The Battle of York - this day in history

April 27th, 1813. Cannons thundered across the little town of York, and North America was at war with itself. Two new countries with citizens from the same families, same language.

Ask President Madison, the forth President of the United States, why he did it. He’d probably say that it was a golden opportunity to grab a continent while kicking the English out for good. And the English had their hands full across the ocean with a little Frenchman named Napoleon. So why not make a grab? But provoking neighbours to the north is never a good idea. Especially neighbours with their hands on the best Army and Navy in the world. So the War of 1812 became a hard driven war of battles and skirmishes that the United States had never bargained for with the British in their North American stronghold of Canada.

April 27th, was a battle; a skirmish at the quiet little Capital of Upper Canada, York.

American troops sailed by frigate and landed by long boat along the North Shore of Lake Ontario. They then marched along the shore toward the town and Fort York. In the scuffle that ensued, the Commander of the British Garrison at Fort York ordered a retreat, meaning, “Get out of town, fast. The Americans are coming.” But before they marched, or ran out of town, he left orders to blow-up the gun powder stone-house at the Fort. 

As American Soldiers and Marines advanced on the Fort, the gunpowder blew and rocks from the ammunition stone-house flew in all directions, showering rocks, carnage and mayhem, killing many- including American Brigadier General Zebulon Pike, who incidentally, Pikes Peak Mountain in Colorado is named after.

The Americans were so angry at the loss of troops and good officers that when they entered the little town, they sacked the place and burned down the Government House; the Capital.

Of course sometime later in retaliation for torching Canada’s Capital, the British marched on Washington, D.C., and burned the President's Mansion. To quickly cover the blacken scars, it was decided that the mansion should be painted white and from there after it became known as the White House.

All this because of the burning of the little town of York.

The War of 1812 and 1813 claimed too many lives and spread across both nations, ending at the Battle of New Orleans. Neither country lost territory in the war and Canada was saved.

The United States and Canada eventually became the best of friends, and President Madison? Well, he became an American hero, but not for the war of 1812. In most history books it’s a forgotten war because the USA were defeated in their expansionist ambitions. But Madison went on to forge the United States Constitution and today he’s remembered for that.

But what happened to that little town of York? Well, today it’s known to the world as the City of Toronto: A native Indian name meaning meeting place.

Toronto is Canada's largest city and is still host to invading Americans each year. But now, in peace, on vacation.


"I believe that in four weeks from the time a declaration of war is heard on our frontier, the whole of Upper Canada and a part of Lower Canada will be in our power."
- Representative John C. Calhoun

Run Lola Run (favorite films)

I recently re-watched the German "Art house" film "Run Lola Run." 

From the opening credits where a swinging pendulum sets the pace, we hear a clock ticking, the beat of the music starts, and this movie never stops with its frenetic and frantic pace. It's a visual cacophony of different and exciting images that run at you around every corner to build in your brain faster and faster until the end of the movie. Phew. Then your heart is still racing from the experience and you want to see it again. 

Run Lola Run is three films in one. Yet, it's the same film time and time again. But it's vastly different in that only the characters are the same. The story hits you repeatedly and builds without repetition. Each time Lola runs past someone on the street, you learn something new; sometimes funny and perhaps quirky about that person, and all within a few seconds, so that by the end of the film, it has been a complete encounter. 

The basic story is that she is running to stop her boy friend from committing a crime. I'm sure I lost pounds just watching this girl run. She's beautiful and compelling. She's also hip and fit with red hair flying in the wind. A tight blue top reveals a white bra underneath, and her tight green pants flair at the bottom over black boots; definitely not running shoes. 

This is a film like no other. It's so original that I would recommend it to literally anybody who is willing to suspend his or her belief in a linear world. 

Run Lola Run is in German with subtitles, but you hardly need to read much dialogue before the images tell you the story. 

