The Ottawa Journal from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • Page 6

The Ottawa Journal FubUthad by Th Journal FubUahlnt; bo. ol OtUw Ltd. MS Uuriar Annue Wert, OtUw. Ontario SATURDAY, JUNE 24. 1972 A Gift to the Generations Free at the Archives! It cannot compete In beauty, elegance or sumptuous mounting with the medle- vaJ art at the National Gallery.

In the middle of the afternoon there may be only a group of schoolchildren on a duty tour at the centennial exhibition of the Public Archives of Canada, peering through glass cases at pictures, posters? maps, drawings, books and other memorabilia whkh are the "Mirror of Canada Past." Archivists are realists. Before he sur-, veys the scope and the history' of his domain in a fine introductory essay written for the exhibition's catalogue, Dr. Wilfred Smith, Dominion Archivist, says: "The news that 1972 is the centennial of the founding of the Public Ar chives of Canada is unlikely to evoke an overwhelming sense of achievement in most Canadians." That is a neat understatement. But it is, as Dr. Smith also says, something of Pity.

The resurgence of Can adian nationalism would be less likely to deviate hi to emotional excesses if it were grounded in the record of the past. The raw materials of history, which it is the business of the Archives to store, illumine our story and should make the telling of it by skillful historians more lively, yet at the same time more balanced and more complete. Ttia Uume nrtiich tinvf? VlPOTI f.hnsett tO reveal new insights both into the history of Canada and the holdings of the Archives are not the most precious treasures stored on Wellington Street A picture of the Canadian delegation to the ninth General Assembly of the League of Nations in Geneva in 1928 (showing among others, Mackenzie King, Dr. O. D.

Skelton and Charles Dunning) does not grip the imagination. Yet it and the political cartoons on Sir Wilfrid Laurier, a picture of Tommy Burns only Canadian to win the heavyweight boxing championship of the 'world), a manuscript of Stephen Leacock, a photograph of the Winnipeg General strike and the other items on display have a cumula-' tive effect of bringing the past into the present. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who sometimes belonged to the "history is bunk" school, once asked: "Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of Ms faded wardrobe?" The Archives has an answer to that query. The dry-bones turn out on inspection not to be so dry after all; the wardrobe not so faded. More important, as George Santayana wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are con-.

demned to repeat ft." The special centennial exhibition, which lasts until September, and the whole work of the Archives in passing the remnants of the past from one generation to another, helps us all to remember. It Bear and Eagle i i- Next month Bobby Fischer sits down with Boris Spassky to settle the question of whether an American can prove himself the world's best chess player by defeating a Russian world champion. Fischer is in a situation something like David going forth to meet Goliath: he -can't look too bad if he loses, but can reap even more fame If he wins. Fischer is reputed by some including, it seems, the Russians to be the first serious challenger to Soviet chess supremacy in a quarter century. Soviet grandmasters such as Botvinnik, Taf and Petroshian have traded the world chess championship back and forth among themselves since 1948.

Spassky won the championship in 1969. mind-blowing complexities have won it countless devotees around the world, and tbey will follow move-by- move the Spassky-Fischer matches, to be held in Reykjavik. The rugged Spassky trains at the chess board, and at tennis, skiing, swimming and running. He compares himself to the Russian bear, and his game is bearlike: deceptively lethargic in starting, but powerful in later play. In the young Fischer he meets a brav- ura player who, like the American eagle, strikes to kill swiftly.

Fischer won his right as challenger by some dazzling achievements: as when he clobbered ex-champ Petroshian in Buenos Aires last year. His artistic temperament some say, petulance does not endear him to everyone. That's the scenario. Will Spassky uphold the claimed superiority of "Soviet man" by retaining the world's chess championship for the Russians? Or will Fischer become an American folk hero in victory, and get a congratulatory phone call from President Nixon? It will be a long hot July before we know. To Keep Trees In a City Whenever anyone hollers publicly about the cutting down of a city tree it's Dick Standish, city arborist, or his assistant Tom Spence Who hear about it Since they know as fully as any other ardent conservationist the increasing necessity to preserve an forest In crowded concrete cities they'd rather hear the protests than die silence of indifference.

