POSTING # 31

Go Train Comes to Niagara Falls Finally (But Only on the Weekends); I Spy with My Little Eye…..a Spy: Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


GO Train Comes to Niagara Falls Finally (But Only on the Weekends)

Friends from Ottawa came to Niagara-on-the-Lake last week by Via Rail to see a number of Shaw Festival plays. On Tuesday, we introduced them to a new restaurant in town (Grill on King---they went back four times on their own!) and then joined them at their B&B for a pleasant catch-up chat.

When we heard on Friday that Via Rail was going on strike on Saturday---the day they were to return to Ottawa---we called to see whether we could help with alternative arrangements. We knew they had to travel on Saturday in order to be home to welcome relatives coming from England on Sunday.

They were a bit stumped and we suggested they consider taking the GO Train from Niagara Falls to Toronto, which we had been reading about, and then fly to Ottawa.

On June 27th, the GO Train began an experimental excursion service to Niagara Falls with trains running on the weekends and public holidays. This service will end on Thanksgiving Day.

The friends got seats on Porter Airlines and found a GO Train that would get them to Toronto in time for their flight.

When we took them to the Niagara Falls train station, we saw the familiar green and white, double-decker GO Train cars, as well as the mayor of Niagara Falls, wearing his chain of office, flanked by a bevy of green and red-shirted volunteers welcoming incoming visitors and thanking departing guests for coming to the Falls.

The train and the town have worked hard to put together a great deal.

The normal fare is $15.90 one way, with fares for seniors and children priced at $7.95.

Arriving visitors can buy a $6.00 daily pass that allows them to ride Niagara Falls buses to all the major attractions, and then back to the station.

There is even a special car that provides secure locked storage for bikes.

Thinking that our friends might need help hoisting their bags onto the train, I spoke in advance to a friendly and helpful GO employee. He said he would provide help if necessary, but he pointed out that a ramp had been installed on the platform so that wheelchairs, strollers, and bags with wheels could roll right onto the cars. Our friends had no trouble at all.

I also like this gentle warning on the GO website: “While every effort will be made to get you there on time, customers may experience delays because of the single track shared by GO, freight, and VIA trains through this corridor, as well as the ships passing through the Welland Canal.”

Our friends arrived back in Ottawa in good time to rest up before their relatives arrived from England.

We are sure that the GO Train excursions will be repeated next year and we are hoping that it will be the camel’s nose in the tent---that soon we will have weekday GO service to Toronto.

I Spy with My Little Eye…..a Spy

I was browsing recently in a used book store and bought a book, The Making of a Spy. I was curious to see whether it dealt with Richard Sorge, a Soviet spy born in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan (it did have an article on Sorge). We had heard of him when we lived in Baku in 2002-2003 (see posting # 5, December 21, 2008, for background on our stay in Baku.)

When we asked a friend in Baku to recommend a guide for a tour of the city, he suggested a senior police official with the Azerbaijan government, who had an outstanding knowledge of Baku, and excellent English (he had studied some criminology courses at Harvard under a US Aid program). Apparently he supplemented his quite small police salary by moonlighting as a guide on the weekends.

The guide---in his forties, tall, dark and with the authoritative air of a police officer--- picked us up in his car one Saturday morning. After giving us an excellent tour of the main historical attractions in the centre of Baku, he told us he was going to show us something that most tourists didn’t see because it was in a park a little way out of the old town. In the park was a famous sculpture in honour of Richard Sorge, the Soviet Union’s greatest spy.

As we drove to the park, he asked if we had heard of Sorge.

We had not.

He asked if we had heard of Tom Clancy, the writer.

We had, of course.

He said that Clancy had called Sorge the best spy of all time.

That was impressive.

The guide said that Sorge was born in Baku in 1895, the son of a German mining engineer and a Russian mother. The family returned to Germany soon after Sorge’s birth. In 1914 Sorge enlisted in the German army, was seriously wounded, discharged and entered university, where he received a PhD in Political Science.

He became a member of the German Communist Party and when his outspoken political views got him into trouble he fled to Moscow where he became a low-level intelligence agent with the Soviet Government.

