Playoff (Pool) Fever

The Leafs in six.

That’s what I put down in the family hockey pool, so it must be true.

That’s the heart, not the head talking, no doubt about it. But I honestly think we have a tinker’s chance. Funny thing is, I seem to be in the minority. Even the die-hard fans seem convinced the Bruins will walk all over Toronto in this series. They’re looking at the 1-8-1 record Toronto has against Boston in recent years. They’re looking at Phil Kessel’s dismal record against his old team since ‘the trade.’ They’re looking at the physical dominance Boston has enjoyed against us, thanks to players like Chara, Lucic and Thornton.

I think those fans are looking for excuses before the series has even started.

Those numbers are old and tired numbers, just like some of the Bruins. Truth be told, all the games this year were close and if you remember, we won the last encounter. And if you’re looking for a physically intimidating team in 2013, look no further than the Toronto Maple Leafs. And as a final point, Phil Kessel is on fire lately.

So don’t give up on your team so fast, Guido from Woodbridge, or Joe from Oshawa. Have a little faith in the boys in blue. Toronto in six games.

I’m also picking Washington in five games. I’m predicting Ovie has a monster series and Torts has a complete breakdown, throttling New York Post writer Larry Brooks in the process. Easily the most entertaining series in the first round, if we count the post-game press conferences.

The Montreal-Ottawa series is going to be a good one, but I have Montreal in seven. P.K. (Subban, not the penalty kill) will be the difference.

I like what the Islanders have done this year – John Tavares had a legitimate MVP-type season – but Pittsburgh will win, with or without Sid the Kid. Pittsburgh in five.

Out west, Chicago has been the class all year and I don’t see that dynamic changing in the post-season. Up until a week ago I had Minnesota as a bit of a dark horse, but they were horrible down the stretch and nearly missed the playoffs. Still, they have enough to make it interesting. Chicago in six.

I think Detroit gave it all they had just getting to the big dance, apparently for the 300^th year in a row. Anaheim in six games.

Vancouver has had a good year and there are those who think maybe this is their year. Not me. San Jose in six.

The Blues, meanwhile, have got hot at the right time and I think they make short work of the defending champion Los Angeles Kings. St. Louis in five.

As always, this information is for entertainment purposes only. Do not use for hockey pools: it’s only going to work for me.

Oshawa’s Fab Four

It is an unusual trio – an automotive pioneer, a hockey player and a horse – that makes up the Motor City’s Holy Trinity.

Col. Sam McLaughlin, Bobby Orr and Northern Dancer – icons all – have helped cement Oshawa’s place on the national landscape and created a benchmark of excellence for others to try and follow.

I suggest it’s time we add another member to the sacred list: a tiny, perfect academic administrator who, by sheer force of will, changed the course of Oshawa’s future by bringing a university to the city.

I’m not saying Gary Polonsky is going to rival the beloved Colonel Sam at the top of the pantheon, but his contributions to the city are finally allowing us to wean ourselves away from our dependence on Sam’s gift to Oshawa: General Motors. And with the automotive giant slowly but surely divesting itself of its commitment to Oshawa one job-for-life at a time, it’s not a moment too soon.

There’s no question Robert Samuel McLaughlin deserves his place at the top. If not for Col. Sam, we might all be living in Whitby today, so we should thank him for that, at least. Just kidding, Whitby.

It was Sam who moved the family carriage making business from rural Tyrone to Oshawa, and it was Sam who started making cars for the masses – McLaughlin Buicks, to be exact – that eventually led to the formation of General Motors.

Col. Sam became the founding chief of General Motors of Canada and one of the original investors of the Detroit-based parent company, which has been for most of its existence the biggest car maker in the world. Sam’s contributions to business in the 20^th century has been impressive, to say the least.

His contributions to Oshawa have been off the charts. McLaughlin lived to the ripe old age of 101 and his home – Parkwood Estate – is the city’s most popular tourist attraction and a prime location for movie shoots.

He also dabbled in horse racing and his silks graced a couple of King’s Plates. But his best gift to the Canadian horse racing industry came when he sold some land in north Oshawa to E.P. Taylor, leading to the establishment of Windfields Farms and the birth in 1961 of Northern Dancer, the greatest horse in Canadian history.

The Dancer captured the 1964 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, captivating North American racing fans as he tried to become the first horse since Citation in 1948 to win the U.S. Triple Crown.

His third place finish in the Belmont ended that dream, but he returned to Canada in style by winning the Queen’s Plate by seven and a half lengths before an injury ended his racing career. He was named North America's champion three-year-old colt of 1964, and, naturally, Canadian Horse of the Year.

