Bruce Bell: Toronto’s Tour Guide and American Spy

“In the beginning, I always loved history,” says Bruce Bell, Toronto’s premiere tour guide, as he reflects upon his youth in Sudbury, Ontario. “Mom and Dad loved history. We as kids were always driving somewhere; getting in the car and going places.”

One such destination: Toronto, about a five-hour drive southeast of Sudbury, where not only the history intrigued him but also the architecture. When he was seventeen, Bell moved to the big city. Not to pursue a formal degree in either of his favourite subjects, though. With a walk-on bit part in the movie “Class of ‘44” (in 1972) on his resume, Bell returned, for good, to Toronto in 1973.

For twenty years, Bell bussed tables, acted, wrote and produced plays, and did stand-up comedy—he was a founding comedic member of Yuk Yuk’s Stand up Comedy Cabaret. “Never making much money,” Bell says, laughing, “but having a really good time.”

All this while, though, history tugged at his coattails. Was he really that passionate about acting? Bell recalls, “I was still reading up on Toronto history. Friends would come to Toronto, and I would show them around. And I realized: This is what I want to do; this is it.”

Not until his late forties, however, did Bell take action. “This is what I want to do” became “I’m going to do this.” He says, “I stopped whatever else (I was) doing, and (said) I’m going to become what I always wanted to be.”

“The Internet changed everything,” Bell says. The wonders of a Web site. Tourists contacted him. Business began to bloom, and so did Bell. In 1999, He began documenting Toronto’s history in The Bulletin, a widely-read community newspaper, and he wrote the book on the St. Lawrence neighborhood where he now lives. The St. Lawrence Market, in turn, named Bell its official historian in 2002.

The love of history his parents had instilled in him, his affection for architecture, and his performing experience: These factors guided Bell to his true calling, and he incorporates them all into his act. This walking, talking, taste-testing and teaching tour guide relishes the challenge every tour presents. An audience of one? Or twenty-five? Visiting from Ireland? America?

He tailors his tours to the personality and predisposition of his customers. “I can pretty much suss them out in the first couple minutes,” Bell says. “There are some people who are very serious about their history, and I enjoy that.”

Especially if said history buffs are Americans. “Nothing makes me more happy (than) if I get an American on a tour who knows his history, who knows a bit about Canadian history. That is so enjoyable, how we can go back an forth.”

To and fro, he says is the nature of American and Canadian history. We were once part of the same country, after all. American history students are familiar with the Thirteen Colonies, but they tend to forget about Canada’s influence on the States.

Bell loves taking Americans to two places. “I take a lot of them to St. James Cathedral,” he says. A loyalist haunt in the heart of the St. Lawrence neighbourhood, the cathedral served as a hospital during the War of 1812. Bell says the church is where many ex-Bostonians—descendents of the Mayflower who believed that God could not speak to a president—congregated here. These United Empire Loyalists, many of whom lost their property as America emerged as a nation to be reckoned with, set the foundation for Canada as an English-speaking country. “Our heritage,” Bell tells his audience, “is American.”

The other landmark Bell visits is Commerce Court, what some call Commerce Banking Hall There, Bell encourages Americans to imagine Penn Station in New York, as the grand and ornate edifice stood before demolition commenced in 1960. “This is what you lost,” he says to Yanks. “This is what was torn down in 1966 (demolition took three years). When you enter this bank, pretend you’re entering Penn Station and you’re about to catch a train to go to Philadelphia or Boston.”

New York and Boston: Both cities Bell has visited. “I really loved New York City a lot.” He hasn’t been to Boston since about 2002, but he’s eager to return. First, though, he’s going to revisit Chicago, to lead a tour. You see, Bell is more than than a connoisseur of Canadian culture, more than a trusted Toronto historian: He loves that which transcends our borders—the shared history, the architectural similarities, and the friendly ties. He is an American spy.

Additional reading:

Boston Globe Article (May 2012) by Paul E. Kandarian

Travel and Transitions (2005)

Puckbite Interviews Captain CanAmerica

Image courtesy of Puckbite

Captain CanAmerica visited Quebec last week as a guest of the Montreal Poutine Hockey Club. He sat down for a chat with Puckbite.

Commemorating Cooperation and Compassion: 9/11, Beyond Borders

As the U.S. honours loved ones lost on this date ten years ago, I keep close to my heart heroes on both sides of the 49th parallel. An except from AMHL Glory:

Presidents and prime ministers will come and go, so I’m talking about the residual, ordinary citizens in the U.S. and Canada who’ve done extraordinary things to extend goodwill beyond geographical borders.

During the horrors of September 11, 2001, the bravery of New York’s Fire Department, Police Department (and the less publicized Port Authority) is well-known, and should be; we know of the pluck of the passengers of Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania; and we recall the image of a smoldering Pentagon. The carnage: 2973 dead (including twenty-four Canadians) and twenty-four missing.

