Random Access

As promised, Jazmine Humble (in the photo above right) attended the protest Friday outside the provincial courtroom where the case against Rambo the-mutt-who-looks-too-much-like-a-pit-bull opened.
Jazmine, you'll remember, was bitten badly in the face by a Cocker Spaniel a couple of years ago, but is a dog and animal lover nonetheless. She knows Gabriela Nowakowska, Rambo's owner, from shopping at the Starky's store where Nowakowska works.
Jazmine's mother Natalie had promised her daughter that she and her twin brother Tristan, could take the day off school to express their opinion about Rambo. She escorted her children into the courthouse where they listened intently while the preliminary legal skirmishes ensued.
Some quick impressions of the event: Nowakowska has a knowledgeable and able lawyer, Anik Morrow, who is thoroughly familiar with the entire pit bull legal morass. She was not impressed with the "threatening" letter the City initially sent Gabriela saying the dog would be put down unless she provided proof in five days he was not a pit bull, which is a tricky proposition even for experts.
"Mississauga has a bit of a snatch and kill policy," Morrow told reporters suggesting some of the other 28 dogs the municipality has euthanized under the policy may have been intimidated into acquiescing, even though their animals might not have been prohibited dogs.
Nowakowksa, who is just 20, is in this — not for the legal precedent, nor for the animal welfare lobby, nor for the (unwanted) publicity — but for Rambo. From the first time I talked to her when she was in hysterics Dec. 27 outside the animal shelter where she had taped a desperate note to City officials on the door, she has said the same thing that she told reporters Friday: "I just want my dog back."
It will be a long and winding road to a resolution of this case, which could be overtaken and/or rendered irrelevant by the larger appeal case of the pit bull law.
Bailing Rambo out of the hoosegow is a double-edged sword for the defence. It's hard to agree to conditions to muzzle Rambo, have him remain housebound or post bond for potential liability insurance without raising the spectre that he is, indeed, some kind of danger to society.
The bail issue is likely to be debated in earnest at the next court appearance Mar. 14.
• • •
There is a very interested spectator at Mississauga City Hall these days reading all those front-page stories about whether or not the Harper Tories tried to lure independent MP Chuck Cadman to vote against the Liberals and bring down the Paul Martin government in May 2005.
The vote was 153-152 when the Speaker of the House carried the day for the Liberals after two independents, Cadman and Mississauga-Erindale MP Carolyn Parrish, supported the government.
"I made it clear when I left the caucus that I would be voting with the Liberals so they didn't even approach me," Parrish said today.
She doesn't know anything about any Tory offer to pay life insurance premiums but she does think she knows why Cadman voted as he did. "If an MP dies while the House is in session, his spouse automatically gets two-and-a-half times the salary. He was a really dedicated family guy. He would not have left his wife high and dry if he could help it. If you know you are going to be dead in three weeks what do you do? That's why he voted to keep the government going."
Despite the consolation she keeps getting from sympathetic constituents who keep asking her if she's bored with municipal politics, the Ward 6 councillor is very glad to be out of Ottawa, "where everyone preens and parades around. They remind me of roosters in the barnyard."
In contrast to federal government where it takes "forever" to get anything done, you can actually get things done promptly in municipal government, she says. Suppose that includes succession planning for the mayor?
• • •
Jeff Healey lived in Mississauga for four years until he moved his estimated 30,000 78s and thousands albums to a new house in Etobicoke, which had to have specially reinforced floors to handle the load.
Most of those 78s represented the roots of New Orleans jazz from a bygone era, an era that Healey grew up revisiting through the old records and then passing on to a new generation of fans through the radio shows he hosted.
Blind since the age of one because of a rare form of cancer, Healey died of the disease yesterday.
He got famous playing lap-top electric guitar and playing electro-blues but his true musical love was the period of classic jazz in the first few decades of the 20th century. That's what he featured on his weekly radio show My Kinda Jazz Monday nights and early Sunday mornings.
He often used to muse about how wonderful it was to make a living playing your own record collection. He started a similar show called Sugarfoot Stomp, which is still on CIUT at 5:30 p.m. Thursdays, hosted by Healey friend, bandmate and fellow encyclopedic collector Colin Bray.
Usually I caught Jeff's show on Sunday mornings which it ran from 7- 9 a.m. He often packaged wonderful "theme" shows on the singing of (Buffalo's own) Harold Arlen or the small group sessions of the Ellingtonians. Best of all was when Jeff would start a session by saying, as he often did, "now here's a guy who was extremely influential who never got the recognition he deserved."
Then he play a couple of sides that would blow you away and come back on to say, 'Yeah, see what I mean?'
Interviewed Jeff once on the phone in 2003 before a November gig at the LAC. He explained how, while he made his living playing rock and blues, jazz lived in his soul.
“People are lifelong followers of this music,” said Healey. “There’s nobody I know who just dabbles in it. People have really stuck with it. It will get you early if you let it.”
He let it and the rest of us who had a chance to enjoy the rewards of his passion, were the richer for it.

Nothing smells worse than compost in mid-digest, to use the technical term, and nothing smells more wonderful than the finished product. It has an earthy, visceral, dank aroma that is almost coffee-like in its appeal.