But if racing fans thought Northern Dancer peaked on the track in 1964, they had no idea the legendary status the horse would achieve in the equine equivalent of the bedroom in the years to follow.

Northern Dancer may have been small in stature, but, well, you know what I mean.

As a stud, Northern Dancer had no peer. His progeny won 147 stakes races and earned more money than any other sire in thoroughbred history, and his influence spread to Europe, Japan and Australia as well as North America.

The demands on his services were so great that he had to be moved from Oshawa in 1969 to finish out his breeding career in Maryland – to be closer to his admirers – and he was the first sire to command a $1 million stud fee, a price that was unheard of at the time and still unmatched today.

Retired from the breeding stall in 1987 at the ripe old age of 26 – that’s Hugh Hefner age for horses – Northern Dancer died three years later and was returned to Oshawa for burial on the Windfields estate.

Just as Northern Dancer was making his name on the race track in 1964, Bobby Orr – the greatest defenceman in NHL history and, some would say, the best player EVER, was creating his own legend in Oshawa with the Generals.

The Boston Bruins, which owned the Generals at the time, had to buy the entire Parry Sound minor hockey organization just to ensure they could get their hands on Orr, and the teenage sensation lived up to his end of the bargain in Oshawa, leading the Gens to a Memorial Cup appearance – their first since the war years – in 1966.

As a pro, Orr re-wrote the record books, becoming the first d-man to win a scoring title (he won two) and revolutionizing the position.

Orr won three consecutive Hart Trophies as the league’s best player, won two Stanley Cups (earning playoff MVP honours both times) and reeled off eight consecutive Norris Trophies as the best defender in hockey.

The photo of Orr flying through the air after he scored the Cup-winning goal in overtime in 1970 is acknowledged as the most famous in hockey history.

Bad knees ended Orr’s career prematurely, but even with his joints held together with duct tape and crazy glue he managed to shine on the international stage. In his only Team Canada appearance in 1976 (he missed the ’72 series to injury) Orr was named the most valuable player of the tournament.

Forced to retire in 1979, Orr was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the age of 31, the youngest to be enshrined.

Gary Polonsky’s accomplishments in Oshawa since he arrived to take the President’s post at Durham College were considerably lower key than McLaughlin, Orr and Northern Dancer, but no less important, especially as the city prepares for an uncertain future.

When he got here in 1988 he was aware that Oshawa was the largest city in Ontario without a university. He also knew that the province hadn’t created a new degree-granting institution since Brock University set up class in St. Catharines in 1964.

No worries, says Gary.

It took a few years of schmoozing, cajoling and arm-twisting, but the dream became a reality when the University of Ontario Institute of Technology – yah, it’s a mouthful, but they were going for a MIT theme – accepted students for the first time in the fall of 2003.

The school has revitalized Oshawa and Durham Region and has helped change the Motor City from a blue collar town to a multi-cultural city of many collars. And when the school started spreading its footprint into Oshawa’s inner core, the downtown was given the boost it desperately needed.

Polonsky, who now chairs the Canada Science and Technology Museum Board of Trustees, was always quick to share credit for his accomplishments with others – notably his staff and the students of Durham College/UOIT – but we know better.

When he retired in 2006, having served as top man for both post-secondary institutions for four years, they had to find two people to replace him. ‘Nuff said.

Playoff Bound

OMG, OMG! The Leafs are headed to the playoffs!

My tongue is ever so slightly in my cheek with that lede, but it’s understandable that Leaf fans would be excited after Saturday’s victory over Ottawa; a win that clinched a spot in the second season for the first time since 2004.

We could have qualified through the back door with a couple of Winnipeg losses – after nine long years, Toronto would have taken their playoff pleasure any way they could get it – but we did it the traditional way with an emphatic 4-1 triumph over the Senators.

Nine years. That’s the longest post-season drought in the club’s history. My youngest son had just turned two: Jake has no memory of his favourite team ever making the playoffs.  In fact, there’s a whole generation of young fans who have no idea what it’s like to get invited to the dance.

That all changed Saturday night. Finally the kids have something to cheer about.

Us old guys too, the ones like me who remember the good ol’ days. I have actually been alive for four Leaf Stanley Cup parades, though I only remember one: ’67.

So while we finally ended this nagging playoff drought – every other team has made the playoffs at least once since 2004 – we still have that Stanley Cup bugaboo to deal with. When Chicago won the Cup two years ago it ended their record of futility at 49 years, leaving Toronto as the new leader in that dubious category. It will be 46 seasons this spring.

