thanksgiving, the vast majority took time to be grateful for the fact they never have, nor likely would, ever know the name of even one of the justices of the highest court in the nation.

“I’m grateful for mommy, and daddy, and my brother Brian,” said little Susie Cole of Regina. “And for the fact that no member of the Canadian Supreme Court did something so terrible that their name is burned into memory forever.”

“...Oh and I’m also grateful for my dog, Alfie, and for a woman’s right to choose,” she added.

This year especially, many Canadians were happy their court was quietly and deliberately applying the constitution, rather than say, allowing corporations to put unlimited money into political campaigns and accusing sexual assault victims of being a conspiracy organized by the Clintons.

“I think the last time I thought about the Supreme Court was when they struck down that Alberta law banning gay marriage. That was pretty cool,” said Harold Thompson of Moncton.

Others, however, insisted they actually could name a Supreme Court justice. “I’m a huge fan of Beverly McLachlin,” said law student Tiffany Cohen, in reference to the Chief Justice that retired two years ago.

Asked to comment further on this report, our trusty Beaverton Echo said that at press time 10 per cent of the people they interviewed were shocked to discover Canada also has a Supreme Court.

MY BASEBALL BLOG SITES RETURNED TO PUBLIC VIEWING

PLEASE NOTE:  A Wrights Lane follower has advised me that three of my four baseball blogs have been blocked from public viewing...This certanly defeats the intended purpose and I sincerely apologize.  I have no idea how the settings for these sites got changed, but corrections have been made and there should be no further viewing problems. Go to the links below:

https://baseballnme.blogspot.com/ "The Game I grew Up With"
https://dicktheblogster12a.blogspot.com/ "Boy who Made A Big Catch"
https://dicktheblogster8.blogspot.com/ "A Baseball Dreamer"

A PERFECT THANKSGIVING DAY...

MAKE THIS WEEKEND A TIME FOR THANKS GIVING

Happy Thanksgiving this weekend to my Canadian family and friends. Of course, I will have to wait a another six weeks to share that message with American family and friends.

So what’s the difference between American and Canadian Thanksgiving anyway? 

Well, for one thing, our Canadian Thanksgiving is not about pilgrims and (2) due to the fact that we are geographically further north than our American neighbors, our harvest comes earlier and we celebrate it earlier accordingly.

The origins of Canadian Thanksgiving are more closely connected to the traditions of Europe than of the United States. Long before Europeans settled in North America, festivals of thanks and celebrations of harvest took place in Europe in the month of October. The very first Thanksgiving celebration in North America took place in 1578 in Canada when Martin Frobisher, an explorer from England was in search of the Northwest Passage. He wanted to give thanks for his safe arrival to the New World. That means the first Thanksgiving in Canada was celebrated 43 years before the pilgrims landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts!

For a few hundred years, Thanksgiving was celebrated in either late October or early November, before it was declared a national holiday in 1879. It was then, that November 6th was set aside as the official Thanksgiving holiday. But then on January 31st, 1957, Canadian Parliament announced that on the second Monday in October, Thanksgiving would be "a day of general thanksgiving to almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed." Thanksgiving was moved to the second Monday in October because after the World Wars, Remembrance Day (November 11th) and Thanksgiving kept falling in the same week.

But as stated previously, the Canadian history of Thanksgiving has nothing to do with pilgrims and the Mayflower as does American Thanksgiving. Both holidays, however, are generally seen as an opportunity to give thanks for what’s good in our lives, celebrate nature’s bounty, and enjoy a big meal with family and friends.

While the Canadian holiday officially falls on Monday, celebrations can take place at any time over the weekend. The big meal is just as likely to happen on Sunday as it is on Monday.

Canadian Thanksgiving is not as strongly associated with shopping either. In America, Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) is legendary: American news reports show how some shoppers go straight from their Thanksgiving celebrations to the mall the moment it opens.

That doesn’t happen for Canadian Thanksgiving. The holiday Monday means it’s a long weekend for many people, but shopping isn’t an essential part of it. Many stores operate on more limited hours on Thanksgiving Sunday and Monday.

Don’t get me wrong -- there are plenty of sales and promotions that happen on Thanksgiving weekend in Canada. But up here, our biggest shopping day of the year is hands-down on Boxing Day, the 26th of December. That’s when you’ll see line-ups outside electronic stores, in particular. Some Canadian stores are so busy on Boxing Day that they do not accept returns until Dec. 27.

From what I can tell, Thanksgiving seems to be almost as significant a holiday as Christmas in the U.S. People fly across the country to visit family, and according to U.S. Bureau of Transport statistics, the number of long-distance trips increases by 54 percent over the six-day Thanksgiving period, while that increase is just 23 percent over the Christmas/New Year period.

In Canada, of course, people also travel to be with loved ones over the Thanksgiving weekend. However, my perception is that fewer Canadians take time off work for long-distance travel. We stick closer to home on Thanksgiving than we do at the end of December when the Snowbird exodus to a warmer climate begins in earnest.

Matilda and I have no special plans for this weekend. We're just thankful to have a roof over our head and a turkey thigh to share for dinner on Monday.