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Ottawa's Shoebox Part 8: Grande dame gets a facelift

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  • Ottawa's Shoebox Part 8: Grande dame gets a facelift

    Ottawa's Shoebox Part 8: Grande dame gets a facelift (1980-1989)
    by Tony Atherton, The Ottawa Citizen

    Ottawa Citizen
    August 6, 2005 Saturday
    Final Edition

    With Ottawa turning 150 this year, we got to wondering: If the city
    was a proud, old dowager instead of a burgeoning metropolis, what
    might she keep in her shoebox? What souvenirs of a century and a half
    of colourful living?

    With the help of local museums, public and private archives and
    enthusiastic collectors, we have assembled nine such "shoeboxes",
    one collection for each significant era in Ottawa's history, all
    overflowing with the reminders of the people and events that shaped
    the city. Today we upend the eighth shoebox -- covering the period
    from 1980 to 1989 -- for your perusal. Watch for a final glimpse
    inside Ottawa's Shoebox next month.

    If you left Ottawa in 1979 and didn't return for a decade, you'd find
    Canada's good, grey capital looking a lot more glamorous.

    During the 1980s, construction of the Rideau Centre and the Westin
    Hotel changed the faces of both Rideau Street and Colonel By Drive.
    The National Galley of Canada rose like a crystal palace on Sussex,
    and the Museum of Civilization undulated seductively just across the
    Interprovincial Bridge. All this activity helped to revitalize the
    Byward market, which became chic as well as colourful.

    While not all the changes were well received (the unsightly Rideau
    Street bus mall would have to be dismantled), overall they gave the
    environs of Parliament Hill a dramatic new look and flavour that
    charmed Ottawans and visitors alike.

    And the city had its share of prominent visitors during the '80s,
    figures who would become part of history. A gutsy kid with big
    ambitions and 2,600 kilometres behind him made his ungainly way into
    Ottawa in the summer of 1980. A fairy-tale princess whose story would
    not have a happy ending charmed Ottawans during a visit in 1983. And
    a Polish cleric with a beatific smile came to Ottawa via Rome in 1984.

    And when the city wasn't welcoming heroes, celebrities and saints,
    it was manufacturing them, including a soft-spoken doctor who would
    perform a miracle here 1986, and a petite skater who would struggle
    through adversity to honour her country and captivate her hometown
    in 1989.

    There would be regrets -- a newspaper lost, the shadow of terrorism
    -- but they would be outweighed by the sense that Ottawa was holding
    her head a little more proudly.

    1. Bert Raccoon plush toy, 1980s. (Collection of Kevin Gillis)

    In the '80s, goofy gregarious Bert Raccoon became the biggest Ottawa
    celebrity since Dan Aykroyd, and helped launch a thriving animation
    industry here.

    In 1979, Kevin Gillis, a young musician and former CBC-TV kiddy-show
    host (Yes You Can), approached Ottawa entertainment lawyer Sheldon
    Wiseman with a script. He was looking for a some advice. What he got
    was an executive producer.

    Wiseman loved the story of The Christmas Raccoons, in which the
    denizens of the Evergreen Forest help two children solve the mystery
    of the forest's disappearing trees. So did CBC and its viewers when
    the half-hour special aired the next year. The show's success led to
    more specials and a primetime Raccoons series that drew as many as
    two million viewers a week.

    The Raccoons became an industry; with merchandising, sales of its
    hip soundtrack, and worldwide distribution, the company that Mr,
    Gillis and Mr. Wiseman founded, Lacewood Productions, was earning up
    to $30 million a year.

    Ottawa has a history in cartoon production dating back to the days
    when Norman McLaren ran the NFB's animation studio here, and including
    the work of the former Crawley Films (Wizard of Oz TV series) and its
    affiliate Atkinson Film Arts (Little Brown Burro). But the success
    of The Raccoons was unparalleled.

    These days there are a number of independent animation studios
    operating in the city, including Dynomight (Untalkative Bunny), Funbag
    (For Better or For Worse) and Mr. Wiseman's Amberwood Entertainment
    (Hoze Hounds, Zeroman).

    2. Ottawa Journal final edition, August 1980 (Collection of Ottawa
    City Archives)

    For 95 years, Ottawans had had their pick of two daily newspapers,
    the Citizen, launched as a weekly in 1845, and the Ottawa Journal,
    which had arrived on doorsteps 40 years later.

    Then, without warning on Aug. 27, 1980 ("Black Wednesday" in the
    parlance of journalists who remember it), the rivalry was over. The
    Journal closed its doors with barely a backward glance, cutting its
    employees adrift before they knew what had hit them.

    Not that the paper's financial problems were much of a secret.
    Questionable management and an inability, or unwillingness, to invest
    in modernization of the paper had left the Journal with fewer readers
    and advertisers.

    When the paper was sold in 1979 to the Thomson chain, for whom Ottawa
    journalists had little respect, it seemed like the beginning of the
    end. And it was.

    By then, the Journal was $4 million in debt, a hole too deep even
    for cost-cutting Roy Thomson to climb out of.

