Snowstorm? What snowstorm?

You mean that record-breaking dusting we shook off on Tuesday? Please.

While record-keepers are putting asterisks on one- and two-day totals and pre- and post-1938 Ottawa International Airport readings versus those gathered at the Central Experimental Farm, let me tell you a little about snow in Ottawa.

Perhaps you recall the storm of Feb. 26-27, 1887, when 56 cm of snow fell, considered such a piddling amount at the time — really — that the newspaper headline barely murmured The Worst Storm in the History of Railroading, the sort of qualified heraldry you might expect of a millennial today (i.e. The Worst Storm I Can Find Anywhere on Instagram).

True enough, though, the 1887 maelstrom that saw the train from Boston to Ottawa arrive a full hour late wasn’t even the worst of the previous dozen years, bettered, or worsted, as it was by the Feb. 15, 1876, tempest that dropped 57 cm, enough to bury three Chihuahuas standing atop one another, and the April 1885 squall that fully entombed Ottawans in 71 cm of snow (add one Chihuahua to the pile).

The deepest from which our denizens have had to shovel, however, was the epic dump of 1947, when, on March 2 and 3, a whopping 73 cm fell on our streets (the equivalent, say, of a full-grown male Irish Setter), prompting the Citizen’s description of it as “the storm to end all storms,” which, nearly 70 years later, remains accurate, at least if snowfall is your only measure.

Ottawa journal March 3 1947.

“The city is tied up like a pretzel,” scribbled one newspaper scribe. “Ottawans took the big storm as a matter of course,” added a spokesman from the Civic Bureau, whatever that might have been. “They made the best of it and let it go at that. We have had remarkably few complaints either on Sunday or this morning. We are surprised and agreeably so.” (Today, WE are surprised that the Civic Bureau was even taking complaints on a Sunday, let alone one during which so much snow fell.)

Home bread deliveries were halted, forcing the toastless to trod through the drifts to their corner stores or resort to porridge. Milkmen’s horses “did considerable floundering” before being given the day off. “The city,” it was perhaps overstated, “is living from hand to mouth.”

It took a taxicab, a toboggan, two police officers and her husband to get Mrs. H.W. Carruthers, pregnant and expecting a “blessed event” at any moment, from her home on Fairmont Avenue to the Grace Hospital, normally a seven-minute walk. “The toboggan,” it was reported, “beat the stork.”

Snow removal on the streets was slowed as horses became exhausted, yet the Ottawa Electric Railway continued business as usual on all its routes save the Britannia one, where service was briefly interrupted in the morning of the second day. Downtown, an overheated car caught fire at Sussex and Rideau streets, but by the time firefighters arrived, spectators had put it out with handfuls of snow. Meanwhile, the weatherman, F.W. Baker, couldn’t get to work.

You want to complain about the snow? Suck it up, princess, and enjoy a bowl of porridge.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

Eddy, Wright, Billings, Sparks, Bronson, Booth, Ahearn, Southam, Besserer.

These are just some of the people who built Ottawa; the lumber barons and farmers, the politicians, businessmen, inventors and visionaries who shaped this region, who made and lost fortunes while writing their names in our history books and on our street signs, schools, parks, bridges and office buildings.

Many of them left more than edifices and industry. They left behind family: sons and daughters who kept alive their names and legacies, in turn passing them on to their children.

Some families died out or disappeared, of course: Ezra Butler (E.B.) Eddy’s spindly family tree withered. Braddish Billings’ homestead and many of his belongings are part of a museum now, but no direct descendants remain in Ottawa.

But scattered throughout the city are people who can walk the streets of Ottawa and Gatineau and say, “My great-grandfather built that.”

Citizen writer Bruce Deachman found a few and asked them about their forebears’ place in our history.

The Ahearns: Descendants of ‘Ottawa’s Edison’ say city’s greatest innovator is unsung

Robert Toller and Jane MacTavish are great-grandchildren of “Ottawa’s Edison,” Thomas Ahearn.

Almost three years after writing him, Robert Toller is still hoping to hear back from Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson.

In his letter dated Dec. 18, 2012, Toller congratulated the mayor for his role in bringing light rail to Ottawa, and then got to the nut of the matter: His great-grandfather, he wrote, was an early adopter, inventor and visionary behind what today is OC Transpo, and helped completely transform Ottawa in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Currently, however, the only public tribute to Thomas Ahearn — known as “Ottawa’s Edison” — is a bronze bust that was once part of a public drinking fountain at Lansdowne Park. The bust is expected to again find a home at Lansdowne, in the small plaza at Bank and Holmwood, no later than next spring. But perhaps, wrote Toller, Ahearn’s name might also be given to one of the LRT stations.

Click here to read more.

The Booths: A famous name (and nose) mostly a blessing, sometimes a curse

John Booth, great-grandson of Ottawa lumber baron J.R. Booth, stands outside Booth House on Metcalfe Street, where he was conceived and briefly lived. The Booth family sold the house in 1947, after which it became the Laurentian Club.

John Booth jokes that when he first walked into Ottawa’s Trinity College, people said, “Oh, there’s J.R.”

“Because somehow through the generations, the nose profile hasn’t changed a whole lot.”

Indeed, the 71-year-old Ottawa businessman, who now lives in Nepean, did inherit his great-grandfather’s prominent nose — and some of his wealth — but not a lot else. The original J.R. — John Rudolphus — was shrewd and frugal. His successful bid to provide all the wood for the original Parliament Buildings, for example, undercut his competitors by using unemployed longshoremen from Montreal to cut trees for much less than the going rate.

“I’m told I’m much more like my grandfather,” says John, “in that I deal with people well.”

Click here to read more.

The Wrights, the Sparks (and more): Wayne Lester is the Kevin Bacon of Ottawa ancestry

Wayne Lester holds a book on the history of the Wright family. Lester is the great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Philemon Wright, the first settler in the Ottawa area.

Wayne Lester may well be the Kevin Bacon of Ottawa ancestry, with no more than a handful of degrees of separation between him and who knows how many of the city’s founding families.

As a youngster growing up in City View, relatives often told him of his roots: “We’re descendants of Philemon Wright.” “You’re related to Nicholas Sparks.”

To a 10- or 12-year-old boy, though, these ties to some of the region’s foremost settlers seemed just vague statements or unverified legends of a long-distant past. Like the lists of British kings memorized in school, they were far from the things that then interested him.

Click here to read more.

In one of three related stories looking for living descendants of Ottawa’s founding families, Bruce Deachman talks with lumber baron J.R. Booth’s great-grandson John (Rowley) Booth.

John Booth jokes that when he first walked into Ottawa’s Trinity College, people said, “Oh, there’s J.R.”

“Because somehow through the generations, the nose profile hasn’t changed a whole lot.”

Indeed, the 71-year-old Ottawa businessman, who now lives in Nepean, did inherit his great-grandfather’s prominent nose — and some of his wealth — but not a lot else. The original J.R. — John Rudolphus — was shrewd and frugal. His successful bid to provide all the wood for the original Parliament Buildings, for example, undercut his competitors by using unemployed longshoremen from Montreal to cut trees for much less than the going rate.

“I’m told I’m much more like my grandfather,” says John, “in that I deal with people well.”

His great-grandfather, known as The Great J.R., lived to nearly 99 — outliving five of his eight children — and worked almost until the very end of his very long life.

J.R. Booth in 1904.

When J.R. wanted to secure a princely $45,000 loan to buy 250 square miles of timber rights for the Parliament job, and the bank asked what collateral he had, he famously held out his hands and said, “These.” The story may be apocryphal, but it’s not out of keeping with what we know of the Bytown lumber baron who arrived in 1852 with nine dollars in his pocket and went on to become the largest timber-limits owner in the British Empire and a major player in shaping of the nation’s capital.

“If J.R. had lived in any other area in Canada except Ottawa,” says John, “he’d be a really famous man. I mean, a lot of people remember who he is if you’ve been in Ottawa, and you’ll see references here and there, but because Ottawa was the political capital of the country, business was just business.”