But you may not realize the importance of the international cooperation between the Stars and Stripes and the Maple Leaf on that terrible Tuesday and the days beyond.

When the U.S. ordered all its flights that morning to land, Canada rose to the challenge.

NAV Canada, a private corporation that owns Canada’s civil air navigation, reports on its Web site that it was responsible for diverting 239 flights, most of which were en route to U.S. destinations, to Canadian airports. From St. John’s (Newfoundland) to Vancouver (BC) to Whitehorse (Yukon), Canada came to the rescue of some 33,000 passengers. In Gander, Newfoundland, about 40 landed without incident.

Where do you house, feed, and comfort more than 6,000 distressed, confused, and hungry passengers? Gander, population 9,651 and nearby communities like Lewisporte, that’s where.

Nazim-Amin, a flight attendant on Delta Flight 15, said that after landing in Gander without incident, passengers and crew spent nearly the next eleven hours on the plane, unsuccessfully trying to reach loved ones on their mobile phones because their communications providers didn’t have towers in Canada (or if they did, the phone lines to the U.S. were too jammed to reach anyone). Sleeping as comfortably as one can on a jumbo jet, everyone, including a thirty-three-week pregnant woman, waited for their turn to disembark.

And when they did, the kind-hearted souls of central Newfoundland, blanketed these passengers with more compassion in days beyond the initial tragedy. Returning to the States would take several days.

And the grateful passengers and crew, many from Atlanta, GA, responded in kind by creating the Flight 15 Scholarship Fund for their new-found friends in Lewisporte.

Love transcends borders, eh?

Thank you, Delta Flight 15 passengers and crew. Thank you, Newfoundland and Labrador. Thank you, Canada.

Canadian Spy: The Next Step

I’m taking this espionage thing to the next level, by learning French. Below is an excerpt of my first assignment en la cours de français, my first foray into introducing myself to francophones.

A Propos de Moi

Salut, mes amis. Je m’appelle Jim, mais ma famille et mes amis de hockey m’appellent Jimmy. Tout le monde pense que je suis Canadien. Je viens de Colorado—ou trois de mes quatre frères et mon papa habitent—mais je habite avec ma femme à Maynard. Je étudie le français parce que deux de mes amis de hockey parlent français, j’aime bien la musique de Céline Dion, y parce que ma femme et moi voyageons souvent a Canada. Nous adorons la Ville de Québec. Nous ne somme pas fans de l’équipe de hockey de Montréal, mais j’aime bien Patrice Bergeron, qui vient de Québec et qui joue pour les Bruins de Boston. Nous aimons les Bruins et le entraîneur, Claude Julien.

J’adore aussi lire les livres de Jacques Falla, Frank Delaney et George Plimpton; écouter et chanter la musique de les artistes canadiens comment Great Big Sea, Bryan Adams, y Les Ténors Canadiens; manger les beignes les démanche; et écrire de tout ces expériences.

Un de ces jours j’aimerais publier mon mémoire, Gloire AMHL: Une passion pour le hockey du matin (et beignes); écrire autres livres, et voyager à Nouveau Zélande—bien que ils ne pas parlent français allé.

Return to CanadAmerica, Part II: Double Good

Continued from Part I

I woke up from a nap and removed the thin, dark blue blanket covering my head.

“Any international security forces tailing us?” I asked my wife.

“What?”

Spy stuff, I tell her.

“Oh god,” she says and then refers to me as Walter Mitty’s donut-loving cousin.

I guess we’ve ditched the double agents, so I toss the blanket onto the back seat. Another mission accomplished…

From Grand Manan, we landed at Blacks Harbour and then drove to the safe house in St. Andrew’s.

After a two-hour nap, I watched a doubleheader—Oprah and Ellen—as cell phone coverage went from Rogers to AT&T to Rogers to AT&T.

My wife and I then walked west along Water Street, past the art gallery touting http://www.twocountriesart.com/ and toward Olde Tyme Pizza.

While we waited for the Hawaiian Pizza, I glanced back and forth at the two televisions. On the monitor to my left, the Weather Network updated us on highs and lows across Canada; to my right, a station from New York aired the People’s Court.

Walking back toward the wharf, we entered the new coffee shop in town. At Honey Beans we ordered two hot beverages. The new owners, who had moved from Alberta, were still getting things in order. They needed business cards, a Web site, and an American flag to compliment the Canadian one hanging outside, but my hot chocolate and my wife’s latte hit the spot.

With sundown still two hours or so away, we finished our treats while gazing upon Passamaquoddy Bay. We discussed the possibility of someday setting up a satellite spy operation here in St. Andrews, where we could observe activities from Canada’s Navy Island to Eastport, Maine.