But one thing at a time. You gotta get to the dance to have a shot at the big prize, and anything can happen in a short playoff series.

One thing’s for sure: this place will be rockin’ next month. Especially so if we draw the Habs in the first round, which is how it's looking right now. Can you imagine?

The buzz when the Leafs are on top is incredible, so let’s hope we can have an epic run this year to create some memorable moments for today’s generation of Leaf fans.

I remember Lanny McDonald’s overtime winner in 1978 against the Islanders – a seminal moment for my high school days – and Nikolai Borschevsky’s OT winner in 1993 against Detroit. There were the two trips to the final four in the early 90s during Pat Burns’ days behind the bench and two more semi-final appearances in the late 90s when Pat Quinn coached the team.

There was Dougie and Wendell; there was Domi and Sundin. And there was success.

Now we have Kadri and Kessel; Lupul and JVR. And James Reimer, who will be the key to any success we might enjoy this spring.

 “For periods of time there’s been a lot of sand kicked in the face of the (hockey fans) of Toronto,” Leafs coach Randy Carlyle told the media after the playoff clinching victory. “Hopefully this gives them something to stand up and cheer for.”

I’m ready.

Fly Like a Bird

I was in north Pickering the other day and I saw something I’ve never seen before: a Canada Goose nesting in a tree.

The nest was about fifteen feet off the ground in the crotch of an oak, just a stone’s throw from the Pickering-Uxbridge Town Line, and the female was settled in nicely in the nest while the male was dive-bombing any and all vehicles driving by.

It was quite the sight and the nesting pair was the talk of the township, with the over-under on how long the male could go on like this before he ended up a splat on some truck’s windshield set at a week.

I got so excited after seeing them I was all set to email Margaret Carney, who writes a nature column for Oshawa This Week, to tell her of my scoop. And then I googled ‘Canada Goose nesting in tree’ and discovered that while it may be uncommon, it’s hardly rare (a coyote/wolf territory adaption, perhaps?), and there are several YouTube videos available for viewing.

Sorry Margaret. I guess I got ahead of myself.

But it was still very cool and it served as a reminder on how awesome close encounters between birds and mankind can be.

I’ve written in this space before about my relationship with Canada Geese – it was a 99 per cent true Pizza Dude Tale (The Goose, 02/01/13) – but those experiences have paled in comparison to some of my other encounters with avian life.

There was the time last year on another lonely side road in north Pickering when we crested a hill and caught up to a trio of airborne Wild Turkeys. We matched speed exactly and for three or four seconds the turkeys were in our windshield, mere inches from my face, before they veered off into the forest.

I’ve also had some particularly memorable moments with Snowy Owls – the arctic bird that ventures south only when the lemming population up north crashes – thanks to my reporting career. The first time was in Kenora, when I got a call from a resident who had found an injured Snowy and was nursing it back to health in his home.

Having an owl with a four-and-a-half wingspan and talons the size of daggers swoop over your head in the confined space of an attic is something I won’t soon forget.

My last meeting with a white owl was even more unforgettable. Graphic, too, so the squeamish may want to look away.

This encounter was in Pickering – a very rare sight this far south – and it was the result of a call from the maintenance guy for a strip plaza at Liverpool Road and Highway 2. “There’s an injured owl on the roof here,” he said. “I think his wing is broken. Do you wanna come take a picture?”

Sure. Why not. Perqs of the job, no?

So we climbed onto the roof – and sure enough, there’s a Snowy with a crooked wing and blood all over his feathers. So I started walking towards him, snapping shots as I went. When I got within fifteen feet or so he decided that was close enough and abruptly flew away. That’s when I discovered the blood – and the crooked wing – wasn’t his. It used to belong to a seagull, which lay headless and very much dead on the roof’s graveled surface.

I know, right? Gross. But still very awesome.

I also remember the first time I saw a Bald Eagle, on my first full day living in Kenora. I had to pull over so I could take in her majestic beauty.

The meetings that are etched in my mind are not just with big birds capable of clawing my eyes out, either. Small is remarkable, too.

The Chickadee is a species that holds a special place in my heart. If you’ve been to Lynde Shores Conservation Area in Whitby, you’ll know the feeling when the little birds fly down to feed out of your hand.

Just magical.

I can sit a listen to a Cardinal call for his mate all morning, or watch a flock of Juncos – slate-coloured sparrows that only come south in the winter – mill about beneath a feeder ‘till the cow(birds) come home.

The call of a Common Loon, the steely gaze of a Great Blue Heron, the buzzzz of a Ruby-throated Hummingbird in flight, the splash of a Belted Kingfisher at the end of a power dive, the sight of a Red-breasted Nuthatch climbing down a tree trunk or a Brown Creeper climbing up, the sheer beauty of a Scarlett Tanager.