But. our protests should be aimed at strengthening their care for our trees, not condemning them for what has to be cut down. In 1971 city crews felled 2,200 trees. Of these 840 were already dead or dying of Dutch Elm The Grounds and Trees Branch of Recreation and Parks is empowered to remove such 'infected trees from private property. On applications by regional roads authorities, 100 trees came down.

But a positive side of the city arborists' work as tree, wardens is revealed by the Sunnyside Avenue story of last June. There was plenty of last-minute protest, about the felling of 21 stately old elms to make way for a widened artery between Bank and Bronson. As a road decision that act may raise questions. But as a story of trees, appropriations were made to allow 99 replacements for the lost 21 (eight of which were diseased). This hasn't been possible.

Hydro regulations forbid the planting of trees within 30 feet of their poles. But ft has been possible to plan for 66 new trees. The shock of cutting is given more attention, not the quiet act of planting, as perhaps it should. The mature tree doing its full-time job of absorbing noise, recycling and cooling our air supply, and gracing the harsh citysoape cannot really be replaced by the slim young, sapling for years. Last year the city planted 2,800 trees, 600 more than it cut down.

But the destructive triumvirate continues of -traffic, pollution and The lush June canopy over our heads, one of Ottawa's distinctions end no longer to be accounted a mere city luxury, demands our constant vigilance. Into the Fray With Valiant Cleavers Prairie farmers with the help of scientists have fought off drought, rust, grasshoppers and frost and brought in their wheat harvests triumphantly. Strip-farming, rust-resistant varieties, hopper poison campaigns and quicker-maturing crops worked wonders in prairie productivity. Still, the battle is never done. Thousands of farmers have turned to the production of rapeseed and the Manitoba' Department of Agriculture has just issued a warning against a noxious weed called Valiant Cleavers which threatens rapeseed crops.

Valiant Cleavers what an Imposing Dame for a nasty bit of weedwork! can be removed from most grain easily by. a simple screening process, but it is similar in size to rapeseed and getting rid of it there is difficult There's no chemical treatment to eradicate Valiant Cleavers from fields of rapeseed and farmers ere being advised to check seed carefully before planting. Farmers checking seed with a magnifying glass, remembering that mustard seed which may have drifted in is also very like Valiant Cleavers, must reflect that In the Golden West it is just one darn thing after another. Notes and Comment "Ask the average Canadian what the towns of Timmins and Kirkland Lake are famous for and the answer would be gold, and hockey players as good as gold." Energy Minister Donald Mac- Donald. i A man with a set of do-4t-yourself encyclopedias he never uses wonders why his wife heeds so many cookbooks.

Cottagers there say Lake Erie is so polluted it might as well be paved over and used as an international airport. LORD BEAVERBROOK once wrote that A. J. Taylor was finest historian writing in Britain today." It was, he stressed, only an opinion since he himself was not an historian but merely a chronicler and therefore not qualified to judge. In the same essay he compared Taylor's oratorical powers with those of Lloyd George and Churchill in their prune which was praise indeed from a man well qualified to judge both.

The admiration is not one-, sided. Mr. Taylor called one of Lord Beaverbrook's history books "Tacitus and Aubrey rolled into one," and grew to love him "more than any human being I have ever known." And there, perhaps, is the rub. Praise of Alan Taylor from Lord Beaverbrook? Oh dear, say the sound men of af- -fairs. Praise of Lord Beaverbrook from Alan Taylor? Ob dearsay the sound historians.

