Nancy Whittle's Mini was crushed by a fallen tree.

Environment Canada has confirmed it was three tornadoes — not one — that wreaked havoc in southern Essex County during the early morning hours of June 6. The first, rated an F1 on the Fujita scale, touched down near Harrow, Ont., while the second and third — an F2 and F1 — tore through southern sections of Leamington.

When I visited the community a few days after the severe weather struck, cleanup crews were still in high gear, clearing debris from streets and yards. The destruction was at its worst along Highway 18 just west of Sherk Street, where houses were splintered and greenhouses shattered. Seacliff Park, near the pier, lost many of its stately trees. In the Cherry Lane subdivision, where my wife and I once lived, large trees where split, shredded or uprooted, while many younger trees seemed to survive unscathed. A little farther east, tree damage was heavy at the Erie Shores Golf and Country Club, while greenhouses and barns were twisted or flattened on farms.

Despite the millions of dollars worth of destruction, however, not a single life was lost. That became the focus of a column I wrote for Sun Media later in the week.

Homes along the north shore of Lake Erie took the brunt of the F2 tornado's destructive power.

The Hume Cronyn Memorial Observatory at UWO

When it comes to community involvement and making impressions on young minds, it’s tough to beat the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Western Ontario.

For many years, the astronomy faculty and students, supported by volunteers from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada‘s London Centre, have offered public lectures and viewings of the stars at the campus’s Hume Cronyn Memorial Observatory. The facility is open on clear Saturday nights during May, June, July and August for lecture presentations and stargazing, but it opens its doors on special occasions through the rest of the year as well.

Yesterday’s cool and clear evening provided a great chance to study nearby planets. The observatory’s refractor telescope, as well as three other reflector telescopes, were trained on Saturn and Venus. I’d guess about 100 people were there at various points through the evening (8:30 p.m. to 11 p.m.). Roughly half of those took in a 45-minute-long lecture on meteors and meteorites by astronomy professor Margaret Campbell-Brown at about 8:45 p.m. RASC London Centre volunteer Bob Duff and Western astro prof Peter G. Brown helped manage the public viewings.

The age range of participants last night was impressive — from little ones sitting on parents’ shoulders to people in their 60s. One rather precocious junior astronomer, who couldn’t have been more than 12 years old, asked the majority of questions (and informed ones, too) during the Q&A following Campbell-Brown’s talk.

A young patron gets a chance to view Saturn through the observatory's refractor telescope.

Through the school year, the UWO department runs a community outreach program called “Exploring the Stars,” geared to a wide range of age and interest groups. See the website for additional information. Later this summer, the university will hold two open houses at its Elginfield Observatory, home of its research telescope, as well.

We began our foray into the murky and tentative world of journalism ethics last evening with a discussion about bias, then launched into two case studies. One of the benefits of having taught journalism as long as I have is that former students become some of the best sources of case material. Last night, we explored dilemmas (one from the world of broadcast journalism; the other, print) faced by two of my former students at Ryerson University‘s School of Journalism: Kimberly Gale, a reporter at CBC Radio in Toronto, and Oksana Lypowecky, an editor at the Saint John Telegraph Journal. It’s a three-hour class. But I arrived early and stayed late, taking time to stroll the UWO grounds before and after the lecture.

The spire of UWO's Middlesex College at dusk

There is something haltingly beautiful about a university or college campus in the summer. The pace is relaxed. The manicured grounds are beautiful. The detritus of the past semester has been swept away and anticipation is already building toward the arrival of a fresh crop of students in the fall. Campus pubs and eateries are uncrowded and convivial.

Perhaps I feel this way because my spouse and I spent our first year of married life on a university campus. We were residence dons at Conrad Grebel College at the University of Waterloo and spent the glorious summer of 1975 on its sprawling grounds. Our studies complete, we had four months to while away before the big move to our first jobs in another community — and we took advantage of every moment. There were early-morning duckling feedings and late-night walks. Both of us became involved in the dramatic production of In Search of a Country by Urie Bender, directed by Maurice Evans, at UW’s Theatre of the Arts — Jacquelyn had the female lead; I was stage manager. There were cast parties, walks to a nearby plaza for wine and havarti cheese, and impromptu picnics with no particular beginning or end. Rent was $50 a month, it was summertime and the livin’, as George Gerschwin wrote, was easy.