Later he became part of the Red Army’s intelligence service and conducted spying missions around the world. He developed an incredible ability to win the confidence of important people and then steal their secrets.

In 1933, he was asked by Red Army officials to set up a spy network in Japan. Working in Japan supposedly as a German journalist, he had close relations with both the German Embassy and the Japanese government.

There is agreement that he managed to winkle out of the Germans and Japanese some critically important secrets that he passed on to Moscow. For example, he told Moscow about the plans for Pearl Harbour (Stalin didn’t pass that on to the US!). And he told Stalin that Japan did not plan to invade Russia. That information allowed Stalin to transfer troops from the far east of the Soviet Union to the west to fight and eventually defeat the German army.

The Japanese eventually caught Sorge (1944) and when their offer to exchange him for some Japanese spies that Moscow held was rejected---Stalin did not want to admit that the Soviet Union had been spying on Japan---he was hung.

After the war, the Soviet Union declared Sorge a national hero and streets and schools were named after him and many sculptures were commissioned.

Since Sorge was born in Baku, there had to be a sculpture in that city.

As we were nearing the park, the guide turned to us and asked us to imagine what kind of sculpture we would design to commemorate this heroic spy.

Pat and I thought and thought but couldn’t come up with anything but some kind of statue of the man.

“Just wait”, the guide said as we drove up to the park.

“There it is”, he said.

At the end of a 'grande allée' was a massive monument. We just gasped, “Oh my god!”

Now, I would like to ask the reader the same question the guide asked us? What kind of sculpture would you design?

Take a minute or two.

And then click on this link to see the Baku sculpture.

After you have seen the photo, please come back and I’ll tell you how the guide explained the symbolism of the sculpture.

In the meantime---just so your eyes don’t cheat and go to the explanation without checking out the link---I’ll tell another story about spies and Baku.

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When I was in Baku (and I’m sure it is even truer today) the city was awash in spies, all attracted by the international competition for the oil and gas reserves in the Caspian Sea.

Early in my stay in Baku, I shared a hotel elevator with two young Americans, a man and a woman who looked as though they were just out of university. When I asked what they were doing in Baku, they replied evasively, “Oh, just some liaison”.

New CIA recruits on their first assignment, I decided.

Later on, I was invited to a party with English, French, and German guests. Most of them had a plausible cover story explaining what they were doing in Baku, but one French fellow had such an improbable story that I leaned over to him and said, “You’re a spook, aren’t you?’

He looked at me with disdain as though I had just committed what text-messaging people call a BGO (a Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious).

He shrugged his Gallic shoulders. Of course, he was a spy. Why else would he be in a backwater town like Baku when he could be in glorious Paree?

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Now, back to the Sorge monument.

The guide explained that the designer, Yuri Dubov, decided that the essence of spying was watching. How better to commemorate the work of Sorge than by having a monument that was solely composed of eyes---alert, silent, sinister, haunting eyes.

I would like to have seen it at night, with the eyes illuminated from beneath. That must be a truly awesome sight.

By the way, there are some who believe that the hanging of Sorge was a mock-execution, and that he was smuggled back to the Soviet Union where he finished his days working as a spymaster for the KGB.

I think that’s unlikely.

But who knows, we are talking here about the world of espionage.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Last summer, a contractor started building a house beside us.

During much of the construction, the site was not fenced off. In the evenings, neighbourhood children, aged 6 to 10, would swarm over the site. They explored and moved things around but didn’t do any damage until one evening when a couple of them started throwing nails, boards and tools into the cellar.

The contractor called the police.

It didn’t take a police officer long to identify the kids who had been playing in the house. He lined them up in front of the contractor and lectured them about the crimes they had been committing and spoke about ‘jail’ if they didn’t behave. Then, he asked them each to apologize to the contractor and promise never to go on the property again.

With tears running down their cheeks, they made their apologies.

And, that was the end of problems at the house.

On Halloween, one of the culprits, a sunny-faced lad, called at our house for candy.

What was his costume?

Why, that of a police officer. Of course!

We are not sure what the moral of the story is, but there has to be one.


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See you next Sunday for Posting #32 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.