9/11: 17 years later and clearer than ever.

I remeber the morning well. I knew the world had changed that day and we would, Canada and the United States would be going to war. Which the British commonwealth did beside Americans.
Something that sadly gets overlooked these strange days.

I remember as the sky’s shut down, towns in the far east of Canada, little more than fishing villages and refueling stops for Trans-Atlantic flights welcomed hundreds of planes, thousands of people and gave them comfort regardless of country, race, religious beliefs or gender.

I remember very sadly as I saw on the noon news when my friends and I left work to watch the news as the second tower collapsed.
Thinking my Good Lord, someone used one of the planes I build with pride and turned it into a fucking bomb.

I remember sitting in Madison Square Garden a few years later talking with people who had actually witnessed their friends jumping to their deaths rather than burn alive. How these tough sons of britches, working men and women., strong people. Cried at the thought of it all years later.

I remember the calls for vengeance that I knew would come against a regime and people who were not our enemies. I remember seeing Canadian bodies coming home from a war that had to happen perhaps but in wholesale different manner and in a completely different country and way.

My High School World Politics teacher used to say that the only coin worth holding was trust. Trust was the coin of the realm, the only thing worth anything. We as a people, both political and basic were robbed that day and days since in ways both gross and sublime.
Slights of hand have happened to basic simple freedoms, taken for granted, unworked for in our generation.

The world as a whole as I look back has changed as I predicted, we went to war, crushed a region and unleashed exactly what the planners of 9 11 had hoped for all the long. Democratic common sense and reason at war with it’s self.

James Bond, Winston Churchill and Adolph Hitler – The Canadian Connection

What are the first things that spring to mind when someone mentions the word “Spy”?  Well, in my mind images start to appear, men in trench coats, stolen and falsified documents, secret codes and spy gadgets.  Not to be forgotten is the legendary drink of fictional super spy James Bond a perfectly poured vodka martini.

Now imagine just for a second that all of these things have a basis in fact and that the man at the center of it all was a real person who inspired the greatest fictional spy of them all Ian Fleming’s Commander James Bond of the Royal Navy.  You would think that I’d been staring at my computer screen just a tad long, wouldn’t you?

Well friends gather round and I’ll continue the story of William Stephenson.  In my last installment I told you all the story of William’s birth in turn of the century Winnipeg, Manitoba, his exploits as a child and his daring as a World War One fighter ace.

The rest of the story picks up back in Winnipeg with a can opener that William had stolen from the Commandant’s quarters while he was imprisoned in a German POW camp.  The design was revolutionary for the time leaving a clean edge on the can lid where other models of the day simply hacked off the top leaving a sharp jagged edge. Since North American patent law did not recognize German patents, William registered the device in North America and went into business forming the Franco-British Supply Company with friend Charles Wilfrid Russell in 1919. Soon after the young business men incorporated the company as Stevenson-Russell Ltd. raising money through selling shares in the community.

The post war period was hard for business and Stephenson-Russell was failing by 1922. William lost face in the Icelandic community he was raised in by not paying back the debts he had incurred while trying to grow the company.  He fled to England while members of his extended family set up a hardware store with the remains of the failed venture.

William Stephenson sends the first image via radio. July 6, 1924.

Was Harry Houdini America’s first international super spy?

There is a great deal of recent speculation on the life and times of one of magic’s greatest legends, Harry Houdini.  It seems that new information has come to light on things that governments don’t like to talk about.  Espionage.

Takk Norge! (Thank You Norway!)

Dear readers, English translation follows.

I en uformell avstemning jeg nettopp har fått ser det ut til at jeg er en hit i, av alle steder, Norge. Kanskje det er fordi vi deler samme klima eller kanskje det er en masseflukt av nordmenn planlegger å rømme fra EU og emigrere til vennlig Manitoba? Jeg vet ikke.

Uansett tilfelle jeg vil takke mine venner i Norge. Mine lesere fra Oslo spesielt. Jeg tror du vet hvem du er. Midt på natten når jeg brann opp trykk som er det blinker bort på min verden, men gode gamle Oslo.

Dag og natt jeg kan se deg blinkende bort, jeg aner ikke hva jeg har skrevet å fengsle ditt sinn. Noen ganger kan jeg se bort fra skjermen for å se om du er titte ut på meg … ser på meg som jeg skriver, redigerer, ripe og redigere litt mer.

Du er alltid der, blinkende bort i dag og natt, er du en terrorist sovende celle bruker bloggen min som en front? Planla å gjennomføre nefarious ordninger mot vest? Jeg håper ikke det, det ville virkelig ødelegge bildet mitt perfekt utsikt over ditt land.

Harry Houdini: The Mythbuster of His Age

In my last post Spirits, Levitation and Sherlock Holmes I described Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as one of the leading figures of the spiritualism movement.  I also referenced Harry Houdini but only in passing as one of the great entertainers of that era.

Houdini Handcuff King and Prison Breaker