Columnists - Winnipeg Free Press

Don Marks

Why tell bullied kid to do what we did not?
I'm no expert on bullying, but I can tell you some of the advice we're giving kids doesn't make sense. Such as, I just saw this anti-bullying public service announcement about "Billy the Bully," which shows this kid shadowboxing in the middle of a playground while taunting and teasing imaginary opponents. The catch is that Billy is all alone. An announcer's voice tells kids to "just walk away," and bullies like Billy will look silly dancing around all by themselves. Oh really? It's not that easy to walk away. Most often a kid will find himself yanked to the ground and stomped when he does.
View Full Column | 05/1/2013 1:00 AM | 0
What are they smoking at First Nations Bank?
There has always been this big bulge in Manitoba's population that reflects so-called baby boomers, that disproportionately large generation born during the 20 years following the Second World War. The only thing comparable in the province today is the huge increase in our native population. The original baby boomers have dominated our music and culture (Why do you think we are still listening to the Rolling Stones and guys like Paul McCartney fill our stadiums with parents, grandparents and grandchildren?)
View Full Column | 04/23/2013 1:00 AM | 0
No 'respect' leads straight to violence
When did things get so violent? It's a question I've been asking myself more and more as I read the headlines about shooting and stabbings that take place so often in Winnipeg's North End. I grew up in the North End and, yes, it was a pretty tough neighbourhood, but most of our differences were settled with fist fights. And when two guys decided to square off, everybody else backed off and said, "Fair fight, one on one!" And when one guy said, "I give (up)," the fight was over. We didn't allow "swarming" or 10 guys giving "the beats" to one guy.
View Full Column | 04/10/2013 1:00 AM | 0
'Provocateur' was name-calling that Nick liked
Accolades are pouring in for community activist Nick Ternette, who died on Monday, age 68. Many are praising Nick for "never ever giving up." It is ironic that it is this staying power that has resulted in most of the praise, because so many Winnipeggers are rather late getting to the grace table. Nick was often ridiculed, scorned, laughed at and downright abused throughout his lengthy career, and it is only recently that many have come to see the virtue he carried throughout his life.
View Full Column | 03/5/2013 1:00 AM | 0
Gimli Glider would fly at aviation museum -- or downtown
The attitude expressed by Shirley Render, executive director of the Western Canada Aviation Museum, toward the idea of making the Gimli Glider part of its collection reveals what can be wrong with the thinking of museum officials. "It's too much of what people fly today," said Render, meaning the Gimli Glider is still too new for their collection.
View Full Column | 02/23/2013 1:00 AM | 0
Brazeau symbolic of Harper's indifference to First Nations
The latest problems of Patrick Brazeau raise much bigger issues than his personal fall from grace and Senate reform. Brazeau represents all that is wrong with the Harper government's approach to First Nations. First Nations have long claimed the Harper government doesn't take their concerns seriously and that they can't trust the prime minister. These feelings started when Brazeau was paraded out as the Harper government's "go-to boy" on all things "native".
View Full Column | 02/11/2013 1:00 AM | 0
Canadians can't be smug about racism
Americans are celebrating the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. this week and they are commemorating the justice and equality the civil rights movement gained for black people in the United States. Canadians were aghast back in the 1960s when they learned about black men being lynched and black women being raped without any form of justice or redress, how freedom riders were being pulled off buses and beaten severely, and how children died while they knelt in prayer in black churches that were firebombed.
View Full Column | 01/23/2013 1:00 AM | 0
Indians just got a whole lot harder to identify
Knowing what name to use when referring to a "native person" in Canada just got a whole lot harder. And not only because about 600,000 "indigenous" people may have their status changed by a recent court ruling. Back in the 1960s, things were more simple. There were Indians, non-status Indians and Métis. Indians were people who met the requirements of the Indian Act sufficiently to be issued a treaty status card, non-status Indians were native people who were not eligible or who had lost their status (e.g. an Indian woman who had married a white man). And Métis were descendants of a European and Indian mix who had developed their own culture, complete with language (Michif) and political leaders like Louis Riel.