    While the demise of the Journal was not unlooked for, its timing
    was a complete surprise, as were the circumstances surrounding the
    closure. The same day that the Journal ceased publication in Ottawa,
    leaving the market entirely to the then Southam-owned Citizen,
    Southam's Winnipeg Tribune closed its doors, leaving the prairie city
    exclusively to the Thomson-owned Free Press.

    The parallel closures raised cries of collusion, which sparked a
    royal commission on the concentration of newspaper ownership.

    3. Spring from the knee-joint of artificial leg, 1980 (Collection of
    Diane Barrett)

    Before microprocessors and rechargeable prostheses, artificial limbs
    were a clever mechanical collection of pins and brackets and springs
    like this, all subject to the wear and tear of daily use.

    Wear and tear affected the limbs on some bodies more than others, of
    course, and none more than the succession of artificial legs worn by a
    young man from Port Coquitlam, B.C., in the spring and summer of 1980.

    Ottawa's Diane Barrett had been on a cross-country road trip with
    family that summer when she stopped just east of Sault Ste. Marie in
    mid-August to catch a glimpse of Terry Fox, who had been hop-skipping
    his way across Eastern Canada, raising money for cancer research.

    Fox was not quite a legend yet, but already a larger-than-life
    celebrity, so it was a thrill for Barrett to find him stopped along
    the highway, awaiting the delivery of another replacement leg. The
    travellers politely kept their distance until the young runner called
    them over and offered to explain how his leg worked. He then extracted
    the spring, and proffered it as a souvenir.

    When Fox's run was ended by the recurrence of cancer three weeks
    later, the unprepossessing piece of hardware became a treasured
    family heirloom.

    Earlier, Ottawa's red-carpet treatment of Terry Fox, including Gov.
    Gen. Ed Schreyer's invitation to Canada Day festivities at Rideau Hall,
    had helped make his quest into a national cause celebre. And on June
    30, more than 16,000 Rough Rider fans at Lansdowne Park had given Fox
    a standing ovation after he performed the ceremonial opening kickoff.

    4. Turkish flag

    In 1985, 16 years before U.S. officials started calling Canada a
    haven for terrorists, the government of Turkey said roughly the same
    thing about Canada's capital city. Ottawa, the Turks declared, was
    one of the most dangerous cities in the world -- at least for Turkish
    diplomats. And the assessment did not seem the least bit hysterical.

    It was prompted by three disturbing incidents in the first half of
    the decade. Turkish diplomat Kani Gungor was left paralysed after
    being shot in the chest and the leg outside his Ottawa home in April
    1982. In August the same year, Turkish military attache Col. Atilla
    Altikat was shot to death in his car while waiting for a light to
    change on Island Park Drive.

    Both shootings were the work of Armenian extremists seeking redress
    for the 1915 killing of some 600,000 Armenians by the Turkish military.

    The attacks became bolder in 1985 when a group calling itself the
    Armenian Revolutionary Arm, armed with automatic weapons and grenades,
    stormed the Turkish Embassy, killing a security guard and holding
    the embassy for four hours. Ambassador Coskun Kirca flung himself
    from a second-storey window to escape the attack, and lay bleeding
    and broken in the bushes outside the building during the siege.

    The terrorists would eventually surrender, but the political fallout
    would give rise to Canada's elite counter-terrorism unit, Joint Task
    Force Two.

    5. Commemorative pin, 1982 (Collection of Larry Ellis)

    A royal visit always produces trinkets such as this, but this souvenir
    also marks a signal moment of history played out with pomp and ceremony
    on Parliament Hill.

    April 17, 1982, was overcast, blustery and pouring rain when Queen
    Elizabeth II sat down with then justice minister Jean Chretien to sign
    the paper that surrendered Britain's rights to make Canadian laws,
    and brought Canada's constitution home.

    Critics of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, one part of the
    Constitution Act of 1982, might suggest the stormy weather was
    prophetic. The charter, and its interpretation by a succession of
    Supreme Court judges, has been at the centre of many controversies
    in the generation since.

    But on the day of the signing in Ottawa, the mood was celebratory
    among the 30,000 who braved the elements and cheered the speeches of
    the Queen and prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

    6. Medallion die, 1983 (Collection of Royal Canadian Mint)

    Somewhere in the vaults of the British royal family is a golden
    medallion reminiscent of an age before scandal and tragedy, when people
    still believed in fairy tales. The medallion, its lines carefully
    etched by the master craftsmen of the Royal Canadian Mint, shows a
    smiling Prince Charles with a beautiful Princess Diana beaming over
    his shoulder.

    The heavy die from which the medallion was struck remains with the
    Mint, a memento of a visit that enchanted Ottawans in the early summer
    of 1983, when the couple were presented with the gift. It was just two
    years after their luminescent nuptials, and a year exactly since the
    birth of the first son, William (he would turn one while his mother
    was in Ottawa). The bloom was still on England's rose.

    The medallion was presented halfway through a hectic three-day visit
    that also saw the royal couple attend a black-tie affair at Rideau Hall
    and a barbecue at Kingsmere, cruise down the canal, and officiate at
    ceremonies on Parliament Hill, at the new Ottawa Police headquarters,
    and in the Terry Fox Canadian Youth Centre.