It's great fun to run your fingers through too, especially if you don't mind cuddling the odd red wiggler.
It's hard to believe that the massive pile of multi-coloured frozen goop that greets you these days when you are able to pry off the lid of the compost bin, will turn into that lovely gardener's gold in just a few months, if spring ever returns to these parts.
What got me thinking about compost in the depths of March was talking to Andy Pollock, director of waste management for the Region of Peel, this morning about the pending anniversary of the green bin program.
That's right, as of April 2, Mississaugans will have been wheeling their little green pre-digesters to the curb for exactly one year.
"We've exceeded our project estimates of tonnage by quite a bit," says Pollock. "From the program launch in April until the end of December, we estimated we'd collect 15,000 tonnes. We actually collected 29,000 tonnes, almost double what we thought. So the residents have done a great job adjusting to the new setouts."
Peel was early into the talk game about launching into organics and really late into the real action. Politicians, led by former Ward 6 Councillor David Culham who got the blue box program launched here in the mid-80s, were discussing it long before it was ever on the horizon in Toronto. But that city actually started first.
Mind you, Peel uses a superior capture and processing method which produces higher quality compost and better revenues. That's why it was so important at the beginning to get residents to remove the non-compostable plastic from the bins, an exercise which Pollock says was largely successful.
There have been a few bumps along the way. While the $35 million Material Recycling Facility on Torbram Rd. at Highway 407 has worked well, there have been some problems with smells from the curing facility in Caledon. "We are temporarily shipping to a second party for curing as we work through those issues," says Pollock.
So how many households are actually participating in Mississauga?
A disappointing 45 per cent — not even one in every two houses.
Although Pollock says that's not far off what was anticipated at brown launch, it seems woefully inadequate when you think of the potential market.
Peel reduced the number of garbage bags picked up at the curb at no charge from three to two in the fall as an incentive to use the green bin. No appreciable difference.
Another round of encouraging ads and public education will be launched again around the pending anniversary, but somehow it doesn't seem enough.
Maybe it is going to have to take a little neighbour to neighbour counselling to get the job done.
This is a sensitive subject, needless to say, because everyone is nervous about trying to impose their values — even their virtuous green ones — on the family next door.
But next time you bump into a non-participant in your pajamas at the curb at 6:45 a.m. on garbage day, see if you can bring the conversation around to the fact that we can't reverse global warming by ourselves or negotiate a Kyoto extension, but at least we can dump our egg and shrimp shells back onto the earth, where they belong.

Doug Clark (above left) smiled for the camera yesterday as he accepted a $100,000 cheque from Enersource Corporation.
Then he very carefully checked out the shovel he was handed to hold onto for the photo opportunity. "This is a nice shovel," he said to no one in particular. "We could use this."
Yes, when you are building a local Habitat For Humanity affiliate from scratch, you look for help — and tools and construction materials — anywhere you can find them.
It's been three years now since the first vestiges of the time-tested international Habitat formula — houses built by volunteers for "working poor" families who desperately need housing with no interest charged on the mortgage — landed in Mississauga.
It was actually Clark's wife Terry who was first approached in the family but when Clark himself retired from his long-time job as a chartered accountant with an Etobicoke construction company, it became his passion too. Now he's the chair.
The obvious question is: why hasn't Mississauga been in the Habitat For Humanity game earlier, especially given the 14,000 person 20-odd-year long waiting list that exists for Peel Living housing?
"Yes, that struck us as odd too," said Clark, noting that there are 72 other established affiliates of the group across Canada.
There are many disadvantages of getting in the game late, not the least of which is finding appropriate land to build on.
"Land is a huge issue," says the Erin Mills resident with a sigh. Yes, especially the price of it for dwindling supplies in Canada's sixth-largest city.
Habitat moved the yardsticks forward a long way yesterday when Enersource Chair Norm Loberg announced the donation.
It's the single largest charitable donation that the private corporation (which used to be Hydro Mississauga) has ever given. "This fits the criteria for our four pillars of giving: community, environment, health and safety," said Loberg. “This build will involve the community, our employees, our customers, as well as the new homeowners and is a perfect representation of how companies can bring their social responsibility programs to life in a very real way.”
Enersource employees will be rolling up their sleeves and helping to build the house too.
There will be several "green initiatives" in the home, although their exact nature isn't detailed yet.
The Mississauga Habitat affiliate has been working with Peel's housing department, of course. It has its eye on property that may be surplus to the Region's needs on the south side of Britannia Rd. Streetsville, west of the Credit River.
Habitat has actually already build at least one project in Mississauga. That was many years ago on the east side of Cawthra Rd. north of Lakeshore Rd. But that was sponsored by the Toronto Habitat affiliate.
The local group has a 12-member board, which includes a typical cross-section of skills. Clark says there's a retired school principal, a former teacher, a former journalist, an ex-Ontario Hydro employee, someone who works during the day at World Vision (there has always been a strong faith involvement in Habitat), an executive of TD Bank and someone who works at Mattamy Homes. Sounds like a promising crew.
The group has a website, www.habitatmississauga.ca, and 300 volunteers, including 50 "core" volunteers.
