Random Access

Are you ready for some malversation?
Monday is inaugural night in Mississauga which means you’ll get to hear a dozen oaths sworn by City councillors and a dozen repetitions of that curious word that you hear only at inaugural meetings and in court proceedings.
Municipal councillors must swear not to exercise any, “partiality or malversation or other undue execution of such office.” Malversation is corrupt behaviour in a position of trust or in elected office.
I wonder if Cliff Gyles ever looked that word up in the dictionary.
Staff and workmen are madly rushing to put the final finishing touches on the $2.5 million third-floor reno that provides upgrading of the council chambers, an improved sound system (which won’t be ready Monday), better sight lines and two more offices for the new councillors who will be pulling up chairs around the old horseshoe.
If the designers knew then what they know now, they would have built a DMZ between the mayor and the councillor for Ward 5.
Instead, Carolyn Parrish (she’s the one with the mayoralty training wheels), becomes the living DMZ.
The seating arrangement means Parrish may find herself cast in the uncomfortable role of peacemaker/cannon fodder between Eve Adams and the mayor. Can you say collateral damage?
It will be interesting to see what McCallion stresses in her traditional address at the start of the new term, and especially to see whether she simply renews hostilities with the Region/Province/Feds or tries to set forth a vision for this, likely her last term of office. If we’re lucky, we may see the blueprint towards 2010 that was missing in her campaign platform.
She promised more of the same on the campaign stump, which is understandable when you have only token opposition, but we deserve an inaugural that says a lot more than “ditto.”
With criticism mounting about “white bread” municipal councils, there is a proactive step that Mississauga council can take to increase its ethnic content. (Hazel’s affirmative action program already seems to have reached its goal, with nine of 12 councillors from the distaff side.)
This issue can easily be defused by getting some of the members to return to their maiden names. Wouldn’t adding a Eve Harvath or a Carolyn Janozeski to the mix help? If the Councillor for Ward 3 wishes to incorporate her Swedish roots (her grandmother worked for one of the kings of Sweden), she could end up with the elaborate handle of Maja Carlstrom-Petrie-Prentice.
There. That sounds better. One nettlesome issue off the table already.

Architect Edward Jones once explained that the podium where citizens stand to address council at the Mississauga Civic Centre was strategically placed at the exact physical centre of the council chambers to symbolize that the voice of the Mississauga citizen is at the very centre of civic discourse in this city.
Wonderful image.
Difficult sell though - especially to those who have stood at that spot and received a less-than-civil welcome from the politicians who sit arrayed in front of them on the council dais.
After the $2.5 million in renovations to the third floor which the public will get its first peek at tonight, that striking metaphor will need a small asterisk beside it.
As part of the municipal makeover, the podium at which the public makes delegations has been moved forward a couple of feet.
Instead of having room for just one deputant at the lectern, the podium now has three stations, including a lower one intended for use by citizens in wheelchairs. For the first time since the building opened in 1987, the public speaking post is fully accessible to all Mississauga’s citizens.
Ken Owen, the City’s director of facilities and property management, explains that the project encompassed a number of needed upgrades, which were prompted by the need to add two more councillors’ offices on the third floor.
The public will notice a few changes. When there is a problem with the sound system and the mayor gets that familiar quizzical look on her face and stares up towards the back of the chambers looking for someone to pillory, the A/V guys will be closer at hand. The top of the escalator cavern that divides the chamber has been bridged over at the top, making the technicians a better target.
Those huge, irksome screens that used to be lowered over the doors at the sides of the chambers for video presentations and forced one to crane one’s head to see them, are gone. They are now behind the council dais so the audience can see them clearly while looking straight ahead.
Councillors won’t have to scurry into the audience to see the presentations either. A new computer screen system will allow them to see them at their desks.
The vote management system also shows who has pushed the button to speak and provides a chronological roster of speakers for each item. Do you suppose they can program it so that councillors can speak only once to an issue, as the rules suggest, or so that an alarm sounds when the allotted time for bafflegab has been breached?
The most nettlesome thing about the chambers has always been the Great Wall of Mississauga down the middle. The walls of the escalator pit prevented anyone sitting on one side of the chambers from seeing anyone on the other side.
“That was a key issue,” said Owen. The solid wall has been reduced in size by half. It could not be lowered further because it is a structural element.
A glass panel has been erected on the top half of the former wall.
“It works as well as we can make it work,” says Owen.
Pity the first deputant who gets out of line with our hockey-loving leader. He just might find himself not only plastered against the boards and/or glass, but subject to Coach’s Corner analysis on the big screen between periods of the council meeting.

This is how Eve Adams’ term begins, not with the bang of a big hug from the mayor, but with the whimper of a limp handshake.
If Mayor Hazel McCallion hadn’t made her disdain for returning Ward 5 Councillor Eve Adams clear enough in her post-election remarks about how disappointed she was with the return of the incumbent to office, it became painfully obvious to even the most casual observer at the inaugural meeting of City council last night.
While the mayor went out of her way to get out of her seat and go all the way to the far end of the wing of the dais to give new Ward 10 Councillor Sue McFadden a big, fat welcoming embrace, McCallion could barely muster the strength to offer Adams a flimsy flipper. Talk about holding a cold hand.
While Adams choice of attire cast her as the scarlet woman, the mayor looked resplendent in a new ivory dress. Too bad she didn’t spend more time on her inaugural address, which — rather than looking forward to inspire us about what is to come in the next four years — looked back and rehashed all of the old familiar themes.
A few miles to the north, Peel District School Board Chair Janet McDougald was showing how it’s done in a speech that had a theme (lead, renew, commit), some interesting quotes from someone other than herself, some interesting observations (people who started at the board before 1981 present a monochrome picture, she noted in touting diversity) and some engaging thoughts about what it means to be a “progressive” board in such trying times. She even promised to make the exercise “slightly fun.”
By the way, while McCallion enters her amazing eleventh term in office, she has some distance to go to catch Ruth Thompson, the board vice-chair, who took her 14th oath of office last night.
• • •
It appears Emil Kolb will come up smelling like the venue, the brand new Rose Theatre in Brampton, when Peel council holds its inaugural meeting Thursday night.
There’s no one on the horizon so far to challenge the former Caledon mayor.
If Mississauga mayoralty candidate Roy Willis had his way, he would challenge the incumbent. The problem is that only members of regional council can nominate candidates. Willis asked McCallion to put his name forward, but she politely declined, asking him if he were capable of being the chair.
“I felt like saying, ‘Are you capable be being the mayor but I bit my tongue,’” says Willis.
“The bylaw should be changed,” the Port Credit resident feels. “The thing is, if they don’t want you, you’re not going to get it.”
Since the councillors are the ones who will elect the chair, that holds true under any circumstances.
It’s interesting to note that while chairs in most other regions are elected at large, and Durham recently held a non-binding referendum Nov. 13 that showed 90 per cent of voters there want direct election of the chairs in future, it has never even been raised for serious discussion in Peel.
We have a whole extra year this term around to kick the idea around.

