Everything everywhere all at once: Not the wonderfully creative and entertaining film that deserves every award it’s up for, but our current existence. Week after week, month after month, reality continues to pile on. Covid wasn’t enough, we had to add RSV and a bad flu season. Russia’s war on Ukraine is entering its second year. Suddenly there are mysterious spy (or not) balloons floating across North America, being shot down every couple of days. Yet more gun violence in the US. Using vehicles to run down pedestrians in Israel and New York and a bus to slam into a daycare in Quebec. Then just over a week ago came the utterly devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria—36,000 dead so far, gut-wrenching, horrible scenes daily. Underneath it all the slow motion catastrophe of global warming. It’s enough to turn off the news entirely and no one would blame you. Yet while the volume and frequency of these events seems to be increasing—as is the general hostility among humans as the stress eats away at us—we’ve lived through some pretty intense periods in the past. Let me illustrate.
Remember April 1961? No, me neither. I was 18 months old. But whether you were alive and aware isn’t necessary to appreciate the following. Our new Flashback Friday feature is proving popular, as we figured it would be. To select the photos, I’ve been combing back through stacks of old papers—both the Voice’s archives as well as my personal collection of other papers I’ve acquired over the years—and I happened to find a startling front page last weekend. It was of The Evening Tribune, as it was called then (now the Welland Tribune), dated April 17 1961. As you’ve seen above, the giant headline blares news of a devastating fire in Welland. Here’s the first paragraph of the main story: The worst fire in the history of Welland raged through three downtown businesses and the Odd Fellows Hall early this morning, destroying an entire block. A tumbling wall crashed tons of bricks through the adjoining F. W. Woolworth Store, greatly increasing the total amount of damage. It is believed that the loss will exceed $275,000. A disaster, clearly, and fortunately one apparently without casualties...But wait, there’s more, much more: Let’s start with a tiny item: Syngman Rhee, 86, deposed ex-president of South Korea, exiled to Hawaii, is admitted to hospital there. Nope, never heard of him either, but the internet tells us he was an authoritarian who crushed dissent, was essentially a puppet of the US, and who amended the constitution to drop the term limit on his office. When police killed student demonstrators almost exactly one year before this edition of The Evening Tribune, in April 1960, the CIA kindly provided a DC-4 and flew Rhee and his wife to Hawaii, where he lived three more years, dying there in July 1965 of a stroke. Let’s see what ad pops up as we break for a new paragraph…
The front page continues: Reds Reject Some Details Of Laos Note. Well, we all know how much worse this gets, in Laos and Vietnam, and in Cambodia. This brief article is about the Soviets rejecting a Western allies’ proposal for a ceasefire. In 1959, there were 760 American soldiers in Vietnam. By four years after this edition was printed, there were 385,000...Moving on: A wire story from Canadian Press via AP, Eichmann Enters Plea Of Not Guilty. Yeah, that Eichmann. After escaping Allied detention in 1945 Adolf Eichmann settled in Argentina, where, in May 1960, one year before this edition of The Evening Tribune hit the street, Mossad agents abducted him and took him back to Israel to stand trial for his role as one of the chief architects of Hitler’s “final solution.” The article opens: Adolf Eichmann pleaded not guilty today to all 15 counts in the Israeli indictment accusing him of directing the extermination of 6,000,000 European Jews. Then Attorney General Gideon Hausner opened his case with the words: “Six million prosecutors stand here with me”...The weather kills some people: Considering it’s mid April, this next one is a surprise. The headline: Spring Snowstorm Hits The Midwest, and the first line: A crippling spring snowstorm, sweeping out of the northern plains with all the fury of a midwinter blockbuster, staggered the midwestern US today. It goes on to describe ten-foot drifts in areas of Minnesota, and some 18 deaths attributed to the storm, mostly from “traffic accidents on ice and snow-covered highways.” Don’t forget, it’s 1961. Remember those gruesome accident-scene films from Driver’s Ed? Rigid steering columns through the head and other highly effective images that stick with you for the next five decades? In 1961 there were no antilock brakes, no airbags, no padded dashboards, and very, very few seat belts—it would be another seven years, 1968, before seat belts were made mandatory in the US. (And it wasn’t until 1976 that Ontario required seat belts be worn. Jeez!)
Fleeing from the Mob: There’s also a short article about a witness to the beating of a gambler in Toronto, who is said to be “hiding out among the crowds at the Fort Erie racetrack.” The beating triggered an “investigation into rackets,” which is a 1961 word for organized crime, i.e., the Mob. The witness “was reported to have been going to [the victim’s] aid when he was grabbed and told to stay out of it if he wanted to ‘stay healthy’...Finally, there’s Fidel: Rounding out our list—recall that these are all front-page stories in this single edition—comes a claim from Fidel Castro. The headline: Rebel Landings in Cuba Backed By US: Castro. Yes, my fellow time-travelers from 62 years in the future, this April 17 1961 edition of The Evening Tribune is bringing us news that the Bay of Pigs invasion is underway, having started that very day! This famously colossal failure at the height of the Cold War was covertly funded and directed by the US, who intended that their band of mercenaries overthrow Castro. The plan was hatched under the Eisenhower administration, but carried out by JFK. Once the world became aware of the invasion—I mean, it was reported in The Evening Tribune, for crying out loud—Kennedy decided to withhold planned US air support, dooming the operation. April 17 was a Monday. By Thursday it was all over but for the interrogation and torture. Well, not quite. The botched landings emboldened Castro, pushed Cuba closer to the Soviet Union, and set the stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis a little over a year later, in October 1962...Oh, and there was another fire: Thirty-five miles southwest of Brantford, forcing three families out of their apartments...How’s that for a single front page? A Welland inferno, another fire, an ill ex-Korean dictator, chaos in Laos, mob witness on the run, a killer snowstorm, Adolf Eichmann on trial, and the Bay of Pigs on the day-of. Yes, our lives at the moment are uniquely stressful, arguably more so than ever. But I imagine the readers of the April 17 1961 issue of The Evening Tribune were of a similar mind. Here’s that entire front page:
False spring is here: Don’t get too used to it! See you next time.
