{"id":4916,"date":"2013-12-11T14:31:20","date_gmt":"2013-12-11T19:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=4916"},"modified":"2013-12-18T13:35:46","modified_gmt":"2013-12-18T18:35:46","slug":"brocks-banter-mandela-the-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/brocks-banter-mandela-the-children\/","title":{"rendered":"BROCK’S BANTER: Mandela & The Children"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

It almost seemed like the world paused for a second or two as we got home from work or school on Thursday, flipped on the TV, only to find wall-to-wall coverage of Nelson Mandela\u2019s death.
\nSadness is understandable following the death of anyone, but despite his being in rapidly deteriorating health for the better part of 2013, there was something shocking and final about the loss of a figure so pivotal to the history of the 20th century.
\nAs I am writing this with the news little more than an hour old, images are being beamed over from Johannesburg and Pretoria of South Africans gathering with flags, flowers, and candles, and the Presidential Seal is being adjusted at the White House, waiting for a televised statement that will be beamed around the world.
\nAs people remember, I wonder how many people in my age bracket around here had their minds cast back to one very memorable Toronto day in the fall of 1998, being among the tens of thousands of Ontario students and teachers filling the Skydome, all sharing in a once-in-a-lifetime feeling of electricity.
\nEarly in that school year, we students at Newmarket\u2019s Stonehaven Elementary School received word that there just might be a possibility that a few of us would be able to be a part of the Nelson Mandela & The Children rally in Toronto.
\nWe didn\u2019t care much about the political purposes of his trip, but the fact this \u201csuperstar\u201d was taking time out of his schedule to share a morning with students sparked more than a little imagination among us.
\nIn all honesty, I can\u2019t fully remember the criteria of our students being chosen as one of the hundreds represented that remarkable day, but we forged ahead. We lay the groundwork for the Nelson Mandela Children\u2019s Fund within our school, adopted a laundry list of charitable endeavours that we could do to fulfil its mandate, and did our utmost to raise awareness within the community of \u201cthe cause.\u201d
\nEven then, however, there was no guarantee at the time that our group would be able to attend and, if our group was, whether all members would be able to make the trip. Putting our heads together, however, we had something of an \u201cin.\u201d After all, the teacher leading the group was a South African \u00e9migr\u00e9 named Ryan Freidman who, it seemed, had pretty good connections in his native land through his athletic prowess. Or so we surmised.
\nWith that in mind, looking back it is almost laughable the extent to which some of us went to keep in Mr. Friedman\u2019s good books in order to secure our spots. It might have been a bit over the top but, hey, we knew this was going to be a once in a lifetime opportunity and we were damned if we were going to miss it.
\nJust days before the event, we finally got the thumbs-up. I\u2019m not going to speak for my group, but I was personally elated that we would be in the same room \u2013 even if the room in question could fit a few thousand regulation-sized classrooms \u2013 as a person of such greatness.
\nAnd he didn\u2019t disappoint.
\nWe were up on our feet as the determined looking woman in the red suit drove President Mandela and his wife, Gra\u00e7a Machel, onto the field in a rather ordinary golf cart through the hordes of children to the podium below the Jumbotron while cultural displays unfolded on the stage.
\nPerhaps we might not have been the most orderly bunch \u2013 a certain infamous booing of Premier Mike Harris when he took to the dais comes to mind \u2013 but when President Mandela approached the podium to deliver his simple, yet powerfully delivered message, you could almost hear a pin drop. And that was certainly no mean feat for a stadium packed with approximately 50,000 kids.
\nThere, he formally launched his Nelson Mandela Children\u2019s fund in Canada and had a reciprocal message for the Canadian children lending a hand and the children benefiting from the fund.
\n\u201cIt has been said that the youth, the children, are the most important asset of our society,\u201d said President Mandela. \u201cTo find that young people are so sensitive to come to the help of their young friends in South Africa shows that the people of Canada are on their feet to be counted in fighting all forms of injustice.\u201d
\nIt was a plain, yet stirring message, for those of us who were using our feet just a few moments previously to deliver a message about the Common Sense revolution which, over 15 years on, was mortifyingly inappropriate for the occasion. His words got right to the point and had a lasting impact.
\n\u201cWhen I go back to my country, I will be able to tell the children of South Africa that in Canada they have friends indeed who are ready to work with us for a better life for all children \u2013 and I would like to tell the Canadian children who are not with us that we love each and every one of them,\u201d he concluded.
\nThat love was certainly returned from all quarters that memorable morning and as the world mourns, I keep reliving that certain unique feeling many of us had the great fortune of experiencing, have longed to re-experience it, and now, sadly, know all too well we will never feel it again.
\nIt was a fleeting moment, a moment which, from the 500 level of the SkyDome, could really only be taken in with binoculars, but a towering moment nonetheless.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir It almost seemed like the world paused for a second or two as we got home from work or school on Thursday, flipped on the TV, only to find wall-to-wall coverage of Nelson Mandela\u2019s death. Sadness is understandable following the death of anyone, but despite his being in rapidly deteriorating health for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1hi","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-04 17:27:51","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4916\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}