Now, says Clark, it just wants to get on with its crucial business of, "putting a roof over a family's head."
When he retired, the accountant resolved "to get involved in something meaningful."
He found out he'd done that a few weeks ago when there was an overwhelming turnout at the first "family selection" meeting at the John Paul II Polish Cultural Centre.
Hundreds, if not thousands of the City's working poor, are hoping to inhabit the virtual House of Hope that is featured on the local website. Only two families, at least in this first project, will be chosen.
But pointing out that disparity is part of the game plan, as well, says Clark. Advocacy about the plight of far too many families shuffling from place to place to try to make ends meet is part of Habitat for Humanity's mandate.
A huge job lies ahead but it always must begin with a first project. And that looks like it is well on the way.
The group is actively pursuing other prospects and projects.
"We have an opportunity with The Daniels Corporation if we can raise some money," says Clark. "That could put a number of families into homes."
None too soon.

The birth of his daughter Celine, in the 66th year of his life, changed Oscar Peterson's life forever.
In his autobiography, A Jazz Odyssey, he talks about how his marriage to the former Kelly Green and the birth of Celine marked a new maturity in his life. There were numerous, "subtle pleasures that arose from having my days governed by my baby daughter. I also found myself getting much more tolerant than before: she was remoulding both life itself and my attitudes to it."
The arrival of Celine also seemed to usher in a new maturity in his composing as well. "I became more mellow," says Peterson in his biography. "Compositions such as Nighttime, Should I Ever Dream of Being Without You, Valse Mauve and Summertime came very easily, flowing out of my newly serene inner life."
Yesterday afternoon, a simply charming ceremony was held on the campus at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) to mark the occasion of the naming of a new residence in honour of the late Dr. Peterson.
The speeches were short, the jazz was hot and the mayor wasn't late. What else could you ask for?
Both Kelly and Celine Peterson were there to help unveil a series of three paintings by former UTM student Janice Ting to commemorate the occasion.
There are a lot of closet Oscar Peterson fans, of course, but who knew that the president of the U of T was one of them?
"I've been an Oscar Peterson fan forever," Dr. Naylor confided after the ceremony, as he soaked in the sound of a sharp-sounding quartet from the U of T music school. "The thing that struck me about his playing was that it was always so incredibly inventive," said Naylor, who finished off the event with a command performance (Chancellor David Peterson did the commanding) by playing Oscar's arrangement of I Get a Kick Out of You from OP's Sinatra tribute album.
"He could play anything and make it swing and sing. He could absolutely transport you in any genre," said Naylor, whose favourite OP albums just might be the ones that feature Count Basie, with the stylistic juxtaposition of the minimalist Kansas City master and the effusive Peterson.
As she watched yesterday's tributes, now 16-year-old Celine Peterson (above) was once again struck by the amazing impact that her father's work and life have made on the world.
She and her mother have been been so swept up in the outpouring of love and the string of major events to honour Oscar (the IAJE conference, the Roy Thomson tribute concert, the LAC tribute concert) since his death Dec. 23 that, on a personal level, "I have not really had time to deal with it," she said. "The grieving process is definitely being postponed."
When she remembers her father, Peterson said, it has to be with a smile. "He was the biggest tease," said Celine, who plans to continue her volunteering in the library of Oscar Peterson Public School once things quieten down a little. "He just loved to have fun. He was so kind and gentle and that's what so many people recognize," she said.
Especially the Peterson students who got to see the jazz legend wearing a Santa hat and handing out candy canes in his wheelchair a couple of years ago. It was tough to tell who got a bigger kick out of the experience, the kids or the mock-Santa, says Celine.
So which songs of her fathers are her favourites, she is asked.
Surprisingly, Celine hesitates a bit on that one. "Well, Celine's Waltz, of course, which was written for me, Ballade ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqEutf3ec_A), Cakewalk and, of course... Hymn To Freedom."
As she said at Roy Thomson Hall, Celine was especially thankful that, while her father's gargantuan technique may have faded after the stroke he suffered in New York City not long after she was born, he never lost his ability or his compulsion to play the instrument.
"He would not limit himself," she said. "He still played all 88 keys on the piano and he still did amazing things."
Now that she is in Grade 11 with her home schooling, Peterson is beginning to think about university.
Wouldn't it be something if one day Celine finds herself going to UTM and living in Oscar Peterson Hall?
• • •
By the way, The Mayor's Valentine Tribute to Oscar Feb. 14 raised $8,500 for one of Peterson's favourite charities, World Vision. That includes a personal $2,500 contribution from his childhood friend Oliver Jones, who has been jetting around the world since OP's death, anchoring numerous tributes to his fallen musical comrade.

There was a standing ovation at the annual general meeting of the Mississauga South Federal Conservative Party riding association last night — but it wasn't for the announcement of a nomination date that so many people had come expecting.
Jim Tovey was the president — of the Lakeview Ratepayers' Association — who got the applause after he finished his audio-visual presentation on the Lakeview Legacy project.
President Don Plett of the Conservative Party, who was the special guest speaker at the agm, didn't make the announcement so many were anticipating.