As Dr. David Clarkson stood at the podium Friday to talk about the new Family Medicine Training Unit (FMTU) at Credit Valley Hospital, a project he was instrumental in establishing, he stood below a large, striking black and white photo.
It was a beautiful shot of a Credit Valley Railway steam engine under full power, with smoke billowing everywhere, puffing up a hill. It looked like it was probably taken in the last century.
“In fact, I was on that train when that picture was taken,” the personable Dr. Clarkson said in an interview shortly after the official launch of the FMTU, an exciting model that will see just-graduated doctors spend two years at CVH learning the craft of family medicine.
Clarkson’s roots go deep in the community. He was on the replica train for an event hosted by Credit Valley Conservation, of which his now 91-year-old father Grant (former deputy reeve and reeve of the Town of Mississauga) was then the chair. Although Mississauga West MPP Bob Delaney referenced the photo was proving the hospital is on track, with a full head of steam behind it, the engine provided by the Steam Restoration Society ran into some trouble that day and, “wouldn’t climb the hill” Clarkson recalled.
Yes, things are not always as they seem. Clarkson may be a descendant of one of the founding families of Dixie but he does not see the past through rose-coloured glasses.
The new program at CVH is light years ahead of what he faced when he opened his own practice here in 1972.
He decided that medicine was for him when he was a senior at Streetsville Secondary School. After he graduated, there was an informal system of mentorship and local doctors like Dr. Reg Perkin and Dr. Alex Borgiel provided assistance.
But the FMTU project is light years ahead of that model. Both Clarkson and CVH have a huge ulterior motive in providing a model that exposes young doctors to all aspects of hospital operations, provides a supportive network and even gives them a roster of patients they can transfer to their own practices. The idea is to have the doctors stay right here in Mississauga, where they are desperately needed. Only 11.4 per cent of Ontario doctors are accepting any new patients.
It irks Clarkson that other parts of Ontario are given hundreds of thousands of government dollars to attract new doctors when the need in growing communities such as Mississauga is just as severe.
The student doctors could have no better teacher than Clarkson, who has just been named a recipient of the College of Physicians and Surgeons council award, which recognizers practitioners “who come closest to meeting society’s vision of an ideal physician.”
Dr. Megan Hogan, one of the freshman class of four in the FMTU said the award is well deserved. “He’s incredible,” she said. “He’s so real. He genuinely cares about the patients.”
Colleague Dr. Paul Philbrook said Clarkson, a former Medical Officer of Health for Niagara Region and ex-chief of medicine at CVH, has done so many things for the hospital and community over the years that they are difficult to enumerate. For instance, he established a program for hospital patients who have no family doctors, so that a pool of physicians provides them service after they are released. He also worked weekly in a homeless shelter for some time.
These are not things you will learn from the self-effacing doctor himself.
What makes a good family doctor, Clarkson is asked. “A passion to heal,” he replies instantly. That informs the individual relationship which is now and always will be the key to the patient-doctor relationship, he says.
The 61-year-old has sacrificed about a third of his own practice to become one of the three doctors who teach and model for the FMTU.
Asked about his own future plans, Clarkson says: “I will continue to practice as a leader until I am 65. I will continue to practice as a healer until my brain goes soft.”

Every family has its special Christmas music, the stuff that gets hauled out year after year after year and becomes as much a part of the season as that lopsided star the dog once chewed that sits at a jaunty angle at the top of the tree.
In the household Alex Pangman grew up in in Mississauga, there were a couple of special records that got a spin once a year. “My Mom always played the New Christy Minstrels album and my Dad played the King’s College Choir. We also had a couple of those old K-Tel compilations.”
Now the Erin Mills jazz singer has her own freshly-minted contribution to the less-than-stellar genre, which - let’s face it - is generally long on emotional manipulation and short on hot musicianship.
In an era when you can’t go into a variety store without fear of exposure to ersatz Christmas muzak (It should be open season for hunting The Chipmunks), Pangman has produced a Christmas record that is raucous and musically rich.
Co-produced with Don Kerr, Ron Sexsmith’s touring drummer, Christmas Gift keeps you deliciously off guard.
It starts with a disarming version of Jingle Bells, influenced strongly by Ella Logan’s 1937 version of Jingle (Dingle) Bells. The Pangman version seems to change tempo at will and be slightly out of control, an approach that breathes new life into a too-familiar tune.
That seems to be Pangman’s modus operandi here, taking our expectations and turning them gently on their heads. She’s aided admirably in the endeavour by a raucous roadhouse band featuring Ross Wooldridge on clarinet and tenor sax, Kevin Clark on trumpet, Drew Jurecka on fiddle, Peter Hill on piano (but for two tracks), Sam Petite on bass and Chris Lamont on drums.
Strong bands are a fixture on all of Pangman’s recordings. This group shines brightest on the instrumental Winter Wonderland.
Many of these songs, like Patti Page’s Boogie Woogie Santa and Kay Starr’s The Man With the Bag are old gems that will be new to most listeners.
One of the duets on the CD features vocalist Tara Hazelton, whose husky timbre contrasts nicely with Pangman’s pipes. Unfortunately, nothing can redeem the material, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, a way-too-cutesy bit of candy floss.
The other duet, with Tory Cassis, is much more successful. Frank Loesser’s Baby It’s Cold Outside is a charmer that has been recorded by innumerable couples through the years. This version stands with the best, from Johnny Mercer and Margaret Whiting to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan. Turcotte and Wooldridge follow the overlapping singing with some very effective overlapping jousting of their own.
This is an Xmas album that even has something for those who are depressed for the holidays. Christmas Spirits is the most striking thing on the album. It starts with a weird fiddle cacophony that works into a straight-ahead blues. “Merry Christmas to all and Happy New Year/ It’s all just a joke when Gabriel’s playing in your ear,” sings Pangman. A little reality therapy on a Christmas disc. Probably Santa’s favourite cut.
Pangman debuts the album Tuesday night at the Lulu Lounge in Toronto. You can sample and purchase it at www.alexpangman.com.