Up at 5 a.m. each day and always dressed in shabby work clothes, J.R. founded the region’s lumber industry, oversaw the country’s largest privately owned railroad, and became a shipping magnate. He and his descendants shaped Ottawa, establishing a hospital and building churches and mansions, Union Station, a YMCA and day nursery. He was friends with both Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, although he ultimately helped defeat Laurier over reciprocity. The Booth, Transportation and Jackson buildings, all eventually expropriated by the federal government and the NCC, are among the Booth family’s legacies, while a pair of Booth streets, one each in Ottawa and Gatineau, and Booth Road, at Kingsmere, are named for them. A new breed of chrysanthemum, developed at the Experimental Farm, was also given J.R.’s name.

Among Canada’s richest men, his estate was probated at $23 million when he died in 1925, the equivalent today of more than $300 million. The total would have been higher, but for some “gifts” he gave to family members before his death. The family paid more than $4 million in succession duties following his death, but a dozen years later, the Ontario government claimed it was owed more, and changed existing legislation that might have prevented it from collecting an additional $3 million from the Booth family.

“Here’s the crowning thing,” says John. “If you take all the wealthy families in Canada today, the really old-school wealthy families, most of them came from the booze business, which was illegal. So they didn’t pay taxes; it was all cash. So what J.R. did was that much more impressive.

“But I heard he was tough,” John adds. “He didn’t suffer fools at all, and took no prisoners.”

John Booth, great-grandson of Bytown/Ottawa lumber magnate J.R. Booth, outside Booth House, where John was conceived and briefly raised.

John (also a J.R.; his middle name is Rowley) never met his famous forebear; the elder Booth died 19 years before John’s birth in 1944. But the old man’s forceful personality and enduring legacy were never far away.

“Growing up being a part of a wealthy family has its challenges. There is an expectation that you should be as great as your great-grandfather, or a complete failure. Either way, you will be judged and it is difficult.”

John was 10 or 12 when he became aware of his family’s significance in Ottawa.

Related

• The Descendants: How families of the barons who built Ottawa keep their legacies alive
• The Wrights, the Sparks (and more): Wayne Lester is the Kevin Bacon of Ottawa ancestry
• The Ahearns: Descendants of 'Ottawa's Edison' say city's greatest innovator is unsung

“When you’re a kid, you don’t know that you’re from a wealthy family; it’s just a family. We spent summers in Montebello at the Seigniory Club. I called it going to the cottage, although it was everything but.”

It wasn’t until he attended Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B. that John discovered a downside to his life of privilege. The school’s winter carnival included a performance by Ian and Sylvia Tyson, who only months earlier had released their biggest hit song, Four Strong Winds. Booth recalls that copies of the January 1964 Chatelaine magazine, featuring the folk duo on its cover, were plastered all over the campus. Before long, however, students began reading another story in that issue, titled The Booths of Ottawa. “No Canadian family,” wrote Doris French in her article, “has left a greater impression on Ottawa than the Booths.”

“So all of a sudden people put two and two together,” recalls John. “Until then I was just John Booth; nobody knew who the hell I was. I had the freedom to be a university student without ever thinking about the old Ottawa name and all that went with it.

“It came as a shock, because what happened was that I gained some new friends – that, I expected. But I lost some friends that I’d made down there, and that was really hurtful and upsetting. I challenged them on it, and their response was that they couldn’t co-exist with me because they weren’t in the same class, financially. And I thought that was really sad.”

John Rudolphus Booth stands beside a rail car of his timber.

John was briefly raised at his grandfather Jackson’s home at 252 Metcalfe St. The house was built shortly after the Ottawa fire of 1900, which destroyed J.R.’s home.

He was only three years old when his family sold the brick, turreted mansion to the Laurentian Club, an exclusive businessmen’s enclave of which Jackson and his brother, Fred, were members, and of which John was later president.

“I like to joke that I was conceived in the bar of the Laurentian Club,” says John. “My parents’ bedroom actually became the bar there.”

Soon after the sale of the Metcalfe Street house, John’s father, Rowley, built another, in Rockcliffe. John and his brother, William, attended Ashbury, where each was head boy.

And while it may dwarf in comparison to J.R.’s contributions, John, too, had a hand in helping shape Ottawa.

After the massive Canada Day festivities on Parliament Hill in 1967, about a decade followed without July 1 celebrations there. Then one year, John’s lawyer and accountant, Bernie Shinder, held a Canada Day picnic at Vincent Massey Park, to which, John recalls, 25,000 people showed up. The event was subsequently moved to Parliament Hill, and John was asked to join Shinder’s group of organizers. Around 1980, John was asked to take over, which he did until 1985, after which the NCC assumed control. “It was a whole lot of fun,” John recalls. He offered to continue organizing the event for another 10 years, but never received a reply from the NCC.

“But being part of J.R.’s legacy feels really good,” he says. “I’m certainly proud to be Canadian, and proud to be from Ottawa.

“I’ve had a great life so far, and while not having the great successes, business-wise, that my great grandfather had, have had my own successes. Also, I have three wonderful sons, four grandchildren and lifelong friends, which make my life a success. I’ve experienced several close calls with death and have learned what is ultimately most important in life: Love.”

bdeachman@ottawacitizen.com

In one of three stories looking at living descendants of Ottawa’s founding families, Bruce Deachman spoke to Robert Toller and Jane MacTavish, great-grandchildren of Thomas Ahearn, “Ottawa’s Edison.”

Almost three years after writing him, Robert Toller is still hoping to hear back from Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson.

In his letter dated Dec. 18, 2012, Toller congratulated the mayor for his role in bringing light rail to Ottawa, and then got to the nut of the matter: His great-grandfather, he wrote, was an early adopter, inventor and visionary behind what today is OC Transpo, and helped completely transform Ottawa in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Currently, however, the only public tribute to Thomas Ahearn — known as “Ottawa’s Edison” — is a bronze bust that was once part of a public drinking fountain at Lansdowne Park. The bust is expected to again find a home at Lansdowne, in the small plaza at Bank and Holmwood, no later than next spring. But perhaps, wrote Toller, Ahearn’s name might also be given to one of the LRT stations.

“Considering what that man did for this city,” says Toller, “I always thought he was unsung.”

Neither Toller nor his cousin Jane MacTavish, who are neighbours in Chelsea, ever met Ahearn — he died in 1938 at 83, before either was born — but MacTavish recalls her mother, Lilias Janet Southam, of another famous Ottawa clan, describing him as a doting father and grandfather.

Robert Toller and Jane MacTavish are great-grandchildren of “Ottawa’s Edison,” Thomas Ahearn.

“She adored him. She and her first cousin, Joan Ahearn, used to go over to his house in Nanny Goat Hill. They were picked up after school on Friday afternoon by his chauffeur, whose name was Read, and they’d go to the house and have tea, and then their grandfather would come home from wherever he was, and they would play with him. Then they’d bathe and be put to bed, and the next morning was the best; they’d wake up and get into bed with grandpa, and he was just a fund of stories. He’d tell them all these wonderful stories, and then they’d have breakfast with him.”

MacTavish likes, too, to recount the story of how Ahearn was tossed out of the Catholic college he attended for kicking a priest. “He used to tell people that he graduated over the back fence. The story goes that he was excommunicated.”

If an ecclesiastical upbringing wasn’t the ideal fit for Ahearn, it wasn’t for a lack of smarts on his part. His aptitude for things mechanical and electrical revealed itself at a young age, when, as a teen, he devised a series of electrical relays to allow his mother, in frail health and often bedridden, to open the front door of their LeBreton Flats home without having to get up.

Thomas Ahearn in 1903.

From there it was one innovation and invention after another. His career began as a messenger for the Montreal Telegraph Company, its Ottawa quarters located in J.R. Booth’s office. In 1881, at the age of 26, he and partner Warren Soper founded Ahearn & Soper, an electrical contracting outfit that brought electricity and outdoor lighting to Ottawa. In 1892, he filed a patent for the first electric oven, which was showcased the following year at the World’s Fair in Chicago. He also had the patent for a system to heat streetcars using electrically heated water.