All these moments give me pause and serve to remind me of my place in the world. They help keep me grounded, while allowing me to dream that I can one day fly high like a bird up in the sky.

Metaphorically speaking, anyway.

Marathon Madness

Why?

It’s what we ask after any act of senseless violence. It’s what we ask after any tragedy that we can’t explain or rationalize.

Sometimes there aren’t any answers. And we have to live with that.

The Boston Marathon was rocked by a pair of explosions near the finish line yesterday as some of the more than 27,000 runners were finishing the race. Three people, including an eight year-old boy, were killed in the blasts and hundreds were injured, many seriously.

The blasts occurred about ten seconds apart in a crowded viewing area in the city’s downtown Copley Square, turning a scene of jubilation into one of chaos, blood and screams.

The bombs were crudely made, but unspeakably deadly, making this horror a terrorist attack, without question. But whether this is another 9-11 event – God forbid – or a homegrown act of terrorism, no one knows at this point.

We do know that first responders sprung into action very quickly and should be commended for their heroism. We do know that at an event such as this – an outdoor, free public event watched by more than half a million people – it is not possible to prevent every nutbar with a crude bomb in his backpack from putting citizens in peril.

It is the price we pay for a free society.

The people of Boston, like the citizens of New York a dozen years ago, are resilient. One runner who had finished the race just before the explosions said he would not be scared off by terrorism.

"Whoever did this is trying to break people's spirits, but it's not going to happen," 33 year-old Arkady Hagopian told the Huffington Post, who added that is “definitely” running again next year.  "It only brings people closer."

Bostonians stepped up in other ways as well, as a tweet from the local Red Cross reveals: Due to the generosity of our donors we don't need blood at this time. Please schedule for a future donation http://redcrossblood.org  #marathon

I’ll leave the end of this blog by quoting my friend Don, who posted this status on Facebook:

There are bad people out there. But seeing how the city has responded and reacted tells me there's WAY more good people out there than bad people. We out-number them. And we always will. Bad doesn't win. In the history of mankind, it never has. It didn't win 1,000 years ago. It didn't win 100 years ago. And it won't today.

There's always going to be bad. But go to sleep knowing there's always going to be more good.

Amen to that.

Restless at Rogers Centre

“If this all-out experiment flops, I see an end to this franchise coming.”

I think it’s pretty clear the natives are restless in Blue Jay land. Pissed off might be a better word and if the post above is any indication, they’re in a state of panic as well.

But we’re only though one-eighteenth of a long season and the poster’s handle is Fullofit, so maybe it’s a little early to write this team off. But damn! The bloom came off this rose in a hurry, didn’t it?

Of the Jay’s four major off season acquisitions, only Jose Reyes, with a .400-plus batting average, is playing up to expectations. The three prize pitchers picked up this summer with so much fanfare – R.A. Dickey, Mark Buehrle and Josh Johnson – have been awful.

The collective starting staff of the Jays has pitched just 42 2/3 innings and have put up an embarrassing 7.59 ERA, by far the worst in the American League. The team is dead last in the majors hitting with runners in scoring position and they’re striking out at an alarming rate. Defence – especially in the middle of the infield – has been godawful and the bullpen has been almost as bad as the starting pitching.

More worrisome has been the breakdown in fundamentals. Routine balls are misplayed, cutoff men are missed, fly balls are dropped. And don’t get me started on the base running gaffes.

(Deep breath)

There’s loads of time to right the ship, of course. We’re just nine games in.

Joey Bats is back and Brett Lawrie will be soon. The hitting will come around – it’s too good of a lineup for it not to – and I have to believe the bullpen will start registering some key outs in short order or Alex Anthopoulos will be looking at finding some pitchers who can.

As for the errors – both literal and mental – it’s a safe bet manager John Gibbons is working on improving that side of the game. He’d better, because a problem with fundamentals has to reflect on him more than a bit.

That leaves the starting pitching as an area of concern. There’s an adjustment for National League pitchers adapting to the A.L. way of things, so I have faith Johnson and Buehrle will get their groove back. As for Dickey, we can do little more than hold our breath that he will regain mastery of his mysterious (even to him) knuckleball.

Dickey, the reigning NL Cy Young Award winner, took the city by storm when he arrived in Toronto. Not every ballplayer climbs Kilimanjaro, reads C.S. Lewis novels and raises money and awareness for global charities and Torontonians fell in love with him very quickly.