In this at least they stand to-g outsiders both, frowned upon by orthodox men. 1 7 f. MR? TAYLOR met Lord Beaverbrook in 1956 shortly after the publication of Lord Beaverbrook's book "Men and Power," which Mr. Taylor reviewed. They became good friends and re- -mained so until Lord Beaverbrook's death in 1964.

For the past five years Mr. Taylor has been engaged in writing an independent biography of bis friend which will -be published (in Britain) on June 26. In defiance of its subject's known liking for short books it is 712 pages long. Lord Beaverbrook's career as an historian, the last career be embarked on, owed something to Mr. Taylor's review.

To his own surprise Taylor had liked the book, even found it "one of the best books I had ever read," and said so in print. Sir Robert Ensor, another distinguished historian, had also praised it But Taylor suspects that Beaverbrook had never heard of Ensor, so it was his-own review which "changed his life" and spurred him on to write more. "At the end of his life he was proudest of being ac- knowledged as a writer: this was one sort of person be was envious of." Taylor recalls. "In the last years he probably devoted more time to this than to anything else, and the thought that this was not just an old man reminiscing, but that these books were going to be praised, gave him great pleasure." verbrook when be was in England, discussing historical problems (Taylor was writing 'English History. about this time).

Plant a Garden that here was an enormously cre ative man, who was also a "gadfly," restlessly flitting from one thing to another faithful throughout only to his Plant five rows of peas: Pleasure, Promptness, Patience, Perseverance, Pride: -Plant three rows of squash: Squash gossip, Squash criticism, Squash cliques; Plant four rows of lettuce: Let us be faithful to Canada, Let us be true to our obligations, Let us obey laws and regulations, Let us love one another. J. No garden is complete without turnips: Turn up for meetings, Turn up with new Ideas, Turn up with an open mind, turn up to make new friends, Turn up for fun and fellowship. and TURN UP WITH A SMILE. (Ripreduutf from "Tt Fourth EMitt," of Ottw, Moot! mm Tlx AMKtwi HtraM.) Merriekville Blockhouse, 1839 This watercolor by Colonel H.

F. Ainslie depicting tht blockhouse on the Rideau Canal at Merriekville is part of the "Mirror of Canada Past" exhibition on display at the Public Archives on Wellington Street until September. A. J. P.

Taylor Discusses Lord Beaverbroohz To Catch a Gadfly Written for the Manchester Guardian and The Journal By MICHAEL WHITE "Sometimes I was invited because he wanted to show off some ancient historical figure, -however boring, because be knew I'd want to see him. Or he might want to show me off. I was always careful not to let him dominate, which he usual-; ly tried to do. So about one time in three or four when he said 'You must come to although I longed to go I would say, 'I'm sorry but I can't' Others he would ring up and dictate to, but with me he could never, be sure. One had to keep out of bis power." Taylor is not a biographer, nor does he like writing long books.

Then "Beaverbrook" is a labor of love? "Obviously it was an attractive thing to do. I wouldn't dream of doing it for anyone else. I once asked him if be would like me to do the book. He looked rather cross and said Yes, he would very much. Then he changed the subject and I never spoke about it to him again." MR.

TAYLOR'S manner seems 'mild enough. He changes -the. pace of his speech and the tone of his voice to retain your attention. A short emphatic burst is suddenly followed by an effective pause, and then he is- off again. more outrageous the statement, the more innocent its delivery.

He rurai-, nates, then digresses much in the way that his famous footnotes enliven the weighty pages of bis diplomatic and political histories. As a footnote it might be a quite irrelevant allusion to the liaisons with romantic novelist Elinor Glyn of two of Lloyd George's war Cabinet (it bad only five members): or to the curious fact that the colloquial "French letter" is known in France as tne capote Ang-laise. In this instance, the verbal digression is to savor the rela-, tions between Prime Minister. Churchill and his Minister of Aircraft Production Lord Beaverbrook "deeply emotional with one another, yet manoeuvring all the time:" Then he is back to the question. although be was not a usual figure, was an important one," he says emphatically.

