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Editor’s Notebook
Serving Caesar
School is out and it’s the beginning of the entertainment season in Prescott.
Last weekend was particularly busy. The annual “A Taste of Prescott”
culinary and live music event occurred Saturday, while all the stops
were pulled on Sunday with the curiously named Happy Crap band
continuing at the Prescott Legion what it started the evening before at
the tasting, the second edition of Magic Spells at St. Andrew’s Church,
and opening night of the 2016 Summer Concert Series at the Kinsmen
Amphitheatre.
Presented by the town and now coordinated by Bill Roberts and June
George, the Fabulous Belairs drew close to 500 rock and roll lovers to
the Kinsmen Amphitheatre and left them wanting more. Just to drive the
band’s name home, an immaculate 1955 Chevy Bel Air was parked at the
foot of the stage.
That’s the same Bill Roberts, by the way, who will play a
soldier-senator in the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival production of
Julius Caesar opening July 16, and the same June George cast as Marilla
in the community production of Anne of Green Gables, the musical, set
for August 26-27.
.....
Tom Van Dusen
See more on page 6
From
the Other Side
by Jeff Morris
The greatest fight that never happened
With the Olympics scheduled to
begin in August in Brazil, columnist Jeff Morris begins a series of
reflections on the Games and the impact they have left on us.
What if.
They are two words that take our imaginations down a different path that perhaps history has not laid out for us.
What if Adolph Hitler had been stopped long before he took the world into one of history’s darkest decades?
What if 9-11 had never happened?
What if Britain had voted to stay in the EU?
As a sports fan and historian, one of my favourite what ifs revolves
around the greatest professional boxer of all time, and the greatest
amateur boxer of all time.
What if Muhammad Ali ever got the chance to fight Teofilo Stevenson?
It’s a question that, though the years, I had always pondered. They are
two great heroes, though completely different in their impact on
culture. Stevenson, who steamrolled through every heavyweight opponent
he faced in an undefeated span of 11 years, which included three
Olympic gold medals, is perhaps the greatest Cuban hero aside from Che
Guevara. He was a man who gave the country pride and brought his nation
together.
Ali’s rise to stardom, though a few years earlier, was similar. He was
admired and loved by a nation, but he was a divisive personality who
lived in controversy. His conversion to Islam and his name change from
Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali was a social lightning rod in the United
States. He was friends with Malcolm X and was at the front of the Civil
rights Movement. One of his most famous quotes was, “I am America. I am
the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident,
cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own;
get used to me.”
Ali was as supercilious as Stevenson was humble. Ali was an
entertainer, in and out of the ring, who was at his best in long and
exhausting battles. Stevenson was a 6’5” tactician who often knocked
out some of the world’s best within 30 seconds. Ali floated like a
butterfly and stung like a bee. Stevenson was a silent assassin.
As a 12-year-old, sitting in the Maurice Richard Arena during the
Montreal Olympics, I sat with my father and uncle as we watched
Stevenson dismantle and knock out American hopeful Johnny Tate in less
than a minute. I watched the fight, as I watched him fight two other
times at the Montreal Olympics, realizing I was watching one of the
greatest athletes of the century.
.....
JM
See more on page 6
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