But his earned run average is 8.44, his last outing was a short one and he was booed as he left the field. So if Dickey wants to feel that love return, he’s going to have to start winning some games, beginning with his next start tomorrow night.

I have faith, but I’m not sure everyone does. I was at Chapters the other day and I saw Dickey’s autobiography, Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball, prominently displayed near the front of the store.

With a 20 per cent off sticker.

I asked the clerk if that was a promotion, or was the book on sale because in his first two starts as a Jay he has sucked. She said “the first thing” but I’m not sure I believe her.

Reload time for Generals

And that’s a wrap for the 2012-13 edition of the Oshawa Generals, a season that started with such promise but came to crashing end last night at the GMC.

The Barrie Colts finished the four game sweep of the Eastern Conference semi-finals on a rainy Tuesday evening in Oshawa with a 4-2 victory, but the killing blow actually came during a span of six minutes and twenty seconds at the end of Game 1 last Wednesday in Barrie.

That was when the Generals, holding a 3-1 lead over the Colts at the Barrie Molson Centre and seemingly imposing their will on the Lake Simcoe squad, let it slip away. It started when Steve Beyers scored against the run of play withy 4:52 to play to narrow the deficit to 3-2 and then, after an ill advised slashing penalty, Zach Hall scored the equalizer with just over three minutes remaining.

Hall then won it for the Colts 1:18 into the extra frame.

The Generals, who had taken out Niagara in five games in the first round and looked good doing it, never recovered and went down rather meekly three games later.

The Generals were one of the pre-season favourites in the OHL and were still nationally ranked after Christmas. A mid-season swoon – injuries, suspensions to key players and Team Canada call-ups all played a part – distanced them from the big boys, but a late season charge allowed them to almost catch Barrie for the second seed in the conference and energized the squad entering the playoffs.

Then it was vengeance time as Oshawa faced Niagara, the team that eliminated the Generals the past two seasons.

No problem, said DJ Smith’s team, and the Oshawa fans started to dream a bit. Maybe, they mused, this is the year.

Now the organization is left wondering about the future. With a lot of firepower up front not likely to return in captain Boone Jenner, big Tyler Biggs and the two Scotts – Laughton and Sabourin – the Generals are probably looking at a rebuild, with an eye on 2017.

That seems to be the best opportunity for Oshawa to try a win a bid to host the Memorial Cup, something that hasn’t been held in the Motor City since we held the tournament in 1987 in the old Civic Auditorium.

Oshawa put together a good bid for the 2008 Memorial Cup, with the brand new General Motors Centre as the venue and superstar-in-waiting John Tavares as the drawing card, but lost to the City of Kitchener.

Some say Kitchener threw more guaranteed cash on the table. Others whisper that the abandoned Genosha Hotel and the equally derelict Alger Press building – both within a stone’s throw of the GMC – conspired to influence the selection committee.

The Generals do have a chunk of their defence returning and a trio of young forwards – Cole Cassels, Michael Dal Colle and Bradley Latour – coming back, but I don’t see the team as a serious contender for next year.

So let’s shoot for 2017. The Alger Press building is now a retro-cool UOIT building and maybe – just maybe – that’s enough time for the City to find a buyer for the Genosh.

We can always dream, anyway.

Go Gens!

Gay Athletes in the dressing room…Oh My

On February 15 Robbie Rogers, a member of League One soccer club Stevenage in England and a former U.S. international, announced on his blog that he was gay.

And then promptly quit.

Rogers, who spent five years in MLS with the Columbus Crew and made 18 appearances with the national team, said he decided to retire because he was “fearful” of how his teammates were going to react and he was worried about the treatment he would receive from opposition fans and the media.

(No professional soccer player has come out during his playing career and less than a handful have come out post retirement. One, former England U21 international Justin Fashanu, hung himself eight years after.)

"For the past 25 years I have been afraid, afraid to show who I really was because of fear. I always thought I could hide this secret," wrote Rogers, 25. "Football was my escape, my purpose, my identity. Football hid my secret, gave me more joy than I could ever have imagined."

Rogers has received plenty of positive feedback since his announcement, with athletes such as NBA star Steve Nash, former MLB pitcher Curt Schilling and NFL linebacker Brendan Ayanbadejo offering their support, but not everyone is on his side on the issue.

Saneguy, an obviously sensitive troll who read about Rogers in the Toronto Sun, did support the player’s decision to retire, rather than subject teammates to a gay man in the dressing room.

“If I was to spend time in a female dressing room, I would get aroused just seeing people I am interested in sexually, nude. It's what happens and would obviously make the females uncomfortable. The same thing goes for men who are interested in other men sexually. It would make US normal men extremely uncomfortable.”

