The models were part of a program to test the hull design of the legendary Canadian plane, cancelled before it could truly soar. Strapped to high-powered booster rockets, the 10-foot models weighed nearly 500 pounds and flew over Lake Ontario at supersonic speeds. Their onboard sensors — revolutionary for the 1950s — relayed information back to the launch site at Point Petre, in Prince Edward County.

The models represent a key part of the development of the scrapped plane project.

The Avro Arrow made its first flight in 1958. The interceptor was widely regarded as ahead of its time in terms of aerospace technology. Its Malton plant employed nearly 15,000 people.

But development was cancelled abruptly in 1959, after five Arrows had flown. All were ordered destroyed, along with any documentation and related equipment.

The models, however, were safe from the scrubbing, protected by 30 metres of water.

Eleven models were tested in total: nine at Point Petre and two in Virginia. None has been recovered yet, but that hasn’t stopped so-called “Arrowheads” from hunting for them, often at great cost of both treasure and time.

Hibbert, 70, leads up Arrow Recovery Canada, a group that has performed about 22 dives and scanned the bottom of the lake countless times searching for the lost models. The group began its work in 1998.

“Initially it just sounded like fun — it was kind of an interesting thing to be involved in,” said Hibbert. Then he caught the bug familiar to many. “I’m not sure what it is — there’s definitely a mystique, a mystery, a cachet to the whole Arrow program.”

That mystique propelled him and expert diver Mar Smith to devote their spare summer time to scouring the lakebed.

It’s a mammoth task. The Point Petre launch site was used to test all manner of designs, littering the lake with models of missiles and other airborne prototypes.

They spent the years from 1999 to 2006 researching and surveying the site. For three straight years, from 2006 to 2009, they dived down to targets that had been identified by sonar, but failed to pull anything up. They had to take a break for lack of funding, but the group hopes to get on the water again this year.

“Finding them is like looking for a needle in a needle-stack, in that armaments range,” said Russ Isinger, who wrote his master’s thesis on the Arrow and is currently writing a book on the plane.

But that didn’t discourage Smith from presiding over the dives — though she admits it was a challenge to find a target so small at depths of more than 30 metres.

“Sometimes when you dropped down you found nothing, because either the target was off or it was just a log. It was a learning curve,” said Smith, who runs a diving school out of London, Ont.

The ARC team isn’t the only group looking for the lost models. Ed Burtt, an experienced shipwreck diver, has also been after them. He takes issue with ARC’s research and has compiled his own information. Burtt believes there are just two models remaining in the lake, the others having been removed by government divers shortly after the test.

“There were nine skid-marks (on the lake bed),” he said. “We started at the ones that were out further because we thought if they were there they’d be in the best shape. The seven skidmarks that we checked, there’s absolutely nothing out there — not a bolt or anything.”

It’s tough to pin down a straight answer on anything. Burtt says that when the models hit the lake, they skidded along the bottom — though another prominent hunter disagrees that the model would have enough force left to carve metres-long grooves into the rocky floor.

“Nothing could leave skid-marks in 70 feet of water. That can’t even happen — especially when you’re talking a model that’s (10 feet) long,” said Dave Gartshore, whose father worked for A. V. Roe, the manufacturer of the plane, during the Arrow’s heyday.

Gartshore owns an Avro Richardson boat, a luxury cruiser produced in part by A. V. Roe shortly after the aircraft project. He lives and breathes the Canadian legend and also has the models in his sights.

“I’m going back out there,” said Gartshore. “I haven’t produced anything out there as far as the Arrow goes, but I’ve been producing.”

He notes he found the body of a rocket on the lakebed during an earlier outing. Gartshore has purchased his own sonar machine but wants to buy a remote-operated vehicle to scour the murky water for the models.

The Canadian Navy launched a mission to find them in 2004. It spent three days scanning the lake with a sonar machine and dispatched underwater robots. While the crew didn’t find the models, they did turn up four rocket boosters and a sunken 19th century schooner.

“At least one of the rocket boosters was confirmed to be a Nike booster, the exact same type fired from Point Petre Range from 1954-57 with an Arrow model in piggyback,” said a release from the navy. The rockets were used to propel the models through the air, detaching midway to allow the miniature planes to soar.

The search was part of a training exercise for naval crews, to keep their sonar skills sharp. Save for the booster rocket, the crew found no trace of the missing models.

