Uranium: the Climate Fixer?
Nuclear power is now classified as green, though not by everybody. It seems to be the simplest way of producing electricity without giving off Carbon Dioxide.
Put uranium in one end and electricity comes out the other. Steam comes out the tower. There is the problem of nuclear, waste but that’s being ignored for now.
Many countries have banned nuclear power because of the waste problem. The people promoting nuclear power say don’t worry, there isn’t that much of it.
That re-birth of nuclear has driven the price of Uranium to a recent high to $106 a pound. The price has quadrupled in four years, though it was higher around 2007.
And Uranium production is one area where China doesn’t have a hold on things.
Who Speaks What
And Your Second Choice is?
A very detailed map of the second language in countries around the world. It can be somewhat confusing if you happen to know the details of a particular place. French shows as the second language of Canada, but there are places where it is barely spoken, with the bulk of French speakers in Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick. South America is perplexing at first; Italian immigrants flocked to rich Argentina in the 20th century; across the Andes, English is big in Chile and native languages dominate in Peru and Bolivia. In Europe, the Ukrainians probably wouldn’t like the fact that Russian is number two; English is listed as number two in Italy, but only about a third of Italians speak English whereas almost everyone speaks it in Holland and the Scandinavian countries. Chinese is conquering once anti-immigrant Australia.
European Nationalism by Country
Nicolas Chauvin was French soldier of the Napoleonic era who was said to be blindly loyal to Napoleon and France. Thus Chauvinistic meaning nationalistic, though probably most used now to describe men who are anti-women. It seems that Nicolas Chauvin may not have existed; around 1830 someone made him up, a character whose nationalism was over the top.
The map below is quite perplexing and is ideal fodder for hours of coffee shop debate. No surprise that the Russians feel superior; but the Spanish are that modest? And the most nationalistic are the Greeks, followed by the rest of the Balkans.
The Peak of Colonialism
I don’t know quite why but I saw this map and thought it went with the one above.
1957: The first year Volkswagen came to the United States
Essay of the Week
An obituary I wrote in 2014.
Walter Massey was born into a life of privilege and was being groomed to take a role in the family manufacturing company, Massey-Harris, when he decided to abandon that path and take up acting – a career that would last more than 65 years.
It was a choice that ran in the family; his close relation Raymond Massey was also an actor, famous for his 1940 film role playing Abraham Lincoln, although later Walter Massey one-upped him, playing two American presidents in separate films, Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft.
Walter Massey, who died on Aug. 4 in Montreal of complications from cancer at the age of 85, started on stage in Boston in 1949 while at university and did his last voice-over work in July of this year as Principal Haney in the popular children’s television show Arthur.
The list of parts played by Mr. Massey runs to several pages, in stage, film and television. The highlights included a stage role in the early 1950s as Brutus in Julius Caesar. It was an early production by flamboyant New York producer Joseph Papp, and morphed into the famous Shakespeare in the Park series.
“Walter was very proud of his Brutus,” said Richard Dumont, a fellow actor and director who directed Mr. Massey in 52 episodes of Papa Beaver’s Storytime, an animated TV series from France, dubbed into English in Montreal in the 1990s.
“Walter was a mainstay on any production. You could trust him to bring things to the character that even the writers hadn’t thought of,” Mr. Dumont said.
Both Walter Massey (as Mr. Tinker) and Mr. Dumont had major voice roles in the 1996 animated film How the Toys Saved Christmas, which starred Mary Tyler Moore and Tony Randall.
Mr. Massey had hundreds of roles in movies, many of them American productions filmed in Canada, including his major part as President Roosevelt opposite Rod Steiger in Cook & Peary: The Race to the Pole (1983). His role as President Taft was in The Greatest Game Ever Played. For decades he was in demand to do voice work in cartoons such as Arthur. The show which won an Emmy.
In the one the few times he portrayed an evil character – he was too likeable for that – he was the voice of Pollutto, on an animated, environment-focused series called The Smoggies.
He was perhaps best known to television viewers for his role as Doc Stewart in the Canadian-produced series Lassie, which ran from 1997 to 1999.
“Walter was a delight to work with,” said Susan Almgren, who worked closely with him for two years on Lassie, produced by Montreal-based Cinar. “I played Timmy’s mother and I was a widow and a vet and Walter was the avuncular Doc Stewart, my mentor. It was the last of the lavish productions and each episode took a week to shoot, because it involved children and animals. Walter and I spent a lot of time together in trailers and on sets and became quite close, like the characters in the series.”
Along with his success in acting, Mr. Massey helped to start a number of theatres in Canada. He co-founded the King’s Playhouse in Georgetown, Prince Edward Island, and the Piggery Theatre in North Hatley, Que. He was also deeply involved in the now-defunct Mountain Playhouse in Montreal, which received strong support from the city’s mayor at the time, Jean Drapeau.