View Full Column | 01/18/2013 1:00 AM | 0
New light shines on city
Writing from the perspective of my 26th floor of an Osborne Village apartment overlooking the Manitoba Legislative Building and the rest of downtown Winnipeg provides numerous advantages besides the simple esthetics of a prime view. The most obvious benefits stem from looking out at a majestic cityscape by night and day, looking down on a multitude of merry skaters along our river trail (and the traffic jams on the Osborne Bridge that a home-office slacker such as I can avoid), and the many other magnificent sights Winnipeg provides as inspiration to someone who often writes about this city.
View Full Column | 01/9/2013 1:00 AM | 0
The 'roaring game' has become a screaming match
Do we really need to yell (and screech and holler) so much when we play the sport of curling? Every time I try to point out that all this noise is even mildly annoying I'm told, "It's just part of the game." But I think I'm part of a silent majority.
View Full Column | 12/5/2012 3:17 AM | 0
Symbols, totems should get some respect
The most recent "affront to native American culture" took place when a Victoria's Secret model wore a headdress down a runway at a fashion show. After receiving numerous complaints, Victoria's Secret apologized. "We absolutely had no intention of offending anyone," they said.
View Full Column | 11/16/2012 1:00 AM | 0
New generation of homeowners faces new risks
The last home I bought in Winnipeg cost $56,000. It was a four-bedroom, one-and-a-half storey on Elm Park Road in St. Vital. I lived there for seven years. Tired of paying $800 a month in mortgage and taxes without knocking anything off the principal of my loan, I decided to sell. My real estate agent advised me I might have trouble selling the house for what I paid for it because I had converted two of the bedrooms into a loft and the other two into one office and the market was soft. I was faced with the reality of paying the bank a few thousand dollars to make up the deficit between the selling price and the balance of my mortgage.
View Full Column | 10/29/2012 1:00 AM | 0
Funding cuts choke off First Nations' voice
Most of the good things that have come to First Nations people in the past 50 years have happened because some Indian leaders had the courage to stand up and say "this is wrong," and fought to make it right. Great chiefs like Dave Courchene of Sagkeeng First Nation united First Nations into a collective force called the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood (MIB) and concepts such as "sovereignty" and "self-government," which were unheard of back in the 1970s, have become commonplace and accepted today. It is often difficult to draw a connection between the work done by organizations like MIB/Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs and the impact this has on the daily lives of grassroots First Nations people.
View Full Column | 10/3/2012 1:00 AM | 0
Making progress, one kid at a time
We have to start funding failure in Winnipeg's core area. Because supporting success has only made the problems that plague our inner city bigger.
View Full Column | 08/15/2012 1:00 AM | 0
Crossing a street needn't be an adventure
Whether or not to use "pedestrian countdown timers" in Winnipeg has been raised again but not seriously because it would cost $10,000 per intersection. But there must be benefits to them since one is used for streets beside the MTS Centre, which is the most pedestrian-packed area of Winnipeg. We need a more detailed cost analysis of PCTs because there are other benefits to be derived from them and almost all of them involve safety. And shouldn't that be the primary concern anyway?
View Full Column | 07/16/2012 1:00 AM | 0
‘Bill’ could get down and throw with the best
There was a line in the memorial handout at Bill Norrie’s funeral that alerted me to the fact we were all missing out on something very important about our former mayor. It read “Bill delighted in shaking the hand of every student who passed across the stage at convocation.” At first glance, a rather innocuous statement but it stirred the memories of one great experience I had with Bill Norrie.