Written and Directed by Tom Tykwer

Starring: Franka Potente as Lola and Moritz Bleibtreu as Manni her boyfriend


"The secret is just to keep moving."
-Franka Potente

Critic Quote:
"It delivers everything great foreign films should - action, sex, compelling characters, clever filmmaking, it's unpretentious (a requirement for me) and it has a story you can follow. I can't rave about this film enough - this is passionate filmmaking at it's best. One of the best foreign films, heck, one of the best films I have seen."
- Chris Gore

Thanks Billy Bishop or whoever you were.

“Ever trust your future to a drunken conversation in a bar?”

That was a line from a brilliant play we just saw, “Billy Bishop Goes to War,” about Canadian, World War One flying ace William A. Bishop. 

The line hit home, because when I was 19 years old, I did trust my future to a conversation in a bar. Drunken or not, I’m not sure. It was in 1968. My family and I had recently moved half way around the globe from England to Vancouver. We had been looking for a local pub, (there’s one on every corner in England) but we didn’t find one near our new Vancouver home. However, we did find a Royal Canadian Legion. My mother had been in the English services, so we joined.

One evening, after a long day of working at a job I wasn’t particularly enjoying, my mother and I went for a beer at the legion to discuss our situation. Since moving to Vancouver a few months earlier, neither of us were finding the work we aspired to, or wanted. I had apprenticed and had been a photographer in England, and I was looking for a job in the profession where I could build a career. I just wasn’t finding it in Vancouver.

During the evening of beers and conversation, I was introduced to a Toronto man who was visiting Vancouver on business. We talked about the world and business, and he told me of how some people use other people for connections to get ahead in the world. Modern day networking. So I asked the question: “Do you know anyone in the photography or film business in Toronto?” He proceeded to tell me about a friend of his who worked at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Jobs for photographers and cameramen were posted on the jobs board all the time. He suggested that I take a trip to Toronto, talk to his friend and look at the board.

Following another family chat, I found myself on a flight bound for Toronto, and it wasn’t long before I was chatting with this man’s friend at the CBC.  “Yes.” he told me, there are were many jobs in my profession, and that I should go and register at the CBC employment office. 

With my background, education and training, it wasn’t long before I was accepted at the CBC in a foot-in-the-door job as an office junior.  It took me another two years to finally find my way around the CBC and land the career of a lifetime; first as an assistant cameraman on TV dramas and documentaries, later as a cinematographer.  They sent me around the world filming at the far reaches of humanity, and to the great capitals where I participated in the high life. I also became the youngest Director of Photography on major CBC TV dramas. When I was 36, I left the CBC to become a freelance director of photography and director, until I side-stepped the profession to start my own production business in 2002.

“Ever trust your future to a drunken conversation in a bar?” That line from “Billy Bishop Goes to War” was very much about my experience. I did trust my future to a conversation in a bar when I was 19 years old, and strangely, the Royal Canadian Legion where my life was changed, was the Billy Bishop Branch 176 in Kitsilano Beach, Vancouver.

I never saw that man again, but I knew what it was all about when I read the following saying: 

“People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.  

When someone enters your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have.  They have come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally, or spiritually.  They may seem like a godsend; and they are.  They are there for the reason you need them to be.  Then, without any wrong doing on either part, you may never see this person again.  What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled;  their work is done.  

When people come into your life for a SEASON, it is because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn.  They may bring you an experience, or make you laugh.  They may teach you something you have never done.  They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy.  Believe it!  It is real!  But, only for a season.

LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons; those things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation.  Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person/people (anyway);  and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life.  It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.”

It's the Circle of Life, Davy.

I was sad to hear of the death of actor, winemaker, real-estate tycoon Fess Parker this past week. As an actor, he played a hero of mine back in the 1950s, and I expect many Boomers will remember him, not for being an actor, which he did exceptionally well, but for embodying the spirit of a movie hero and icon; Davy Crockett.

Which reminds me of a recent experience that reinforced the Circle of Life for me. This is when something, instigated many years before, can come back around to tap you on the shoulder later in life. Well, I had one of those experiences about three years back, and it was instigated by the 1955 Walt Disney movie, "Davy Crockett."