He runs through the list The fall of Asquith and the rise of Lloyd George, Lloyd George's own decline end faH, Bonar Law, the Empire Crusade key episode in Baldwin's life Beaverbrook was a complete outsider yet his most ridiculous, ill-organized, ill-defined campaign got Baldwin to the point of saying be was going to vrwi uwuw TAVmB flam fairly regularly with Bea-' I AXLUK, Mys newspapers, perhaps because for a restless man newspapers are ideal (you start afresh every day), and also because "this was the one thing he knew be was better at than anyone else." 'v. Of course, ell his campaigns were inspiration, no thought or discipline behind them. says Taylor in his mildest manner, "is very difficult to explain to people with more ordinary minds, and most historians are people with ordinary minds. They like to think people have a pattern and work things out by sitting down end studying memoranda. Well, Beaver- brook didn't arrive at his ideas like that" Here we are in good Taylor country.

History Is not the creature of general causes or the conscious grand design of either heroes or villains. Incompetence is a greater force than accident greater than either. Thus Lord Beaverbrook so often cast as the evil genius is never more than mischevtous. "He seemed to provoke people into putting the worst interpretation on his conduct Time and time again when I have examined these stories about him they're not true. He just attracted stories of this kind from the high-minded, those be caused trouble to.

and because of die unorthodox way he did things." 1 THIS last is partly attribut- able to the need to have fun. Take the Ministry of Air- craft Production, producing the planes that were winning the Battle of Britain. "He thought that MAP was funny, and I am sure he worked to make it He deliberately did things in a non-Civil Service way in order to annoy the air marshals. He deliberately rang up civil servants In the middle of the night just to get them out of bed. But it doesn't alter the fact that he was very anxious to win the Because of the fun, the unorthodoxy, Taylor says, goes hand in hand with a deeply radical temperament Many of his enemies were his fellow Conservatives, while most of his intimate friends were radicals of one kind or another from Lloyd George and the young Churchill at the beginning, to Nye Bevan and Michael Foot at the end.

The truth is, he says, that Beaverbrook drifted into the Conservative Party and remained a racalcitrant member most of his life. But if a radical party, especially under Lloyd George, had re emerged after the First World War, then Beaverbrook would have been very attracted to it MR. TAYLOR fears that people will find his book dull, which is suprising, and that fellow historians will be glad of the will think be has been soft on Beaverbrook. He has tried, he says, to paint him warts and all, because that is what he would have wanted. So at the end of.

the conversation be runs through a list of Beaver-, brook's failings, which he manages to make 6ound attractive all the "In many ways be was a rogue. He told romantic stories. Some of his best stories were not quite true, he put gloss on things. He was often timid and though be would prop friends up when tbey were down be didn't like the failures in life. "If someone had lost their he would perhaps send mem an occasion bottle of champagne but not see mem.

This was perhaps unkind. But he, having gone on being young himself to the end, expected other people to be young. If not why hell should be keep up with them?" 1 Sidelights This England New Statesman First be told the Crown Court: "I am not going to try end paint him white because he isn't" when defending a man who admitted possessing a forged 5-pound note. The accused happened to be colored. Daily Minor.

Broom Squad North Bay Jobs for students? The city could hand out a bunch of brooms end have them sweep down the community's sidewalks which, at this writing, were still heavily covered with sand. There is no use waiting for rain to wash it into the sewers. The sand was spread too thick during the winter.We recall days when the city would swoosh around with a big revolving brush, and although it created a dust storm that would dismay Lawrence of Arabia, it got rid of the sand. Then and Now 25: Years Ago From Th Journal of Jvn 34. 1W PROTESTING against the Taft-Hartley labor law passed by the' U.S.

Senate over President Harry Truman's veto, 135,000 U.S. miners went on strike. M. rattan O'Leary was made an honorary life member of New York State Bar i Association. G.