Now there was some disagreement to Saneguy’s opinion in the responses that followed that day, with one wag in particular calling Saneguy a “moronic homophobe.”

Well, that’s just not right, and his supporters let him know they had his back. A woman named Ann, who earlier in the thread thought she had the debate settled by noting that we have separate washrooms for men and women, took Saneguy’s attacker to task, calling him an “ever ignorant sodomizer.”

jj333 also came to Saneguy’s defence. “That's the one thing I detest about gays. Whenever a person doesn't bend over and agree with everything they say and do, they're a "homophobe."

Jj333 believed that staying in the closet would have been the better option.

“If he was worried about what the response would be, how the fans would feel or what the press would write, why not just keep your yap shut? I think that many times these people who ‘come out’ are looking for accolades...why not let your soccer skills speak for themselves? If I'm watching a game (any sport), I couldn't care less, nor think about, who is sleeping with whom! Get over yourselves!”

Surprisingly, jj333’s post drew criticism as well, and he was asked why he was so afraid of gays. After claiming that Rogers’ supporters were “intolerant” of other views, he then took the logical step to assume that any supporter of gay athletes in the dressing room must be, well, gay.

“Straight males have no ‘fear of gays.’ They are just repulsed at the thought of two males having sex...the same way you're repulsed at the thought of having sex with a woman. Does that make you afraid of women?

(Sigh)

It’s no wonder gay athletes stay in the closet with those kinds of attitudes among the fan base. But support for Rogers and others like him is not universal in the dressing rooms, either. Remember former Blue Jay Yunel Escobar and the homophobic slur (Tu ere Maricon) painted on his eye black?

Then there's 49er cornerback Chris Culliver, who gave us this grammatical gem just before the Super Bowl. “No, we don’t got no gay people on the team, they gotta get up out of here if they do. Can’t be with that sweet stuff. Nah … can’t be … in the locker room, man. Nah.”

So yah, we got a long way to go.

My experience in sports locker rooms as a reporter is limited and somewhat dated, but I’m thinking there are maybe one or two players on each team that would be strongly against gays in the room. Most of the players wouldn’t care, as long as their teammate did his job. And there would be a couple of players, with egos the size of the pay cheques, who just assumed the rest of the team always stared at their handsome self anyway, so what’s the fuss?

Rogers, who didn’t actually mention the ‘retirement’ word in his statement, may yet return to the game. But for now, he is “a free man” who is stepping away from his sport.

“It's time to discover myself away from football.”

In 'Nam, Charlie don’t Surf

War has always been hell for those who fought it, but a paradise for filmmakers who sought to capture the savagery and the humanity of armed conflict for North American movie audiences.

The Vietnam War, in particular, presented Hollywood with a feast of gripping, emotional and violent stories that became especially poignant, given America’s collective guilt over the nation’s involvement.

Nearly 60,000 American soldiers were killed in the war, which, while significant, pales in comparison to the nearly two million Vietnamese on both sides – including civilians – who lost their lives.

Canada played its part in the war as well. Officially we were ‘non-belligerent,’ but Canadian companies sold about $2.5 billion in war materials (including napalm, Agent Orange, ammunition, explosives and aircraft engines) to the Pentagon. And about 30,000 Canadians volunteered to fight in Vietnam, with 110 Canucks failing to return.

This nation was also the promised land for American recruits trying to escape the draft, with more than 30,000 draft dodgers finding refuge here.

With so many rich stories it’s no wonder Vietnam War movies are among my favourites, which I suppose reflects, in part, my generation. Most Vietnam movies were made in the 20 year period following the American withdrawal from Southeast Asia in 1974, coinciding with my peak movie-watching years.

There have been a few recent Vietnam flicks – the re-make of the Quiet American (2002), Tigerland (2000) and When We Were Soldiers (2007) come to mind – but most were produced from the mid-70s to the early 90s.

Here's ten of the best Vietnam movies ever made:

1.      Apocalypse Now (1979) - The greatest movie of any genre, period. Based loosely on Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, the film is more about a journey into madness – two journeys, in fact – than it is about war itself. Starring Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando and introducing a young Laurence Fishburne, Apocalypse Now has the distinction of spawning the most memorable lines (think “The Horror” by Brando, as well as “Charlie don’t surf!” and “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” by a brilliantly over-the-top Robert Duvall) of any movie since Casablanca.

2.      Full Metal Jacket (1987) - Essentially a two-part movie, the first half takes us through the hell-on-earth that was basic training, as new recruits for the war are abased and abused to make them better killing machines. The results, as the young men make their own descent into madness, are on display in the film’s second half in Vietnam.