Nobody has. Yet somehow, the legend propels diverse groups of people and private individuals to sink thousands of their own dollars, and hours of their time, into the project.

The Avro Arrow attracts a special breed of fan — one devoted to the legend, who soaks up the mythology and history with a fervid passion. Of course, this also attracts those who cling to rumours — such as the idea that one of the planes was hidden surreptitiously in a bunker on the Prairies. Credible experts insist this is just a myth.

The models are appealing because of the thicket of conspiracy that surrounds them. Many aspects of the Arrow project are the subject of speculation; in a way, it’s a ghost plane still being chased by a few who refuse to give up.

The models are bits of history that are definitely there, somewhere. True believers will hear them calling until they’re finally retrieved.

“Once you lose your heart to an iconic aircraft, it stays with you,” said Isinger. “I can understand the dedication of aviation buffs who want to find and touch a piece of history … I would do it too, if I was there. You know they’re out there. You can’t resist.”

Arrow Recovery Canada hopes to be out in the water this year. Members had a planning meeting in June 2011 but couldn’t pull together a dive team then. Funding is a big part of the problem.

“I have said this until I’m blue in the face — if the Canadians would all reach into their pockets and throw us a toonie, we would get it done,” said Smith. She estimates that a dedicated few weeks of searching would turn up the models.

The group isn’t searching for profit. If the models are found, it plans to turn the models over to a museum.

Correction: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly referred to 50 years of zebra mussels at the bottom of Lake Ontario. In fact, zebra mussels were first identified in Canada in 1988.

A quarter cup of hemp oil stands between Annaleise Carr and conquering Lake Ontario.

Coach Lisa Anderson pleads with the 14-year-old to drink the greasy mix at 7 a.m. Sunday. Annaleise has been in the water for 13 hours, battling fierce winds and high waves throughout the moonless night. Her four-foot-10 frame struggled against winds nearing 20 km/h, blowing metre-high rolling waves into her face.

Anderson knows that if Annaleise doesn’t drink the oil, she won’t make it to Toronto.

“I don’t want it — it’s gross,” Annaleise says after a small sip.

Anderson promises her a square of chocolate if she takes two more big sips — enough to give her battered muscles the glycogen they need to keep going. The sun poking over the horizon offers slight reprieve.

Annaleise has just fought the battle of her lifetime and while her mind is still strong, her body is battered.

“The worst part for me was knowing that she was never going to say ‘I want to get out,’ that it would have to be me making her get out,” Anderson says later. “I almost cried and she knew it.”

Annaleise isn’t even halfway by morning, and the coach is devastated by the distance still to go. The gains overnight have shrunk from nautical miles to nautical inches.

Annaleise sees a look of desperation has replaced the constant steely, determined look on Anderson’s face. She gives in and drinks some of the oil.

At sunrise, Anderson retreats to a nearby power boat, to mentally regain control of herself. She knows if she tells Annaleise how far away she is it will crush her spirit, but the duo have a rule — Annaleise is not allowed to ask how far remains. Anderson fears her silence says it all.

“I know something’s wrong. What’s going on? I can see Toronto,” Annaleise says.

“I know you can, honey. You just, you gotta drink this,” Anderson says.

The members of the boat crew have been hand-selected by Dave Scott, the general manager of the swim. Scott, owner of the Norfolk Hub newspaper, has never been part of a lake crossing before, but he did participate in a 10-kilometre swim in Lake Erie last year from Pottahawk to Turkey Point, where Annaleise’s quest began. He is both a member and leader in the crew, with years of lake swimming, kayaking and boating experience.

The swim last August brought Annaleise and Scott closer and forged bonds between team members that paved the way for the Lake Ontario crossing.

Three days before the crossing, the group met in ground crew manager Bill Martin’s living room. It was a typical small-town southern Ontario gathering, complete with pizza and pop. Everyone towered over Annaleise as she sat rapt, watching Scott go through the plan in excruciating detail.

Downstairs, children of the crew members, some her age, played videogames.

The plan has to unfold flawlessly. The flotilla will consist of six boats, each with his own role and driver. Extra gas has been packed and each driver understands his place for the crossing. A Zodiac boat will ride on either side of Annaleise, close enough to talk to her but keeping a safe distance. The kayak will serve as her navigation aid and constant companion, but must stay at least three metres away to avoid any chance of accidental touching, which would bring the swim to a halt, according to rules established by Solo Swims Ontario, the governing body of the swim.