Alex Pangman

Memo to Toronto Blue Jay General Manager J.P. Ricciardi: You can take Vernon Wells out of the “holiday” greeting card, but please, please don’t take him out of the line-up.
Ricciardi and the Toronto Blue Jays brass took their annual off-season shopping trip to the winter baseball meetings in Florida this week and came back with a lot of room still on the old credit card.
They should use it to make a pitch to keep Wells, their standout centre fielder. He has one year left on his contract, turns 28 today and should be heading into the most productive stage of his career. If he ever finally learns the strike zone (some players never do) Wells is going to be unstoppable at the plate.
He’s already looking Devon White-like in centre field.
The Jays are a couple of players away from being competitive in the AL East and Ted Rogers has loosened the purse strings even further in a bid to field a team that will fill up all those empty seats at the stadium formerly known as SkyDome.
Ricciardi went to Florida shopping for pitching but came home without re-signing Ted Lilly, who threw more curve balls at the manager last year than he got over the plate.
The callow Lilly has a lifetime record that is one game over .500, and he managed to land a $40 million four-year deal. That shows you the inflated value of mediocrity in baseball. The Jays’ other main pitching target in a poor free-agent pitching market, Gil Meche, also got away.
Instead of trying to find arms that tread water at the .500 level, the Jays need to lock up Wells.
But they look like they’re doing the same prolonged disentanglement dance with him that they did with the last great man who got away- Carlos Delgado.
Wells is not included in the promotional pictures for the 2007 campaign, or in
their greeting card.
Speaking of a white Christmas, do you think somebody should tell J.P. that the colour barrier has been broken – since 1947?
Maybe the Jays have to get rid of Wells because they’ve already signed Frank Thomas. Just as striking is the lack of Latino players on the roster. Now that Bengie Molina is gone, among the position players and starters, it’s just Alex Rios and Gus Chacin.
If the Jays let the hard-working, five-tool Wells get away, they’ll just be going backwards and they will have blown it twice in a row with their franchise superstars.
Maybe management just needs someone to light a bonfire under it. Where is Damasco Garcia now that we need him?

Interesting picture of Emil Kolb being helped on with his chain of office Thursday night by Mayor Susan Fennell and Mayor Marolyn Morrison of Caledon.
Gee, who was missing from this rosy picture of regional camaraderie?
Why, perhaps the woman we thought would be trying to orchestrate the removal of the chain of office from Emil Kolb?
Mayor Hazel McCallion has always had a prickly relationship with the chair of Peel Region, no matter who it is. She was an indefatigable opponent of the regional government as the Mayor of Streetsville, before she and her little town were swallowed into Mississauga’s giant maw in 1974. McCallion became councillor for Streetsville and then mayor of Mississauga but she never got over her disdain for Peel.
It persists to this day and has resulted in the City and Region expending an incredible amount of (largely wasted) time and energy as the mayor tried to pull her little magic act of making a level of government disappear. It is largely a tribute to her own immense personal influence that this discussion even got onto the provincial agenda, let alone resulted in the addition of two Mississauga councillors on Peel council. That triumph, of course, now creates the possibility of regular legislative deadlock at Peel, if Mississauga votes as a block and Brampton-Caledon vote as a block.
This has generally not happened in the past, it is true – except on issues that really matter – such as where to put garbage dumps, the regional headquarters, the police HQ etc.
Since the mayor’s declaration of independence .... pardon me.... her inaugural address restated the mayor’s intention to do everything possible to get out of Peel, you would logically have expected Mississauga to put forward its own candidate for chair this time around.
If the captain of the Peel ship has the final say in a tie vote, one would expect the mutineers to mount some kind of an effort to replace the captain.
It did not happen, however. Which seems mighty strange. Does Hazel know something the rest of us don’t?
It’s true that part of the problem in trying to stage a coup are the rules of engagement. Appointing a candidate from outside council with no political experience, who would be seen as a puppet of Mississauga, has a number of obvious drawbacks.
Having a member of Mississauga council run for chair makes the most sense. If the honourable thing had been done, one of the incumbents would have sat out the municipal election and announced his/her candidacy for chair beforehand.
Even if a councillor had done that, there was no guarantee of success. There was the distinct possibility of a 12-12 tie and the necessity of council members voting over and over again until someone blinked or resorting to a drawing of straws or a coin flip to determine a winner.
What brave soul would risk their political career on that prospect?
If one of the sitting City councillors had run for chair at the inaugural last Thursday, a mandatory, expensive by-election would have been triggered which would not have been seen in the kindest light, to put it mildly.
So the uneasy alliance continues. We are in for another four years of internecine warfare between Mississauga and the rest of Peel, with Kolb cast as the kindly, slightly befuddled arbiter trying to hold the region together as its single most powerful member tugs relentlessly at the keystone of the foundation.