Ahearn also made the first long-distance phone call from Ottawa, in 1878, calling Pembroke using a pair of telephones he made from wires, magnets and cigar boxes.

He founded and was president of the Ottawa Electric Railway Company, providing Ottawa its streetcar service. He also manufactured streetcars that were used not only in Ottawa, but across North America, and devised a large electric spinning brush so that the cars could clear tracks of snow and thus be used throughout the winter in northern cities.

Related

• The Descendants: How families of the barons who built Ottawa keep their legacies alive
• The Booths: A famous name (and nose) mostly a blessing, sometimes a curse
• The Wrights, the Sparks (and more): Wayne Lester is the Kevin Bacon of Ottawa ancestry

“When you think of the infrastructure of all the track and snow systems back then, and the fact that it was all locally done, it was quite pioneering.

“He was this interesting guy who came along at a time when ingenuity was something you could sell well.”

In 1927, Prime Minister Mackenzie King appointed Ahearn the first chairman of the Federal District Commission, which later became the National Capital Commission. It was during Ahearn’s five-year term there that the region’s parkways and the Champlain Bridge were developed.

“I remember my mom saying, ‘My grandfather built this bridge,’” recalls MacTavish.

In 1948, Ahearn sold his transit system to the City of Ottawa for $6.3 million, the equivalent today of $66.2 million.

Ahearn married twice, first to Lilias Mackey Fleck, and then to Margaret Howett Fleck. His first marriage produced two children: Frank, a member of Parliament and the  owner of the original Ottawa Senators, and Lilias, who married Ottawa Citizen publisher Harry Southam.

Toller sees something of Ahearn in his family, particularly in his son, Chris, an engineer. “I think there’s some of that ingenuity and drive in him, whether he realizes how far up the family chain it came from.

“Between Ahearn and Southam,” he adds, “for us to be born into that pairing is pretty amazing when you think of the influence. Southam was national, and Ahearn more local, but the impact is remarkable. That’s what marvels me as a descendant of all this. That amazing ingenuity back in a time when you pretty much had to hammer everything out yourself. And to think of the influence of both those families on the development of Ottawa, and the philanthropy, it’s really something.”

bdeachman@ottawacitizen.com

In one of three stories looking to find living area descendants of the families that built Ottawa, Bruce Deachman speaks with Kanata resident Wayne Lester, great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Philemon Wright, the Ottawa area’s first settler and founder of what is now the Hull sector of Gatineau. Lester is also related to Nicholas Sparks.

Wayne Lester may well be the Kevin Bacon of Ottawa ancestry, with no more than a handful of degrees of separation between him and who knows how many of the city’s founding families.

As a youngster growing up in City View, relatives often told him of his roots: “We’re descendants of Philemon Wright.” “You’re related to Nicholas Sparks.”

To a 10- or 12-year-old boy, though, these ties to some of the region’s foremost settlers seemed just vague statements or unverified legends of a long-distant past. Like the lists of British kings memorized in school, they were far from the things that then interested him.

Philemon Wright.

“I didn’t follow up with the right questions while my parents or grandmother was alive,” he recalls. “‘Tell me more about my grandfather Horace Sparks. Do you know anything of his father, George Alexander Sparks?’ And ‘How far back can you remember?’ It’s the farthest thing from your mind. I listened but didn’t pursue it.”

It wasn’t until 1996, when the then-51-year-old left his job with Bell Canada and entered semi-retirement that the time, interest and resources to start navigating his family tree came together.

The stories proved true, and then some. Initially researching his mother’s side of the family tree – her name was Mavis Sparks – Lester discovered that he was a direct descendant of Nicholas Sparks’s brother, George, who emigrated from Ireland to Ottawa in 1824, eight years after his better-known brother. Like Nicholas, George came to the area to start a new life farming.

Related

• The Descendants: How families of the barons who built Ottawa keep their legacies alive
• The Booths: A famous name (and nose) mostly a blessing, sometimes a curse
• The Ahearns: Descendants of 'Ottawa's Edison' say city's greatest innovator is unsung

While George eventually bought land and settled near Moodie Drive, it was Nicholas who indelibly stamped his name on the history of Ottawa. In charge of Wright’s stables and regularly travelling to Montreal and Quebec to purchase supplies for Wright, he fastidiously saved his earnings, and in 1821 bought 200 acres of land across the Ottawa River from Wrightstown, land that is now the capital’s most valuable.

At the time, his property, bound by Wellington, Bronson, Laurier and Waller streets, had little more than a log cabin on it.

“He wanted to get set up in business for himself as soon as he could, and maybe he couldn’t afford to buy on the Quebec side,” says Lester.

Sparks eventually established himself in a stone house on Wellington Street around 1830. “That’s when he became a land baron and got into all kinds of things.”

“When he first saw the land he bought, he probably took a deep breath and thought, ‘What the hell have I done here? Why did I buy all this scrubland?’ But he needed a place for himself. He wanted to be able to take care of himself.

“There were lots of people who came here who didn’t have enthusiasm, who just wanted to survive. But Nicholas saw a different way of life. He saw an opportunity to make money. It seems that whatever he touched turned to gold. He had good business sense. They say he was really good with numbers; he didn’t need a pad of paper to work things out. He was very smart.”

Wayne Lester in his home office where he does his genealogy research. Lester is the great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Philemon Wright, the first settler in the Ottawa area.

Lester later began climbing the Wright family tree, and learned of his direct descent from the region’s first family. He is the great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Philemon Wright, the region’s first permanent settler, arriving from Woburn, Massachusetts in 1800 with five families, at first farming the area, and later adding lumbering to his empire. In 1806, he floated a raft of timber to Quebec City, launching the region’s lumber trade. 

“It pulls you into local history,” Lester says of his ancestry research. “You have to read a bit to find out what happened to a person; you read about the local history of an area, and you get a sense of how people lived in certain areas at a certain time.

“I think of Philemon Wright and what his thought process might have been. He’s living on established farmland in Massachusetts and was fairly wealthy. And I guess he had the desire to move away and do his own thing. He must have had some idea. His originally idea was to start something in Hull, but not necessarily to settle there. But at some point he must have thought ‘I wouldn’t mind living here,’ so they brought their families and stayed here.

“In school you learn about the kings and queens, and the feudal system and the Plains of Abraham. Those are historical markers. But nobody said ‘Do you realize that this city was founded by a guy named Nicholas Sparks, and a handful of others? And they started in a log cabin, probably as poor as church mice. And look at all this around you now; this prized piece of property with all these buildings on it. And it all started with one small person.”

Monument to Hull founder Philemon Wright.

Among the surprises Lester discovered along the way was that his parents were fourth cousins, once removed, by marriage. He also learned of his direct relation to Richard Lester, a stonemason who helped build the original Parliament Buildings. When he first arrived here from England in 1857, Richard Lester wrote in his diary: “My heart failed within me. I thought I had made a sad mistake in coming to Ottawa. Comparing it to London, it looked like a group of rabbit hutches.” Lester Road, near the airport, was named for his family.

Lester also discovered he was related to George Clarke, who first settled the Hazeldean area where Lester currently lives with his wife, Deborah.

“For those of us in endless pursuit of our family history, we tend to subconsciously trace out our physical features, strengths, and weaknesses through the family line. We learn what motivated our ancestors to adopt the lives they led. It’s always a source of true amazement when we put our ourselves in the shoes of our ancestors to feel what they felt, see what they saw and imagine what it would have been to live in their times. It’s like peering into a time capsule. To learn that one’s ancestry flows from several connected Bytown first families is a golfer’s hole-in-one. One can’t help but feel a sense of personal pride knowing you are part of local history prominence.”

bdeachman@ottawacitizen.com

Nearly 500 people showed up to remember Bernard Cameron, the Mississippi Mills councillor who was shot and killed defending his daughter from a gunman.

Sarah Cameron, who was injured in the shooting, also attended the funeral at Holy Name of Mary Church in Almonte on Friday. Sarah Cameron had one foot in a walking cast, her left hand and wrist wrapped in bandages and a splint, her hospital bracelet and an IV tube on her right wrist and hand.

