Democracy dimming in darkness

Here’s a follow-up-up to last week’s column about how angry, autocratic politicians are working to turn voters against journalists.

Journalists ask questions about questionable government affairs. They dig out facts and write stories that autocratic politicians don’t like because they are neither flattering, nor favourable.

So the autocrats call the journalists names, such as losers and enemies of the people, and urge voters to turn on them. That thinking seeps down into the government’s agencies and their bureaucrats, important sources of information about a government’s work.

When its employees follow the government’s lead, journalists are cut off from the help they need to produce the stories that the public wants and needs.

The Ontario government provided an example of this with its non-helpful approach to journalists trying to cover the story of two teenage girls missing in Algonquin Park.

 I was involved in that story, having been asked by some southern Ontario newspapers to drive to Algonquin Park to assist with the reporting.

I arrived at Smoke Lake air base on Highway 60 and saw the parking area jammed with police, paramedic and volunteer searchers’ vehicles. I went through the open gate and into the aircraft hangar where three OPP officers sat at a table.

I asked them if this was the search command centre and whether the news media would be allowed here. One officer, a polite and respectful young guy (he even called me sir!), said he did not know but he would ask his sargeant on my behalf.

As he left, I was grabbed by the arm and yanked around. I found myself looking at a belligerent Algonquin Park ranger who demanded: “Do you not know how to read?”

That I learned later was a presumed reference to a No Unauthorized Persons sign out by the open gate.

My first thought was to say: “Yes, I can read: enough to have written and published 10 books despite being blind in one eye. Now get your paws off and let me finish my business with the OPP.”

But experienced reporters understand that their job is to stay focussed on the story, not to fight with people in authority. Their editors have lawyers to do that.

As I was being escorted off the property an OPP officer ran up and told me that reporters would not be permitted at the search command area but could get information about the search through the OPP media office in Smith Falls. I thanked him for his help, while resisting the temptation to ask him if he would mind giving human relations lessons to Ranger Bob.

The result was that myself, and a few other media types who arrived later, stood on the Highway 60 shoulder hoping to pick up bits and pieces of what was happening with the search. That created a dangerous situation in which the media people, and passing motorists, could have been hurt.

One reporter, trying to read her cell phone screen in the bright sunlight, absent-mindedly backed into the traffic lane. If a couple of others had not  shouted at her, she could have been hit by a passing car.

The authorities at Smoke Lake were just doing their jobs, although the park ranger could use training on how to do it without the storm trooper tactics.

Their bosses, the autocrats at Queen’s Park, were not doing theirs. If there had been an accident out on the highway, the blame would have rested solely with them.

This is a government that despises the media, in fact is afraid of it, and will do whatever it can to stop journalists from doing their jobs.

Professionally-run governments know how to handle these situations. A professional government operation would have had an information officer at Smoke Lake; someone to organize journalists into a safe area where they could view comings and goings without bothering search teams.

That’s how it works in a democratic world.

But angry autocrats know nothing better than shouting slogans about journalists being ”the enemy of the people” and scumbags working “in the weeds.”

The Washington Post masthead warns that “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

I see our democracy dimming every day, and it has nothing to do with advancing age, or having one blind eye.

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Ghost Canoe

This is the week for sitting on the shoreline of a northern lake and staring into the evening mists that creep across dark waters at sunset.

You never know what will emerge from the mists. Perhaps a dove grey cedar strip and canvass canoe paddled by a lone man wearing a yellow bush shirt. If you do see him and call to him, he will not answer and the canoe will dissolve into the mists as if it had never been there.

Ninety-eight years ago this week Tom Thomson, landscape artist, drowned in Canoe Lake. He was last seen alive July 8, 1917 and his decomposing body was found in the lake more than a week later, on July 16.

Some people believe Thomson’s ghost still paddles through the mists on Algonquin Park lakes. There have been reports of sightings, none in recent history.

The most famous sighting report came back in 1931 from a Mrs. Northway, a summer resident on Smoke Lake. She and her guide were paddling the lake one evening when a man in a canoe appeared. As the guide steered their canoe toward the man to exchange greetings, the canoe vanished.

One of Mrs. Northway’s guests that summer was Lawren Harris, Thomson’s friend and a member of the Group of Seven artists. He believed her story because, he said, persons taken unexpectedly continue to haunt the places they loved.

Jimmy Stringer, long-time Canoe Lake resident who met Thomson when he first arrived in the Park in 1913, told of two encounters with Thomson’s ghost.

He said he saw it once while paddling in the Park alone. Another time he was guiding an American who was part of a group. Their canoe fell behind the rest, and somewhere along the route the American began yelling from the bow.

Stringer asked what was wrong and the American said he had seen a ghostly canoe with a lone man up ahead. The man in the ghost canoe shouted that someone had drowned, then disappeared. When they reached their destination, Stringer learned that one of the lead canoes, carrying the American’s brother, had tipped and the brother had drowned.