Henry Fehmi never claimed to be the world’s greatest golfer, although he may be its most passionate.
When he started to spray the ball in all directions on the Magna golf course in Aurora in the fall of 2005, both he and his wife Emine suspected something was wrong.
Henry was too busy running his business, Dominion Spring Industries on Courtney Park Dr. E., to bother making any doctor’s appointments. Like most middle-aged men he was convinced of his own immortality, even though the pains in his head just kept getting worse and worse.
Fehmi had reason to be confident in himself and his business. He was a self-made man and a poster boy for the Canadian immigrant experience. He arrived at Union Station April 27, 1968 with eight British pounds in his pocket and two huge suitcases full of Arctic gear that his mother, back home in Lefka, Cyprus, had packed for him.
“She thought I was going to Iceland. You should have seen the wool socks. They were two inches thick,” he recalled with a laugh in his office Friday.
His wife knew Henry better than Henry, of course. She made a doctor’s appointment in November that was supposed to be for herself and brought her husband along for company. The doctor saw him instead, ordered a CT scan and grimly wrote out a note for Fehmi to pass along to his family doctor.
A baseball-sized 3 cm. thick, 12 cm. long, 10 cm. wide benign tumour had been growing in his head for some time, putting pressure on his brain. The vacation trip to Turkish Cyprus was cancelled, the will was updated and Fehmi started looking at an $80,000 bill to go to New York for immediate surgery. That was before he learned that Trillium Health Centre’s regional neurosurgical centre could do the job promptly right here. Dr. Eric Duncan operated Dec. 9.
As he was being wheeled back to his room after four-and-a-half-hours of surgery, a groggy Fehmi heard some of his attendants chatting about Harold Shipp and a $6 million fundraising challenge.
Later he learned that Shipp’s offer to match contributions to Trillium dollar for dollar up to $6 million had helped inspire George and Anne Ploder to give $1 million to Trillium for a machine that helped provide an intricate pre-surgery picture to surgeons. That is what allowed surgeons to “spot-weld” the arteries in Fehmi’s brain and reduce bleeding during the operation and his recovery time after.
That’s when Fehmi reached for his cheque book.
He gave $10,000 right away and then he gave another $75,000, which is what he would have spent anyway to have the surgery done in the U.S. The money is going for a special retractor that will help Dr. Duncan do the job right and allow other patients to recover as Fehmi has.
“What is money if I don’t share it with people?” he says.
The 59-year-old Credit Pointe resident is still taking it easy a year after his surgery, no longer obsessing over every decision at his business, and thinking about making a large donation to the hospital near his hometown in Cyprus. The hospital just happens to be surrounded by a golf course.
That sounds like the perfect spot for a generous Cypriot expat who plans to spend a lot of time in future travelling and perfecting his golf game.

You might think that after half-a-dozen biographies, there wouldn’t be much new to say or discover about Mazo de la Roche.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
De la Roche, who spent four summers in Clarkson at Trail Cottage starting in 1923, the year her first novel was published, is as mysterious, elusive and compelling a figure now as she was when she died in 1961, one of Canada’s most successful authors ever.
Heather Kirk, whose book Mazo de la Roche Rich and Famous Writer has recently been published by XYZ Publishing, is the latest to try to throw light on the life of a woman who created the dazzling literary world of the Whiteoaks of Jalna, the 16-book series that sold millions of copies around the world and spawned a movie and television adaptations.
What Kirk thought in 2001 would be a six-month knock-off biography for the young adult market at which the book is aimed, turned out to involve a lot more research than the Barrie writer ever imagined. “There were at least half-a-dozen astonishingly big gaps” in knowledge about de la Roche, she says, and especially about her long and close relationship with her cousin Caroline Clement.
Kirk has corrected the record admirably by proving definitively that Caroline was nine months older than Mazo, not nine years younger as her previous biographers believed.
Clement mysteriously appears almost out of nowhere in the earlier bios in the de la Roche household aged 7. Kirk was able to trace Clement’s early family history after finding records of her living as a two-year-old in the Dakotas in an American census (thanks to assistance from a Mennonite Family History Centre).
Kirk also discovered the birth name of the mother of the two children that de la Roche and Clement adopted, under mysterious circumstances, in England.
The book will be disappointing to many Mississaugaphiles in that it discounts to some degree, the importance of Benares, the Clarkson home of Captain James Harris family and now the Mississauga museum that has long been thought to be the model for Jalna. Although it fits the description of Jalna, it was undoubtedly more important to de la Roche as a catalyst, a trigger that helped her let loose the vivid memories of her own, similar childhood homes.
“Oddly, Benares reminded Mazo of the lost past of Caroline and herself,” writes Kirk at one point. Her skilful use of the creative non-fiction form has the uncanny ability to transport the reader to a past era that feels absolutely authentic. At points the author even manages to put us inside Mazo and Caroline’s heads and make that feel legitimate, which is quite a trick.
Of course, since Joan Givner’s 1989 biography Mazo de la Roche: The Hidden Life, the relationship of the cousins has been cast in a different light.
Kirk categorically rejects Givner’s contention of a long lesbian relationship. It’s possible, of course, concedes Kirk, but highly unlikely given the women’s upbringing in Victorian times. There is virtually no evidence to support the contention and at least two family members who should know have vigorously denied it. “I really think it’s a red herring issue,” she says.
Mississauga Museums Manager Annemarie Hagan, who admits to a personal fascination for de la Roche, is happy to welcome a new book to the Mazo pantheon.
“Mazo is still a strange and wonderfully mysterious character and, even after all these years, she’s managing to elude definition and understanding, which is the whole point of what she wanted to do,” said Hagan. “That sort of honours her.”
Kirk will be signing copies of her book Sunday, 1-4 p.m. at the Home for the Holidays event at Benares. The first two books in the series, Jalna and The Whiteoaks of Jalna, which have been reissued by XYZ for the first time in three decades, will also be for sale.
Tomorrow - de la Roche’s literary legacy.

“The creation of the Jalna books is the most protracted single feat of literary invention in the brief history of Canada’s literature.”
No less an authority than the eminent Canadian novelist and the founding master of Massey College, Robertson Davies, offered that assessment of Mazo de la Roche in 1961.
The author, who summered in Clarkson for several years and certainly used the two-storey red brick home that is now the Benares Museum as a model for the house in the Jalna series, is no longer considered among the first rung of Canadian writers and barely seems to warrant a passing mention anymore.
That is a shame and a miscarriage of literary justice according to Heather Kirk, de la Roche’s latest biographer.
The 16-book series sold millions in a staggering 193 English-language editions and 92 foreign-language ones.
“People have been so scornful of the books and looked down on her for so long,” says Kirk. “It’s really stupid.”
De la Roche’s career took off after she won the $10,000 Atlantic Monthly literary contest in 1927 with Jalna. At a celebratory banquet in Toronto, the so-called father of Canadian poetry Sir Charles G.D. Roberts saluted her by saying she had, “proved beyond a doubt that there actually is something called Canadian literature.”
So why does de la Roche get so little respect these days?
“In part, because she was so successful,” speculates Kirk. “Her style was not what Canadian professors of literature thought was serious. She writes in a romantic style. The Canadian literati have just been snobbish,” said Kirk.
Having re-read much of the series that details the ups and downs of the aristocratic Whiteoaks clan in preparation for her biography, Kirk was convinced again of the general high quality of the work.
“These are not simplistic books,” she says. “It’s true that one or two of the books are quite awful but most of them are quite good, so good as to make her clearly a top-ranking Canadian writer.”
The third book that she published, Delight, was absolutely brutalized by Canadian critics on its publication but is now considered one of the best things she ever wrote.
While she had a bad case of “sequelitis,” the second-last book in the series Centenary at Jalna, published in 1958, is one of the best.
“She’s been hard done by,” says Kirk. “It’s time for a measured study of her writing. I hope it will be done soon by a full-time academic with lots of funding.”
The suggestion by previous biographer Joan Givner that de la Roche and her cousin and long-time companion Caroline Clement had a lesbian relationship has blinded consideration of the author for the last 20 years, argues Kirk.
One of the key pieces of evidence supporting that suspicion has always been de la Roche’s instruction – carried out by Clement – that her diaries be burned immediately upon her death.
Conspiracy theorists lick their lips at its mention.
Kirk says the truth is probably a lot more prosaic: de la Roche, always an extremely private person, likely wanted to protect her family. She clearly modelled many of the characters and incidents in Jalna after relatives and real events.
It is a shame that the Jalna series has been out of print so long. That wrong is now being corrected as XYZ Publishing of Montréal has issued the first two volumes in the series, has two more slated for next April and intends to publish all of them eventually.
Thank goodness Jalna is finally coming back on the market. Now readers can decide for themselves if de la Roche deserves to be condemned to the literary limbo she has been assigned so far by the self-appointed guardians of Canadian literary taste.