3.      The Boys in Company C (1978) - This underrated movie served as an inspiration for Full Metal Jacket and also takes us from training to deployment as we follow a group of young soldiers into Vietnam in 1968. Hope for escape from the horrors is offered in the form of a soccer game, which counts for extra points in my book.

4.       Platoon (1986) - Charlie Sheen’s juiciest role and featuring two excellent performances by Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe, Platoon was Oliver Stone’s first – and finest – contribution to the genre. The final battle scene is epic.

5.       Hamburger Hill (1987) - A classic film about the hopelessness of war, as soldiers from the 101^st Airborne Regiment try to take a hill (Hill 937, to be precise), which has no real strategic value, while suffering heavy casualties. Notable for bringing light to the treatment returning soldiers received at home as well.

6.       Good Morning Vietnam (1987) - The comedic craziness of Robin Williams at his peak is utilized very effectively in this slightly off-beat movie about a military DJ in Vietnam, but there’s plenty of drama too, as William’s character undergoes a moral awakening.

7.      The Killing Fields (1984) - Based on true accounts, this film takes place in Cambodia (after most Americans had left Southeast Asia), during that nation’s civil war. The movie’s title is taken from the name of mass graves of Cambodians killed during the brutal dictatorship of Pol Pot and the Khamer Rouge.

8.      Tigerland (2000) - A really, really awesome movie that I’m already thinking of moving up the list. Tigerland stars Colin Farrell as an ant-war recruit who spends his time at boot camp finding ways to get other people out of the army.

9.      Jacob’s Ladder (1990) - Strange movie. Emotional, and we’re left at the end of the film wondering if any of what we just saw actually happened, or was the result of some drug-induced psychosis. Possibly a metaphor of the lives of a few people I know.

10.  The Deer Hunter (1978) - A movie about friendship, the horrors of war and post traumatic stress. The Russian Roulette scene with Christopher Walken is worth the price of admission all by itself.

Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Coming Home (1978), Casualties of War (1989) and Uncommon Valor (1983) earned honorable mention.

The Day the News Died

I’m not sure of the date. It could have been April 18, 2011. It could have been December 1, 2010. But whenever it was, it was the day the newspaper business died in Toronto.

Okay, maybe not died. But at least went to hell in a hand basket.

I’m talking about the simmering feud between the Sun and the Star that has set newspaper standards back nearly a century. At its core the rift is about ideologies and right vs. left politics, but economic factors that have been bleeding ad revenues for years have also conspired to ramp up the dispute to what I, as a newspaperman of long standing, consider to be intolerable levels.

The two newspapers have always sat across the great divide, but it always seemed that journalistic integrity would not be sacrificed for the sake of headlines or profit margins. But all that changed when Rob Ford found himself inexplicably elected mayor 29 months ago.

That seems to be the day the Star lost its mind and with its attacks on Ford deteriorating into a witch hunt of late, it looks like they lost any clear vision of newspaper ethics as well.

For the Sun, it was the launch of the Sun News Network two years ago that put them over the top. Always feisty, always right wing, the little paper that grew clearly grew tired of the Star’s circulation dominance – not to mention its left wing stance – and decided that a television station was the way to change that.

Problem was, the Toronto Sun lost its editorial balance in the process.

The newspaper that was born in 1971 from the ashes of the Toronto Telegram has always been opinionated, with much of its strength derived from its powerful stable of columnists. Sure, as a right wing newspaper most of those columnists took small ‘c’ conservative positions, but the Sun also prided itself on hiring writers with contrarian points of view.

This is a paper that employed Walter Stewart and Doug Fischer – both late, great bastions of the left – as well as Heather Mallick, who won two national newspaper awards for the newspaper in the 1990s. Heck, even Sheila Copps wrote for the Sun.

Today it is shrill voices from the ultra right – straight from the Sun News studios – that dominate the editorial pages. As for alternate voices, the Sun tolerates occasional columns by Sid Ryan and Edward Greenspan for appearances. But that’s it.

If it was just the opinion pages it wouldn’t be so bad, but that ultra-right slant has filtered down to the regular reporting. And that’s just sad.

The Star, meanwhile, has been incessantly braying for Ford’s head since his election victory. They tried ousting him over the Don Bosco fundraising issue and when that didn’t work they moved on to ass-gate, followed by drunken moron-gate.

Enough is enough. I get that you don’t like Ford, I get that he’s a buffoon. I think the voters of Toronto were looking for a bit of Ralph Klein’s populism when they voted for Ford, but got Chris Farley instead. So yeah, I think most people get it.