In 1955, I was a boy of six. We lived in Montreal and the fad that was circulating North America at the time was based on the film and the TV series: “Davy Crockett – King of the Wild Frontier.”

First there was the song:

Born on a mountain top in Tennessee,
Greenest state in the land of the free.
Raised in the woods so he knew every tree,
Killed him a B’ar (bear) when he was only three.
Davy, Davy Crockett King of the Wild Frontier.

We all learned the words and everyone in my school wanted to be Davy Crockett, with a raccoon-skin hat, buckskin clothes and the blunderbuss rifle. Even the kids in the neighborhood dressed like him, but I had my eyes set on something different. Every day when my mother walked me to school in Ville Saint-Laurent, the suburb where we lived, we would pass a certain shop and the only thing in the shop window was a puppet; a marionette of Davy Crockett hanging for all to see. Everyday I would stare at this marionette with it’s little coon-skin hat and buckskin clothes and a small, plastic guitar. I loved the idea of show business. Yes, even back then. This puppet was for me.

However, real life began to over take our family, as my parents were splitting up. And not long after, my Mother sent me to live in England with my grandparents. All was strange and I really didn’t know my grandparents. But that soon changed. When I opened my suitcase, can you imagine my eyes when I saw the Davy Crockett puppet my mother had bought for me?

"Who's that?" my grandfather asked.
"Davy," I replied.
And I started to sing the song.

“Born on a mountain top in Tennessee.
Greenest state in the land of the free.
Raised in the woods so he knew every tree,
Killed him a B’ar (bear) when he was only three.
Davy, Davy Crockett King of the Wild Frontier. “

My grandfather stopped me, “Bar?” he said.
“He killed him a bar? Does that mean he was drinking at a bar at the age of three?”
“I think it means he killed a bear,” I replied.
“Killed a bear? At three? Bear, bar. Silly Americans,” he said.

Now, jump forward fifty-two years into the future, to 2007, when I lived in Studio City, California. I was invited to a business luncheon where the Association of Fundraising Professionals were having their annual National Philanthropy Day. I go to many business luncheons, so this was another rubber-chicken lunch for me. As a matter of fact, it was at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City, so the chicken had bounced many times on the way to my plate.

I was trying to stomach eating when the Master of Ceremonies started to talk about himself. His name was Bill Hayes. He was a TV soap opera actor. But then he talked about his early career and this sparked my interest. He was a young session singer and musician in Hollywood back in 1955, and during a recording session, a producer raced into the studio and said:

“Hey, Bill, please record this song. No one else wants to record it and it may become a hit. It’s for Disney.”

He did record it (one take) and it became a huge hit. The name of the song was “Davy Crockett - King of the Wild Frontier”.

Well, I was in awe of Bill Hayes. I remembered the song our whole Montreal neighborhood had sung, and I went up to him at the end of the program and shook his hand.

“Mr Hayes,” I said. “I just want to thank you for being such a significant part of my life as a kid.”

I told him that I tried to teach my English grandparents to sing his song, and that he had made quite the impression on me. He was very gracious. But I did notice him looking at me as if to say, "You don’t look much younger than me."

When I got home that night, I reached into an old storage case and dug out my Davy Crockett marrionette/puppet. He has been my mascot all my life. I sat him on my desk top and the weathered, old doll began to play the song that I had sung as a six year old. Those words that Bill Hayes had sung back in 1955, introducing Fess Parker as Davy Crockett.

“Born on a mountain top in Tennessee.

Greenest state in the land of the free.

Raised in the woods so he knew every tree,

Killed him a B’ar (bear) when he was only three.

Davy, Davy Crockett King of the Wild Frontier. “

Sometimes the “Circle of Life” comes right back to pat you on the back fifty years on, to say, “Hello, old friend, remember me?”

I'm sure the death of Actor Fess Parker this week was a sad moment for all of us Baby Boomers whose lives touched that era of Davy Crockett so intimately, those many years ago.