When oxymorons die and go to heaven, what do they read?
Truth in government advertising.
All joking aside, one of the most irritating things about living in this country and this province is watching government advertising twist, garble, obfuscate and distort the facts to the advantage of whatever party happens to be governing in an obvious attempt to improve its chances of re-election. It doesn’t help to know that we are watching our tax dollars at work, massaging and spinning the facts.
As an election approaches, the themes of government ads take on a striking resemblance to the themes that the governing party will stress during the pending election campaign.
Earlier this year, the Advertising Standards Canada (ASC) launched a series of public service announcements that feature a half-dozen Canadians holding up signs that say in large capital letters TRUTH. The group fosters community confidence in advertising and acts as a watchdog and complaints bureau for those who betray that confidence.
The catch line below the public service announcement stated, “Fact is, truth is an essential part of any successful ad campaign. Smart advertisers have known this for years. That’s why the advertising industry created the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards.
“For more than 40 years, the Code has set the standards for acceptable advertising in Canada. It helps ensure that the ads you see and hear are truthful, fair and accurate. Check it out for yourself. Because the more you know about advertising, the more you get out of it.”
Perhaps ASC should consider adding an asterisk to its statement, with a note that goes something like this: “* not applicable to any advertising by political parties or governments.”
Case in point – the latest judgement by ASC that finds that Ontario’s Liberal government published misleading newsprint and TV ads in September and October that gave the false impression that people can get faster access to health care service just by visiting a new web site or calling a government hotline. The ads raised expectations that could not be delivered and, “made inaccurate claims and omitted relevant information,” stated the ruling.
This comes just a couple of weeks after the Ontario Auditor-General Jim McCarter concluded that information listed on the government web site itself was misleading because it was incomplete (information from 33 hospitals was missing) and inaccurate. The information should be taken with a “grain of salt” said the Auditor-General because it combined wait-times for patients already in hospital, who obviously get faster service, and those outside, who have to wait much longer.
Government advertising should be taken with a mine of salt in my experience. In Opposition, parties rail against the government for bribing us with our own money. Inevitably, when they get elected, they all do exactly the same thing.
The McGuinty Liberals even passed a law that supposedly prevented this sort of partisanship from happening. This week’s ASC ruling proves that didn’t work.
Since reducing wait times is obviously a key plank in the Liberals’ re-election plans for next October, we can look forward to hearing and seeing new, more carefully-nuanced embellishments on the subject in the coming months.
(The preceding was not a paid political advertisement).

“I crave music that grabs my attention,” says Ross Porter in the introduction to his new book The Essential Jazz Recordings 101 CDs. “When I hear a great album, the easiest way I can describe it is to say that it feels like Christmas. It gives me a feeling of wonder, appreciation.”
We all crave music – and books – that grab us by the rhythm section and shake our booties.
But writing about an art form that often defies description is highly problematic.
No less an authority than Elvis Costello has said that, “writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it’s a really stupid thing to want to do.”
Maybe it’s stupid and maybe the written word can never approach the emotional impact of the music, but I’m really glad that people like Porter are willing to take up the hopeless challenge.
“I didn’t want to write just another list book,” the president and CEO of Jazz.FM91 said in an interview from its new Toronto offices in Liberty Village. “I wanted to do something that would have its own personality, attitude and point of view.”
The former host of CBC’s late-night jazz show called After Hours also wanted to give Canadian jazzers their due with the world’s best. Oscar Peterson obviously belongs on everybody’s list and he’s here in many forms, as is only appropriate. His 1962 album Night Train is a standard choice but Porter has also included his Canadiana Suite, and not just for sentimental reasons. “Yes, it’s relevant to where we live but it’s also an underrated masterpiece,” says the Ottawa native and former head of Cool TV.
An excellent choice. The Canadian landscape inspired some of Peterson’s most memorable melodies, including Wheatland and March Past. Peterson is also a sideman on several other of the chosen recordings including the superb Ella and Louis duos and Milt Jackson’s Ain’t But a Few of Us Left.
Other Canucks who made the grade include Diana Krall (Mrs. Elvis Costello) of whom Porter says, “other people spend a lifetime trying to chase down the style she was born with.” Porter finds room for Phil Nimmons, Rob McConnell, Guido Basso and Jane Bunnett (whose bass player is Mississauga’s own Kieran Overs.)
Anyone who is just entering the world of jazz appreciation will find the book an invaluable starting point. In order to provide maximum value-per-listening dollar, Porter has recommended a number of multi-CD, career-spanning retrospective compilations. Admittedly, that may feel like copping out to long-time jazz fans who want a sense of the shape-shifting albums that marked the journey.
No list of 101 jazz CDs can be complete, as Porter is well aware. He bemoans the exclusion of Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come, wishes he could have included more Ella Fitzgerald and confesses to a severe shortage of Lester Young.
While I have him on the line, I run down my own personal complaints list of those missing in action: Gerry Mulligan, Gil Evans, Jack Teagarten, Anita O’Day, the Blanton-Webster version of the Ellington band, Clifford Brown and especially the unforgiveable exclusion of the man who made the saxophone all that it is in jazz today: Coleman Hawkins.
Porter chuckles. “Yeah, I know,” he says. “I’ve bought a lot of these books and seen a lot of things in them that I did not necessarily agree with. That’s what it’s all about - this debate.”
In his intro, Porter says, “use this book as a guide, but also use it as a springboard.” The Essential Jazz Recordings is a guaranteed springboard – to the Essential Jazz Debate. As long we’re scrapping about the music, we know it’s still alive.
The book is available at local book stores or through http://www.jazz.fm/
It comes with an accompanying CD that is sold separately.

