SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-09-18 published
Peter DEVINE
By Mary DEVINE
Scholar, athlete, husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather,
friend. Born January 21, 1914, in Ottawa. Died February 2, in
Ottawa, of natural causes, aged 89.
By Mary DEVINE
Thursday,
September 18, 2003 - Page A28
Peter DEVINE was defined by the grocery business he, and his
father before him, operated on York Street in the Byward Market
in Ottawa. Founded in 1911,
DEVINE's was a local institution
until it closed in 1975. In the late 1930s, Peter took over his
father's fledgling business and developed it into Ottawa's premier
grocery establishment. Except for his years of armed service
in Newfoundland during the Second World War, Peter managed his
business 12 hours a day, six (often seven) days a week for almost
40 years. Sixty years before the advent of internet home grocery-shopping,
DEVINE's red trucks, carrying individual orders in wooden boxes,
could be seen making the rounds to 24 Sussex Drive, Rideau Hall,
Parliament Hill, embassies and private clubs, as well as to customers
elsewhere in the city. On most Saturdays and preceding major
holidays, shopping at
DEVINE's was a ritual for generations of
Ottawa families.
While Peter blossomed into a successful merchant, he began his
adult life as a gifted athlete and scholar. When he was just
14, he won the McKinley Trophy, awarded to the best Ottawa junior
tennis player under 16. He continued playing tennis until he
was 80. While earning his B.A. and the Governor General's Medal
at the University of Ottawa in 1934, Peter starred with the local
hockey team. During this time, he was heralded by many as Ottawa's
finest prospect for National Hockey League ranks. After earning
his M.A. in Ottawa in 1936, he began his PhD studies at the University
of Toronto, finding time to centre a Varsity Blues hockey line.
Just a couple of credits shy of his PhD, Peter returned to Ottawa
to attend to his ailing father's business. He continued to play
hockey; his bride-to-be, Aurelia
GRIMES, saved clippings from
Ottawa newspapers which document, for his family today, his "brilliant"
play with the Hull Volant during that time.
Peter and Aurie married in 1940 and raised seven children, living
most of their married life in the Glebe neighbourhood of Ottawa.
Aurie died suddenly of heart failure at age 60 in 1974.
After decades devoted to the grocery business and Aurie's untimely
death, Peter became somewhat philosophical by the mid-1970s.
Rather than sell and risk damaging his reputation at the hands
of a new proprietor, Peter decided to close the store in 1975.
After almost 65 years as a fixture on the Byward Market,
DEVINE's
ceased to exist.
Peter embarked on a new life. He took art appreciation courses
at Carleton University and travelled to Europe to observe first-hand
the paintings reproduced in his text books. He became an avid
gardener in an attempt to learn how the produce he had sold for
40 years was grown. He spent many hours volunteering for the
Canadian Cancer Society, St. Vincent's Hospital and the Ottawa
Food
Bank. In the late 1970s, Peter met Anne
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER who became
his closest companion until his death. In 1981, they established
a new business, Handi-House, to serve disabled customers. After
they sold the business, they travelled extensively.
Peter was renowned for his generosity. In the early 1980s, he
opened his home to a family of five Cambodian refugees who have
since made a successful life for themselves in Canada. His identity
to many outsiders was his commercial success; however, to his
family and close Friends, he was an intensely private, independent
and humble man, a devout Catholic who attended mass virtually
every day of his full life.
Peter's daughter Mary
DEVINE wrote this with help from her siblings:
Gloria, Peter, Patrick, Christopher, Michael and Nancy.
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SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-10-07 published
Desire impressed scout
By Tim WHARNSBY
Tuesday,
October 7, 2003 - Page S11
Toronto -- Dan
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER had a twinkle in his eye and an eye for
beating the odds. Nobody knew this better than Atlanta Thrashers
scout Dan MARR, who took a chance on Snyder.
The first time
MARR sat down to have breakfast with
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER at
the Boot and Blade Dining Lounge in Owen Sound, Ontario, seven
years ago, the initial impression
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER made was good enough.
"Snydes had this twinkle in his eye that said he was going to
get there no matter what the odds were,"
MARR recalled yesterday,
a day after the 25-year-old hockey player died of fatal injuries
suffered in a car accident with teammate Dany Heatley last week.
The▼ odds were stacked against
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER making it to the National
Hockey League. He was a scrawny teenager. He didn't possess a
grand scoring touch. He lacked the impressive speed that smaller
players need. But
MARR couldn't cross
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER off his list of
prospects.
"When you watch a game as a scout, you look at the basics,"
MARR
said from his Toronto home yesterday. "You look at skating ability,
size and strength. Dan didn't score high in the basics. But then
you make a list of the best players on each team and he was the
best player on his junior team [the Owen Sound Platers]."