“Davy was an interesting thing to live with.”
- Fess Parker

"Fame is like a shaved pig with a greased tail, and it is only after it has slipped through the hands of some thousands, that some fellow, by mere chance, holds on to it."
- Davy Crockett

"Never let the facts get in the way of telling a good story."
- Walt Disney

Olympics are over.

Well, they’re over: The 2010 Winter Olympic Games in our home city of Vancouver, Canada.

It was such a long awaited, anticipated event with such mixed emotion from the people who live here. Now it’s over, in a blink of time. We know of many who left town to bask on a tropical island while renting out their houses for a small fortune for two weeks. Others swapped houses with people of foreign lands. So they missed it, the wonderful excitement of it all. Because no matter what you think of a circus coming to town, or your city hosting the biggest party in the world, the atmosphere itself is something to bask in.

We played our part. We attended the opening event; ski jumping at the brand new Whistler Olympic Park. We also attended the preliminary pairs figure skating at the Pacific Coliseum where the Chinese couple began their skate for Olympic gold. Throughout the games we were glued to the High Definition TV, broadcasting on a 24-hour schedule. NBCs “Today” show built their facilities high on Grouse Mountain, and CTV broadcast all day every day with their affiliated stations. We could watch almost every run and re-run of each Olympic win all day and all night.

The opening ceremonies were spectacular. We were on the edge of our seats wondering how this opening event could ever compete with the standards set by the 2008 Beijing Summer Games, especially in the relatively small, BC Place stadium. But they did it. It was sensational and distinctly Canadian. When the Games started, we needed snow badly up on Cypress Mountain. It was warm. British writers said that this was the worst games ever. But we got the snow and we won gold medals up there. During the first week, Canadian officials were worried that we were not winning as many medals as we should. But by the second week, the athletes were proving they were great in every sport. Canada won gold, and we won more gold and more medals than ever before. There was victory, there was pride in achievement and pride in country.

Then there was the Canada vrs. USA hockey matches. The first one Canada lost. This gave them the practice to beat the others teams in the running and come back to go for gold with the USA. What a match. All the country was watching. Hockey is not just a sport in Canada, it’s a religion that unifies this diverse nation. Canada won and the nation celebrated and basked in the glory. In all, Canada won: 14 Gold, 7 silver and 5 bronze medals, an Olympic record for any country winning gold and a Canadian record medal count of 26.

We sang the national anthem more than any other time. Patriotism. Moments. Magic filled the air, and Canadians came together with excitement and enthusiasm, cheering our teams and politely acknowledging and sometimes cheering another country’s win. We bought the clothes: The toques and the now world-famous mitts. Vancouver was splashed with red and white and Olympic Hudson Bay clothes everywhere. The Olympic spirit was embraced by the whole country. What an exciting time to be here. What a glorious experience.

And the ones who left? They probably returned and their lives were none the wiser, having missed life itself: The greatest show on earth.


“Hockey is not a sport in Canada. It’s a cult.”

- Brian Burke. (USA men’s team GM)

“The first thing is to love your sport. Never do it to please someone else. It has to be yours.”

- Peggy Fleming (American figure skater, 1968 Winter Olympics)

"What is next? I don't know. Sleep, and then take on the world."
- 
Shaun White (American snowboarder , after he won gold)

Olympics are here.

As a kid growing up in England, I loved to watch the Olympic Games on TV, but then I discovered the Winter Olympics and I was even more enthralled. I’d watch the bobsled, the skating and the downhill skiing, but the thrill for me was the ski jumping. These men on wide wooden skis would go hurtling down high mountain runs and steep ramps at ultra fast speeds, then throw themselves into the air with a whoosh and a simple elegance that turned them into flying angels. They seemed to stand on air for an endless time until gravity would glide them gently to land, with graceful flair on the snow at the end of their flight. This was magic to me. All hands would raise from the crowd and people would cheer for the victor. Wow, I couldn’t wait to watch the Winter Games every four years.

To me, the Winter Olympics were always in more exotic places than the Summer games. Places like: Innsbruck Switzerland, Sapporo Japan and Sarajevo Yugoslavia. They even came to Calgary Alberta, and at one time I thought of learning to ski. I went to a junior slope near where I lived, but found out the hard way that my ski laden feet wanted to go in different directions. For the sake of my profession, I decided then and there that I didn’t need broken legs, muscles or limbs to impede a life’s work that I loved.