As you drive north at dusk on Mavis Rd. from Eglinton Ave. W., you can see the sagging silhouette of Mississauga’s pioneer past, standing in stark relief against the sky.
I don’t know if it’s the barren, lacy fingers of the black walnut branches splayed out against a cloudy backdrop, or the fact that the crumbling vestiges of the once-magnificent Sandford farm house stand on such a prominent rise of land that makes it such an iconic – and desolate – site.
“It looks so forlorn out there by itself,” says Mississauga resident Doreen O’Grady, whose father Edward was born in the house in 1907. Her grandfather Martin bought the home Dec. 15, 1890. O’Grady knows because she still has the deed.
It makes O’Grady very sad to think about how the house has been allowed to fall into disgrace in its dotage. After her Uncle Vincent and Aunt Agnes, who lived there for eight decades, began having health problems in 1994 the house was empty.
Thieves broke in and stole the family bible and the little rocking chair that Doreen and her siblings had used.
It was the beginning of a long decline that included a fire that destroyed the barn, arson in 1999 that took the roof and a rearguard action by heritage buffs and the family to try to have the home preserved. Both the house and the land that includes the walnut grove were designated for preservation when a developer bought it, but he could not be convinced to restore it.
Ward 11 Councillor George Carlson, who chairs the City’s Heritage Advisory Committee (HAC), says the combination of a $1 million plus bill to restore the house and/or create a replica and the continuing theft of bricks, artifacts and just about anything else that could be physically lifted off the site. “It’s basically a derelict building now,” says Carlson. “It’s unfortunate but there’s nothing realistically we can do now,” says the HAC chair.
The heritage designation has been taken off the house and the developer will be
applying for a demolition permit. As a condition, he will have to produce a heritage impact report which will stipulate that everything that can be saved from the house should be saved.
Yesterday, heritage lover and environmental watchdog Stephen Wahl was at the site and expressed shock at the degree of deterioration that has taken place since his last visit. The farm was once a showcase, as surviving photos and drawings prove.
Wahl hopes to rescue some of the outstanding remnants of the building, especially the iron cooking implements and the magnificent stone hearth that was the centre of the family life at one time. “The house’s demise is a given,” said Wahl. “We want to reuse the elements that remain ads a memorial to the spirit of the building.”
Now that the fight to save the Sandford house is lost, wouldn’t it be wonderful to see the hearth become a centrepiece of another historic home that can be saved?
That, at least, would be be a small comfort, says O’Grady, who remembers that, in her childhood, the parlour was only used when the priest came to visit.
Seeing the slumping profile of her ancestral home from the car as she passes by is anguishing, says O’Grady. Asked how she will feel when there is nothing left at all, she says, “the tears already come now, so it’s not going to be any better.”

Mississauga is going to have an environmental advisory committee again. And none too soon.
Our municipality is one of the few that has no formal avenue to address overriding environmental issues, which seems mighty strange for a place where growth – and the degradation to the natural environment it inevitably brings – has been a front-burner issue forever.
The environmental advisory committee is the initiative of Ward 11 Councillor George Carlson, who sees a need for, “an umbrella group that can tie together all the pieces – a central place to bring information. I’d like it to be a practical, useful committee that people can use as a resource on how to green your house, your car and your neighbourhood.”
Mississauga and Peel have lots of environmental groups, from formal agencies such as Credit Valley Conservation to the Peel Environmental Network, EcoSource, the newly-formed local chapter of the Sierra Club, etc. Those groups all serve slightly different roles. Carlson says he’s consulted them all and they like the idea of a body where they can have input right to council.
Maybe the best news is that the City’s one woman environmental band, Brenda Sakauye, whose title is environmental coordinator, will now have somebody to coordinate. “There’s a $200,000 budget for the committee and we’ll be hiring two people,” says Carlson.
Part of the function will be educational because, “I find the citizens are the biggest abusers of the environment a lot of the time,” says Carlson. All you need to do is drive down any street in the spring and see all the pesticide warning signs on front lawns to see whereof he speaks.
One of the things that will inevitably land on the committee’s agenda is whether Mississauga should join the many municipalities who have already banned use of pesticides on private property.
The committee will also include new Ward 6 Councillor, and long-time green girl, Carolyn Parrish and two citizens. (Anyone who wants to apply for the committee must attend a mandatory information session Jan. 17 at 7 p.m. in the auditorium on the main floor of City Hall to obtain an application.)
There’s no shortage of issues to tackle - woodlot preservation, water quality, the further greening of the City’s horticultural practices and transit and works fleets, energy conservation, protecting the City’s three peregrine falcon nesting sites, fighting the threat of the gypsy moth and the Asian long-haired Beatle (no wait - that was John Lennon in his Maharishi Mahesh Yogi period.)
Asked about the Donald Barber issue, Carlson says, “I won’t allow the committee to get hijacked by any individual or group with an axe to grind. This is more about the basics anyway. Eighty per cent of people are looking for help to be more green but they just don’t know where to turn. This is a kind of a one-stop shopping centre.”
As we absorb the reality that 75 per cent of our “land of snow and ice” will have a green Christmas this year, it’s nice to welcome the City of Mississauga to the table.
You can pick up your late slip at the office.

