Canadian comedy lost an icon this weekend as former member of the Royal Canadian Air Farce, Roger Abbott died after losing a battle with leukemia on Saturday.
Now, the Air Farce was Canada's version of Saturday Night Live, so whenever election time came up, all the federal party leaders would be impressively portrayed by the Air Farce cast members.
Fellow cast member Don Ferguson did an amazing Lucien Bouchard, Paul Martin, and Preston Manning.
And Abbott did an unbelievable Jean Chretien.
It's too bad that the original Air Farce cast could not get together for one more election special, which in all likelihood, would have happened in the next month.
Here's Abbott in his prime.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_z2pRMuOUs
Monday, March 28, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
A Great War Update...
Standing inside the Gray Academy of Jewish Education, it really is tough to believe that there was once a hospital reception desk that sat right in the middle of the hallway. Or when walking further down the hallways, that a lot of the classrooms housed hospital beds.
But that was the case nearly 100 years ago as the school and the entire piece of land was once known as the Tuxedo Military Hospital that hosted soldiers returning from the war and allowed them to recuperate and also train at the same time.
Gray Academy is just a part of the 250,000 foot Asper Jewish Community Campus that sits on 123 Doncaster Avenue. The campus opened in 1997 and serves as the centerpiece of the Jewish Community of Winnipeg.
The campus is home to the school which has 600 students from kindergarten through grade 12. The campus also features the Rose and Max Rady Jewish Community Centre which features a double gymnasium, aquatic centre, and cardiovascular area. Other parts of the campus include the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre, the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba, and the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada.
“It’s gone through an evolution,” said Louise Kollinger, executive director of the campus.
The history of the buildings date all the way back to 1906, when it was originally known as the Manitoba Agricultural College. That lasted until 1913, when the college moved to a new location in Fort Garry, which later became the University of Manitoba. The building then served as the Manitoba School of Deaf for three years and then became the Tuxedo Military Hospital in 1917, near the end of the First World War. The whole area of land was soon renamed the Fort Osborne Barracks and remained until 1968.
The main hallways at the school still have some resemblance of a building from the early 1900s.
“And because it’s a heritage building, a lot of these types of things stayed,” said Kollinger, referring to the facades and the rotundas that are visible around the halls.
Walking through the main atrium of the campus, there’s a stairway leading to the doors of Gray Academy that she says brings many visitors.
“It’s on e of the more spectacular pictures in the interior,” said Kollinger. “A lot of places come and they have their professional board pictures taken here.”
After the Barracks moved to a location further south in the city in 1968, the province bought some of the property and converted a number of buildings to house government departments.
One of these buildings is located right across from the campus and is considered a part of 139 Tuxedo Avenue, known as Building 3. During the war, it was known as Roblin Hall, and the two-story building housed 270 men.
Now it’s a Department of Family Services and Consumer Affairs building which hosts programs like children’s special services, supported living, and residential care licensing.
“It’s all resource co-ordinators who work here,” said Collette Bridgeforde, who works in administrative support. “They provide support to families with adults or children with disabilities.”
Unlike the Asper Campus, which has plaques and other displays commemorating the First World War, Bridgeforde says “I haven’t seen anything” in the building that makes mention of the building’s use during the war.
But the Asper Campus does just that and the designer of the building, John Peterson, is a huge reason why the building has been such a success.
“He did an outstanding job of bringing the old with the new,” said Kollinger.
“And also bringing the culture to light, and just making this place what it is, and it is absolutely stunning.”
Monday, March 14, 2011
Winnipeg's Great War
I love looking back in time and exploring history, whether it be around the world or whether it be right here in Winnipeg. The book “Winnipeg’s Great War” by Jim Blanchard is one of those local historical looks at how the city of Winnipeg was affected and shaped by World War I, which lasted from 1914-18.
Blanchard set out to basically educate readers about the happenings in the city during this time, and he did exactly that, so you could say that worked in the book. Each statistic that he mentioned made the content that much more interesting. Also, I loved the quotes from all the newspaper articles including the Free Press and the Telegram. It was very cool to see how stuff was written and reported on nearly 100 years ago.