Jeff and Debbie Carr, Annaleise’s parents, followed along as Scott rattled off the itinerary. They must trust the people in this room with the life of their young daughter. The pair will not be on a boat, stepping aside to make room for more immediately useful crew members, like the pair of lifeguards and the pacers who will provide vital motivation Sunday.

The meeting was the culmination of months of planning. The crew first came together in February, members culled from the North Shore Runners/Swimmers — a group of outdoor athletes who adopted Annaleise as one of their own. She proved her mettle by pounding the surf. At last year’s 10-kilometre swim, she came in third, hot on the heels of Chris “Otter” Peters, the reigning champion and neck and neck with Scot Brockbank, a 44-year-old lifelong athlete.

Brockbank’s nickname is “Lightning,” given to him by Annaleise, who dubbed herself “Thunder.”
“If you do one thing for me this weekend, stay positive,” Scott said. “You can be mad at me on Monday.”
The crew’s faith is made ironclad by months of practice and planning; the word “if” does not exist in their vocabulary.

Kayaker Rob Smith, with his bushy soft beard and gentle smile, comes armed with years of kayaking experience, including whitewater work. Tyler Wilson, the second kayaker, is a champion rower from the University of Guelph with two national bronze medals under his belt.

“The minute she got in the water . . . she became my daughter. And I would do anything for my daughter to protect her,” said Smith, one of the two kayakers. “Everybody adopted her right then as their own daughter.”

These men will keep her going in the darkness. Through the night, the flicker of starlight in Smith’s gentle eyes and Wilson’s reassuring voice will keep her fighting against the waves and loneliness.

A competitive swimmer at age 4, her body, though still young, has been shaped and crafted by the waters. She was told to put on a bit of weight for the swim, but with a naturally high body temperature she doesn’t need much to keep her warm. Her meals shifted from typical eating to an athlete’s diet of many small high-calorie, high-protein meals.

Training focused on tether work rather than weights because of her age, training philosophy and to avoid aggravating a shoulder injury. Annaleise’s coach would tie her to a block with an elastic cord and make her swim for hours. The training conditioned her muscles, but also her mind by forcing her to work for hours without moving a centimetre.

“People used to ask me: ‘Is it more a physical challenge, or more mental and emotional?’ ” said Vicki Keith, a woman who has made five crossings along the same path Annaleise will take. “My answer was always it’s 100 per cent physical and 100 per cent emotional.”

Throughout her training, coach Anderson worked on a visualization exercise. Annaleise was told to make two short movies in her mind.

The first was to be of the gates at Camp Trillium. The wooden rainbow sign. The moving vehicle gate. Log fences on either side. The sound of cars churning up a gravel road. Flocks of kids, smiles on their faces, waiting for her to finish.

The second was to be of Marilyn Bell Park. Her family waiting on the wall. Her hero, Marilyn Bell, cheering her on. Friends clapping and watching.

Anderson had Annaleise go through these images at every practice, forcing her to draw in more details, more people to motivate her. Even in the pounding surf and darkness, they would stave off thoughts of quitting.
“During the night, I thought about getting out, because in the water it’s dark, it’s cold; you’re all by yourself in the water,” said Annaleise. “When the waves were that big you couldn’t see anyone.”

So she pressed play on her two mental movies.

Night turns Annaleise Carr from a bubbly 14-year-old girl into a warrior. Her small hands tipped with pink nail polish slice through the waves, trying desperately to make progress against the swells.

Her parents watch from the Harbour Castle Hotel, their view only a blip on a map as the GPS updates her location remotely. They have scant information — cellphone reception cuts out halfway across the lake. They barely sleep.

On the lake, a ship captain’s drawl comes over the VHF radio. “This is the Captain Henry Jackman,” he says, alerting boats travelling nearby that the 222-metre ship he has captained from New York is passing through on the way to Hamilton, carrying a load of stone.

“We’ve got a swimmer in the water here,” says swim master John Bulsza.

If the Jackman were to pass too close, it could churn up cold water, dropping the already frigid lake by measures of up to 10 degrees. The wake from the ship could add to the already high swells pushing Annaleise away from her goal.

“Is that the young girl swimming the lake there?” Jackman’s captain asks . “I heard about her on the news.”
The captain, wishing her luck, slows his vessel down dramatically and curves his path, passing far to the northwest of Annaleise. His move neutralizes a challenge that has plagued other swimmers as they move through the busy shipping path of the lake.

Then the sailboats come.