Cameron’s roots in the area extend back some six decades, to 1955 when he and his family moved from Ottawa. Now he has a new address: “No. 1 Heaven Way, where a gun can’t hurt him.”

Those words were delivered by Rev. Ben Iheagwara Friday in his homily for the former high school English teacher.

Family and friends gathered to attend the funeral of Bernard Cameron at the Holy Name of Mary Parish Church in Almonte on Friday. Bernard’s daughter Sarah – holding flowers – attended the funeral.

On Feb. 11, Cameron and his 28-year-old daughter, Sarah, who was living with her parents at the time, were confronted by Sarah’s former common-law partner, Travis Porteous, 33, who police say shot Cameron and wounded Sarah before fatally turning his gun on himself.

“Death,” Iheagwara said, “invaded the serenity of his beautiful house in one of its ugliest and most devastating ways. Death stormed in and cold-bloodedly took away the beloved husband of Catherine, the devoted father of Ian, Sarah, Christian and Julia, and took away the proud and loving grandfather of Abigail, Simon, Jonah, Amelia, Isaac and Hatlee.”

Cameron’s casket, draped in a red-trimmed white pall, was carried into the church by his son Christian and Catherine’s brothers, as the congregants sang Be Not Afraid: “Come follow Me and I shall give you rest.”  

Cameron’s brother John spoke first, painting a picture of a loving and curious man who cared deeply about his students, his town and community, his friends and family and, especially, his wife, to whom he’d been married for almost 44 years. He was a man noted for his tolerance of opinions and beliefs that contradicted his own.

“He was a wonderful brother; I’ll miss him,” he concluded. “We all will.”

Family and friends gathered to attend the funeral of Bernard Cameron at the Holy Name of Mary Parish Church in Almonte Ontario Friday Feb 19, 2016.

Iheagwara counseled those in attendance to look for ways to become survivors rather than victims. “We are all victims of this,” he said.

His own epiphany, he said, was a powerful one that occurred on the very day of the attack. Shattered by the news of Cameron’s death and still uncertain as to what he would say at that evening’s mass, he answered his phone just before dinnertime to hear Catherine Cameron’s voice on the other end.

“She said to me, ‘Father, I have something important to say. Please forgive me — I know you’re getting ready for mass, but I had to tell you this.

“’I want to tell you that a few minutes ago, Travis died, and I would like you to pray for him, pray for his family, because they are hurting.’

“Think about that,” Iheagwara urged. “Think about that.”

A reception at Almonte’s Civitan Hall followed Friday’s service.

Family and friends gathered to attend the funeral of Bernard Cameron at the Holy Name of Mary Parish Church in Almonte Ontario Friday Feb 19, 2016.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

A sizeable portion of Ottawa’s Inuit community — and others — ignored Saturday’s rain to take part in the Inuit Day celebrations, an outdoor party that featured throat-singing, traditional face-painting, games and a feast of ancestral victuals, including bannock, caribou stew, Arctic char and whale blubber.

At the centre of it all, a seal that was, until very recently, basking on the ice and in the waters around Qikiqtarjuaq — formerly Broughton Island — in Nunavut, gave its bloody all for the alfresco banquet.

About 300 people attended the event at the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre on McArthur Road in Vanier, which has been hosting the annual self-proclaimed festival on a Saturday in February for almost 15 years.

“It’s a day to celebrate being Inuit in Ottawa,” said organizer Heidi Langille. “We wanted to celebrate all things Inuit culture, outdoors and in the wintertime.”

It’s up for debate as to whether Ottawa or Winnipeg has the largest population of Inuit outside the North, but Langille estimates that the capital boasts roughly 3,000. “It’s a chance to make connections or reconnect and celebrate who we are, and have lots of fun,” she said.

An elders tent featured a Coleman stove, a qulliq — a traditional oil lamp — and cups of tea, an olfactory combination that brought one woman to nostalgic tears. Elsewhere, children played on snowbanks, old friends hugged and talked, and everyone ate.

Rep Evic-Carleton carves a seal during the Inuit Day celebrations at Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre.

For Samantha Kigutaq-Metcalfe, 12, and Cailyn Degrandpre, 11, much of Saturday’s fun revolved around the throat-singing, a game in which participants face off in pairs — one a leader, the other following — with the winner being the one who doesn’t laugh first (think of a staring contest with gutteral, sometimes melodic, sounds). The two, who collectively go by the name Ministers of Cuteness, performed for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at his swearing-in ceremony at Rideau Hall last November.

“I like this because you get Inuit food, you play Inuit games and do Inuit art,” said Cailyn. “And the throat-singing.”

Centre executive director Karen Baker-Anderson says that Inuit Day’s importance lies in preserving and celebrating “the beauty and strength of the culture.”

“People will come here and eat their food, and their souls get filled. And they walk away happy, feeling they’ve had a taste of the Arctic while being here in Ottawa.”

Ina Zakal was one of the centre’s co-founders and creator of its Inuit Day, which was originally held solely for its children but soon expanded to include the public. She had the honour Saturday of eating one of the seal’s most-sought-after eyeballs.

“Growing up in Pang (Pangnirtung, on Baffin Island), that was a delicacy,” she said. “We didn’t have candies or gum or anything like that.

“But the outdoors has always been our playground,” she added, “and that’s why we have this day. When I was growing up, I said I wanted to tell people who we are. Well this is who we are.”

Eejeevalu enjoys raw seal meat at Inuit Day at the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre on Saturday.

Youngsters had fun playing on the huge snowbanks and in the big puddles while celebrating Inuit Day at Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre Saturday.

Four-year-old Jacqueline Akpalialuk gets her face painted at Inuit Day at the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre on Saturday.

Rose Anne Nuvviaq enjoys raw seal meat at Inuit Day at the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre on Saturday.

Youngsters had fun playing on the huge snowbanks and in the big puddles while celebrating Inuit Day at Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre Saturday.

Samantha Kigutaq-Metcalfe, 12 and Cailyn Degrandpre, 11 were throat singing at the Inuit Day celebrations Saturday February 20, 2016 at the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

There was no choice but to shoot and kill a 300-pound lion that escaped its enclosure at a zoo east of Ottawa, since tranquilizing the animal would have taken too long and put the public at risk, the zoo’s co-owner said Monday.

“Public safety is my main concern,” Papanack Park Zoo co-owner Kerri Bayford said of the difficult decision to euthanize Zeus, a five-year-old African white lion, on Sunday evening.

“There could be kids playing down the road. Do you think I’m going to take that risk?”

Papanack Park Zoo in Wendover, where a lion escaped its enclosure Sunday and was later euthanized.

The lion escaped his enclosure at the zoo south of Wendover, east of Rockland, at about 4:20 p.m. Sunday.

Exactly how the lion escaped was still under investigation, although the OPP said they were told by the park’s owner that the animal escaped through a window that was covered with chain link fence.

In a Facebook post, Bayford speculated that, pending a staff meeting to pinpoint the exact cause, “human error” was likely at play.

But at no time during the hour that Zeus was outside his enclosure was the public at risk, added Bayford, whose husband, Doug, shot and killed the lion at about 5:20 p.m.

The zoo was closed for the winter, and, while staff were present, there were no members of the public visiting the zoo.

The decision to euthanize Zeus, meanwhile, was not taken lightly, Bayford added, but the potential danger to the public left them little choice. The option of using a tranquillizer gun ran the risk of the lion’s escaping before becoming fully sedated. With nightfall approaching, that wasn’t a chance they were willing to take.

“The risk to the public of trying to sedate the lion was simply too high, as the sedative takes too long too kick in, and this would have put everyone at risk,” Bayford posted to the zoo’s Facebook page.

Local animal rights activists are planning to stage a protest at the zoo’s main entrance on Sunday, March 6 at 1 p.m.

Organizers posted an announcement to Facebook Monday announcing the “peaceful” protest, which they say aims to educate the public on “why zoos are no place for animals.”