Some random notes today.
Is it the Sandford Farm or the Sanford Farm? Over the years, the iconic piece of property at Mavis Rd. and Eglinton Ave. W. has been referred to both ways.
But which is right?
Well... both, according to Doreen McCarthy, the niece of Vincent and Agnes Sandford.
The original family name was spelled without the D, but somewhere along the line, things got changed. Her father Edward was first-born in the family and his surname was Sanford, although his father Martin who bought the farm Dec. 15, 1890, spelled it Sandford.
Edward’s siblings, Agnes, Helen, Vincent and Margaret all had the D.
McCarthy’s theory is that an elderly aunt who either preferred the correct spelling or had forgotten about the change in her dotage, used it to register Edward’s name when he was born.
Vincent, who lived on the farm with his sister Agnes for decades before they died in 1999 and 2000 respectively, never married.
Because of that, the correct spelling of the surname, without the D, still survives in the family. Unfortunately, with the disappearance of the farm house which will be demolished shortly to make way for a new subdivision, the name may no longer remain on the landscape in any form.
• • •
Erratum: The new environmental advisory committee at City Hall is made up of three councillors, not two as stated yesterday.
Ward 1 Councillor Carmen Corbasson joins George Carlson and Carolyn Parrish on the body. With a gas-fired plant in the works for the former Lakeview Generating Station site, Corbasson is a natural for the committee.
Like everyone else, she has her own qualms about how we treat our environment.
“To my great dismay, my own townhouse complex continues to use pesticides to maintain our plush manicured lawns,” says the councillor.
• • •
There was a false alarm in the refrigerant detection system at the NCR building in Meadowvale Tuesday morning, which put many of the 300 or so workers out on the street. That street, Century Ave., is actually named for one of National Cash Register’s products. The company was one of the first on the street (you can see it as you drive eastbound on 401) when it opened in 1972. In 1968, the company introduced the NCR 615 Century series, the first low-cost electronic data processing system to put programs, operating software and data on a hard disk. (Info courtesy of Lorraine Willson at NCR.)
So the street is named for a NCR product: the ultimate branding.
By the way, the last volume in Kathleen Hicks’ entertaining series of local history books sponsored by the City and the Friends of the Library, will be about the fascinating stories behind Mississauga’s street names. Her latest book, Malton: Farms to Flying, has just been published.

The lovely version of Baby It’s Cold Outside on Alex Pangman’s new Christmas Spirits album, a duet with Tory Cassis, sent me scurrying to my library to revisit The Complete Lyrics of Frank Loesser by Robert Kimball and Steve Nelson.
This song has incredible legs, having been recorded by everyone from Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban, who debuted it in Williams’ movie Neptune’s Daughter, to Dinah Shore and Buddy Clark, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan, Louis Armstrong and Velma Middleton, Rod Stewart and Dolly Parton and Ray Charles and Betty Carter among many, many others. There’s a duet with Marc Jordan of the song on Emilie-Clare Barlow’s new Xmas disc as well.
In the comedy category, there are versions by Homer and Jethro and Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey.
But the song was sung first by its composer, Loesser, and his wife, the former Lynn Garland. They debuted it at a housewarming party in New York in 1944 and blew everyone away, prompting partygoers to demand the couple sing it over and over again.
For years after, it was the Loessers’ entrée into the finest cocktail parties on both coasts and they took full advantage.
The song is so enduring because of the coy interplay between the male protagonist (the wolf as Loesser called him), who is trying to convince his girlfriend that the weather is so bad she should stay and cuddle, and the girl (the mouse), who is torn between her own temptation to accept and the social consequences if she does.
The classic tug-of-love is mounted on an enchanting melody. But it is the overlapping dialogue and the feeling that you are eavesdropping on a real conversation that truly sets the song apart.
Loesser’s wife, who had come to regard the song as the couple’s delicious personal property, was devastated when Loesser decided to sell it to the movies. “Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban!!!,” she cried. But, according to daughter Susan’s biography of her Dad, he had to release it. “If I don’t let go of 'Baby', I’ll begin to think I can never write another song as good as I think this one is.”
Although it’s always seemed like a quaint, casual bit of pop pleasure, some interpreters have found a way to assign the most malevolent spin possible to it, equating it to an homage to date rape. (See http://www.mormonmommywars.com/?p=504 and many responding posts).
My personal favourite recording of the song is the one of the first, by Johnny Mercer and Margaret Whiting. Mercer wrote some excellent songs with Whiting’s father Richard, including Hooray for Hollywood and Too Marvelous For Words.
As justifiably famous as he is for his lyrics and songs, it’s easy to forget that the Georgia native was a wonderfully expressive singer, who had a huge string of hit songs.
In the knowing hands of Mercer and Whiting, Baby It’s Cold Outside is a diverting, delicious trifle that is as clever and cosy as the living room where the wolf has invited the mouse to play.
Here’s hoping your holiday includes a little:
“Listen to that fireplace roar/ Put some records on while I pour.”

Video games give me the creeps.
Probably because my knowledge of them has been largely confined to the involuntary consumption of television commercials that gleefully promote six-a-second shootings of various grotesque semi-humanoid figures. Ridding the world of these bad guys is somehow vaguely linked in these ads with preservation of the American way of life.
This gives one the overwhelming impression that America’s first line of defence in the war on terrorism is made up primarily of testosterone-charged teenaged boys, fingers flicking furiously to make the world safe for democracy.
So, it is with more than a touch of guilt that I must report that not only did I play my first video game in earnest yesterday, but I quite enjoyed it.
Not that it had anything in common with those combat games that are so unpalatable.
You see, I became part of the Wii (pronounced we) Generation on Boxing Day.
For Christmas, my daughter received one of the games, thanks to the boyfriend getting up at 4:30 a.m. a few weeks ago to line up at Best Buy. Being passionate consumers of television sport and especially the Blue Jays, my 20-year-old son and I decided to hold our own spring training.
You’ve undoubtedly heard about the Wii concept. Instead of just pushing buttons, there is a controller with a strap which allows you to swing the bat, pitch, stroke a golf ball, serve and volley, box, and bowl using realistic motions that are reflected on the screen.
Hitting is supposed to be way ahead of pitching in spring training, but that’s not what we found.
After two frustrating, scoreless, three-inning baseball games, Josh finally connected on my curve ball (Should have pretended to be Bert Blyleven, not Josh Towers) and I was history.
On the other side of the ledger, my lifetime batting average continues its flirtation with the south side of the Mendoza line. Who says art doesn’t imitate life?
The baseball was the most fun. The golf, tennis, boxing and bowling will take a lot more practice.
If the intent is to sucker old-guys-who-should-know-better into the video game vortex, then the makers of Wii have achieved their goal.
The best news of all is that apparently there is a Madden NFL 07 version for the Wii. So daughter Chelsea, a Buffalo Bills’ fan, has her birthday gift all taken care of.
It’s even possible to show replays of the video game action on the Wii, so we can insert our own Madden signature “Booms” and “Whams” into the action where appropriate.
Only one little problem.
How can we teach the cat to use the telestrater?