Instead he faced some pointed questions about why the five-and-waiting candidates in the race (Tom Simpson, Ryah Shadursky, Don Stephens, Hugh Arrison and Ted Opitz) must wait even longer for a date with destiny.
Hugh Brown, who is the campaign manager for Arrison, gently pointed out that the Liberal incumbent, Paul Szabo, is well-entrenched in the riding, has just received oodles of national face time as the chair of the Commons ethics committee looking into the Mulroney-Schreiber standoff, and is getting off to a nice head start.
"I tried to let him know how frustrated all the candidates are," said Brown. "They're tying our hands behind our backs and then sending us out there to win the election," the Clarkson resident said this morning.
Plett told the meeting that there are many complicating factors involved in timing a nomination. Many potential candidates don't want to declare too early and be forced to quit their jobs only to find themselves waiting for the writ to drop. And, oh yes, Plett explained, Harper and the Conservatives are very interested in recruiting women and ethnic candidates, and even better if they come in one package.
That would perhaps explain the unseemly haste with which Mississauga East-Cooksville Tory candidate Melissa Bhagat, who will hold her campaign kickoff tomorrow at the LAC from 2-4 p.m., was whisked into position to challenge Albina Guarnieri — a little slight of hand that has obviously left a lot of hard feelings in the riding. That was obvious from a belligerent questioner who wanted to know why there was such a hurry in Mississauga East-Cooksville to get a candidate in place for a supposed pending snap election and why there is so much reluctance in Mississauga South to even open the starting gate.
Plett took some umbrage at the suggestion that the fix is in, and pointed out that even a fresh, ethnically-pure, gender-correct superstar with a party-issue blue parachute would not be appointed because Mr. Harper is opposed to appointments.
But, as one long-time Tory who attended last night's function said, "something really doesn't smell right here. Something's wrong."
Needless to say, last night's non-answers will only increase the cynicism.
• • •
I'm away on vacation next week visiting Canada Blooms and as many wineries as possible in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Back in this space next week.

Rambo got a death-row visit from his lawyer last week.
After her brief, and frustrating appearance in provincial court Friday, lawyer Anik Morrow and assistant deputy defence attorney Carolyn Parrish made a quick visit to the nearby Mississauga Animal Control so that Morrow could meet the alleged pit bull she is fighting for in court.
It's always good to meet your client in person, or in dog as the case may be, before the fur flies in court.
Morrow's real client is 20-year-old Gabriela Nowakowska. She owns Rambo, who is a mutt who looks like a pit bull — therefore is a pit bull unless proven otherwise by his owner — under the convoluted thinking of the Ontario Dog Owners' Liability Act.
Morrow has an interest in animal law and has obviously taken on this case because it is a classic example of the flaws of the law. A puppy who is by all accounts good-natured and loving and has never attacked a single solitary soul is going to be executed unless his owner can prove he is not what his appearance suggests to some people, "a pit bull-type breed."
Meanwhile, as any number of dog experts will tell you, a pit bull isn't even a breed.
Morrow met privately with Nowakowska before she took the case to make sure that she was sincere in her love for the dog. It takes about two seconds of conversation with Gabriela to prove that.
The young woman probably drove the animal control staff crazy with her several-times-a-day desperation calls pleading to see her dog.
Morrow probably wanted to see the other half of the defence equation as well — to see with her own eyes exactly what this dog looked like, if he displayed the classic look of a pit bull and if he was aggressive.
The only way he could possibly be construed as vicious is if you got in the way of his seriously wagging wayward end, says Parrish. "He wiggled his behind off and he licked my face. He hasn't got a mean bone in his body."
He has obviously been well cared for by Manager Duilio Rose and his animal control staff who have provided a separate glassed room and often play with the dog to keep him well-socialized. Volunteers walk him regularly.
After the matter was put over last week because a crown has yet to be assigned to the case (could it be that no one wants to touch it?) Morrow expressed concern that the longer Rambo is separated from Gabriela, the more the bond between the owner and dog is broken. "It's a crucial period to his development," she said.
It wasn't exactly O.J. Simpson's black glove, but the lawyer brought along a pair of Gabriela's gloves on her visit and let Rambo have a sniff.
That set off another wagging marathon. The dog hasn't forgotten.
Tomorrow, if the crown has its act together and decides that the City has jurisdiction to consider doggie bail, and Morrow can convince a Justice-of-the-Peace that a home sentence, given Rambo's clean sheet, makes sense until a full trial can take place, then you might see the supreme full-body wag when dog and owner are reconnected.

When they handed out the Civic Awards of Recognition last night at City Hall to the individual (versus sports team) recipients, Bonnie Yagar was the last to be recognized, based on alphabetical logic.
Based on civic contribution logic, she probably should have been first — with no disrespect meant to any of the other worthy people honoured.
Yagar has long been a volunteer, one who did the things any concerned mother would do while raising her three sons in Lorne Park, things like sitting on the local ratepayers' group and serving on the parent and school councils.
All that changed when the former law clerk decided to take a cue from the boss and went back to university to become a lawyer at age 43.
When she decided to start volunteering actively after she joined the venerable local law firm of Pallett Valo, founded by former MP and John Diefenbaker's Parliamentary Assistant John Pallett, she found a warm reception.