At a deeper level, however, there’s much more. Universities and colleges are about inquiry, learning and communicating — pursuits that lie at the heart of the journalistic credo. Their campuses are at once utilitarian and symbolic. They represent aspiration, experimentation and progress. They remain repositories of a kind of idealism that tends to dissolve beyond their gates. And, as corny as it may sound, the students who inhabit their varied spaces are a kind of bridge to the future.

In all of that, for me, there is a magnetic attraction.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hmmm. Maybe Delta Airlines employees and airport security officials in Amsterdam were doing something similar on Christmas Day, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab passed through their security scanners. In any case, it’s a nice gesture. Though, as Toronto Star columnist Cathal Kelley notes, this kind of routine will now get you tasered at some international airports.

The Lisbon airport dance is reminiscent of a routine in April of this year at Amsterdam’s main train station:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s hoping that, despite our collective obsession and occasional bouts of paranoia over security in public spaces, we never entirely erase such displays of cheer, fantasy, whimsy and goodwill.

The approach of that milestone reminds me of how tentative, narrow and conditional our understanding of history often is. Take the current decade, now coming fast to a close, as an example.

As we approached the end of 1999, it seemed clear that with the turning of all four numbers on our digital calendars — as if they were odometer numerals — we’d enter a new, as-yet-undesignated, era. The calendar was telling us things were about to change. Who were we to argue?

There were passionate and heated arguments about what the turning of all those figures would mean. Remember the Y2K paranoia — the notion that many of our automated systems would freeze and lock up, creating mass havoc? Then there were the debates over when, exactly, the end of the second millennium in the common era would arrive. Many argued (rightly, but inconsequentially) that the new millennium would not begin on Jan. 1, 2000, but rather on Jan. 1, 2001.

When extremists struck at the United States with such unprecedented force on Sept. 11, 2001, we revised our thinking. Many commentators, myself included, thought that, when the chronicle of this century is written 100 years hence, 01-09-11 would mark the geopolitical fulcrum on which the world shifted and a new chapter of human history began. Only eight years out, does that still seem likely? Not so much, really — the events around airport security in the last few days notwithstanding.

Just as lively debate still exists among historians over precisely when the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, the Victorian Era or the Modern Era began, so I expect debate to continue for some time as to when, exactly, the 21st century arrived in our midst. For some, it will be the clicking over of the calendric numerals; for others, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Economists may one day argue that it was a particular date in the fall of 2008, when the biggest global recession since the Great Depression struck.

I was intrigued, however, to read a passage on the popular Quoteflections blog from Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Martin is quoted there as saying Nov. 10, 2001, was a pivotal date in the history of the past decade, if not the fledgling century. “That was the day the first iPod was shipped. To me, it heralded a kind of an interesting, ironic intersection of trends. In terms of consumers, what it heralded was individualization . . . . But Apple didn’t just announce iPod; it announced iPod and iTunes simultaneously. What that heralded was also the era of the business ecosystem — a gigantic system that a corporation orchestrates and manages. The two trends were more momentous than any of us had realized. It’s not that iPod caused it, but iPod signalled it,” Martin said.

Whose view will prevail over the long run won’t be known for another century or two. But two things seem clear. One, that the technological shifts of the past decade will play a role in interpreting and drawing the lines of history. And two, that history, as always, will be told in myriad ways, through the lenses of an increasing number of tellers, through an ever-expanding bouquet of tools and platforms.

Brian Pickett, left, and Graeme Cornies at Voodoo's Toronto studio

Graeme, our second son, never gave up on the music thing. It likely began before he was born, when his mother Jacquelyn filled our home with music while he was in the womb, then carried him on her hip through many choreography sessions and theatrical rehearsals. When we moved back to Canada and her choreography career evolved into that of a troubadour harpist, Jacquelyn’s musicality influenced the development of his own styles of expression.