MARR, who was a Toronto Maple Leafs scout at the time, simply
used common sense and invited
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER to the Leafs' rookie camp
in 1998. When
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER wasn't offered a contract, he returned to
Owen Sound for a fourth season.
MARR, who joined the expansion Thrashers a few weeks later, told
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER not to give up.
MARR wanted
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER for the Thrashers.
"I know this sort of thing is said all the time, but you wish
some of the players you see with more talent had the heart, courage
and determination of Dan
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER,"
MARR said. "He played like
his personality. He was an honest performer, whose work ethic
and attitude were infectious.
"Everything you saw with this guy is that he gave it his all.
That's why a superstar like Dany
HEATLEY took him in as a roommate
last summer and the two trained together...... He fit in everywhere."
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SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-10-07 published
A close-knit community mourns death of National Hockey League
player
Anthony REINHART visits the hometown of Dan
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER, a kid who
just wouldn't quit.
By Anthony
REINHART
Tuesday,
October 7, 2003 - Page A3
Elmira, Ontario -- On the main street of Elmira, three slabs
of polished black granite rise from a fountain in Gore Park.
The monument, erected in 2001 after a string of car accidents,
bears the names of those taken too young. The name Dan Snyder
will now join a list that's grown too long, too quickly for this
bucolic town of 9,600, better known for its maple syrup and Mennonites.
Mr. SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER, a 25-year-old forward with the Atlanta Thrashers
of the National Hockey League, died Sunday night, six days after
teammate Dany
HEATLEY lost control of his speeding Ferrari and
crashed on a narrow Atlanta street.
In the wider world of sport and celebrity, Mr.
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER will be
remembered, perhaps only briefly, as the latest professional
athlete to die in the fast lane.
But it's different here in his hometown, a short country drive
north of Kitchener-Waterloo, where community ties are drawn tight
by blood and strengthened by sidewalk familiarity.
Here, Mr. SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER will be remembered as a scrappy, hard worker
who refused to listen when they said he was too skinny, too small,
too whatever to play mid-level junior hockey, let alone in the
National Hockey League.
"He just kept proving people wrong," his uncle, Jeff
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER,
said yesterday outside the old brick house where Mr.
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER had
lived with his parents.
"And we were hoping that he'd be able to do that again this week,
but that's one battle he couldn't overcome, I guess."
The▲ fight of Mr.
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER's life began on the night of September
29, after he and Mr.
HEATLEY, the Thrashers' 22-year-old scoring
sensation, left a social gathering with the club's season-ticket
holders.
Mr. HEATLEY, according to Atlanta police, was driving his 2002
Ferrari 360 Modena at about 130 kilometres an hour when he lost
control and struck a fence made of brick and wrought iron.
The car was sheared apart, and both men were thrown to the pavement.
Mr. HEATLEY, who suffered a broken jaw and torn knee ligaments,
faces several charges. Mr.
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER suffered a fractured skull
and died of brain injuries without regaining consciousness.
People who knew him said he would have never driven so recklessly
himself, that he preferred his pickup truck to the flashy cars
that a fat paycheque affords.
"That's not Dan," said Bob
CUMMINGS, who taught Mr.
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER in
grade school and helps manage the Junior B Elmira Sugar Kings,
for which Mr.
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER, his father and his uncle all played.
"He enjoyed life, but he respected life."
Standing in the Sugar Kings dressing room yesterday afternoon,
Mr. CUMMINGS described a career rife with hints why Mr.
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER
took so little for granted.
Even the Sugar Kings, one rung down from the level where the
National Hockey League drafts most of its talent, had their doubts
when he arrived for the 1994-95 season.
"By the end of the season, he was probably one of the best players
we had," Mr.
CUMMINGS said.
His hard work caught the eye of the Junior A Owen Sound Platers
(now the Attack,) but just barely; they drafted Mr.
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER in
the seventh round.
"He beat those odds and became the captain," Mr.
CUMMINGS said,
"probably the best captain they ever had."
Still not deemed good enough for the National Hockey League,
Mr. SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER became a free agent and landed with the Thrashers'
farm teams in Chicago and Orlando, where he helped both win league
championships.
Atlanta finally called him up in the latter half of last season.
He scored 10 goals and four assists in 36 games. "That isn't
bad for a kid at the National Hockey League level who wasn't
supposed to play Junior B," Mr.
CUMMINGS said.
An ankle injury, resulting in surgery last month, was expected
to delay Mr.
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER's start with the Thrashers this season. Still,
he was excited, just five days before the crash, when team officials
told him to find a place to live in Atlanta, his uncle said.
"He had really earned the respect of the people at the highest
level of hockey in the last half of last year," Jeff
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER said.