Stringer himself drowned in Canoe Lake. He was pulling a toboggan on the lake when the spring ice gave way – in almost the same spot where Thomson’s body was found.

Mystery shrouds much of the Thomson story. His body was buried in a tiny bush-choked cemetery at the north end of Canoe Lake. The burial was hurried because the body was decomposing.

However, Thomson’s brother George send a telegram to the lake saying the family wanted the body reburied in Leith, near Owen Sound, where Thomson’s parents lived. He hired an undertaker to travel to the lake, exhume the body and bring it home to Leith.

The undertaker arrived with a coffin on an evening train and went to the isolated cemetery about midnight. He left with the coffin on the next train. Rumours circulated that the undertaker did not exhume the body and brought an empty coffin to Leith.

Thus the Great Canadian Mystery: Do Tom Thomson’s bones lie under his headstone at Leith, or in the dark tree-shrouded soil at Canoe Lake?

The other part of the mystery is how did Thomson die? Some people say it is impossible that the wandering woodsman-artist who spent so much time in his canoe could simply fall out of it and drown. There are theories that he was murdered. There was much speculation about fishing line wrapped around his ankle.

What is known is that on the night of July 7 there was a drinking party at one of the cabins on Canoe Lake. Thomson was there. Arguments, no doubt fuelled by too much booze, broke out.

Thomson was last seen the next day paddling his canoe away from the Canoe Lake shore and letting out copper fishing line as he went. He disappeared behind Little Wapomeo Island and his canoe was found overturned the next day.

The mysteries remain, elusive as the evening mists. Elusive as the ghost canoe that some people say still glides through them.

From my Minden Times column @ http://mindentimes.ca/?p=7202

More on Tom Thomson at: http://www.amazon.ca/Tom-Thomson-Mysterious-Canadian-Painter/dp/1551539500

Loving the Smell of Cordite in the Morning

'Did you see that tank going by?'

   Here’s a really bad idea for a world unbalanced by bad ideas:  A London, Ontario tank armour manufacturer wants to establish an explosion test site on the southern edge of Algonquin Park.

   Armatec Survivabilty plans to buy 2,300 acres of bush country for an explosion obstacle course to test its armour. The land is across the road from Benoir Lake, one of many cottage lakes in the area. Cottagers have received notice from the Dysart et al Municipal Council that it plans to decide  in late March whether to allow the Armatec purchase.

   Tanks weighing up to 50 tonnes would be run through the obstacle course and the company says there would be only one explosion a day on 30 days a year and explosive noise would be short. There also would be mobility tests in which tanks and armoured vehicles roar through the forest.

   The company, anticipating someone might object to explosions and tank maneuvers on the border of Ontario’s most precious piece of outdoor heritage, has an FAQ site answering 42 questions about the plan. It can be found at:     http://www.armateconline.com/index.php/faq-page#Q4

   One of the cards already being played in the testing range plan is: “This is all about saving the lives of our soldiers.” Please, let’s not do that. There are plenty of other places, plenty of other ways to do important testing that will help protect our soldiers.

   The real issue here is that we live in a world in which pollution and noise are killing us, or driving us crazy. The Algonquin Park area is one place where people can go to find some solitude. That 2,300 acres should become an extension of the Park, not a war weapons testing range.

A Mystery Now 95 Years Old

         Ninety-five years ago this week the Great Canadian Mystery began. On July 8, 1917, Canadian painter Tom Thomson went missing in Ontario’s bush country. To this day, no one knows for sure how he died, or what exactly happened to his body after his bush country burial.

          Thomson was a moody bachelor who spent much of his time in Algonquin Park, canoeing, fishing and painting. His art work always is associated with the Group of Seven, founded after his death, because all these artists shared a vision of distinct Canadian art connected to the Canadian landscape.

          On the morning of July 8, Thomson went fishing on Canoe Lake in Algonquin and disappeared. His body was found floating in the lake eight days later. A quick investigation ruled his canoe had overturned, or he had fallen out of it.

          There have been decades of speculation that he was murdered by a summer resident from Buffalo, New York, or died the night before in an accident during a drinking party.

          It was a hot week and Thomson’s body was buried almost immediately at the lake because it was decaying rapidly. His brother George was notified and he sent an undertaker to the lake to disinter his brother’s body and return it to his parents’ home near Owen Sound for burial. There is speculation that the undertaker, who went to the Canoe Lake gravesite at night, did not dig up the body and sent an empty coffin back to George Thomson.

          It is a fascinating story that has intrigued Canadians for almost a century. People continue to try to figure out how Thomson died, and whether his remains lie at Canoe Lake, or near Owen Sound.

          More on the Thomson mystery can be found in my book: Tom Thomson: The Life and Mysterious Death of the Famous Canadian Painter, available at Amazon or wherever you buy books.