A. Stone was retiring as a member of the Board of Transport Commissioners. Crawford Dewar, of Brae-; side, was appointed to the Ontario Cream Marketing Board. The Commons approved establishment of a seven-- man National Coal Marketing Board. on Today With Ben Wicks i fi U.

ft, 1 ttx beautiful sunset' Letters to the Editors Alcock and Brown Sirs: Your "Flashback on Canada" eeries most MmmMulnM an1 it quently remarkable in the way that it condenses, into a short space a long and complex episode of our history. Such an article was the one that appeared on the 53rd anniversary of the first non-stop trans-Atlantic flight made by Alcock and Brown In 1919. While Mr. Bowman's article on the famous flight has some minor factual errors, ''these are more in the nature of For ex-. ample, Mr.

Bowman says that Alcock and Brown crashed in a bog at the other sfde of the Atlantic. Actually, they a perfectly-executed lamfng on a moor just near the old Marconi wireless station at Gif-den, Ireland, but the ground was too soft to carry the weight of such a large aircraft and the wheels dug hr causing the plane to nose over resulting in some damage to the aircraft. Interestingly, a short time later the same day a lighter RAF aircraft from Oranmore, a few miles sway, landed beside, the Vimy of Alcock and Brown, without any The Alcock and Brown story has a number of aspects of Canadian interest not men- uoned in Mr. Bowman's article. Capt John Alcock was a close associate of an early Ca-nadian naval flier, Lt Hugh R.

Aird, the late father of Hon. J. B. Aird, Q.C. a distinguished member of the Senate of Canada.

Alcock, and Aird were together1- on a bombing raid when they were down end taken prisoners, in September 1917. They spent the remainder of the First "World War in a POW camp. It has been reported that they often discussed the possibility of flying the Atlan- tic after the war. The famous flight might easily have been' and Another footnote 'of Ottawa interest; 'mere were four aircraft groomed in 1919 for the Atlantic crossing, and the' late Air Vice-Marshal, E. Stedman of Ottawa, also 'a professor of engineering at Carleton University, was a member of one of the teams.

Air Vice-Marshal Stedman was a member of the Handley--Page team, whose four-engioed was a large aircraft even by today's Stan-, dardf. The V-1500 bad a wing-' span of 126 feet just six feet less than mat of the Canadian Forces Hercules transport t-r W. R. MEREDITH. 77 Metcalfe Street.

Slow Mail Sirs: Many of us have reason to complain about the inefficiency of the post office and I wonder maybe one of the reasons for such bungling is because the public service bas pretty well done away with the merit system In the hiring of mailmen. Whatever the reason, our postoffice must be one of the most disorganized departments in the government My roost recent reason for. believing so is that a letter mailed in downtown Ottawa May 17 (and postmarked that i date) was not delivered to an address in Alta Vista until June 6. That is a delay of almost three weeks! E. Ottawa.

Bolshol Ballet Sirs: The recent visit of the Bokhoi Ballet to Ottawa was, indeed, joy to many dancers as well as our ever-inoreasing number of Balletomanes. if. 'i You are to be commended for your choice of reviewers, in this case Eileen Turcotte she did a commendable job. Obviously she is hot trying to tell her reading public bow knowledgeable she might be on the technique of ballet but is writing of the sheer enjoyment end appreciaton of the art of these exceptional artists. Mm.

LOUISA HOLTZ. 10 Arundel Ave. Acknowledgements The Journal wishes to acknowledge letters of thanks I from the following organizsl tions: j. 'The Canadian Hearing So-. ciety, Eastern Ontario regional office; The Ottawa Gtty Union of the International Order of the Rng's Daughters and Sons; The Canadian Ladies' Golf Association, Quebec branch.

(Letters eanmmtwtitta' end meaning If they art signed. But It the writer's name is disclosed to tht Editor they may publish fetters over pen-names. The best Utter It usually. the short letter 200 words should bt celling.) ft.