OPP Const. Mario Gratton said police arrived to find Zeus walking near the entrance of Papanack Park Zoo in an unfenced area, although Bayford said the incident took place away from the entrance, in back of the zoo.

Gratton said officers teamed with park staff to try to keep the lion from escaping and posing a risk to nearby residents.

“When they got at scene, the lion was walking around and if the officers tried to approach, from a distance, obviously, he would look at them and try to walk toward them,” said Gratton.

Gratton said the officers made a hasty retreat and watched the animal from a distance.

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“In a way, they didn’t want to provoke it,”  said Gratton. “The officers were told by the owners that this kind of animal is very aggressive. They are not friendly animals. It was posing a serious risk to everyone.”

Between the Bayfords, their family, park staff and Hawkesbury OPP, Kerri said, about 20 people were on hand Sunday evening. No people or other animals were harmed during the incident.

“We have an escape procedure plan in process, and it worked,” Bayford said. “It was controlled.

“There were eyes on him at all times, and we could see him at all times. There never was a public threat.” 

Gratton said the officers lacked the firepower to take down such a large animal, and so the task fell to Doug Bayford, who used a large-calibre hunting rifle.

OPP officers carry rifles in their police cruisers, but they aren’t equipped to take down an animal as powerful as a lion, Gratton said.

“The one that we have obviously is powerful, but on animals it is not really the best rifle to use,” said Gratton. “A good shot could have injured it at the beginning, but injuries could have caused it to escape and be more frustrated, agitate the animal more than anything else.”

Gratton said police weren’t able to immediately notify the public about the loose lion because all available officers were tied up trying to contain the animal.

“It would have been nice to get an officer and knock at each door and say stay inside, but it was a matter having enough officers to secure the area and keep an eye on the animal so if it does escape they would be able to do something about it,” said Gratton.

Gratton said once the animal was shot dead, the risk to the public was gone, which is why police didn’t send a media release about the incident until hours later.

In the meantime, rumours began circulating that as many as four lions had escaped, which wasn’t true.

“It would have been totally different if the lion had escaped and we didn’t know where it was.” Said Gratton. “The threat was ceased. Everything was under control,”

Police would have done an immediate release to warn people to stay in their houses and not go out at all if  police had lost sight of the lion, he said.

Bayford said Papanack acquired Zeus, along with a female lion, about a month ago.

With files from Tom Spears

The opening draw of the Tim Hortons Brier commences Saturday, kicking off what can arguably be called Canada’s premier national sporting event.

For while curling is unmistakably a Scottish import, Canadians adopted it, nurtured it and raised it like one of our own. The results speak for themselves: In men’s play at the world curling championships, Canada has won 34 gold medals, while Sweden, Scotland, the U.S., Norway, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Finland, France AND EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD have combined to win just 23.

A common sentiment heard at numerous world curling events held overseas is “ABC” — Anybody But Canada, if you can imagine such impertinence from the historically neutral Swiss, et al.

What about hockey, you say? Hardly. Prior to its world title last year, Canada’s men’s team hadn’t bitten into gold since 2007, and has hoisted whatever-it-is-world-hockey-champions-lift in celebration just six times in the last half century. In the NHL, meanwhile, it’s been 23 years since a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup. If the rules of curling somehow allowed for bodychecking, tripping and the odd fisticuff, Don Cherry would either be out of work or telling viewers how you shouldn’t keep your head down while sweeping.

The success of top-level curling in Canada stems largely from the grassroots popularity supporting it. It should come as no great surprise that, notwithstanding communications giant Nokia’s title sponsorship of the men’s Canadian championships for four years in the early 2000s, the Brier has been brought to you since 1927 by a tobacco manufacturer, a brewery and a chain of coffee and doughnut shops. How much more Everyman does it get?

Because here’s the thing about curling: with a pretty limited investment in equipment, first-timers can be drawing the four-foot (ie: making an intended shot) on their first time on the ice. Oh, the strategy gets complicated and mastery is, as in all things, elusive, but proficiency is like an object in the side-view mirror: closer than you think.

“Once you get a feel for how a rock goes down the ice, you can get pretty good pretty quick,” says head icemaker Dave Merklinger, who in 1985 competed at the Brier as part of Earle Morris’s Ontario foursome. “Anybody can beat anybody on any day. You’re lobbing rocks up and down the ice. You never know what’s going to happen.

“Curling is Canada’s national sport,” he adds, “because it’s got camaraderie, it’s got sincerity. You shake hands before the game, look a guy in the eye, shake hands with him after the game, look him in the eye and go have a beer with him. It’s for young and old, there’s strategy and it’s entertaining.”

For while the Brier determines Canada’s best men’s curling team, it also celebrates the greater game, the one played in tiny two-sheet clubs in the shadows of grain elevators and in cities and towns all across the nation.

Unlike Grand Slam and tour events, the Brier represents all of Canada. Generally weaker teams from northern territories and provinces not known as curling hotbeds still get to compete. Fans, too, come from all over the country to watch. For many, it’s an annual pilgrimage; they’ll buy their tickets a year in advance, long before any of the competitors have earned their berths.

“The Brier is a great party, a great get-together,” says Pierre Charette, coach and alternate player for Jean-Michel Ménard’s Quebec team. “It’s like the Grey Cup, but 10 days instead of three or four.”

And just as a newcomer to curling can make a few shots and before too long beat another, more experienced team, Charette says this week’s Brier will bring some surprises.

“You know one team is going to upset another and screw their week,” he says. “Even the weaker teams here are still going to beat somebody; they’re going to upset somebody and that team is going to miss the playoffs by one game.

“This week you’re going to see a team lose a game they’re not supposed to, and that’s the beauty of curling.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com

Mike Murphy bought his wife, Jill, a cowbell for Christmas, a gift she acknowledges with a laugh, a shrug and a raised eyebrow, as if to say, “I know — can you believe it?”

She even holds it for a photo, but in fact it was at Mike’s side, not hers, as they watched their son, Jamie, skip Nova Scotia’s team in Thursday night’s Brier relegation-round match against Yukon. When the Halifax foursome made a good shot, which it did often enough to win, he clanged the bell and applauded.

They were easy to spot, the Murphys, even when the cowbell was silent. There were about a dozen of them, friends and family of Jamie’s and his teammates, all wearing bright yellow Sou-westers, cans of Alexander Keith’s in hand, the empty seats around them (because, really, are you going to sit in front of someone with a loaded cowbell?) draped in Nova Scotia flags.

They arrived in town Thursday from Quispamsis, N.B., a good day’s drive through Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont to avoid a maritime winter storm. Jill doesn’t expect to see much of her husband during their son’s games. In fact, they typically don’t sit together. Mike is a nervous spectator, and will frequently leave the tribe to pace the concourse alone. Although the Brier, he says, is the easiest one to watch.

“It’s always nerve-racking, 100 per cent of the time,” he admitted. “I never get used to it.

“But when they get out of the province, to the Brier, they’ve made it. They’ve made the show, and this is now entertainment.”

But he’s never before had to watch his son play a relegation round. In Jamie’s previous Brier appearances, in 2012 in Saskatoon and 2014 in Kamloops, his berths were earned simply by winning the provincial title. This year, Nova Scotia and the three territories are locked in a pre-qualifying round for the final Brier spot.

“I have to say I’m not a big fan of relegation,” Mike said. “Provincial champions deserve to be in the Brier, as full participants.”

And so he’ll pace TD Place Arena concourse, while Jill watches. Beside her on Thursday, Jamie’s wife, Grace, was thankful for the distraction that their two children, Alice, 2, and Nolan, 9 months, provided.

“I don’t get as nervous, now that I have something else to focus on. I came the year before we had kids, and that was more stressful than this.

“Also, I think I don’t get as stressed out as a curler would, because I don’t totally understand what’s going on. I’m just here to cheer on the team.”

GUY, GUY, GUY

Also watching Thursday’s relegation games, standing on the concourse overlooking the home end, was a figure far less conspicuous than the yellow-hatted cheering section.

