Bajrangi Bhaijaan plays to packed house at Strand Theatre July 18: Eid al-Fitr holiday marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan for Muslims and is celebrated by Hindi Bollywood cinema’s Salman Khan

Several thousand Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs from India and Pakistan call Thompson, Manitoba home, with hundreds more arriving each year, yet the scale of their collective and growing presence is perhaps best appreciated through the lens of their religious and festive holidays, such as Eid al-Fitr, which began for the world’s almost 1.57 billion Muslims July 17, with the arrival of the  astronomical new moon on the Islamic Hijri lunar calendar, with the crescent first visible over Chile July 16.

The Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan for Muslims is also traditionally celebrated by Hindi Bollywood cinema from Salman Khan and Thompson loves Bollywood and Salman Khan. Surprised? Well, mull on this for a minute. Statistics Canada’s  voluntary National Household Survey (NHS) from the May 2011 census, the first results from which were released May 8, 2013, enumerated by way of example, that adherents of Hinduism outnumbered Pentecostals by 300 to 290 in Thompson, but they also outnumbered many other Christian denominations as well. Their growth in numbers has been and continues to be explosive.

There were 50 self-identified Hindus here as recently as 12 years ago. There were also more Hindus in Thompson in 2011 than there were self-identified Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians and Christian Orthodox. That, of course, may not be so much of a surprise to anyone who has been to Hindu Prathna Samaj of Thompson’s Navratri festivities in the fall.

There were also 130 Muslims and 80 Sikhs in Thompson enumerated, during that last voluntary Statistics Canada National Household Survey (NHS) four years ago, and their numbers, too, have surely increased since the 2011 census.

So, yes, Bollywood, a word used since the early 1970s to describe the Hindi-language film industry, based in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, in India, is a big deal in Thompson. The Strand Theatre, they city’s only movie theatre, and one of Thompson’s oldest entertainment spots, having opened at 111 Churchill Dr. in 1960, was packed Saturday night for the highly-emotive Bajrangi Bhaijaan, released worldwide only a day earlier for Eid al-Fitr, and starring Salman Khan, one of Bollywood’s biggest stars.

The narrative has the Indian character Pawan, played by 49-year-old Khan, portraying a devotee of the monkey deity Bajrang Bali, guiding home to her Himalayan village in Pakistan, Shahida, a lost and mute six-year-old Kashmiri girl, played by Harshaali Malhotra, who in real life just turned seven last month, and who becomes separated in the movie near the border frontier in India from her mother during a Lahore-Delhi train crossing  from Pakistan to India.  Given that Shahida doesn’t speak, Pawan must interpret the clues she inadvertently provides, such as feeling more comfortable around mosques than temples, and her elation when she sees Pakistan defeat its arch-rival India (both republics joined the Commonwealth in 1947) in cricket on television, to discover where exactly he is supposed to be returning her. The North American analogy would be looking for a needle in a haystack. And the perilous journey, of course, also plays out in an area fraught with international geo-political tensions and potential worldwide nuclear ramifications in any dispute on the sub-continent between India and Pakistan should it involve the Kashmir Valley, under Indian control behind the Line of Control, the de facto border established as the military control line between India and Pakistan in 1971.

While some of Bajrangi Bhaijaan was shot in New Delhi, Mandawa in the Jhunjhunu district and Shekhawati region of Rajasthan State in northern India, with its grand havelis, or private mansions, and maze-like bylanes, stood in for Pakistan, and much of the movie was shot in the Kashmir Valley, which has no cinemas of its own, in places like Pahalgam and nearby Aru, noted for its scenic meadows and located in the Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir State; atop the 11,700-foot Zoji La mountain pass at Srinagar, where it was a below freezing -2°C in mid-May during near final shooting; and the climax shot at the 10,000-foot level at the base of the Thajiwas glacier outside Sonamarg.

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Soundingsjohnbarker: Blogging by the numbers from Thompson, Manitoba to the European Union to Vatican City

Since starting soundingsjohnbarker last September, WordPress tells me I’ve had readers from 120 of the world’s 196 countries, which seems respectable enough given it is an English-language blog written in Thompson Manitoba, the province’s fourth-largest city of 13,123, according to the most recent revised Statistics Canada census count, and located more or less smack dab in the centre of Manitoba, Canada and North America, for those interested enough to pull out a map.