Despite a marine notice broadcast to every ship on the lake, a regatta of nine-metre sailboats races towards the flotilla. Bulsza frantically gets on the radio and the Zodiac crews flash their spotlights towards the boats.

It doesn’t work. About five sailboats careen on a collision course with the main Zodiac boat. At the last minute, they notice the chain of lights and adjust their course, passing within metres of the Zodiac accompanying Annaleise.

As the sun glows on the horizon, Annaleise’s pace flags and she thinks only of when a pace swimmer will enter the water. Pacers will swim alongside her, giving her motivation and company, but they can’t enter until morning, when swim master John Bulsza can clearly see into the water.

Annaleise is in trouble. She is undernourished from the night and is nodding off in the water. Every stroke is a mammoth effort. Each kick shoots pain through her legs.

“My thought was ‘she’s exhausted,’ and I was, nobody would say it but everybody was wondering, ‘is this the end of it?’ You could just see the look on everybody’s face,” Smith said.

“I could just see her looking at me with her eyes saying ‘why aren’t you getting in?’ ” said Nancy Norton, who was waiting on one of the Zodiac boats.

Norton had been selected as the first pacer because she could provide exactly what Annaleise needed — love and lightness after a pitch-black night alone.

Each of the three pacers has a special relationship with Annaleise. Norton runs and swims with the girl regularly. A 35-year-old single mother of two, Norton takes a nurturing approach to Annaleise by making faces at her under the water and goofing around.

During training, Annaleise’s mother would come to Norton’s house early in the morning and watch her kids while Annaleise and Norton trained together.

When Norton is finally allowed in around 5:45 a.m. Sunday, Annaleise’s spirits pick up but her body won’t follow suit. The goal with feeding is to give Annaleise 50 grams of carbohydrates and 12.5 grams of protein per hour, at roughly a 4 to 1 ratio. The coach slowed her feedings down overnight out of concern for her body temperature, which drops whenever she stops swimming. That had been a mistake, Anderson said afterwards, and they had to catch up.

But Annaleise doesn’t want to eat. She chokes down two bites of a chia seed pancake around 6 a.m. before throwing it in the water. Each pancake contains 280 mg of fast-absorbing potassium, which combats the build-up of lactic acid in muscles and replenishes electrolytes in her system.

At this point, Norton is just trying to get her to move her arms and legs.

Pacers have the tricky job of staying close to the swimmer, but never touching her. It is against the rules of Solo Swims Ontario for Annaleise to touch any person or boat. One false move could blow the whole swim.
Scot Brockbank is next to get in, and what he sees shocks him.

“You didn’t know what to expect — I thought I was getting into a situation where I’d see Annaleise Carr, our regular smiley girl full of energy and spunk. I got a different Annaleise Carr, one that’s tired and just been through hell and back,” said Brockbank.

Annaleise is buoyed by Brockbank’s presence, but more regular feedings have started to rebuild her glycogen stores. The digestive system converts sugars into glycogen, which powers muscles. As exercise continues, the body’s digestive system competes with the muscles for blood flow, said Dr. Greg Wells, an expert in extreme human physiology. Proper protein intake supplies enzymes that help the body create glycogen.

Chris “Otter” Peters, 47, pushes Annaleise the hardest of the three pacers. When he gets in the water, her head goes down and the strokes pick up noticeably.

“I was the third one and she was just struggling. I said to her, ‘Annaleise, we’re going to look in each others eyes . . . we’re going to swim our swim and we’re just going to keep in stride,’ ” Peters said later.

Donations keep rolling in for Camp Trillium and with each milestone the crew cheers loudly, giving Annaleise updates when she pokes her head up. With every new announcement, she quickens and her resolve intensifies.

Her pace picks up throughout the day Sunday, but one of the biggest challenges is yet to come — just 5 kilometres out from shore, water temperatures drop and winds pick up, worsening an already heavy current from the Humber River.

Naggy and the children at Camp Trillium are in her mind’s eye as she pushes through the pain of the swim. Marathon athletes often exhibit the same signs in their body as people who go through chemotherapy. Around 6 p.m. Sunday, just a few kilometres from shore, her body has already been pushing itself for 24 hours. The water temperature drops to a low of 62°F.

Thanks to an electronic sensor the size of a vitamin that she swallowed four hours before the swim, crew doctor Mark Ghesquiere is able to remotely monitor Annaleise’s core temperature. Crews on the Zodiac boats hold a sensor within a half-metre of her stomach and the transmitter, sitting in her small intestine, relays a temperature reading.