But there was a time, a little more than a decade ago, when Guy Hemmings was the most popular figure in curling, his unkempt hair and outgoing and humorous attitude exemplifying the best that the grassroots sport had to offer. He didn’t throw his first rock until he was 22, but he was good, eventually representing Quebec at four Briers between 1998 and 2003, reaching the finals twice. At the 1999 Brier in Edmonton, thousands of Albertans loudly cheered him on, prompting one journalist (OK, it was me) to wonder aloud whether he was the first Quebecker to be so regaled in Ralph Klein’s backyard. For a while, the Canadian Curling Association (now Curling Canada) hired him as its goodwill ambassador, visiting schools, hospitals and the like.

After hanging up the competitive shoes for a few years, he made a run for the provincial title this season, an endeavor he admits “didn’t turn out well.”

The obvious question was: Do you miss playing in the Brier?

“Obviously,” he says, “especially when you come to a place like this, so close to home, where I played in 2001. There are lots of nice memories here, but what could I do? Age is a factor in this game, much more than it used to be.”

(In 2001, he finished the round-robin with a third-place 8-3 record, but lost the 3-4 Page playoff game to Manitoba’s Kerry Burtnyk.)

This year, he’ll be watching most of the games from the Montreal studios of RDS — the French-language equivalent of TSN — doing colour analysis, and says the field is perhaps the strongest ever iced at a Brier. “Every game is going to be like a playoff game.”

Some of the credit for the strength of this and recent Brier competitions should in fact go to Hemmings, as the increased popularity he fostered could only swell the sport’s ranks at every level, all across Canada. In Quebec, he notes, it wasn’t so many years ago that there was almost no French-language TV coverage of major events.

“There used to be maybe one or two finals on TV every year,” he says. “Last year, we broadcast over 100 games.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com

An 81-year-old South Glengarry man has been charged with more than 25 counts of assault, indecent assault, buggery and other offences in relation to incidents that occurred roughly 50 years ago.

The charges against the unidentified man resulted from a domestic assault investigation by members of the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry OPP and its Crime Unit.

During the investigation, the man’s wife and other family members came forward with allegations of incidents occurring between 1963 and 1967, leading to the charges.

The man is charged with 13 counts of assault, six counts of assault causing bodily harm, three counts of indecent assault, two counts of uttering threats and one count each of assault with a weapon, buggery, mischief under $5,000 and pointing a firearm without lawful excuse.

He was released from custody and is scheduled to appear in the Ontario Court of Justice, in Cornwall, on Apr. 26.

Former Ottawa radio host Mark Sutcliffe, who was unceremoniously laid off by CFRA a month ago, has produced a short video that humorously depicts his post-radiowaves life.

The video, which can also be seen on YouTube at https://youtu.be/yt18uwvyJTo, opens with Sutcliffe waking at 6:15 a.m., anxious that he’s late for his CFRA Today show.

After making lunch for the kids and forlornly waving goodbye to his wife, Ginny, from their living-room window as she heads off to work, Sutcliffe’s day continues with many of his old habits intact. He answers a telemarketer’s phone call, for example, by announcing “You’re on the air.” Later, a chance encounter with Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson, whom Sutcliffe has interviewed “like, 200 times,” suggests that most of the world has forgotten that Sutcliffe ever even existed in the first place.

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Screen captures of Mark Sutcliffe A glimpse into my life without early morning radio, and my sincere thank you to Ottawa listeners for their support.

Sutcliffe says he decided to make the video as a way of saying thank you to regular listeners and others who have offered him encouragement since he was let go.

“There has been a tremendous outpouring of support since I left CFRA. The other day I was walking down the street and a car stopped in the middle of the road and a woman got out and came over to me and said, ‘I miss hearing you every day.’”

He jokes that he often offers to simply phone former listeners at their homes at 6 a.m. “I could start a wake-up call service.”

“But people have been really, really great,” he adds, “so I just wanted to say thank you, and have a little fun with it, too, in that while it’s obviously a big change in my life, it’s not the end of the world. Life goes on, and my life is great.”

He adds, too, that as a regular columnist with the Ottawa Citizen, as well as television host, newspaper and magazine publisher, book author and philanthropist who sits on numerous boards, he keeps pretty busy, despite his layoff from CFRA.

The video was produced by a friend of Sutcliffe’s, Don Masters, at Mediaplus. 

bdeachman@postmedia.com

The Ottawa police guns and gangs unit is investigating after residents reported hearing gunshots fired in Ottawa’s Fisher Glen neighbourhood Wednesday night.

Police responded to calls from the 1300 block of Meadowlands Drive, near Tiverton Drive, at about 10:45 p.m. Wednesday, where they recovered shell casings on the ground.

There were no reports of injuries or property damage.

Police are asking anyone with information regarding this incident to contact the guns and gangs unit at 613-236-1222, ext. 5050. Anonymous tips can be submitted by calling Crime Stoppers toll-free at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS) or by downloading the Ottawa police app.

Icy roads and fog conditions, especially in the outlying areas of the city, made driving conditions extremely hazardous across the region Thursday.

Ottawa Fire Services reported three vehicle rollovers during the morning commute, one at Russell and Anderson roads in the east end, the other two on Fallowfield Road in Stittsville, in the southwest.

In one of the incidents on Fallowfield, the vehicle ended up in a ditch in nearly a metre of water.

“At this time of the year, some of the ditches are fairly deep and filled with water,” said Ottawa fire spokesperson Danielle Cardinal.

“Drivers should be very cautious during the foggy, icy, wet conditions, because on rural roads, you think it’s spring, but the temperature hasn’t shifted that much yet, so there are still icy conditions, and people are losing control of their vehicles and ending up in these ditches.”

There were no injuries in any of the incidents.

A 24-year-old Ottawa man was arrested Friday following an early morning car chase that began in Gatineau and ended in Ottawa.

Gatineau police stopped the car, which had been reported stolen, on Saint-Raymond Boulevard at around 1:45 a.m. Friday, but the driver fled as police approached.

Police pursued the vehicle, on which the driver had affixed dummy licence plates, across the Champlain Bridge and onto the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway, where he was stopped for a second time and arrested.

He was fined $792 for driving without an appropriate licence and for using fake plates. Other charges include fleeing arrest, dangerous driving and possession of stolen property.

He was released on a promise to appear.

A man in custody at the Gatineau jail died on Thursday by what the Quebec provincial police are calling a “voluntary action.”

According to Sûreté du Québec spokesperson Sgt. Marc Tessier, the 32-year-old man, whose name has not been released, was discovered unconscious in his cell.

He was taken to hospital and pronounced dead. The SQ major crimes unit is investigating.

Tessier could not confirm reports that the man had been accused of threatening an officer of the peace.

Mark Sutcliffe’s respite from Ottawa’s airwaves was short-lived.

Sutcliffe, who was let go last month by CFRA, where he hosted the station’s morning CFRA Today show, will now be heard regularly in the capital on Rogers’ 1310 News, it was announced Friday.

Sutcliffe’s new show, which starts airing on Monday at 9 a.m., will be called Ottawa Today, and will focus on issues of local concern.

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“You want a show that is fun and interactive and informative,” Sutcliffe said during a “breaking news” alert on the station Friday, “that holds politicians and other community leaders to account, that gives the story behind the story, that gives listeners access to the people who are making the decisions, and also gives them a chance to have their say.”

A lifetime Ottawa native, Sutcliffe added that it’s always been his goal to contribute to his hometown, whether it’s been through radio, writing or his involvement with community organizations such as the United Way and Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s an honour to be able to continue to do that on 1310 News. Ottawa is very different from other cities, in that it’s the national capital, but it’s still a bit of a small town, and you really have to know the people here. You have to be connected to them and understand how the community has grown and evolved.

“It’s really about giving everybody a chance to have access and be a part of the discussion… We’re going to have lots of time to get into the issues.”

bdeachman@postmedia.com

To understand Capital City Championship Combat, or C*4 wrestling, it helps to know how Stu Grayson, formerly “The Emperor” Stu Grayson, got his name and how he came to be fighting alongside Thomas Dubois, whom he claims to detest, in this past Saturday night’s tag-team championship match against Tarik and John Greed, a.k.a. Cuts ‘N’ Guts, at the Vanier Columbus Club on MacArthur Avenue.