But please. Try to remember not to leave your journalistic standards at the door in your quest to get him removed from office.

It was the Toronto Star that hired Pierre Burton and Greg Clark, launched the career of Ernest Hemingway, and inspired the birth of Superman, for crying out loud. Thanks to Joe Atkinson, who ran the Star for nearly half a century, the newspaper has a long history of being a champion of social justice issues.

But that track record only goes so far.

Star media columnist Antonia Zerbisias once wrote that Star staffers have the Atkinson Principles – and its associated values – “tattooed on our butts”. That’s “fine with me,” she added. “At least we are upfront about our values, and they almost always work in favour of building a better Canada."

Seriously? Don’t you think the people who publish the Toronto Sun feel the same way about their principles?

In about a year-and-a-half Ford will be gone from the Mayor’s chair. In the meantime both sides need to chill and get back to what they used to do best: producing great newspapers.

Bonnie Scotland

O, ye'll take the high road, and I'll take the low road. And I'll be in Scotland afore ye.

I want to go to Scotland.

I want to arrive at Prestwick Airport and hear the voices. If one, lone Scottish accent can command attention in a crowded place on this side of the pond, what will it sound like when the buzz is nothing but Scottish burr?

I want to see the highlands and climb to where the ocean meets the sky, and down a wee dram or two of scotch while I’m there. Maybe I’ll even learn to like the stuff.

I want to hear the mournful skirls of the pipes in the place where they belong.  I want to see Edinburgh and explore castles and medieval architecture.

I want to see an Old Firm game between Rangers and Celtic, get drunk, and live to tell the tale the next day.  Maybe by the time I can afford to do this, Rangers will have returned from financial purgatory and this match can actually happen.

Most of all, I want to see Aberdeenshire, the ‘shoulder’ of Scotland, thrusting out mightily into the North Sea. That’s where I’ll find Fraserburgh, the town where my father grew up. That’s where I’ll find Pennan, the spectacular little seaside village where my grandmother – my nana – spent her childhood.

That’s where I’ll find a piece of my heart: from a place I’ve never been.

Pennan, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Bonnie Scotland has always sparked something deep inside me, despite the fact that I am just half Scottish and truthfully, was not raised in a Scottish household. The kitchen was always my mother’s domain and my Sunday dinner plate would be far more likely be piled high with roast beef and Yorkshire pudding (yumm!) than it would ever see haggis or finnan haddie.

The only contribution Dad would make to my mother’s English dinner table would be the grace he would always say (and still does), straight from the pages of Robert Burns himself:

“Some hae meat and canna eat, and some wad eat that want it,
But we hae meat and we can eat, and say the Lord be thankit.”

Bless my English family, which is now down to my mom and three cousins, but there’s no pre-dinner speech like that in merry old England. Humble, confusing – who has meat and can’t eat it? – and best of all, short.

So no haggis, no trips to the homeland and no accent, either. My father has none to speak of and never had one in my lifetime – I would have to visit my cousins or my Nana to hear those familiar rolling rrrrrs – because he’s from The Broch and they don’t exactly speak English in those parts.

They spik Doric up Fraserburgh way, a dialect of the Scots language that is rich in strange phrases such as fit like? (how are you?); gie’s a bosie! (give us a hug!) and dinna be coorse or a’ll skelp yer dowp (don’t be naughty or I’ll smack your bottom). Soccer? Aye, it’s fitbaa, laddie.

The BBC shoots documentaries on life in the north-east of Scotland from time to time, and when they do they use sub-titles. Not just for the English, but also for the viewers in the rest of Scotland.

So when my Dad, fresh-faced and all of 18 or so, came to Toronto to make his mark in the world, he had to tone down the burr if he wanted to be understood. Before I came along, he was completely burr-less.

If I wanted to immerse myself in Scottish ways, I only had to visit the Martins and the Strachans, the families of my Dad’s two sisters, Norma and Jan. My Uncle Jimmy (who hailed from nearby Peterhead) and my Uncle George (Glasgow area) are gone now, as is my Nana. I miss them.

I still have my aunts, my cousins (Steve and Neil; Janice and Jill) and their children to help keep me close to my roots, but I want to go to Scotland very badly. I even made a rash promise to Jake that we would visit in 2014.

But dinna fash yersel on my behalf; there’s no need for me to get doon aboot the mou. I can make this happen. If I don’t I fear I’ll be like the soldier, sensing his own mortality after a crushing defeat at the hands of the English, penning the chorus’ last lines from the famous Scottish song:

For me and me true love will ne'er meet agin’; On the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch Lomond.

Aye.