"I think they wanted to take advantage of my lawyer-brain," says the highly personable Yagar, who talks to you as if she was leaning over her back fence, not as if she was addressing a judge, like many lawyers do.
No one is happier about her decision to take up volunteering as a pastime than Community Living Mississauga (CLM), which serves the many vulnerable people in the City who have an intellectual impairment.
"When I started looking at volunteering, I didn't even know what they did," laughs Yagar, who joined the housing committee 12 years ago and quickly became an invaluable member of the board, of which she is the former chair.
One volunteer post led to another, as it often does with committed people who have an understanding of the needs and a flair for advocacy.
Yagar became chair of Peel's Fair Share Task Force five years ago, reinvigorating the ongoing campaign for justice in funding for our region's under-nourished social services network.
It takes more energy to read through Yagar's list of volunteer positions than most of us have available to donate to a worthy cause in the first place.
As well as serving on the board of CLM, she is the chair of its rights committee, which allows clients a voice in their care.
She's on a Peel United Way committee and serves on PAR (Peel Activities and Recreation) which supports intellectually challenged individuals who are often left adrift after they must leave school.
Other involvements include Success by 6 and the Square One Older Adult Centre where she provides estate-planning seminars. She helps out parents of children who have developmental issues by providing estate seminars for Erinoak, CLM and Brampton Caledon Community Living.
Many aging parents of those with intellectual impairments have found solace in her critical advice about how their children can be cared for when they are gone.
With close to 20 hours a week donated to her various causes, Yagar must never see her family, right?
Well, no. She is so organized that she fits all of her volunteering into weekday evenings and then reserves her weekends for husband Joe and her sons.
She should probably be giving seminars on time management for the ultra-busy.
In case you're worried about her slacking off on weekends, she is an avid gardener at her Lorne Park home and at the cottage in Muskoka where there will be two new beds created this season for all of the perennials that need to be split.
She didn't get to Canada Blooms during March Break last week because she was at the Beads show in an adjoining part of the Metro Convention Centre. She makes jewellery.
She cooks and her sons are all good cooks. Often when she gets home late of a weekday evening, Joe, who doesn't cook, will ask if she has had anything to eat.
She recognizes this as an obvious plea for sustenance and heads for the kitchen to whip up a little something.
Bonnie knits on the way to the cottage so there's no time wasted in the car. Just so there's equal time committed to her masculine side, she drywalls and sets tiles.
She also loves to sew. Most of what she wears, including the jeans, she makes herself.
I can already hear you in the background whispering Peggy Lee's definitive version of I'm a W-o-m-a-n ("Can rub and scrub this old house til it's shinin like a dime/Feed the baby, grease the car, and powder my face at the same time/ Get all dressed up, go out and swing til 4 a.m. and then/Lay down at 5, jump up at 6, and start volunteerin' all over again.")
Whew.
In case she doesn't have enough on her plate, Yagar has recently expanded her horizons to sit on the donor development committee of the Community Foundation of Mississauga. Do you think a legal expert in estates might be slightly helpful there?
And she's on a steering committee to try to re-establish the sorely missed Volunteer Centre of Peel, another organization like the Community Foundation that is critical to the underpinnings of the entire social service network in the region.
"I can't tell you just how amazing she is," says Debbie Moffatt, director of quality and community development at CLM. "She just never ceases to amaze us."
Bonnie is the unofficial "tour guide" whenever CLM board and staff go away for a conference. To the point that when they went to Sault Lookout, Bonnie rented a car and chauffeured five women on a seven-hour drive to Winnipeg for some sight-seeing in the big city.
"She orchestrated it all," says Moffatt.
That seems to be a habit for Bonnie.
Can anyone say Citizen of the Year nominee?

When Dave Cook was a kid growing up on the Sixth Line in Malton, attending Elmbank Public School and living on what is now part of Pearson International Airport, he and his friends loved to visit a nearby farm to sneak in and build hay forts in the barn.
The sheep farm was located behind a store on Sixth Line owned and operated by Jack Wales.
One day when he and his playmates were working on another hay-room masterpiece, they "got a little sassy" with the "old man" who owned the place.
A short chase ensued, as the crime blotter might say.
Cook and his mates outran the old man and thought nothing much about it. Even when his Dad explained to the young lad that he had been in a race with one Alan Byron Morris, better known as Teddy Morris in his playing days when he won three Grey Cups as the star running back with the Argos, the significance didn't really register on Cook.
Morris and his backfield mate Tommy Burns made the end run a weapon to be feared in the late 1930s. When the storied Morris career ended, Toronto Star sports writer Red Burnett called Morris, "one of the greatest little men in the history of Canadian football."
The story of Teddy Morris' amazing career in the CFL and his vain holdout against American imports ("Ladies could play better than Americans," the Mississauga and CFL Hall-of-Famer was once famously quoted as saying) is just one of the historical vignettes that Cook highlights in his third volume of local history, called Fading History, Vol. 1.
Many of the stories, such as Morris', the history of the Avro Arrow, Orenda Engines, the building of the Lancaster and the storied past of the Toronto Golf Club will be familiar to those with a passing interest in Mississauga's past. But several others shine the light of recognition on long-forgotten dusty corners.