Instead of watching the same fireworks that Eastporters would watch the reluctant spy’s wife and I walked back to the safe house to catch the pyrotechnics on Boston’s WBZ.

I fell asleep long before the first flare was fired, knowing that we’d have to slink from the safe house before the authorities could, unannounced, pop in on us.

On the road by 6:00 a.m., Walter Mitty's donut-loving cousin and his wife were at Timmy’s in St. Stephen and then across the border before the feds could say “foiled again.”

Return to CanadAmerica, Part I: Happy Days

Thursday July 3, 2008
11:00 a.m., Atlantic Time

“You gonna eat that donut?” I ask the AMHL Photographer as we wait to board the boat that will ferry us from Grand Manan to mainland New Brunswick.

The donut has accompanies us for about two of our three happy days in the heart of CanadAmerica. Without a Dunkin’ Donuts or a Tim Hortons, it was surprisingly easy to find a donut. North Head Bakery was a snap to locate—way easier than finding any harbinger of hockey.

Grand Manan is all about basketball. Hoops hang above many a garage door, and the b-ball court stands out in the village centre. Hockey doesn’t even place second here. A source at a local eatery told me that a vote was taken to determine if the local arena should accommodate curlers or skaters. Curlers won the big prize, but an outdoor rink was constructed for when weather permits, which is not as often as you might think, islanders to play hockey.

Hockey has been unheralded here, but that may change because ground has been broken for a multi-purpose complex that will house the Boys and Girls Club and an upgraded ice rink. Another source told me that some islanders are skeptical about the need for an indoor ice surface, however. This doubt sounds similar to what yet another source said about the fishing industry vis-à-vis tourism: Those who land lobsters and haul in herring tolerate the tourists.

Best to keep a low profile, which as a field agent is now second nature. (I don’t stand on street corners pretending to read newspapers) Laying low for my meals at the safe house, I enjoyed the victuals and ambiance.

“Put Your Head on My Shoulders”, the Paul Anka song Warren “Potsie” Weber made famous, prompted me to ask my wife, “I wonder what Anson Carter—I mean Anson Williams—is doing?

I don’t know where the ex-Bruin or the former TV star are these days, but I enjoyed the wordless version of the hit from Happy Days as much as I’ll relish that donut to which I haven’t yet formally introduced you.

Meet the chocolate sugared donut: chocolate cake, no glaze, just granular sugar sprinkled on top and a nutty aftertaste going down. I know this because, a few days ago. I devoured a donut from the same batch as the one now in the brown paper bag.

My wife doesn’t want any part of this two-day-old beauty and grants me the rights to the free agent confection.

“You’re like a five year old,” she says. “You’ll eat anything that isn’t nailed down!”

So be it. But besides the obvious faux pas of dissing a donut, tossing it toward the trashcan—as if the donut were a basketball flying toward a hoop—would be too risky.

Unlike basketball on Grand Manan, I want to keep a low profile, especially when escape to the mainland is imminent.

To be continued...

History and "Mission" Statement

“Canadian spy.” In due time, when AMHL Glory is published, I’ll reveal the person responsible for creating that moniker for me. I’ll let you in, though, on the history and evolution of my “mission.”

On the Fourth of July, 2006, while driving through New Brunswick, I first envisioned a separate Web site for readers who want to learn more about Canada. Content would be aimed Americans who would want to delve past the thick ice of silly superficialities and stereotypes: hockey freaks, Molson-minded Mounties, and eh-sayers who spell “center” with the e at the end.

Since that day two years ago, I’ve talked to many Canadians who don’t even follow hockey. I know Canadians, on both sides of the 49th parallel, who say PRAH-sess instead of PROH-cess. One Canadian goalie I know may as well pledge allegiance to Coors instead of Molson. And some stateside Canadians have no intention of returning home.

This site, then, is not only a source for enlightenment about America’s northerly neighbor but also a portal for disconnected Canadians who maybe haven’t seen the Sun (the Ottawa Sun, that is) in a while or who haven’t recently read the Globe and Mail.

In addition to links to mainstream media outlets and to satellite sites that shed light on Canada’s grass roots, I’ll deliver quick-hitting and reliable field reports (while dodging the authorities who track my every move.)

Canadianspy.blogspot.com is for Americans who want to avoid appearing on a Rick Mercer special, but the site is ultimately for Americans and Canadians—and anyone else who seeks insights about Canada. And my ultimate “mission” is to foster greater understanding between two great nations.

Oh, and almost anyone can become a “Canadian spy.” So if you’d like to pursue a challenging career in “covert ops,” or become a famous “field agent,” please send e-mail to jimfdwyer(at)gmail(dot)com.

Thanks for reading (and for not reporting me to the authorities.)

Jim Dwyer