Walter Edward Hart Massey was born in Toronto on Aug. 19, 1928, into the family that was at the pinnacle of social and financial life in the city. He was named after his grandfather, who had been president of Massey-Harris, the giant Canadian maker of agricultural equipment (it later became Massey Ferguson).
Walter’s extended family included second cousins (the cousins of his father) actor Raymond Massey and his diplomat brother, Vincent Massey, the first Canadian-born governor-general.
Young Walter attended Upper Canada College, and the University of Western Ontario. He also studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering with courses in metallurgy management. With that education, he was more than ready to eventually run the operations at his family’s tractor manufacturing company.
But by chance, he discovered acting.
He planned to take on some small parts at the Boston Tributary Theatre while doing homework when not on stage, but instead he was thrown into a major role, the villain Comte de Guiche in Cyrano de Bergerac. His grades at MIT dropped. He told his family he would rather be an actor than an industrialist but promised his father, Denton Massey, that he would finish his degree. He did, and wore his MIT engineer’s ring, although he didn’t finish his master’s thesis.
“His father went to see him act in Boston,” recalled Mr. Massey’s wife, Sharman Yarnell. “He told him, ‘If you want to act you’ll have to do it on your own.’ ”
(Denton Massey may have disapproved of Walter’s acting choice, but he had drifted from an expected career path. Although Denton also graduated from MIT, and did go to work in the family business, he was also a deeply religious man. He broadcast Bible classes on radio in Toronto in the 1930s and 1940s and late in life became an Anglican priest. He was also a Conservative member of Parliament for a Toronto riding from 1935 to 1949, and ran for the party leadership in 1938.)
After his Boston stage foray, Walter Massey eventually moved to New York and studied theatre, at Howard Clurman’s professional workshop, where classmates included Steve McQueen, Julie Harris and Marlon Brando. The workshop was for professional actors and classes were held late at night after the Broadway shows closed. Along with working actors it took two non-pofessionals; 1,200 applied and Walter Massey was accepted.
His first major role was as Brutus in a Shakespeare festival put on by the flamboyant Broadway producer, Joseph Papp. After Julius Caesar finished its run, Mr. Massey went to Montreal, where he had promised to do a play; he turned down a request from Mr. Papp to return to New York.
“He was loyal and once he gave his word, he never went back on it,” Ms. Yarnell said.
Montreal became his base for the rest of his life. He bought a house downtown in the area known as the Shaughnessy Village. “It was his centenary project. The house built in 1867 and he bought and restored it in 1967. At the time he was also in charge of the on-site entertainment at Expo 67,” said Ms. Yarnell.
The two met at an audition in Montreal. A casual conversation revealed both their houses had been broken into. Mr. Massey suggested what was needed was a double bolt deadlock. He winked at a friend and said to Ms. Yarnell: “Why don’t you come up and see my double bolt deadlock ?”
“That was January 18 1975, and we were together ever since then,” said Ms Yarnell.
Over the years, his stage work took him across Canada, to Ontario’s Stratford Festival, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, the Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg, and the Fredericton Playhouse in New Brunswick. In 1953 He played Jason in Medea in London, Ontario, one of his first professional roles in Canada.
He was well-liked by cast mates, both for his collegial support and his sense of humour.
“Walter was always laughing. He was a renowned punster and he couldn’t stop himself. He loved getting into sparring matches with puns, things that would make people both chuckle and roll their eyes,” said Thor Bishopric, a Montreal actor who played the role of Mr. Massey’s on-screen son in three different productions.
“He would always greet me, ‘Hello my son.’ Walter was very supportive of young up-and-coming actors.”
Mr. Massey also performed in French, and was a member of the French-speaking actors’ association, Union des Artistes. He spoke French with an English accent, but that worked well in roles such as Winston Churchill in a 1980s Radio-Canada TV program, Parc des Braves. In Les Belles Histoires du Pays en Haut, a television drama that aired live in the 1950s, he played another anglophone character speaking French. In a more recent TV series, Edgar Allan, détective, which aired in the 1980s, he played a Scottish ghost and had to speak French with a Scottish accent.
“He was a very talented actor and we got to know each other well doing that series,” said Albert Millaire, a prominent Quebec actor who also works in both languages. “His French was very good. Of course he had an accent, but that’s what we needed in the role.”
In addition to acting, Mr. Massey was active in the performers’ union, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) and was a member of the board of the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association for 20 years.
Along with his wife, Sharman, he leaves his sister Marilyn MacKay-Smith and many nieces and nephews.