In that eclectic mix of posts, I’ve made certain observations that have held true from the start. Local stories tend to garner the biggest numbers by a considerable margin and the really big ones take on something like a life of their own, appearing with daily readers months and months after they are first posted, albeit perhaps only a handful some days. Other more esoteric or obscure topics tend to draw a much smaller overall audience, but from a wide range of countries. So while a local story headlined “Lonely Planet, the world-famous travel guide, calls Thompson a town lacking ‘charm’ but ‘a necessary evil for northern itineraries’” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/lonely-planet-the-world-famous-travel-guide-calls-thompson-a-town-lacking-charm-but-a-necessary-evil-for-northern-itineraries/) had about 650 “views” almost out of the gate, so to speak, when it went online around 9 p.m. CDT July 14, my guess is that none of those first wave of readers (and they do often seem to come in waves) were from the European Union, where I’ve garnered 56 views on https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/ (in a tie at the moment with Ireland).

Today, I had my first reader from Vatican City (as opposed to elsewhere in Italy). Pope Francis perhaps? Probably not, but if it was, I expect he might ring me on the telephone to share his thoughts soon enough.

Some countries are special cases. Take Tanzania in east Africa for instance. I’ve had 89 readers from there, which is quite remarkable when you realize Tanzania is a country where electricity, much less Internet connections, can be spotty and unreliable at times. But it so happens that Bishop Prosper Balthazar Lyimo, the new auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Arusha in Tanzania, was posted here in Thompson as a diocesan priest a few years ago, leading me to write a couple of times about him since last November.

While it is easy enough to figure out why more than 31,000 readers have come from Canada, there are some countries, such as Moldova, Curaçao, the Falkland Islands, Georgia, Réunion Island, a French department in the Indian Ocean, and Qatar, that supply a small number of readers, that I have a harder time figuring out, but am glad to have them.

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Happy Canada Day from the True North: Land of Back Bacon, Pickerel, the Maple Leaf, Beaver, Moose and Loon, eh

Here’s some food for thought from Ipsos Reid’s annual Canada Day survey conducted between June 12 and June 15 on behalf of Historica Canada, formerly known as the Historica-Dominion Institute, as you get ready to hoist the cold libation of your choice tomorrow to perhaps toast Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, and mark Canada’s 148th birthday.

Historica Canada is a national charitable organization that was launched in September 2009 as the Historica-Dominion Institute, through the amalgamation of two existing organizations: The Historica Foundation of Canada and the Dominion Institute. The Historica Foundation of Canada was launched in October 1999, while the Dominion Institute was formed in 1997 by a group of young professionals, concerned about the erosion of a common memory and civic identity in Canada.

While Ipsos Reid assures us their sample of 1,005 Canadians from Ipsos’ panel interviewed online was weighted to balance demographics “to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the adult population according to Census data and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe,” I wonder? Does it really matter that much? It’s the all-too-short summer barbecue season in Canada, time to have some fun, without worrying too much about how the sample was constructed. It’s a Canada Day poll after all, not say a … provincial election seats results prediction poll!

Don’t get me wrong. I have worked in public opinion research on-and-off, sometimes between journalism gigs, since 1980, including working as a supervisor for Cambridge Survey Research where I supervised telephone call center employees for Democratic National Committee (DNC) pollster Pat Caddell’s firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the 1980 Carter-Reagan presidential election campaign. Earlier the same year, I worked as a field interviewer in Peterborough, Ontario for Opinion Place/Marketing Insights, a Winnipeg company, doing a 1980 Quebec Referendum survey for the Center for Canadian Studies at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. So when Ipsos Reid says the precision of their Canada Day poll is accurate to a confidence or credibility interval of plus or minus 3.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadian adults been polled with the margin of expected sampling, coverage, measurement and perhaps other errors, as well as a confidence or credibility interval that is wider among subsets of the population, I’m suitably impressed.

And then I go back to the barbecue. Or perhaps my mother’s black cast-iron skillet if it is breakfast time.  Ipsos Reid  says 35 per cent of Canadians named back bacon as Canada’s national food, beating out poutine, named by only 30 per cent, for the top spot this year. Salmon, whether Atlantic or Pacific, trailed at a distant third (personally, I’d have opted for Paint Lake pickerel, a regional delicacy of Northern Manitoba), named by 17 per cent, followed by beavertails at eight per cent; tourtière at six per cent and doughnuts (which is how we’ll spell it for Canada Day) at four per cent.

Other fascinating tidbits include such illuminating facts as only 12 per cent of us have had the opportunity to go out dog-sledding.