The passion grew during elementary school, when I lent him my acoustic guitar and taught him a few chords. It continued through high school, when, like many pubescent guys faced with the choice between a sports field and a stage as the place to express burgeoning manhood, he formed a rock ‘n’ roll band with his friends.

It got more serious when he enrolled in York University’s fine arts program. And through thousands of sets in hundreds of smelly bars and clubs, through sleepless nights crowded up against looming deadlines, through nickel-and-diming his way to his next paycheque, he was relentless in the pursuit of that thing that would give him the greatest vocational joy.

If I needed any more evidence that my early skepticism was misplaced, it came this week with a Gemini Award nomination. Graeme, along with Voodoo Highway Music business associates Brian Pickett, James Chapple and David Kelly, snagged a nod in the Best Original Music Score in an Animated Program or Series category. The Toronto company is an up-and-comer in field of commercial music composition; their credits range from National Geographic TV specials to 30-second spots and jingles. Graeme’s credits reflect that growing range and diversity.

So, from a somewhat sheepish dad who also happens to be a huge fan: bravo. Here’s the opening minute of the nominated World of Quest series. In addition to helping score the series’ music, Graeme sings the World of Quest chorus, as he also did in the opening theme of Total Drama Island, farther below. Come to think of it, the Total Drama Island theme is, in some respects, rather autobiographical.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Update (Oct. 20): The Gemini award in this category went to Michael Richard Plowman for his music to computer-animated action comedy adventure series Jibber Jabber. Graeme’s text to me from the ceremony on learning the news: “No dice this time It’s all good, though ”

Hergé's graphic novels are most popular in Europe.

To say Tintin inspired me to become a journalist would be an overstatement. He was, after all, merely a cartoon character who lived inside the covers of my favourite books at the local public library. As a child, I checked out those volumes again and again.

But it probably was Tintin who established the notion in a young, impressionable mind that some people were, by vocation, reporters. Tintin was such a person, even though, throughout his “graphic novel” existence, he never filed a story, content to criss-cross the globe solving mysteries and pursuing crooks, accompanied by the colourful cast of characters that were his friends. Illustrator Georges Remi, who adopted the pen name Hergé (the French pronunciation of his initials, reversed) had me in his spell.

It hasn’t yet made many waves in North America, but in Europe, anticipation of Steven Spielberg’s 3D treatment of the young reporter’s adventures is already arcing upward. The Spielberg project is in post-production, slated for release in the fall of 2011. It stars Jamie Bell as Tintin, Andy Serkis as Captain Haddock and Daniel Craig as Red Rackham. Given that Spielberg’s first Tintin film follows the plot of The Secret of the Unicorn, speculation is already rampant about a sequel, which would naturally be Red Rackham’s Treasure.

Born in Brussels in 1907, Remi’s first drawings appeared in a scouting magazine when he was only 14. Six years later, he’d been hired by the daily newspaper Le Vingtième siècle to be editor-in-chief of Le Petit vingtième, its children’s supplement. The Tintin series was launched in 1929.

Remi managed to spin nearly two dozen tales of intrigue and adventure featuring Tintin, his mostly incompetent allies and a notorious collection of villains, before the illustrator’s death on March 3, 1983. As remarkable as the stories, however, were Herge’s illustrations. At a time when newspapers were just beginning to grasp the reader appeal of the funnies, Tintin’s creator took the art to new levels. Scenes were rendered in great detail compared to the work of his contemporaries; foreign landscapes, besides being vividly appealing, were topographically correct. The plots, too, were fairly complex: spies, arms merchants, smugglers, capitalists and communists, thieves, traitors and assassins abounded, always to be exposed by our hero and his pals.

Today, Hergé’s legacy is carefully guarded by his estate and its conservators in Belgium, who operate the official website. A small band of Tintin enthusiasts worldwide collects trivia and monitors developments, including the international team of bloggers, programmers and moderators at Tintinologist.org, among them Simon Doyle (@tintinologist on Twitter), and British webmaster Chris Tregenza (@TintinMovie on Twitter), who runs TintinMovie.org. An Hergé museum in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, opened earlier this year.

Below, a short clip in which Hergé draws his famous hero and dog Snowy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.