A Good Day for the Globe and Mail
I read both the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail this morning, as I do roughly every second day. (I read the Globe weekday mornings as I ride a bus to work). Today it struck me that the Globe was much better--even dramatically better.
I won't dwell on the Star, but here are some highlights from today's Globe. A piece on Dieppe--the disastrous attack on a French beach in World War II that, in some ways, foreshadowed the successful D-Day invasion. Timothy Balzer has shown in detail (in his Master's thesis) how the authorities lied immediately after the fiasco--painting it as some kind of victory, when it was little more than a slaughter, followed by a quick surrender by the survivors. Worse, in a way, is that the media--who were in the habit of repeating the official line--repeated the fantastic lies in this case, often feeling guilty as they did so.
The story gets a lot of play in Canada because so many of the Allied troops involved were Canadian. There has sometimes been a suspicion that the Brits were more willing to use Canadians as cannon fodder than their own people--like the Australian feeling about Gallipoli in World War I. The debate still rages as to whether the Dieppe operation was a complete and utter waste of human life and resources, or merely a nearly complete waste. The rather lame conclusion of historian Jack Granatstein in the article is that at least the Allies learned not to attack an actual port city--which would be heavily fortified by the Germans. Empty beaches would be better. Ah yes, a light goes on.
Churchill was all over this fiasco, as he was Gallipoli. (Given his almost unbelievable career). He was pushing hard to get some kind of Western front going. He wanted to show Stalin the West would fight, so as to keep the Russians fighting hard in the East. An 86-year-old man named Jack Poolton, who actually fought at Dieppe, says in this article that in fact some on the Western side wanted to prove any attack on fortified France would be a waste of time for the forseeable future--Stalin would just have to keep fighting alone. Possibly Churchill wanted more air cover than he actually got--again, as at Gallipoli? I don't know.
Not a huge article, but very interesting. Veterans of Dieppe would tend not to discuss it. I worked for a year for a Member of Parliament--Marcel Lambert--who fought at Dieppe with the Calgary Tanks, and was taken prisoner.
Good stuff in today's Globe on Iraq--including a number of individuals, some of them strong supporters of the U.S./Coalition, who have been imprisoned for months, and sometimes abused.
Perhaps the biggest theme in today's Globe is hockey. Christie Blatchford writes about Mike Danton--the NHL player who has been charged in St. Louis with contracting to kill someone--possibly his long time mentor/substitute father, David Frost. Blatchford likes hockey players. Like her friend Rosie DiManno of the Star, she gives the impression that she's been intimate with a few of them. Yet she spells out what she sees as a problem in the system that produces professional hockey players in Canada.
Talented boys move away from home at a young age in order to play for the best team they can. A charismatic coach/mentor can become a kind of cult leader for "his" group of players--especially if, as in Frost's case, they move from coaching to being an agent. Frost has had a tendency not only to win over talented kids, but to turn them against their parents. Danton has ceased talking to his family, and changed his last name. The most famous earlier case of a coach abusing the trust of players was that of Sheldon Kennedy, who confirmed that coach Graham James sexually abused him and other players in Saskatchewan.
Whether Frost had sex with his group of followers or not, it would not be surprising if they discover their closeness with him affects their ability to have a normal social life, or marry and have a family.
The Canadian hockey system has been criticized in recent years for emphasizing actual games over practices. This is great for developing goalies, and grinding players who can slow down the play; but it doesn't necessarily develop the best passing, play-making, or even shot-making. As another article in today's Globe points out, however, Canada is once again Number 1 in world hockey. This makes it hard to criticize the skills development of the national game. But what about the social aspects?
This other article features Wayne Gretzky and the selection of Team Canada for the world championship this year. As always, Gretzky comes across as bright and thoughtful, with good reasons for doing what he is doing.
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