When it comes to Canadian symbols, the beaver ranks up with the maple leaf, and 64 per cent of Canadians have seen a beaver in the wild, followed by moose at 60 per cent, edging out loons at 59 per cent and a bear in the wild at 55 per cent. Meanwhile 16 per cent of Canadians say they  have never seen any of these animals,  Ipsos Reid reports. If you live in Toronto or Vancouver, well, take your dog-sledding stats for guidance. Could happen, I suppose, but back bacon is a better bet. Trust me.

Respondents were asked which musician they are proudest to call Canadian. Nearly four in 10  (38 per cent) chose Celine Dion from a list which also included Kingston’s The Tragically Hip (picked by 14 per cent), Nickelback (11 per cent), Blue Rodeo (nine per cent), Drake (six per cent), Justin Bieber (two per cent), or some other musician or group (20 per cent). Given that Neil Young, The Guess Who, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, April Wine, the Stampeders, A Foot in Coldwater and Loverboy, just to name half a dozen or so others, are apparently absent from the top of the list, I’ve concluded this must be the result of the confidence or credibility interval that I mentioned earlier. Or, perhaps more likely even, the fact my tastes in Canadian music apparently haven’t quite arrived in the 21st century yet. A possibility not to be discounted, to be sure.

Five years ago, the Historica-Dominion Institute, in partnership with the Munk School of Global Affairs and with the support of the Aurea Foundation, conducted an online survey, “Canada and the World in 2010,” which was also conducted for it by pollster Ipsos Reid and had more than 18,000 respondents in 24 countries.

The survey found, among many other things, Canadians sometimes overestimate their own influence in world affairs:

While two in three Canadians (67 per cent) agreed in 2010 that Canada had an influence on the world stage, only 55 per cent of global respondents agreed. Those polled in Brazil and India were most likely (both 74 per cent) to agree that Canada had influence in world affairs, while only one third of Japanese and Swedes agreed, making them least likely of the 24 countries polled to believe that Canada is influential on the world stage.

For Americans, Independence Day Saturday on July 4 marks the defeat of the British Redcoats in the War of Independence in 1783, although some Southerners still mourn it as the date in 1863 when Vicksburg, Mississippi fell to Union troops in the War Between the States or Civil War.

Canada being Canada and Canadians being Canadians, we quintessentially mark July 1 with what might appear to outsiders to be a rather odd mix of reticence, pride and ambivalence. Me? I like to recall that it was on Canada Day 2007 I arrived to live in Manitoba!

Sometimes we forget just how remarkable an achievement Canada was in 1867. In the spring of 1864, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island were contemplating the possibility of Maritime Union. But nothing concrete happened until the Province of Canada, springing from the legislative union of Canada East and Canada West, heard of the proposed conference and members of the combined legislature requested permission to attend the meeting of the Maritime colonies, in order to raise the larger subject of British North American union.

Delegates from away arrived by steamer in Prince Edward Island and shared the spotlight with the first circus to visit the island in more than 20 years. No kidding. How absolutely Canadian can you get?

The historic Charlottetown Conference took place from Sept. 1 to 9, 1864. My ancestral Acadian roots are on the saltwater Tantramar marshes of Amherst, Nova Scotia, in Cumberland County on the Isthmus of Chignecto at the head of the Bay of Fundy and Missiguash River, bordering New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and connecting the Nova Scotia peninsula with those who come from away elsewhere in North America. From Amherst came four of the 36 Fathers of Confederation, more than any other city or town in Canada:  Robert Barry Dickey, Edward Barron Chandler, Jonathan McCully, and Sir Charles Tupper, a Conservative who went onto serve as Canada’s sixth prime minister briefly in 1896.  While he was born in Amherst, Chandler was best known as a New Brunswick legislator.

Tupper was also a medical doctor and founded Pugsley’s Pharmacy, dispensing chemists, at 63 Victoria Street East in downtown Amherst in 1843, the same year he became a doctor. Tupper was president of the Medical Society of Nova Scotia in 1863, and was the first president of the Canadian Medical Association from 1867 to 1870. Pugsley’s operated at the same location in the same historic Tupper Block building, as the oldest business in town and one of the oldest pharmacies in Canada, for 169 years until May 2012.