View Full Column | 07/12/2012 9:58 AM | 0
Time to get hep C out of the closet
In many ways, living with hepatitis C is similar to living with HIV -- both are viruses that begin with a dormant stage, but then they attack the human body and eventually kill you unless they are treated. Treatments for hep C and HIV are quite similar, too. Both are highly invasive, but there is a 55 to 70 per cent success rate in ridding the body of the hep C virus entirely, while there is no "cure" for HIV. In other words, you live with the HIV virus and keep it under control with a drug, hoping it won't eventually become full-blown AIDS (and now there are even plenty of people living with AIDS because of a "prescription drug cocktail" which prevents the body's immune system from failing)
View Full Column | 06/5/2012 1:00 AM | 0
Kids just gotta be kids
The playground structure at King Edward School in Winnipeg's North End has been damaged by vandals and needs replacing. We didn't have such things when I went to King Edward during the 1960s, but I remember some of the alternatives the kids who graduated to the Vaughn Street Detention Centre chose while the rest of us went on to Isaac Newton Junior High. There used to be this Blackwoods Beverages plant across from the school on the corner of Selkirk and Sinclair. Sometimes we envied those kids who scaled the high brick walls and climbed in and around the loosely stacked play structure of wooden crates full of pop bottles because they could get all the soft drinks we all used to crave but so few could afford. Oh sure, every so often one of them would get their head cracked open by some falling crates, but it was good practice for the break and enters that would come later. Similar training could be gained by raiding the gardens along Flora Avenue after the babas and the gigis went to sleep. You got a backside full of salt or a rake upside the head from the ones who stayed awake. Later in life, they would call this the "cost of doing business."
View Full Column | 05/7/2012 1:00 AM | 0
It takes people to raise a Village
Osborne Village, the greatest neighbourhood in Canada. The Canadian Institute of Planners said so after counting more than 200,000 ballots that were cast across the country. According to them, Osborne Village has "a memorable or unique character, architectural features that are visually interesting, it is accessible by different modes of transportation, reflects local culture and history and promotes social and economic activities."
View Full Column | 04/28/2012 1:00 AM | 0
Black market to save addicts it created?
They are called the "black planes." They fly in the middle of the night, in total darkness, their running lights turned off.
View Full Column | 03/7/2012 1:00 AM | 0
First Nation co-signs away housing issue
The Whitefish River Ojibway First Nation southwest of Sudbury, Ont., has solved what used to be a severe shortage of housing for their citizens. And it doesn't involve government money.
View Full Column | 02/13/2012 1:00 AM | 0
Legalize pot but get over 'harmless' pipe dream
How many of your friends or colleagues at work like to "sneak out for a toke" during the day? At lunch or during a coffee break? Or friends who come over to watch a movie and always slip outside for a "tug on the pipe."
View Full Column | 01/11/2012 3:17 AM | 0
Cree leader used his entrepreneurial spirit to do good
Hyacinth Colomb, who died Monday at the age of 95, was one of those people for whom recognition extended far beyond his home community of Mathias Colomb Cree Nation. To say he was recognized as trapper of the year or he was inducted into the Order of the Buffalo Hunt, Manitoba's highest honour, fails to recognize that his achievements provide a time line for changes in the North over the past century.
View Full Column | 12/15/2011 1:00 AM | 0
A tale of two reserves
One cannot ignore the fact the history of Attawapiskat is eerily similar to a First Nation in Manitoba that made similar headlines about five years ago. Both Pukatawagan and Attawapiskat were contaminated by diesel spills from faulty storage tanks in the 1970s. Housing stock and community facilities had to be destroyed and both communities have had to deal with severe hardships due to overcrowding and health concerns, which can be traced directly back to the damage caused by the contamination.
View Full Column | 12/7/2011 1:00 AM | 0
Plasticize THE LOONIE!
We are ignoring the best thing that may come out of the introduction of our new plastic money. It just might free us from the burden of hauling around all that "heavy metal." That is, if Canadians can develop the cojones Americans showed when their government tried to replace a paper buck with a dollar coin.
View Full Column | 11/19/2011 1:00 AM | 0

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