The Applewood Acres resident — a former radio broadcaster, Mississauga News reporter and Ward 7 City councillor who accidentally found a new career writing about local history, — starts in his own boyhood backyard to spin his yarns.
Malton , not far from Cook's boyhood home, was once the home of the British Commonwealth Air Training Base, where about half the airmen who participated in World War II were trained.
Later, part of the base would be transformed to become the site of the ground-breaking Workmen's Compensation Board Hospital, a far-ahead-of-its-time facility where those injured on the job would be rehabilitated and send back to work. Cook remembers selling newspapers in the lobby of the hospital as a kid.
There are also intriguing sidelights on the flying saucer secretly built at Avro in the early 1950s and now located at the US Army Transportation Museum in Fort Eustis, Va.; on the long-forgotten Aug. 23, 1949 crash of naval pilots practising for the CNE show near the Compensation Board Hospital (broadcaster Patrick Watson's brother Clifford was one of the pilot victims); and the amazing story of Bobby Cunningham Sr., the former Mississaugua Golf and Country Club and St. George's pro whose outstanding career deserves to be a lot more celebrated.
My personal favourite among the stories though, focusses on the Dixie Music Fair, which brought musicals and other summer entertainment to the big tent near the site of what is now the Dixie Value Mall in the late 1950s. Cook has unearthed playbills of all of the shows attended by up to 2,000 people, which include many "stars" whose names you know longer recognize.
Among the names you will know are Eve Arden, Gretchen Wyler, Hans Conried, Roddy McDowall, Red Buttons, Dorothy Collins and James Garner.
It was Stage West outdoors before there was any Stage West indoors.
Believe it or not, according to the playbill, acerbic American comedian Lenny Bruce made his Canadian premier at the Dixie Music Fair. Opening for him, by the way, was the Don Thompson all-star jazz group, the same multi-instrumental genius who is still one of the country's best.
As Mississaugans, we owe a debt of gratitude to the Dave Cooks and Kathleen Hicks' who take the time to write down the memories the rest of us all chat and wonder about.
Cook reserves a special note of thanks for another former City councillor, Terry Butt, who once again has pitched in financially to make Fading History something other than a shadow of an idea.
Cook will be selling the book for $20 and signing copies Sat. May 3 at 7 p.m. at St. John's Dixie Anglican Church at Cawthra Rd. and Dundas St. E.

Remember the case of the pothole poet, Meadowvale senior citizen Antonio Batista, who wrote the ode of non-appreciation to Ward 9 Councillor Pat Saito which got him convicted of uttering a death threat?
The paperwork for the appeal is well underway, according to the office of Clayton Ruby, whose defence of not-guilty-by-reason-of-satire didn't make much of an impression on Mr. Justice J.J. Keaney.
Baptista received a suspended sentence and was placed on probation for a year, subject to several conditions including not contacting Saito.
The factums have been filed and a trial date should be known within a few weeks. After that, the lawyers get together in a Toronto court and argue the merits of their case.
Ruby is also handling the appeal of the amendments to the Dog Owners' Liability Act. His 60-page factum was filed at the end of February after a couple of extensions. That means the same courtesy will likely be extended to the crown, meaning their filing is not expected until the end of June. Hearing dates aren't likely until late fall, by which time the Rambo trial may already be over.
• • •
After Conservative Party of Canada President Don Plett gave his keynote speech at the recent meeting of the Mississauga South federal association and disappointed many by not specifying a nomination date, speculation about a possible "star" candidate waiting in the wings ramped up significantly.
Mississauga South university student William Norman, originally from the City, speculated at his www.theliberalbag.blogspot.com/ site that Effie Triantafilopoulous might be in line for an appointment.
To which Effie replied in an email: "I have not been approached by the party nor am I pursuing it. Just idle speculation."
After the principled stand she took on the party hijacking of the open provincial nomination process when Tim Peterson crossed the floor and her tenacity in refusing to back down to the series of imperial dictates of the party which followed, Triantafilopoulos could hardly be receptive to an appointment.
• • •
One wonders if Wajid Khan and Bonnie Crombie, the respective candidates for the Conservative and the Liberal parties in the next (one hesitates to say upcoming) federal election in Mississauga-Streetsville will declare a truce on certain topics on the platform.
Khan, of course, won't want to talk about the Election Finance Act charges that prompted him to become an independent for a while until he entered a guilty charge and paid a fine.
Yesterday, Crombie's spouse Brian — who was the co-chair of the highly-successful Mississauga summit late last year — was named as one of four senior officers at Mississauga's Biovail Corp. who are the subject of serious allegations of misrepresentation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Ontario Securities Commission.
Crombie is the former chief financial officer at Biovail who has long worked with its founder Eugene Melnyk.
The charges have not been proven, of course, and Crombie and Melnyk have both declared their innocence and vowed to fight the charges.
Nonetheless, the timing for a political spouse simply could not be worse.

Tracy Wells had just been studying her birdsongs a couple of springs ago when she swore that she heard the call of the exceedingly handsome Northern Parula warbler (pictured above.)
So she grabbed her field glasses, headed down to the bottom of her yard near the Credit River in Streetsville and — voila! She had another addition to her life list.