    But it was during a walkabout on Metcalfe and Elgin streets that most
    Ottawans had their chance to meet the woman they presumed would one
    day be queen.

    7. Souvenir program, papal visit, 1984 (Collection of Kevin Clarke)

    Pope John Paul II was just six years into his long tenure as the head
    of the Roman Catholic Church when he first came to Canada in 1984. By
    then he had electrified the Solidarity movement in his homeland,
    Poland, and had become a beloved symbol of both strength and goodwill
    around the world.

    His two-day visit to Ottawa, marked by the biggest and most expensive
    security operation the city had ever seen, gave Ottawans plenty of
    opportunity to see the pontiff. There were popemobile processions
    through downtown Ottawa and Hull, a papal flotilla along the canal,
    and an open-air mass on Lebreton Flats that attracted hundreds of
    thousands.

    One of the singers in the massed choir at the mass was Ottawa
    Carleton Catholic School Board teacher Kevin Clarke, who has several
    souvenirs of the event, but none more pleasing that the memory of
    the smiling pope waving his arms as if conducting the chorus during
    the celebration.

    8. Jarvik Heart, 1986 (Courtesy of Ottawa Heart Institute)

    A device like this, two plastic chambers joined by Velcro, beat in
    the chest of a 41-year-old Orleans woman for a week in May 1986,
    extending her life long enough to allow her to receive the heart of
    a Montreal man that keeps her alive today.

    The operation was a Canadian first, and gave the Ottawa Heart Institute
    and its chief surgeon, Wilbert Keon, a national profile.

    Noella Leclair had been in perfect health before the heart attack
    that nearly killed her in late April 1986. It was her good fortune to
    come to the heart institute just a few months after a team from the
    unit had been trained in the use of the artificial heart in Salt Lake
    City under the watchful eye of its inventor, Robert Jarvik. Before
    Leclair's operation, the heart had been used successfully six times
    in the U.S. as a bridge for patients awaiting a transplant.

    Ms. Leclair, now 61 and the oldest living bridge-to-transplant
    recipient in the world, continues to work on fundraising campaigns
    for the institute that saved her life

    9. Birth announcement, 1987 (Courtesy of Lauren Forgie)

    The first quintuplets born in Canada since the Dionnes in 1934, the
    Forgies weren't exactly newborns when they posed for the picture on
    this card that their Orleans parents, Kim and Lauren, sent out to
    family and friends.

    The quints' first group picture had to wait until the babies were
    released from intensive care at Ottawa General Hospital; when they
    were born Sept. 22, 1986, none weighed much more than two pounds and
    all needed constant care.

    Unlike the birth of the Dionne Quints, in a rough farmhouse with few
    facilities, the birth of the Forgies was attended by a well-equipped
    team of doctors and nurses hand-picked for the task. And Lauren Forgie
    made sure her babies did not become the central figures in a media
    circus like the Dionnes; she guarded their privacy rigorously.

    The Forgies now live in Texas, where Lauren, an engineer and artist,
    recently illustrated a children's book.

    10. Woman's figure skate, 1988 (Collection of Gloucester Skating Club)

    In February of 1988, this skate was part of a near-flawless performance
    in a Calgary arena that turned a diminutive, dimpled Gloucester kewpie
    doll into a beloved Olympic heroine.

    Elizabeth Manley didn't win the gold medal that night; it went,
    again, to statuesque German skater Katarina Witt. But she did win
    the hearts of Canadians with a comeback performance that astonished
    Olympic watchers around the world.

    Ms. Manley was not one of the favourites going into the Olympics. The
    women's figure skating competition was supposed to be a duel between
    Ms. Witt and American Debbi Thomas. And, indeed, after the compulsory
    figures and the short program, the odds were no better than even that
    Ms Manley could squeak out a bronze medal. The skater was recuperating
    from the flu and ear infections, and suffering pangs of self-doubt.

    But on Feb. 27, none of that seemed to matter. Ms. Manley gathered
    herself up and skated flat out for four minutes in a performance she
    knew was superb from the moment the last chord of her accompaniment
    was drowned out by the cheers of a partisan crown in the Saddledome.
    She easily outclassed both her rivals that night, and cinched the
    silver medal against long odds.

    Ms. Manley got another standing ovation, and the keys to the city of
    Ottawa, in a ceremony in Ottawa council chambers a few days later.

    11. Chunk of rock, 1986 (Courtesy of the Museum of Civilization)

    Souvenirs are what you make of them. One person's rubble is another
    person's cherished memory.

    This rock is left over from construction of the Museum of Civilization,
    architect Douglas Cardinal's daring, evocative celebration of the
    natural world. It has been preserved by a museum staffer.

    Opened in the summer of 1989, the $257-million building was one of
    two cultural landmarks to embellish the National Capital region in
    the 1980s. The other was Moshe Safdie's breathtaking design for the
    National Gallery of Canada. The gallery opened in the spring of 1988
    with a spectacular black-tie gala attended by 10,000.
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