The people of Elmira shared in that excitement, as they have
several times since the
SEILING brothers (Rod and Ric) and Darryl
SITTLER from nearby St. Jacobs, made the big time decades ago.
Now, they are left mourning yet another one of their young.
Matthew SHANTZ, 13, paid his respects yesterday by walking into
Central Source for Sports on the main street to order a Thrashers
jersey, complete with Mr.
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER's name and number.
Matthew, who hopes to play for the Toronto Maple Leafs one day,
said he met Mr.
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER a couple of times, since his father knows
the SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER family.
"It's bad," he said simply, standing in front of the store, where
plastic letters spelled out "We Remember Dan
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER" in the window,
beneath a Thrashers jersey.
Mr. SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER's funeral will be held in Elmira on Friday.
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SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-06 published
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER,
Edward
Cavell
Group Captain, Royal Canadian Air Force (retired), Distinguished
Flying Cross, Canadian Forces Decoration, died peacefully on
November 29, 2003 in Tsawwassen, British Columbia. He was 87.
Ed SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER was born in Preston (now Cambridge,) Ontario on March
9th, 1916, and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force on November
5, 1940, as an Airman 2nd Class and had risen to the rank of
Group Captain by the time he retired in 1968, after 28 years
of service. He served in two tours of operations and was Executive
Assistant to two Air Vice Marshals, at Eastern Air Command and
Air Force Headquarters in Ottawa. He saw active duty as a Navigation
Officer in 5 and
11 Squadrons during the Second World War, on
successful anti-submarine patrols in Canso
PBYs over the North
Atlantic; he later served in 412 Squadron. He married Bernice
May COULTER of Pugwash, Nova Scotia on October 30, 1941 and had
three children, Gregory, Peter and Virginia. After teaching Military
History at Royal Military College during the early 50s he attended
the Officer's Staff College at Bracknell, England in 1955, returning
to Canada as Commanding Officer of Mont Apica Radar Station in
Quebec. In 1960 he was posted to Madison, Wisconsin as Canadian
Liaison Officer with North American Aerospace Defense Command.
After a final tour of duty at Air Force Headquarters in Ottawa
he retired, first to Florida, then to Kelowna, British Columbia.
He became a stockbroker, then managed a specialty steel company
and finally became a realtor before retiring in 1982 in Tsawwassen,
where he had lived since 1971. He was an avid birder, traveler
and sailor and had circumnavigated Vancouver Island in his Bayfield
29 with his brother Elmer. He is survived by Bea, his loving
wife of 62 years, and his three children in Vancouver, Toronto
and Penticton, their spouses and his five grandchildren, Morgan,
Lauren, Miles, Chelsea and Weston. By his request, there will
be no funeral. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the
Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. Per Ardua Ad Astra
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SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-11 published
An old-fashioned newsman
Distinguished journalist began humbly as a copy boy at the Hamilton
Spectator and soared to the top of the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation
By James McCREADY,
Special to The Globe and Mail Thursday, December
11, 2003 - Page R11
During the October Crisis of 1970, there were a lot of editors
who buckled under. They followed the orders of the police and
the Quebec and federal governments about not printing or broadcasting
some details about the kidnapping of British Trade Commissioner
James CROSS and the kidnapping and murder of Quebec cabinet minister
Pierre LAPORTE.
Many editors and broadcast executives took to self-censorship,
anticipating what the authorities wanted and keeping newscasts
and newspapers clean. Denis
HARVEY, who has died at age of 74,
was not one of them.
Then editor of The Gazette of Montreal, the man he faced down
was Jerome
CHOQUETTE,
Quebec's justice minister and the public
face of authority during much of the crisis.
CHOQUETTE did not
want newspapers to publish the full manifesto of the Front de
libération du Québec. Denis
HARVEY ignored the request and published
it.
The paper also broke the news that police had a photograph of
James CROSS sitting on what looked like a box of dynamite. The
justice minister warned The Gazette editor he could be arrested
under the terms of the War Measures Act, but Mr.
HARVEY called
his bluff.
During the crisis, Mr.
HARVEY didn't change his habits. When
the paper was put to bed, he would walk to the Montreal Men's
Press Club in the Mount Royal Hotel carrying the bulldog or first
edition of the paper and sit at the bar and argue statistics
with the sports editor, Brodie
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER.
There would also be political discussions, some of them heated,
since the man who wrote the stamp column at the paper had been
called up from the reserves in the military and took himself,
and the War Measures Act, quite seriously.
Mr. HARVEY was an old-fashioned newsman, a high-school dropout
who rose to edit newspapers and who went on to run the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation Television news service and then the
entire Canadian Broadcasting Corporation-Television network.
