E. Frank Leavers: Duty for the Ontario Community

Here is a memorial bench at the Ben Machree Drive, in Port Credt, near Mississauga (I've written about Port Credit here).


Bench donated by Frank E. Leavers
[Photo: By KPA]

There is only brief information on Frank E. Leavers. His obituary says that he was:

Retired Justice of the Peace for the Province of Ontario, last Reeve of Port Credit, past President of the Mississauga Real Estate Board.

What is a reeve?

What was a Reeve?...Toronto Township was the name of everything from Lake Ontario to Steeles Avenue, bounded by Winston Churchill Blvd. on the west to the Etobicoke River on the east (minus the Incorporated villages of Streetsville and Port Credit). It was mostly agricultural land.

Port Credit, Streetsville, and Toronto Township each had Reeves to represent them on the County of Peel's council. Their equivalent today would be Regional councillors.

View of Lake Ontario
[Photo: By KPA]


Photograph of members from the 1977-1978 Mississauga City Council

Standing from left to right back row: Councillor Harold E. Kennedy, Councillor Frank Leavers, Councillor Frank J. McKechnie, Councillor Frank H. S. Hooper, Councillor Frank Bean, Councillor Terence W. Butt, Councillor Larry Taylor;

Standing from left to right front row: Councillor Mary Helen Spence, Mayor Ron Searle and Councillor Hazel McCallion

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Ceremonial Inaugural Meeting of the 1977-78 Council of the City of Mississauga took place on January 4, 1977.

Photograph taken at the ceremonial inaugural meeting of the 1977-1978 Council of Mississauga on January 4th, 1977

This was the first term as Mayor for Ronald Searle. During this short time council approved an official plan to create a downtown core for Mississauga and make it separate from Toronto. Council was also looking into reports on how much money it would save if the City quit itself from Peel Region. [Source]

A Few, Brave, Writers

It's incredible that as far back as 2006 when we were still in the middle of the 9/11 "event," that I never once mention "Muslim Terrorists" in the article In Memoriam which I wrote on September 11 (2006), and reposted this September 11. At that time, I had a simultaneous blog which I titled Our Changing Landscape and which I dedicated almost entirely to the "Islamic" changes in our communities: our architecture, our food, and even our language. Of course this infiltration never materialized and 9/11 became something quite different (or perhaps predictable).

Here on the 9/11 "commemoration" are a few, brave, writers:

James Perloff
Kevn Michael Grace
Laura Wood at The Thinking Housewife
Brother Nathanael at Real Jew News
Henry Makow
Paul Craig Roberts

In Memoriam

From a post on Camera Lucida in 2006:

Endless 9/11s



About two years ago, I noticed a building with June lilacs blooming in its garden, perfectly bringing out the grey/black colors of the building and enhancing its simple, yet elegant architecture.

I took a picture of the building with the lilac bush, and drew a rendition of it in pastel and charcoal.

About year later, I was shocked to find that the building had been demolished (in a matter of weeks, I'm sure, since I often walk by it). I predicted that a condominium would go up, in a post ironically titled "Preserving Memory."

A high rise did go up, but as a housing center for the nearby Ryerson students. I've written about the Ryerson expansion, and my skepticism about this long-term project here.

As I walk through or around the campus to get to subways and street cars, what strikes me each time is the over-abundance of "South Asians", hijab-wearing women, and Arabic language spoken loudly and belligerently.

This is the student body that Ryerson is pulling all its stops for, buying nearby buildings, building new ones on available campus land, acquiring funds from the government and generous private funds.

I wonder how many of them will use the engineering department, or other technical departments to reek havoc around campus and around the city? Previous terrorist networks have made great use of the various cities' technological infrastructure, what's to stop them using the readily available university ones?

In their quest for naive universality and utopia, Canadian leaders have put their land on the block, for sale (or destruction) to the nearest bidder.