While there are differing historical opinions as to who should be considered a Father of Confederation, traditionally they have been defined as the 36 men who attended one or more of the three conferences held at Charlottetown; Québec City from Oct. 10 to 27, 1864; and London, England from Dec. 4, 1866 to Feb. 11, 1867 to discuss the union of British North America, preceding Confederation on July 1, 1867. Negotiators settled on the name “Dominion of Canada,” proposed by the head of the New Brunswick delegation, Samuel Leonard Tilley.  The word dominion was taken from the King James Bible: “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth” (Psalm 72:8). Tilley, who had a background in pharmacy, became the minister of customs in Sir John A. Macdonald’s first cabinet in 1867.

As a Canadian, it also remains an uncommon privilege for me to have to sat in the public gallery in the balcony of historic Province House in Charlottetown, designed and built by local architect Isaac Smith and completed in 1847, to accommodate the legislative assembly of Prince Edward Island. To this day, the assembly has only 27 seats for the members from the ridings of Souris-Elmira through to Tignish-Palmer Road.

The July 1 holiday was established by statute in 1879, under the name Dominion Day. There is no record of organized ceremonies after the first anniversary, except for the 50th anniversary of Confederation in 1917, at which time the new Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings, under construction, was dedicated as a memorial to the Fathers of Confederation and to the valour of Canadians fighting in the First World War in Europe.

The next celebration was held in 1927 to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation.

Since 1958, the federal government has arranged for an annual observance of Canada’s national day on July 1.

Well done, Sir John A.

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Jack Knight and Brian Campell: Voters dispatched first two incumbent Thompson mayors, both defeated at the polls in 1968 and 1972

As Thompson goes to the polls next month on Oct. 22 to elect its seventh mayor, we recall that it was Jack Knight, a colourful police court magistrate, who also ran the Strand Theatre, who won the first-ever municipal election in Thompson on Oct. 26, 1966, defeating A. Brian Campbell by 185 votes.

Local politics could get heated in Thompson’s early years – some things apparently never change – heated enough for voters to send Thompson first two incumbent mayors packing between 1968 and 1972.

Thompson was simply part of the Local Government District (LGD) of Mystery Lake from 1956, overseen by Carl Nesbitt, the resident administrator, until it became a separate incorporated town with a population of about 11,000 in 1966.  Nesbitt later served as Thompson’s first town and city manager after its elevation to town status in 1966 and city status in 1970. Almost 50 years later,  the population in May 2011,  according to a revised Statistics Canada count, after a challenge by the city to a lower number, was 13,123 – a decrease of 2.4 per cent between 2006 and 2011. The original StatsCan number for Thompson for 2011 had been 12,829. As a result of the  revision, Thompson traded places with Portage la Prairie to become the fourth-most populous city in Manitoba, dropping Portage back into fifth spot. Winnipeg, Brandon and Steinbach remained first, second and third largest respectively.  The most recent census in 2011 marked the first time Thompson hadn’t been the third-largest city in Manitoba in 40 years since 1971. Steinbach was the fastest-growing city in the province over the five years between 2006 and 2011, with a growth rate of 22.2 per cent and a 2011 population of 13,524.

Tara Newton, a demographics and census statistician with the Manitoba Bureau of Statistics in Winnipeg, said Thompson’s population, according to Statistics Canada census data, peaked at 19,001 in 1971. By 1976, the population had dropped to 17,291. In 1981, the population continued to plunge downward to 14,288. The 1986 population was 14,701; in 1991 it was 14,977;  in 1996 it was 14,385; 13,256 in 2001; and 13,446 residents in 2006.

After winning that first municipal election in 1966, Knight lost the rematch to Campbell on Oct. 23, 1968 by 207 votes. Campbell, the first commanding officer of the air cadet squadron here, and owner of Campbell North, defeated Knight again by 207 votes in their rubber match on Oct. 28, 1970. Three years later in 1973, Knight was convicted of a federal tax offence by Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Wallace Darichuk and sentenced to three months in jail.

In the Oct. 25, 1972 municipal election, Ald. Tom Farrell, the deputy mayor, defeated Campbell by more than 700 votes in a four-way race. Dr. Arthur Philip-Stewart was a close second while Ald. Andy Nabess placed fourth. City Hall at 226 Mystery Lake Rd. was nicknamed “Campbell’s Castle” when it opened in August 1971 on the watch of  Campbell as mayor, and grand brown edifice was still very much fresh in voters’ minds during the municipal election the next year in 1972.

Farrell, a retired chairperson of the Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba (WCB), until July served as reeve of the Rural Municipality of Victoria Beach on the southeastern shores of Lake Winnipeg, about 100 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

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