I never thought of going to the Games until I saw the spectacular TV coverage from the 1992 games in Albertville France and then the 1994 games in Lillehammer Norway. Lillehammer is such a small town, yet they invited the world to the biggest party on Earth. And they built a spectacular Olympic Stadium at the base of the ski jump. This is where they held the opening and closing ceremonies and I was glued. From that time on, I dreamed of one day attending the Winter games. Well, time passed and the games were in places I just didn’t want to go, or I couldn’t break away from my busy schedule. But this year, the Winter Olympic Games came to me.

Today, we attended the first event of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games at the newly constructed Olympic Park near Whistler British Columbia. And guess what? This event was the Ski Jumping I had dreamed of experiencing.

Olympic security in Vancouver is horrendous for normal citizens. They advise, “be early.” We were up at 3 am to catch the 5 am, two hour bus drive, north to the park. It was unfortunately dark, because we were driving past some of the most spectacular British Columbia scenery on the Sea to Sky highway. From there we cleared through security and hiked to the brand new Olympic Ski Jump where only a month before someone had broken a world record.

Spectacular. We were high in the Coastal Mountains. The air was brisk. Being there was a thrill. The athletes in colourful, tight costumes were speeding down the slope, jumping through the air and flying down the mountain to a grounding on the packed snow with the greatest of ease, skill and feelings. The enthusiast crowd cheered for each of the jumpers but the best athletes shone. Good ski jumping is about the fine art of balance, and a total body awareness and a feeling for the air and wind currents make this sport an art. This day they were creating great art at great speed.

Ski Jumping is dangerous as are most Olympic sports, and accidents happen when an athlete will make one fatal slip while hurtling through the air at endless speed. Today was good for ski jumping. Not so fortunate for a young Luge athlete from Georgia who died while on a practice run at the newly built Whistler run. The fastest track in the world. A sad moment indeed.

Today my Olympic thrill brought many emotions.


“Champions aren't made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them -- a desire, a dream, a vision.”
Muhammad Ali

“Becoming an Olympian is the ultimate reward for any athlete.”
Michael Diamond

“I just wanted to be an athlete.”
Merlin Olsen

Marriage

January 28th, 2010

Just got married. Not for the first time; this was my third marriage. And I did it for no other reason but love.

Some get married to have children. I never did. Not this time either. My first wife and I were in love; she was twenty nine, I was twenty five. We knew the day of the wedding we shouldn’t be doing it. We just knew it wouldn’t last. We were married in a lovely, picture-perfect, little church in Unionville, Ontario. It couldn’t have been better. She couldn’t have children. Our marriage lasted three years. We broke up because we couldn’t see any reason to go on with a relationship that was adversarial. We didn’t see each other again and I was sorry to learn that she died at the age of sixty.

My second wife and I loved each other and we got married on Elbow Beach in Bermuda. We were both the same age, forty. A fairy tale wedding. Just the minister and two witnesses from the hotel desk, and us. As the minister pronounced us married, we were suddenly bathed by the sound of polite applause. Astounded, we turned around. Behind us, on the once empty beach, was a large group of people who had gathered to watch in their swim suits. The marriage lasted ten years. At first we tried to have children, but we had a miscarriage. Eventually we drifted apart intimately. We are still good friends.

This, my third marriage, was on a small ferry boat on the waters of Vancouver, British Columbia. We are in love. When we first visited Vancouver together, we rode the ferry across to Grenville Island, a tourist attraction with a great fresh food market. When we decided to get married we wanted to make it truly memorable. We rented one of the Granville Island ferry boats and set sail, or motored, under the bridges of False Creek and out to the beautiful waters that surround Vancouver at English Bay. There we exchanged our marriage vows and native carved wedding rings with a couple of friends and soon to be stepson.