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The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Innisfil Beach Road, Simcoe County, Ontario
[Photo By: KPA]

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
By William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Minimalist Art and the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial: Reclaming Our Monuments

Minimalist Art and the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial
Elaboration on the unpublished article
Article posted on Reclaiming Beauty Articles: June 7. 2011

War memorials are an integral part of civilizations and their histories. One just has to look at the resplendent and grandiose Arc de Triomphe standing tall, at the center of a star-shaped street structure in Paris, to see how it affects the city and the people around it. The more dignified Trafalgar Square holds its distinction with lions, fountains and Nelson on the pedestal, and its vast public esplanade.

War memorials have always been about honoring their dead. And it isn’t false honor, since the mere dedication of a sculpture or a square is indicative of some outstanding effort that was made, whether it be winning a battle, holding a front, or just staying the course for so long.

This is why the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is such a disappointment. History is slowly exposing the real costs and gains behind that war, including the ultimate winners and losers. And the balance lies more on the American side. Yet, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is all about expiation and loss.

on a college project for a funerary design when she submitted her winning entry,

There was fierce opposition to the memorial from the start, where statesmen, veterans and the general public demanded that a more heroic symbol be built. One of the most poignant outrages was that nowhere on the monument is the word Vietnam carved, as though the place never existed, and the soldiers fought a non-existent war.

This controversy precipitated the erection of another monument. Sculptor Frederick Hart, whose base-reliefs adorn the great Washington National Cathedral, constructed a three-man composition which he called The Three Soldiers, clearly Vietnam soldiers standing in their combat gear and rifles. Lin was displeased by this new addition, and demanded that it be placed as far away from her contribution as possible. And no flag to render her area like a golf course, she declared. A flagpole was nonetheless placed near the The Three Soldiers with the fitting inscription: “This flag represents the services rendered to our country by the veterans of the Vietnam War.”



What eventually happened was that the memorial garnered popularity as a focus for grief. Even Lin acknowledges her subtle coercion when she says: “I actually feel like I controlled it a little too much… I knew that one's first immediate reaction… could very well be that you were going to cry.” Her design was to create a repository for unappeasable mourning, and in the end, that is what became of the granite wall.

Lin continues in the art world with sporadic contributions as an abstract, minimalist sculptor, and architect of a few lackluster buildings. She was one of the jury for the 911 memorial competition, and a strong promoter for the design that won. Once again, the winning design was a commemoration to insatiable grief as symbolized by two 30-feet deep holes at the spots where the towers stood. The contending design was more serene and spiritual, evoking enveloping clouds and sparkling lights. It is still hard for Lin to leave the black wall of death. Her original idea describing the wall: “I had a general idea that I wanted to describe a journey...a journey that would make you experience death…” holds to this day.


Maya Lin's collaboration with fashion designer Phillip Lim, in 2016.
The event took place in a pier warehouse-e where Lin's mounds of dirt fit well with Lim's postmodern androgyny

“I needed a raw, large venue to create this work...the Pier was the first place we saw, and the scale and rawness of the space was perfect,” Ms. Lin told the Observer.

But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, or the wall, as the case may be. More recent memorials are giving credence to their lost heroes. The Korean War Veterans Memorial, unveiled in 1995, is a triangular field of 19 stone soldiers with a clear dedication to the veterans. And the National World War II Memorial, which opened in 2004, also includes a wall with symbolic stars representing the fallen soldiers.

Frederick Hart, on meeting Lin, confidently told her, “My statue is going to improve your memorial.“ Time has already proven him correct. The collection of photographs at the veteran-ran The Wall USA website emphasizes the Three Soldiers statue more than the wall, and uses the granite wall many times as a backdrop to reflect this.

The original memorial celebrated its 25th anniversary this November, and it already looks quite different from its initial granite wall concept. Lin’s minimalist abstraction, which only succeeded in making the wall an empty repository for grief, is slowly being improved by more concrete and tangible elements. A Women’s Memorial was added, and a new plaque commemorating the veterans who died after the war lies near the Three Soldiers. There is not much to be proud about war, but there is pride and honor due to the soldiers who fight in them.