Stu Grayson — such an ordinary-sounding moniker — is his wrestling name (if you hire him to renovate your house, which is what he does on weekdays, he uses his real name). When he started in the ring more than a decade ago, the now 27-year-old Gatineau resident was known as Stupefied. When he began tag-teaming with Player Uno (who now answers to Evil Uno), he adopted the name Player Dos, with the two of them fighting under the team name Super Smash Bros. and using video-game memes as their schtick.

He’s also a huge fan of comic books — Batman in particular — and when you’re Dos behind the much larger Uno, you’re kind of like the caped crusader’s sidekick, Robin, so he adopted the surname of the Boy Wonder’s alter ego, Dick Grayson, but kept the Stu from Stupefied as his first name. His signature finishing move, incidentally, he calls the Banebreaker — named after Batman arch-rival Bane — in which he lifts his opponent above his head and drops him, back first, onto his knee.

Christopher Bishop flies through the air to try to checkmate Frankie the Mobster at C*4 wrestling Saturday night.

But here’s the thing: Uno recently dislocated his shoulder and is on the shelf, leaving Grayson without a partner. So, in a decision unannounced until Tarik, Greed and Grayson were together in the ring Saturday night, C*4 organizers paired Grayson with Dubois — “Like putting two alpha dogs together,” Grayson later complained.

The move was fatal for Grayson — wrestling fatal, that is, the equivalent of being frozen in a game of tag — as the pair fought each other more than they did their opponents, who easily defended their title against such disarray. But let’s not kid ourselves: Grayson and Dubois’ script was written before they even laced up their boots backstage and discussed what moves they’d use. This wasn’t their time, and they knew it.

If Shakespeare were alive today, he’d be penning wrestling scripts, where kings and knaves alike are hoisted on their own petards. There are precious few good-guy wrestlers anymore, at least judging by C*4’s 10-act drama Saturday dubbed “A History of Violence.”

But it would serve the bad guys well to remember that if they bring an illicit weapon into the ring, it will be used against them. Chairs and tables and championship belts were among the foreign objects that turned on their owners Saturday, but the best by far was the staple gun that Viking brought for his match against Shane Sabre.

Sabre eventually got hold of it, and ACTUALLY STAPLED NOTICES FOR NEXT MONTH’S C*4 EVENING TO VIKING’S FACE. (That much was real, and Viking later showed upper-torso scars that he earned in previous matches from broken fluorescent light tubes).

Giant Tiger throws down his T-shirt in preparation for his match against Space Monkey at C*4 wrestling Saturday night.

For all their toughness, though, it’s interesting to see how insecure some of these bags of testosterone appear. The Giant Tiger, kind of like your chubby younger brother in tights and a bad Halloween costume, seemed genuinely hurt that the crowd favoured his opponent, Space Monkey (better Halloween costume), tossing him bananas, while in another match, Michael Von Payton had to cover his ears lest he go mad as the crowd mocked his grooming choices, shouting “Faux-hawk … soul patch.” You’d almost think he still lives with his mom.

(For all their toughness, too, it was refreshing to see some light humour, in the form of Qefka The Quiet, who largely wrestled in mime, creating invisible glass walls and large imaginary rubber bands.)

The crowd ate it up. C*4 creator and organizer Mark Pollesel once said that if the pay-TV wrestling of the WWF et al was like watching a movie, then attending C*4 was like being an extra in a movie. Fans and wrestlers interacted, shouting and swearing at one another. Placards were waved in support or derision of favourite/least favourite wrestlers, or for reasons not quite so clear, given the venue: “I’m still worried about the bees,” said one. Another, in lower-case understatement, simply read “this is not bad.” The fights, meanwhile, often left the ring for the seats, as wrestlers tossed from the ring continued their matches amidst fans shrieking with excitement.

Throughout, chants of “holy s–t” were repeated whenever fans felt they were getting their money’s worth, which, at $20 for about four hours, was most of the time.

Stu Grayson suits up for his C*4 wrestling tag-team championship match on Saturday night.

The action goes outside the ring at C*4 wrestling, as ‘Bad Boy’ Joey Janela, right, attempts to defeat heavyweight champion Mathieu St. Jacques.

The final match, which saw heavyweight champ Mathieu St. Jacques successfully defend his title against “Bad Boy” Joey Janela, was an epic battle that lasted more than 20 minutes. It left one referee seemingly dead or unconscious on a broken table in the ring, another lying face down at the feet of some delighted front-row spectators, a broken metal chair that had extracted DNA from both combatants, and a capacity crowd of more than 400 fans hoarse and tired and exhilarated and excited for next month’s event (The Hellbenders, April 15, fyi).

And afterward, in the back room where the wrestlers changed and warmed up and worked with each other on the moves they’d use against one another, St. Jacques and Janela high-fived each other for a match well fought.

“I hope I got that right,” said Bad Boy.

“No,” assured St. Jacques, “you were great, man.”

This, indeed, was not bad.

The five best things about C*4 wrestling’s A History of Violence show:

1. The staple gun: C*4 is usually about the illusion of violence, but this was over-the-top madness, as Viking’s comeuppance came at the working end of his own staple gun, courtesy of opponent Shane Sabre.
2. The mime: Qefka The Quiet brought some lightness to the evening’s six-man “scramble,” as other wrestlers briefly abided his glass wall and imaginary slingshot. 
3. The fans: Increasingly of all ages and both genders, they’re not passive onlookers, that’s for sure. The placards many hold aren’t always family friendly, but they’re usually entertaining.
4. The ridiculous: Giant Tiger versus Space Monkey? What’s not to love?
5. Speaking of love: If each wrestler was paid $200 for his performance Saturday, said wrestler Stu Grayson, C*4 would go broke. Some get more, some get less, but no one’s getting rich. They do this because they love it.

Shane Sabre prepares to drive opponent Viking into the turnbuckle at C*4 wrestling Saturday night.

Shane Sabre cuts a saviour-like figure as he shows off to the crowd before his C*4 wrestling match Saturday against Viking.

John Greed has the upper hand over Thomas Dubois in the tag-team championship bout at C*4 wrestling Saturday night.

2 Cold Scorpio greets the crowd at the Knights of Columbus hall on MacArthur Road before taking part in a C*4 wrestling six-man tag-team bout.

Christopher Bishop launches himself onto his opponents in a six-man scramble bout at C*4 wrestling Saturday night.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

When Ann Scholberg appears in a stage play, which she does with some regularity in Ottawa, her son and his family make a point of attending. But as far as the seventysomething actor knows, her teenage grandsons won’t be in the audience on March 29 when she sets foot on Ottawa Little Theatre’s stage for the opening-night of Calendar Girls, nor at any show during its 19-day run.

“I said to them, ‘You’ll come to my play? I get naked on the stage,’” says Scholberg, a lawyer who recently retired after 30 years of litigation practice. “And their reaction, which was immediate, was ‘That’s gross!’ and so far they’re absolutely refusing to come.”

Still, the boys will have numerous opportunities to accidentally catch their grandmother in the nuddy. For apart from the brief unadorned scenes in the play, the cast and crew of OLT’s production have, in a case of life imitating art imitating life, posed naked for an 18-month calendar to raise funds for cancer and leukemia research, as well as OLT.

Scholberg understands their squeamishness. Her first reaction when she heard the play was being produced was, “There’s no way on God’s good earth I’m going to get on stage naked in front of everyone. No way.”

And yet, there was no shortage of women who auditioned for the play, which author Tim Firth adapted from his screenplay of the film of the same name. An ensemble piece, it revolves around a group of middle-aged Women’s Institute members who, following the death of the husband of one, pose naked for a calendar to raise money to buy a sofa for a hospital family room. The story was inspired by true events in Yorkshire, England, and OLT’s production counts at least three cancer survivors in its cast.

Jane Morris, one of the cast members in Ottawa Little Theatre’s production of Calendar Girls.