Denis Martin
HARVEY was born on August 15, 1929, in Hamilton,
where his father was a customs inspector. He left school halfway
through Grade 13 and landed a job as a copy boy at The Hamilton
Spectator. This was not uncommon and was the traditional route
for a young person coming into the newspaper business. Journalism
schools were all but unknown and university-educated reporters
and editors were rare.
He went from copy boy, ripping the wire copy off the machines,
to listening in for police tips on radio scanners. He became
a sports writer and in 1952 quit the paper and went to travel
in Europe for six months. He came back to the Spectator as a
general reporter the next year.
He did everything, from labour columnist to business writer.
At 26, he was city editor of the Spectator and then news editor.
In 1961, he was executive editor and held that job for five years.
In 1966, he moved to The Canadian Magazine, a joint venture with
the Toronto Star. It meant leaving Hamilton after 21 years, but
it was the first step to the most important job in his career
editor of The Gazette, which he took over in 1969, the year
he turned 40.
Mr. HARVEY was tough. He scared people with a gruff demeanour,
which at times seemed like something out of The Front Page. When
he arrived at The Gazette, it was losing the newspaper war with
rival Montreal Star. Many editors had cozy sinecures. Almost
right away, Mr.
HARVEY fired the head of every department but
one. When one editor came into his office and said he had found
another job and was giving two weeks' notice.
HARVEY shot back:
"Two hours' notice." The man was gone in less.
However, he inspired loyalty in his staff of reporters and editors.
"He could be tough but he stood up for his staff. And he was
completely honest and honourable. A stand-up guy," said Brian
STEWARD/STEWART/STUART, who covered city hall at The Gazette and was later hired
by Mr. HARVEY at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. "You
always wanted to impress him."
One night at Martin's, a bar next door to The Gazette, there
were complaints about a sports picture in the paper. The photographer
said to Mr.
HARVEY: "
I'd like to see you do better."
Next night he was at the Forum for a Canadiens game. Along with
two regular photographers, he took pictures which, unsigned,
went back to the office for selection. His picture made the paper.
It was a combination of hot news stories and the ability to turn
around a failing newspaper that made his reputation at The Gazette.
The police strike in 1969, the October Crisis, riots and labour
battles made the period one of the most exciting in the paper's
history.
Having secured his reputation as an editor, Mr.
HARVEY was lured
away to television in 1973 to become chief news editor at Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation Television News in Toronto. His colleagues
told him he was crazy.
"My newspaper Friends said: 'How can you make the transition?'
Mr. HARVEY said years later. "But I'm surprised more people
don't. I believe in changing jobs."
Although he didn't know anything about television, he told people:
"I do know pictures." He went to CBS in New York for a crash
course in television news.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation-Television News was as much
of a mess as The Gazette had been. There had been a series of
editors who hadn't managed to get a handle on the place. Mr.
HARVEY took quick action and made it more professional, spending
less time on bureaucracy and more time on the main newscast.
One night, an old-time producer was called into his office and
the new chief news editor asked him why he hadn't gone with a
fresh lead story. The producer replied he couldn't order anyone
to do that -- that was the lineup editor's job. Mr.
HARVEY disagreed
and said: "Put on your coat and go home." The man kept his job,
but worked on the desk and not as a producer.
During his short reign at Canadian Broadcasting Corporation News,
he brought in fresh faces and got television reporters to think
about breaking stories instead of following newspaper headlines.
Audience levels rose and so did Mr.
HARVEY, moving up the ladder
at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. But the promise of
a big paycheque lured him to a three-year stint at The Toronto
Star starting in 1978.
There, he was first in charge of the editorial page and then
became editor in chief and vice-president. He left the Star in
1981 and was replaced by George
RADWANSKI, the future federal
privacy commissioner, who had worked for him at The Gazette.
Mr. HARVEY returned to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,
taking over sports for the English network. By 1983, he was vice-president
of the entire English network of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
He held that job for seven years. He used to say his favourite
part of the job was the power to do programming. He changed the
face of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and it has stayed
that way. Mr.
HARVEY took the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
all Canadian -- it took several years but he stopped running
American program in prime time.
"We have handed over this most powerful medium to a foreign country,"
he told a broadcasting conference in 1990. "Nowhere else in the
world had one country imported the total television of another
country."
Along with Canadian content, one of his lasting creations was
the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's news and current-affairs
specialty channel Newsworld. He left the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation in 1991 and worked off and on as a broadcast consultant.
He spent a lot of time travelling and took up some rather un-tough-guy
hobbies, such as bird-watching and going to the ballet.
Mr. HARVEY, who died after a brief struggle with cancer, leaves
his wife Louise
LORE, and Lynn and Brian, his two children from
an earlier marriage.
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