Iwo Jima Memorial, Arlington Virgina

Soldiers and Sailors' Monument, New York

Soldiers and Sailors' Monument
Riverside Drive and 89th Street, New Yorkk
[Photo By: KPA]

This massive circular temple-like monument located along Riverside Drive at 89th Street commemorates Union Army soldiers and sailors who served in the Civil War. This monument, one of the few in a city park that the New York Landmark Commission designated a landmark, was designed by architects Charles (1860–1944) and Arthur Stoughton (1867–1955), who won a competition with this ancient Greek design.
The marble monument, with its pyramidal roof and 12 Corinthian columns, is based on the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens. It was commissioned by the State of New York, and dedicated on Memorial Day in 1902. Sculptor Paul E. Duboy carved the ornamental features on the monument. The pillars list the New York volunteer regiments that served during the battle as well as Union generals and the battles in which they led troops. For years the monument was the terminus of New York City’s annual Memorial Day parade.

In 1961 the City spent more than $1 million to fix the monument’s marble façade, which had deteriorated, and portions of the monument were replaced with more durable granite. [Source: NYC Architecture]

The Twin Towers Memorial

The bombing of the Twin Towers has left a hollow in the American spirit. I sense that whenever I travel to the US, and specifically New York. People are quieter, softer. This is not the New York spirit.

The memorial for the destroyed towers and the 3,000 dead dwells on death. Or, on the nihilism of these deaths. It is not a memorial as much as a hollow pit (or two hollow pits) where there is insatiable grief. Memorials are not happy places, of course, but they should have some dignity for the dead. In this case, the two pits look like mass burial holes. The names, which no-one will read in their entirety, look like carved lines.

To give these 3,000 names more meaning, they should have made crosses with the names carved on them. No-one will take the time to read them all, of course, but the combined presence of these 3,000 crosses would give a deeper, more spiritual meaning to the deaths.

The lights, which emit from these pits, go upwards. I thought this was an attempt to send the souls of these dead upwards towards the sky, if not to heaven. But no! These lights are "search lights." Still searching for more dead bodies?

The argument against these symbols would be, how about those that are not Christian? Therefore, the lights cannot go to heaven, and the crosses cannot be used. Our meaningful symbols are too specific, and what we're left with, in our multicultural era, is a depressing, generic memorial, which has become the norm in our godless, non-spiritual world.

But, ordinary people still want meaning in their lives. People reacted so negatively to the dark, empty granite sheath that stood for the original Vietnam Memorial, that another, showing soldiers in combat, was finally put up.

I suggest that such a sculpture be erected around this mound of granite at Ground Zero, since it is impossible to remove that mound now. It can be something as mundane as a sculpture of one of the passengers on a cell-phone, trasmitting information about the hijackers. Something which would show the bravery of an ordinary citizen, thinking about life, or the living, instead of death.

Memorials should of course be about the dead. But, they should also raise the spirits of the living, if only to say: Never Again! A defeatist memorial will produce defeated people, who will not be ready and vigilant enough to say "Never Again" let alone act to prevent atrocities from happening to their country.

A defeatist, nihilistic symbol will produce a defeated people. That is what the 9/11 memorial does. Of course, the name also has to go. What memorial gains any gravity when remembered as numbers? "The September 11 Memorial" or simply "The Twin Towers Memorial" can give strength back to New Yorkers, and to Americans.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Obama's Martin Luther King Day Speech

Obama in front of the Lincoln Memorial, presenting his speech for the
50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's march on Washington, on August 28, 2013

I'm posting below excerpts from Obama's "I have a dream" speech which he gave on the 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King's march on Washington. The event was commemorated at the "Let Freedom Ring" ceremony, on August 28, the title being a quote quote from King's speech.

The event took place at the Lincoln Memorial. Obama chose that location since it is where Martin Luther King also presented his "I have a dream" speech in 1963.

I waded through Google images and a sixteen minute video of King giving his speech, and could find no images of him standing in front of the memorial.

But, while viewing the video, I can come upon white-capped men on the stage with King. Below is a long shot of him at the memorial (a screen-shot from the video), surrounded by the men wearing the white caps.



It looks like the men are wearing Gandhi caps, I suppose signifying the "non-violence" mantra that Gandhi initiated to activate social change, and which King said he followed.



The image above is from the online Christianity Today, in a January 21, 2013 article titled: Why I Changed My Mind About Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' Speech.