Scholberg says the calendar shoot she and other cast members took part in helped ease any worries she might have had about acting in the buff.

“During the day leading up to the calendar shoot, I was in a slight state of anxiety, but it was so pleasant and nicely done.

“I’m not worried about the performance anymore, in terms of body image and that sort of thing. But right at the beginning I was thinking about this, because we still worry about our bodies, but as older women about different things, like wrinkles and varicose veins. So I think we will have various anxieties, but they will not be the same ones we would have had at 20. And we get over it more easily.”

Fellow actor Rosemarie Dawson-Hill, who plays Annie, the woman who loses her husband to leukemia, says she was drawn to the role before considering she’d be doing it au naturel.

“When I read the play, I fell in love with the character. Then when I was told, ‘Well, you realize you have to take your clothes off?’ I was already in because I wanted to do this.”

Nor is there any awkwardness surrounding Dawson-Hill’s close familial connections in the play: her daughter, Venetia Lawless, is directing, while Lawless’s partner, Jeff Gruson, plays Annie’s husband.

“I grew up watching her do farce,” Lawless says, “so from the tender age of six, seven, eight, she was always in a bra and tap pants on stage. To me, that’s just what theatre is. You just do it.”

Rosemarie Dawson-Hill, one of the cast members in Ottawa Little Theatre’s production of Calendar Girls.

Jane Morris, who plays Annie’s best friend, Chris (and who confesses to keeping her socks on for the photo shoot), says it was important to stage Calendar Girls. As chair of OLT’s season-planning committee, she was among those who decided to put on the play.

“One of the reasons that this play attracted our attention was that it has great roles for women, and that’s not that easy to find, especially for middle-aged ones.

“It’s also a very real play about real people,” she adds. “The mix of comedy and poignancy is ideal. It’s not easy finding plays like that. People will have a laugh and probably leave at the end feeling pretty good.”

She and the other actors will be relying on blocking and other logistics of the production to ensure that strategically placed props will allow them to maintain some modesty. Acting naked in front of a live audience, after all, with sight lines of nearly 180 degrees, is far more technically challenging that posing for a single camera.

“In terms of being nervous,” says Morris, “I get nervous as hell before performing anyway, so I don’t think I could be more nervous just because I’m going to be nude for a small portion of the play.”

Still, she confesses to occasional bouts of sleeplessness: “I picture whipping off my dressing gown and things not being in place, and all of a sudden there I am…”

Being naked on stage, says director Lawless, is the actor’s universal nightmare. “So these guys are just going to live the nightmare.”

Calendar Girls runs from March 29 to April 16. Visit ottawalittletheatre.com for more information.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

“It was a good place to be raised. It was pretty rough country, but you didn’t dare do anything wrong, because everybody knew you. It was quite a district, I’ll tell you.”

When Ray Lauzon talks about growing up on LeBreton Flats, two things repeatedly come up: the gangs of kids he hung out with — Jimmy Bulger, John “Bum” D’Amico and Paul and Lucien Poulin, for example — and the sense of community that was fostered, with his friends, with his family and with neighbours.

“It was gang-oriented, but family-oriented. You stuck together and didn’t let anything bad happen to one another. You belonged to a group of people who knew each other. It made a difference. It was quite a life growing up in the Flats.”

Now 84 and a retired trucker, “Bunny” Lauzon was born in 1931 in Syracuse, N.Y., where his father, Louis, a lumberjack from Gatineau, had moved with his girlfriend, Edna, to find work. They didn’t stay long — just long enough to marry and have two children: Ray and his older sister, Claire. They returned to the Ottawa area in 1934 or ’35, living for a couple of years on Ottawa Street in the Flats before moving a block away to a larger house at 99 Fleet St.

Raymond Lauzon’s grandfather, father Louis and sister, Claire.

Louis couldn’t read or write, but he was good with numbers, and learned how to pasteurize milk, eventually getting a job at City Dairy on Guigues Street, in Lowertown.

He was a friendly sort — perhaps a little too friendly. “The farmers were good to him, and he was good to the farmers,” says Lauzon. If a farmer came in with, say, two and a half jugs of milk, Louis might top up the third for him. The next time the farmer came in, he might bring Louis five pounds of bacon and another five pounds of pork chops, or perhaps $20. At Christmas, he’d be given a tree to take home.

Louis’ scheme came crashing down, but not for long. After losing his job at the dairy and working for a spell delivering lumber and coal, he found work as a cleaner with the federal government. Before long he had contrived another racket, working with a high-ranking official to get jobs for friends and charging them $100 apiece, the equivalent today of almost $750, for the service.

“He was a hustler, the old man,” says Ray, whose allowance at the time was a princely quarter every day.

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Edna worked, too, once the kids were a bit older, at J.H. Connor & Son’s factory, only a block away. There, she made washing machines, one day losing two fingers in a metal stamping press.

And while Ray claims that the familiarity Flats’ residents shared with one another kept them on the up-and-up, he confesses to his own occasional lapses in moral judgment. He and a friend were caught once stealing a bicycle. They had taken the wheels off to put on Ray’s bike, and thrown the frame in the Ottawa River, when Louis found them out.

A back alley in LeBreton Flats in the late 1950s or early 1960s.

Another time, when Ray was 13 or 14 and making deliveries for Ranger’s Drug Store, at the corner of Booth and Wellington, the owner discovered him pocketing a couple of parcels before they’d been added to the delivery list, a habit Ray had gotten into that allowed him to keep the payment for himself.

“He soon put the kibosh to that,” Ray says. “Although I got to keep my job.”

There were always things to keep you preoccupied in the Flats, he recalls. School, of course, first at Ste. Famille Separate School on Sherwood, and then at St. Jean Baptiste School on Empress, just outside the Flats. There was church every Sunday, and on many Tuesdays as well. He swam with friends, after school, in the river, a journey that required crossing the railway yards without getting caught by the CPR police, and in August watched the elephants and horses go right by his house as the Exhibition parade wound its way to Lansdowne Park. There were games of hide-and-seek and, later, when his parents bought him a pair of boxing gloves, sparring matches. He also loved skating at Chaudiere Park. And he loved girls.

“I never got in trouble with the law,” he says. “I got in trouble with women, but that was another thing.”

Most significant among them was Muriel Bradley. She was a couple of years Ray’s junior, and lived miles away at Carling and Maitland, but she regularly visited her grandmother in the Flats, on Broad Street, beside the restaurant outside of which Ray and his pals hung out.

“We got together — too close together — and Muriel got pregnant with Bryan when she was 15.”

They lived with Ray’s parents for a while, then got their own apartment on Booth Street, at Queen. After Michael was born, they left the Flats for the Quebec side of the river, where they added Cathy, Guy and twins Mary Ann and Roseann to the family.

The Fleet Soda Bar, at 96 Fleet Street in LeBreton Flats.

Meanwhile, Ray worked. He was a lineman with CNR, climbing telephone poles and trimming trees. He was offered a job at the post office, sorting mail, which he accepted after being struck for the third time while driving a rail car — twice by train engines and once by a motorist at a road crossing.

With Claire and Ray gone, Louis and Edna moved to a smaller apartment, just on the next block of Fleet, above De Luxe Restaurant. “You could watch all the streetcars go by,” recalls Ray.

When the Flats was expropriated, Louis and Edna moved again, this time to an apartment on Preston Street, across from Plouffe Park at Somerset Street. Within a year, there was almost nothing left on Fleet Street: A used car lot, Red Line Taxi’s dispatch office and Frisby Tire’s warehouse. At the corner of Booth, a six-apartment building had just one tenant.

““They were pretty let down,” Ray says about his parents leaving the neighbourhood, “because they loved the Flats. But it didn’t mean much to me then, because I was out on my own, raising six kids.

“I loved my time in the Flats. You got to know people, and your friends were friends forever. It was the way we lived. It taught us a lot of things, even if they weren’t all good things about life. You got out of there and you knew a lot more about things than other people. You knew things they didn’t know, and had done things they hadn’t done. We grew up.

“But it was probably time.”