“Mississauga needs places.”
That was one of the subheads in the phase 1 summary of the Placemaking in Mississauga report that was presented to City councillors earlier this year.
Ain’t it the truth. Exciting places. Preferably in the pubescent downtown.
The report by the New-York based consulting company Project for Public Spaces (PPS) makes a number of sweeping suggestions for remaking the Mississauga Civic Centre and the much too sterile squares in front of City Hall and the Central Library.
The gist of the report is that the city centre and City Hall have great bones, but we’re missing the boat when it comes to using them properly.
Most of the ideas are common sense, starting with tearing down many of the walls that provide physical, visual and psychological barriers (maybe that was the idea) between the public and the post-modern masterpiece created by architects Edward Jones and Michael Kirkland. That pair would no doubt blanch at many of the proposals which are aimed at function, not form.
Most of them make eminently good sense.
How can one build a tribute to the history of (especially agrarian) architecture, such as this civic centre is intended to be, and not have one single, solitary entrance point worth its salt?
One of the recommendations is to fix that design problem by creating an entrance through the first floor conservatory. The conservatory never worked properly because of humidity problems which severely limited the horticultural showcase. I’ll bet most citizens have never seen the wonderful arch leading into the Great Hall that’s in there. We have a Great Hall. We need a Great Entrance.
Many of the proposals are aimed at generating more action to make the squares the magnet for lunchtime lounging and people-watching that they ought to be.
Among the many stimulating suggestions are:
• moving the Art Gallery of Mississauga out of its sleepy secluded corner office on the main floor of City Hall and giving it a place of pedestrian prominence, perhaps in a new building on the east side of the library square, the spot where a City Hall annex was once slated to go. Then making the art gallery space a restaurant with a patio that would spill out onto the square and into the sculpture court, which now features outdoor art no one can see because of the surrounding walls. (A potential adjunct - a Whine Bar where City staff could debrief each other after work.)
• blowing up the rarely-used amphitheatre and replacing it with buildings that front on Duke of York where City services that require the attendance of the public could be located on the ground floor.
• creating an outdoor wedding chapel. The wall around the contemplative Jubilee Garden at the west end of the civic square is proposed to be removed so the secret public garden is finally revealed, with obvious post-vow picture possibilities.
• launching an outdoor reading room on the library square, with cafés, sofas (Chapters may have a surplus) and an authors’ reading and speaking series, possibly making use of the obvious UTM connections.
• hosting a permanent indoor farmers’ market.
• installing a pavilion on the library square for children’s programs and other events. The best part – an international newsstand.
The City made a good start last summer with its concert series on the square but much more needs to be done to energize the downtown. There are loads of good ideas in the Placemaking report waiting to be seized for action.
Frankly, you’d think there would be more buzz about the entire report.
This summer it will be 20 years since Fergy and Andy opened the Civic Centre on a steamy July afternoon and Prince Andrew noted wryly that, “It is a truly remarkable building. It will be noticed.”
What better way to celebrate that anniversary than to fulfill all the promise of that day by making the key civic square the public draw it was always intended to be?

A few indelible impressions from 2006. The delible ones seem to have slipped my mind.
When they lined up in February for the women’s Olympic cross-country sprint final in Torino, it looked like our incomparable Beckie Scott would get to put a gold cap on her stellar skiing career. It wasn’t to be.
Instead, a stringy youngster who didn’t seem to have the sense to be scared just went out and raced, and won gold. There seems to be a lot of manufactured emotion in sport, especially professional sport, but there was no mistaking the Chandra Crawford’s megasmile was genuine. Playing Duane Allman-style air guitar on the podium and her heartfelt rendition of O Canada were not-to-be forgotten highlights of a very good games for our country.

It’s always nice to see good things happen to good people, especially those who have slogged hard for years for a good cause. Mississauga’s Sandy Milakovic has been an ardent champion for a better deal for the underclass who suffer from mental health difficulties in Peel and she continues to keep those issues on the public radar. Her peers at the Canadian Mental Health Association recognized her outstanding service with the Peel District branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association in November by awarding her the prestigious Marjorie Hiscott Keyes Award. Well-deserved.

For 18 years, Scott Gillies was the face of the Bradley Museum, always willing to appear in the most unflattering period costumes and do the most outlandish things for a photo shoot to promote the cause of heritage. He was unceasingly knowledgeable, helpful, gracious and professional and his efforts helped make The Anchorage and Benares successful City assets. His flair for programming brought history alive for young people. Scott left the City last summer to pursue his career closer to family and home. All who care about local history are the poorer for his departure.

Listened to a lot of great music this year, but nothing moved me more than Lori Cullen’s CD, Calling for Rain. The Mississauga native has a gentle voice that is absorbed straight through the skin to the soul. She has the uncanny knack of taking songs you thought you knew and turning them inside out. Case in point, Gilbert O’Sullivan’s Alone Again Naturally, a song about unspeakable loss. Cullen’s version is much more quiet, yet forceful, than O’Sullivan’s own pop version.

The municipal election turned out to be a combination of Much Ado About Nothing and A Comedy of Errors. The conduct of several candidates was unconscionable. Not to mention criminal. Perhaps it is a good thing that they’ve extended the length of the terms. That way the spectacle cannot be repeated for four years.

Maybe the most memorable recollection of ’06 will be that of a Mississauga man in a skin-tight pink suit, pedalling his guts out to raise $266,149 for the cancer centre at Trillium Health Centre that is named for his mother. Kevin Wallace didn’t win the Race Across America but it was not for want of trying. Ten days through the desert, up and down mountains and across 4,900 kms. of countryside from San Diego to Atlantic City.
When it was finished, Wallace turned the media spotlight that he’d earned back onto the cause for which he rode. “The real story is the power of our mothers and our wives and our daughters to fight this disease,” said Wallace. “They’re the news. I was just a guy out on a bike trying my hardest to get the attention of people.”
May all your worthy causes get the attention they deserve in 2007. Happy New Year.