Audrey Ruth comments on the white-capped men shown in the article:

August 29, 2013: There's not just one man in a white hat behind MLK in that pic -- there are a lot of them. The prevailing wisdom is that MLK was inspired by Gandhi above all. He did quote some scripture, but, as noted below, He did not believe that Jesus was/is Lord. He had some Muslim friends too, including Malcolm X. The bottom line, though, is that if any white preacher is immoral, he is deemed unworthy, period. He's not given a chance by the public to repent and be restored to the Lord. But people seem to give black preachers a pass on such things. I've noticed this through the years and wonder why this is so. I also noticed that not one black conservative leader was at the MLK memorial yesterday, yet he said he wanted people to be judged by their character, period. It doesn't look like that day will come anytime soon.

Here is are forum participants commenting on the Gandhi caps:

okay, so they are Ghandi caps. But that leads to my next question: what's up with Ghandi caps in America?

Obviously, Martin Luther King proudly associated himself with Ghandi's movement and its messsage of non-violence. But had the Ghandi cap become a popular symbol in America of 1963? Or was it pretty much limited to this one demonstration, and then faded away?

When I think of the famous historical symbols of the civil rights movement, I don't think of Ghandi caps. If I had been an average American watching the news that night in 1963 --would I have recognized the caps as a political statement? or as having any meaning at all?

One other point, this time on Obama's choice of his speech venue: Wouldn't it have been more meaningful to have held it in front of the Martin Luther King statue, and pass the torch on to King, rather than use other symbolic references to him?



There is ample space for a large crowd in front of the MLK statue, and some kind of platform could have been built for the speech makers.

I wonder if the statue is aesthetically unappealing to the event organizers, and deterred Obama and his organizing crew from setting the speech's stage before it?

Lawrence Auster wrote in 2011:

I’ve said the statue looks like an Oriental despot. But it’s more than that. It looks like a statue from one of the ancient cosmological empires, in which the pharoah, the god-king, personally embodies the all-ruling forces of the cosmos. Specifically, King’s hostile posture and facial expression are reminiscent of the ferocious statues of the kings of Assyria, that empire that crushed every nation it conquered until it was conquered and crushed itself.

Here are excerpts from Obama's August 28, 2013 "I have a dream" speech:

Because they marched [on August 28, 1963], America became more free and more fair, not just for African-Americans but for women and Latinos, Asians and Native Americans, for Catholics, Jews and Muslims, for gays, for Americans with disabilities.

[...]

To dismiss the magnitude of this progress, to suggest, as some sometimes do, that little has changed -- that dishonors the courage and the sacrifice of those who paid the price to march in those years.

[...]

But we would dishonor those heroes as well to suggest that the work of this nation is somehow complete. The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it doesn't bend on its own. To secure the gains this country has made requires constant vigilance, not complacency. Whether it's by challenging those who erect new barriers to the vote or ensuring that the scales of justice work equally for all in the criminal justice system and not simply a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails it requires vigilance.

[...]

Yes, there have been examples of success within black America that would have been unimaginable a half-century ago. But as has already been noted, black unemployment has remained almost twice as high as white employment (sic), Latino unemployment close behind. The gap in wealth between races has not lessened, it's grown.

[T]he position of all working Americans, regardless of color, has eroded, making the dream Dr. King described even more elusive.

[...]

And what had once been a call for equality of opportunity, the chance for all Americans to work hard and get ahead was too often framed as a mere desire for government support, as if we had no agency in our own liberation, as if poverty was an excuse for not raising your child and the bigotry of others was reason to give up on yourself. All of that history is how progress stalled. That's how hope was diverted. It's how our country remained divided.

[...]

[W]e can stand together for good jobs and just wages. With that courage, we can stand together for the right to health care in the richest nation on earth for every person. (Applause.) With that courage, we can stand together for the right of every child, from the corners of Anacostia to the hills of Appalachia, to get an education that stirs the mind and captures the spirit and prepares them for the world that awaits them. (Applause.) With that courage, we can feed the hungry and house the homeless and transform bleak wastelands of poverty into fields of commerce and promise.

[...]

And that's the lesson of our past, that's the promise of tomorrow, that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it.

Obama is very clever.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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