The lesson, says Wells, is that you don't necessarily have to skulk around in the bushes for hours to see beautiful and unusual birds.
Wells is a Mississauga ambassador with the Great Backyard Bird Count, which has just published the results of its continent-wide backyard survey. This year 19 intrepid Mississaugans took the time to watch their bird feeders for a minimum of 15 minutes over four days and record the species they saw and their numbers.
The results weren't very exciting — no exotics or even semi-exotics — lots of diving ducks, gulls and sparrows, but they are incredibly important, says Wells, who was born and raised in Clarkson and has lived in Mississauga almost all of her life.
"It doesn't take much effort and you feel as if you are doing something important, which you are," says the 42-year-old. "It's a one-day snapshot of all of the birds across North America."
It's rewarding to think that 85,000 other souls this year took the time to count their local birds.
Wells joined the Backyard Count this year because she already belonged to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology which sponsors it. They track the results over years and years and interpolate the results to trace the rise and decline of species, changing migration patterns and the effects of diseases such as West Nile Virus.
You can see the Mississauga results for this year, and since the local count started in 1998, at www.gbbc.birdsource.org/gbbcApps/report?cmd=showReport&reportName=CitySummary&city=Mississauga&state=CA-ON&year=2008.
Wells is already a member of several citizen science groups such as Bird Studies Canada, Project Feederwatch and the Peel Naturalists. A "wonderful" speech at the Naturalists' Club meeting by Bridget Stutchbury, author of Silence of The Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World's Songbirds and What We Can Do To Save Them just last month reinforced the Mississaugan's belief in the critical role birds play in the natural world.
The book, which she recommends without reservation, has just been issued in paperback at a price of $19.95.
"People just don't realize how many birds they can see" in their own backyards or neighbourhoods, says Wells. When she first started birding she lived in Meadowvale and often visited that hidden gem of a park in old Meadowvale Village known as the Meadowvale Conservation Area. "I saw so much wildlife there: otters in the river, possums, deer, Great Horned Owls."
She can take a break from her job at Credit Valley Hospital in the spring, walk over to Eglinton Ave. go down into the river valley and see half-a-dozen colourful members of the warbler family. "You can also see all kinds of warblers along the Credit Valley where we live in May."
Three springs ago she and her husband were walking in the valley one evening about 9 p.m. when they spotted an American Woodcock. "I was completely blow away" at the sighting, she says. Now the couple know where and when to look and they see them again every year.
Keeping an eye on her birdfeeder not only provides entertainment value for the bird squabbling and the squirrel histrionics that are featured, but "it makes the winter go by faster," says the committed birder.
And there's something good about even the most brutal winters, such as this one. "Because it's been so cold, we had four common redpolls on the feeder one day," says Wells. "I haven't seen them in years."

Ward 6 Councillor Carolyn Parrish finally got her hands on the City's standard operating procedure for its animal control shelter this week. Now she thinks she knows why some officials seemed so reluctant to part with it.
Parrish is incensed by a part of the policy which outlines what will happen in cases where stray dogs are picked up and there is doubt in the minds of officials about whether or not it is a pit bull.
That procedure calls for a "pit bull identification voting card" to be posted on the kennel of the dog in question.
"An e-mail will be sent by the Animal Services Manager regarding the location of the dog and the time span for the vote to all full-time officers and shelter cleaner."
Staff shall vote within five calendar days including the day the card is attached to the kennel.
"All full-time officers and full-time shelter cleaner are eligible to vote. Each staff member is allotted one vote per animal. Once the allotted time has expired, the voting card shall be removed and brought to the animal services manager for a tally of the votes. Should a tie occur, the animal services manager shall have the final and deciding vote.
"If the dog is found NOT to be a pit bull, the dog may be moved up to the adoption room as long as it has met or exceeded all other adoption criteria as specified under the shelter's screening process. This shall include, but is not limited to, the dog's temperament, health condition and age.
If the dog is found to be a pit bull, the dog shall be euthanized in a reasonable time frame."
An incredulous Parris says, "a dog's fate is decided by who walks through the room during the days that they are voting and whether they vote yes or no. The caretaker can be the deciding vote. And our manager only gets to vote to break a tie."
Never mind the details of the vote procedure.
The bigger problem here is the absolute inanity of a law that is based on something as flimsy as someone's personal opinion on whether an animal has "substantially similar" characteristics to a pit bull.
What we have here is a reverse beauty pageant with death as the door prize for any perceived loser.
Mississauga Animal Control Manager Duilio Rose says the section of the procedure Parrish refers to is a strictly internal procedure which is used only for stray dogs when they fall into the grey area of pit bull resemblance. "When a dog is really tough to call, we call on the expertise of all of the staff."
The voting procedure has only been used once for a Great Dane cross-breed which had a jaw structure that was similar to an alleged pit bull's. Staff decided he wasn't a pit bull, so therefore, he wasn't.
He has since been adopted to a home where he is doing well.
"This would not apply to Rambo," says Rose, "because Rambo is owned. "This is an internal mechanism we use when we're stuck and have to make a determination."
In Rambo's case, staff had no doubt that he appears to be, and is a pit bull. "Rambo is what he is," says Rose.