All my marriages have been memorable with truly lovely women. I have been exceptionally lucky to know each one of them and I have learned so much from each. What was missing with the first two was a stable relationship. I would never have married again if I thought it wouldn’t work this time. Love is good, but marriage is so much more.

For me, this marriage means stability in love, in a relationship, a truly giving partnership with my best friend. We plan to travel more, to share our lives in a lasting and respectful way, to share each others qualities in a close relationship, and to focus on keeping our marriage successful and diverse. We are very comfortable with each other. This time our marriage will succeed, because this time we plan to stay in love.


"Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century."
- Mark Twain

"Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years."
- Simone Signoret

"Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open."
- George Bernard Shaw

Curiosity

If there’s one thing I could say to the world’s youth that could guide them through a life of quality living and adventure, it would be to develop a curiosity for the world, it’s diversity and it’s humanity, and to develop, nurture and grow their creativity.

Some of us are attracted to interests or hobbies where we can be curious from a young age. I was lucky, I was always an observer of life, so curiosity and creativity have been an ingrained part of me. And when I needed to find a profession, it was a natural progression to study photography and then film making as a vocation. This, in turn, became a profession that helped me grow as a human being and film making/storytelling became an extension of who I am. However, many young people I come across today in their teens or early twenties have absolutely no idea what they want to do with their lives.

From a particular point of view, there are overbearing forces that all of us have been exposed to, even over exposed to. Whether from family or community, these are forces we must all learn to moderate or break free from in order to find that individual and personal passion for our own lives.

We are born into a world nurtured by our family and everything is placed in front of us. From the beginning, we are surrounded by the opinions of others and we are indoctrinated to be part of our immediate family. We are given the love of family, community and country, and for all we know, that’s all there is. We never give it a second thought. We may grow up Christian or we may be born into a Jewish home or one of the many other religions, or not. Our parents may speak: French or Chinese or English, and we naturally learn their language so we can communicate. If our parents love a particular kind of music, then music is pressed on our souls. If politics in the household is leaning heavily to one side or the other, we may be influenced by those ideas. If our father is a business man, we may be asked to take over the family business one day. If our parents are strong willed, then we may be under their influence for our whole lives. So dogma and indoctrination of some sort are impressed upon us continually. And to find our way in the world, out of all these influences toward becoming a free thinker, is very difficult. Yet, the successful among us break free to lead wonderful lives of our own creation. What we are, are individuals. We are not what people try to mold us into. We are certainly not what we are born into. We have the freedom to discover who we really are, yet, few of us realize this.

Think on that for a moment.

Growing up and breaking free to be our own selves is the most difficult thing each of us will ever encounter. We will stumble. We will want to return to the comforts of home. But we will realize that we have moved on. We will come to know that for self survival, we must move out even further to reclaim ourselves. It takes guts to break from the pack, from our families, our community, our allegiances and loyalties, our childhood friends and sometimes our countries. But we must create our own home. This is why it is so difficult.

Curiosity can drive us: We ask questions. We learn from the people we talk with outside our sphere of influence. We are confronted by new ideas from the books we read, quality TV shows we watch, the people we meet or places we visit. From these sparks of information we become curious about the wider world. Our souls wake up, we come truly alive and we come to the realization that we are free to think for ourselves. Our curiosity asks us: Who am I? What makes me tick? With what ideas am I really comfortable? What music do I really like? How can I truly live my life in the comfort of my own sensibilities? How can I contribute with my own identity?

We all have a need to belong. It’s a longing that we all have deep within us. But we must find our own community. To survive, we must realize that out in the world, beyond our brains, beyond the indoctrination and brain washing and cultural comfort, something is there to help us find ourselves: Our curiosity, our creativity, our “being.”

What makes us successful individuals is our curiosity for new and exciting experiences. And to make those experiences work, we must use our imagination and our creativity to constantly shape and mold ourselves, and reinvent if we must. And curiosity will help us go further than we could ever imagine.

“Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning.”
-  William Arthur Ward

“When you're curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.”
- Walt Disney

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”
- Albert Einstein

“Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.”
- Leo Burnett