Mastering change and checking sources

It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change. -Charles Darwin

The measure of intelligence is the ability to change -Albert Einstein

 Sage advice from both Darwin and Einstein and boy did John Lennon get it right when he said "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

Well did life ever happen to us this year! And how about all those plans that went on hold or just went??? So, we stop, refocus, react accordingly and re-direct our attention to an unexpected life crisis.  Whether it’s the pandemic, a personal tragedy, job change or just new technology, it inevitably means change. Generally, we do not like change.

Technological change has revolutionized our world in an incredibly short time. Canadian thinker, author, mass media guru Marshall McLuhan predicted the development of the internet and the creation of a global village back in the mid 60’s as he pondered the effects of electronic media on society. As those who study mass media know, his famous quote “the medium is the message” is more relevant today than ever.

While the internet and social media have fast-forwarded the creation of McLuhan’s Global Village”, probably even beyond his at-the-time-considered-wild predictions, the digital age has also enabled the propagation of misinformation that poses a huge threat to democracies based on an enlightened electorate.

It’s critical to know your medium, the source of your information. Our health and welfare, our very lives depend on it. The problem is we can all be citizen journalists today, capturing everything from the novel and comical to natural disasters, violence and social unrest on our i-phones and tweet it out instantaneously…but what about the facts? Context? Objectivity?

Journalism students throw up their hands in despair, as the industry struggles through this continual technological metamorphosis. Jobs in traditional media are disappearing. Trust in all media is wavering. You only have to look at the proliferation of questionable news sources online and the anchors-come-rival-commentators south of the border, polarizing public opinion. We tell our students there will always be a need and I hope, demand, for good journalism, where facts are checked, context explained and all sides of the story told fairly and accurately. 

Socrates said, “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” That’s what’s happening in journalism schools and must happen in every aspect of society.  It’s about embracing disruption, a tough lesson I learned more than a decade ago.

A career as I had known it for more than three decades had ended. When I shared my despair with friend John Ellison, the “Some Kinda Wonderful” recording artist and very spiritual man, he told me, “when things like that happen, I just smile and say Lord, what have you got for me now?” 

That career just moved into a new chapter.  I eventually found that serenity to accept the thing I couldn’t change that theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote about, and I’m still working on the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. They are words for all of us to consider as we face unprecedented change and disruption in our world today. 

Technology will continue to react to and drive change as the flow of information extends over the multiple platforms McLuhan referred to as the medium that was the message. A lot has changed. Today it’s the source of your information, the story teller who is shaping the message, whatever the medium. Check your sources. Know them.

Trust in sources will help guide us through change during the search for solutions to the world’s problems, like a vaccine and ways to enhance the human experience.  We must simply move on, react to life events with a sense of hope and confidence built on that trust.

Country singer Jimmy Dean put it this way: “I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.“  Then, there’s Martha Stewart, who insists, “the more you adapt, the more interesting you are.” Then I would like to think, Martha, that I along with many of us in this Global Village have become, at the very least, a little more interesting. 

Connie Smith is a free-lance journalist and part-time professor at Mohawk College.  She wishes the story tellers at the Hamilton Spectator well, adapting to their new home.

Navigating Father's Day in turbulent times

-with thanks to a heart of gold at the home of Haida

He loved the sea like the generations of Smiths from the north of Scotland before him.  They tamed the wildest waters from the English Channel to the mighty Atlantic in both war and peace...and his memory lives on along the Hamilton waterfront.

It was only fitting then that our father’s memory bench overlook the harbour next to “Canada’s most fightingest ship”, the legendary HMCS Haida. Every Father’s Day since his passing almost seven years ago, I’d sit on that bench and wonder what he’d think about the state of the world today. But not this Father’s Day…

Robert Prahm Smith didn’t serve on Haida or any ship.  He couldn’t. He was colour blind. But while he couldn’t join the navy, he could join the army. So after the bombing of Pearl Harbour in 1941, he crossed the border from Canada where his family had settled and enlisted in the U.S. Army.  He was 16 and lied about his age.  

You see while my father was born in New Jersey, the family was deported to the closest British colony because their immigration papers were not in order.  It was during my nomadic grandfather’s second crossing from Scotland in his search for a better life for his young family that began during the Great Depression.  He heard Hamilton had a nice harbour.

My Dad served in Italy throughout World War II and then joined the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, where he became a basic training officer while earning his degree at McMaster University. He went on to co-found an American Legion post in Burlington and served as president of the Royal Hamilton Military Institute.

Meanwhile in the backyard of their modest east end home my grandfather with the help of my dad, built a sailboat that became famous or infamous, depending on whom you talk to, as it sailed Lake Ontario. The Tradewind made headlines when it was wrecked in a storm in the early 50’s.  All that was salvaged was its little wooden dinghy.

For one Father’s Day feature news story for CHCH-TV, I arranged to have that dingy brought down from the rafters of the Hamilton Harbour Commissioners warehouse, where it had been stored for decades and surprised my Dad with cameras rolling.

Many Father’s Days passed. In civilian life, R.P. Smith became an insurance adjuster and still feeling the pull of the sea, eventually specialized in marine claims. He was still crawling all over pleasure craft into his 80’s, as a sought-after marine surveyor. Nicknamed Skipper by his harbour pals, he was outfitted with a fluorescent orange life jacket, “in case he fell in.“

His friends from the harbour and the military were there when we dedicated his memory bench beside HMCS Haida.  I still have that life jacket and the remains of Tradewind’s dinghy has found a special place at our cottage.

When I contacted Haida to see if I could make my scheduled Father’s Day visit, I was told that the Parks Canada site was closed due to the pandemic. I said thank you and to say hello to my dad for me if any staffers happened to be there.

Tuesday, June 22 - Message from HMCS Haida National Historic Site:

“Good morning Connie, my colleague and friend was going to Haida this morning to do some cleaning so I asked her to take a couple of pictures of your father’s bench. I know it’s not the same as having a good sit on it for Father’s Day but until we re-open, I hope this can hold you over… Hope to see you soon!”

When I thanked them for such a kind and unexpected gesture, Joel Anthony Forget and Johan Brydson told me they were to happy to put I smile on my face and that’s exactly what they did.

HMCS Haida is the last of 27 Tribal-class destroyers that served in the Second World War, the Korean Conflict and the Cold War, all named after Indigenous communities. She is birthed next to HMCS Star Naval Reserve, Hamilton. For updates on a resumption in tours, visit  https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/lhn-nhs/on/haida ...and say hi to “Skipper” for me.