As for the shelter cleaner, he interacts with the dogs, feeds them and knows them as well as anyone else.
"The whole thing is very subjective anyway," adds Rose.
Bingo!
Animal control staff are only trying to do their jobs, I realize, under trying circumstances, applying a law they didn't agree with in the first place. This procedure may well have been suggested as a way to take collective responsibility for a difficult decision in a grey area.
But is this the way we really want to make public policy in this province: by passing a law that says a dog must die if it looks like some other kind of dog it could, maybe... possibly be? And since we can't really tell which is which all the time anyway, hands-up everybody who thinks we should make an exemption in this case?
• • •
Parrish will introduce a notion of motion at the April 9 council meeting that, if approved, would allow visitation rights for dogs such as Rambo, who must be held for inordinate periods in the local shelter while legal procedures proceed.
Existing policy prohibits such visits after a dog is impounded, unless it is simply to identify an animal.
The existing thought is that visitation rights makes life more difficult for the owner, the animal and the staff who must deal with both the stressed owner and the stressed animal in the wake of such visits.
Parrish's motion asks that a one-year trial program be tried, based on procedures to be drafted by staff, for "incarcerated" pets such as Rambo.

There's nothing like getting a little wet at The Cottage Show.
Which is what happened to a lot of people courtesy of the enthusiastic "Dock Dogs" such as Chubby, the Black Lab, shown above.
Mississauga News Photographer Sabrina Byrnes caught Chubby just at the moment of unloading the bath tub with a magnificent belly flop yesterday in the "speed retrieve" category of the competition held yesterday during The Cottage Show at The International Centre.
The super-anxious dogs had to wait at the top of a ramp while their owners restrained them from breaking the laser "starting line" too early. Then the water dogs bolted for the pool that had been set up, dove majestically into the pond and swam to the other end where they grabbed a small buoy that had been mounted just above the water. Fastest dog wins.
You can bet the Dock Dogs will be back again, judging by the deep (and damp wet around the edges) crowd beside the pool tank.
Had never been to the show before in its 15 years at the former aircraft manufacturing facility in Malton.
Every retailer of every potential cottage product in the province must have been there. Not to mention every person in the GTA who owns a cottage or is thinking about owning a cottage.
There was a lineup to get into the parking lot at 10 a.m. Sunday. Hate to think what it was liking trying to exit at 5 p.m.
After a couple of hours of viewing a dozen different varieties of compostable toilets (moisture evaporation is the key to success if you must know) we went home happy that making all the host of critical retail decisions that supposedly await us this year — that big moose head with antlers or the kitschy little squirrel — are still a couple of months away.
• • •
What else to do during Earth Hour Saturday night except to spy on the neighbours... er... rather to take a small sampling of neighbourhood participation in the event by strolling around the block? The nicest stop was in the middle of the school yard where the constellations were more visible than usual.
(It would have helped if all of the floodlights at the back of the school had been extinguished but I'm sure that would have involved someone coming in on the weekend, equivalent time off and a lot of union hassle.)
The results on our little crescent in Erin Mills were disappointing. Would estimate that only 40 per cent of houses were participating. You could see candles and the Leafs game on in a few places.
And, of course, the same people who put their piles of garbage every week on Monday at noon for Tuesday collection, don't use the green bin, bring their extra garbage bags (for which they have no tags) over to your house to join your lonely bag without asking — they are the ones who have every light in the house blazing away.
Enersource Hydro says that Mississauga's participation resulted in a drop of about 3.6 per cent in power use, which may be somewhat underestimated because it looks like a lot of residents started before 8 p.m.
On the bright side, maybe that means Mississaugans get the point. Instead of turning our lights off for a specified hour, we know we can make a much bigger difference over the next 365 days by turning the light off every day, every time we leave a room empty. If only.
• • •
Too bad there weren't more people out last night at the ESC Lost Lounge to see a night of poetry and original song from local types.
It was my first exposure to "Slam Poetry" with its intentionally visceral in-your-face style.
When Jeff Cottrill took the stage, there was spit spewing everywhere as he chewed out a couple of intriguing pieces.
Slam poetry is half stand-up comedy and half Keystone cops, with a knowing edge, at least judging by Cottrill's pieces.
There was Cottrill — a graduate of the arts program at Cawthra Park — playing Sally in a blond wig dumping poor Jimmy, a guy who was just too nice, decent and kind for her to ever get excited about. Cottrill's salivating and palpitations as Sally twists in perceived forefplay as she describes the rotten jerk of her dreams was worth the ($6) price of admission.
The poet also excerpted King Lear in a two-man takedown with his partner, a frog puppet and performed How I Freaked Out the Spiderman Guy, in which a self-declared Spiderman expert learns the explosive facts behind the original animated series ("Wallopin' Websnappers") shot and voiced in Toronto.
Best of all, though, was "He Reads Michael Ondaatje" in which we meet the embodiment of the name-dropping literary pedant so incredibly anxious to impress us with his upscale reading habits.
Cottrill inhabited his skin and exposed him from the inside out. It was almost like being back in English class with one of those particularly supercilious profs.
Except we were allowed to laugh out loud without marks being taken off.