And it’s interesting to note that, yes, the statistics worked well in the book, but at the same time, improvements could be made. There were so much stats, names, dates for readers to remember that it became virtually impossible to know what was going on without looking back in the book. Would it have been better if Blanchard had divided the book into chapters about the different topics (The war, Manitoba Government, women,) rather than separate the chapters into years? (1914,1915, etc…) His transitions in the chapters to completely different topics seem a little quick and tough to follow at some points.
Again, some of the statistics, especially casualty numbers, have a shocking effect on readers, including myself, and in the times we live in now, it is absolutely incredible reading the accounts of what happened nearly 100 years ago in the same city we live in. Blanchard mentions some streets where buildings located and I found myself trying to envision the street now and then envision it nearly a century ago.
Jim Blanchard is a very dedicated individual and mentioned how he had worked almost three years on the book. He said how he has already completed two books and is working on a third one, about the city in the 1920s. You have to love a guy like Blanchard, digging through the history books, and at the same time informing others of the historical happenings.
And sorry to jump on the bandwagon, but this book resembles another book familiar to journalism majors, Hiroshima. It tells the happenings of a specific city during the war and the effects the war had on the city told through tons of factual information. I guess the difference, though, is that Hiroshima is told mostly through first-person accounts, while this book didn’t do nearly as much of that. Blanchard has so much to write about and get to, that he probably couldn’t the approach that Hiroshima author John Hersey did.
The obvious thing that journalists can learn from this book is that so much dedication is needed to produce a history book of this magnitude. Blanchard explained how he spent nearly three years working on this and how he spent weeks and weeks sitting in a library, looking through 90-year old newspapers. I can see how this process would completely scare away some journalists, and maybe that’s why there hadn’t really been a retrospective of Winnipeg during World War I, because of the amount of research and dedication needed.
In conclusion, for historical lovers like myself, Winnipeg's Great War was a great read, and I would definitely read future works from Blanchard about the history of Winnipeg.
Blanchard set out to basically educate readers about the happenings in the city during this time, and he did exactly that, so you could say that worked in the book. Each statistic that he mentioned made the content that much more interesting. Also, I loved the quotes from all the newspaper articles including the Free Press and the Telegram. It was very cool to see how stuff was written and reported on nearly 100 years ago.
And it’s interesting to note that, yes, the statistics worked well in the book, but at the same time, improvements could be made. There were so much stats, names, dates for readers to remember that it became virtually impossible to know what was going on without looking back in the book. Would it have been better if Blanchard had divided the book into chapters about the different topics (The war, Manitoba Government, women,) rather than separate the chapters into years? (1914,1915, etc…) His transitions in the chapters to completely different topics seem a little quick and tough to follow at some points.
Again, some of the statistics, especially casualty numbers, have a shocking effect on readers, including myself, and in the times we live in now, it is absolutely incredible reading the accounts of what happened nearly 100 years ago in the same city we live in. Blanchard mentions some streets where buildings located and I found myself trying to envision the street now and then envision it nearly a century ago.
Jim Blanchard is a very dedicated individual and mentioned how he had worked almost three years on the book. He said how he has already completed two books and is working on a third one, about the city in the 1920s. You have to love a guy like Blanchard, digging through the history books, and at the same time informing others of the historical happenings.
And sorry to jump on the bandwagon, but this book resembles another book familiar to journalism majors, Hiroshima. It tells the happenings of a specific city during the war and the effects the war had on the city told through tons of factual information. I guess the difference, though, is that Hiroshima is told mostly through first-person accounts, while this book didn’t do nearly as much of that. Blanchard has so much to write about and get to, that he probably couldn’t the approach that Hiroshima author John Hersey did.
The obvious thing that journalists can learn from this book is that so much dedication is needed to produce a history book of this magnitude. Blanchard explained how he spent nearly three years working on this and how he spent weeks and weeks sitting in a library, looking through 90-year old newspapers. I can see how this process would completely scare away some journalists, and maybe that’s why there hadn’t really been a retrospective of Winnipeg during World War I, because of the amount of research and dedication needed.
In conclusion, for historical lovers like myself, Winnipeg's Great War was a great read, and I would definitely read future works from Blanchard about the history of Winnipeg.
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