When there is a distance of about 13 kilometres left, Dave Scott, who swims Lake Erie with Annaleise, pulls up beside her.

“Annaleise, it’s only Pottahawk left; it’s just Pottahawk left; you can do it,” he yells to her.

But cold water mixes together with confusion for Annaleise — the lead navigational boat, Ceilidh, is taking her far westward, well beyond Marilyn Bell Park. Annaleise protests, wondering why they are going past the park.

Chuck Wagin, a powerboat in the flotilla, had been sent ahead hours before to measure currents in three separate locations. Northward winds help move Annaleise toward shore, but also compress and strengthen the current coming from the mouth of the Humber River. While the course appears to take them far from the destination, Marilyn Bell Park is now squarely in their sights.

The crowd of more than 1,000 starts chanting her name. Cold and pushed to her limit, Annaleise swims faster still.

The breakwall comes into sight and the cheers grow louder.

At the park, dozens of kids sit on the edge of the wall, their feet dangling over the water as they wait for Annaleise, the girl who grew up on a farm in Walsh, Ont., and is here to make history. Parents have brought the kids here to be inspired; to see that youth, rather than being an obstacle, is an opportunity.

The current forces her eastward as the crew watches, hoping she makes the narrow gap in the breakwall. Television lights shine from shore, blinding her. But it doesn’t matter — she has seen the wall a hundred times throughout the night in her mind. She has seen the people waiting, cheering her on. She has seen the faces of her parents, Jeff and Debbie, and her grandparents, Ken and Sharon, as their hearts fill with hope.
The crowd has flocked to see her complete a challenge that has broken people twice her age, left them adrift in Lake Ontario. Today, a 14-year-old girl with a toothy smile who loves deep-fried Mars bars turns hero, a warrior who bested the lake.

The din is deafening now, metres away from the wall where nearly 60 years ago Marilyn Bell started it all. Now it’s Annaleise’s turn.

At 9:04 p.m., history is written.

She touches the wall, bringing a 27-hour swim to an end.

After 50.5 kilometres, she decides to add an extra few strokes by swimming back to give her teary-eyed coach a hug. In the end, she raises more than $135,000 for Camp Trillium.

An exhausted crew exchanges high-fives and hugs on the shore. The bonds built on this crossing will not be easily broken. Annaleise’s grit and determination kept her moving through the water, but the determination of dozens kept her afloat.

Ahead of her, beyond the throng of cameras, lie the challenges of life. A sea of trials — high school; dating; driving lessons; making her way in the world.

Behind her stands a crew with a love as deep as a lake; a second family who bore witness to a will 10 times too large.

A statement released Sunday by Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and Minister of State of Foreign Affairs Diane Ablonczy urges the government of Iran to grant clemency for Hamid Ghassemi-Shall, 43, a Toronto-area shoe salesman who has been in prison since January 2009.

“Canada is gravely concerned by indications that the execution of Mr. Ghassemi-Shall may be carried out imminently,” the statement says.

Ghassemi-Shall was arrested on a trip to Iran to visit his bereaved mother in 2008 and later charged with espionage.

He was held in solitary confinement in a coffin-like cell in Tehran’s brutal Evin Prison and sentenced to death in 2009.

This weekend he was taken in front of the judge responsible for handling executions and told they were awaiting an order, according to his wife Antonella Mega.

“They don’t know what the order will be and they don’t know when it will come. They don’t know whether it will be a commutation, an execution, they just don’t know,” said Mega. “Hamid’s life is in the hands of the prosecutor, who has complete control.”

Ghassemi-Shall emigrated to Canada after the Iranian revolution in 1979.

Mega has been running a campaign to free her husband since his imprisonment.

Ghassemi-Shall phoned his wife on Sunday morning to talk about the Canadian government’s appeal and to discuss his sister who died recently.

“I do believe that they’re doing the right thing,” Mega said of Ottawa’s plea for clemency. “I still believe that they can do more and I still believe they need to look for opportunities to create dialogue with the Iranian authority.”

She said the Canadian government has been supportive and that the outpouring of support from the public — in the form of thousands of letters — has given her hope.

“I think the Iranian authorities have the opportunity to do the right thing and save a man’s life,” said Mega. “I pray to God that they will do the right thing.”

With files from Olivia Ward

At Kenya’s Dadaab centre, a 4-year-old girl arrived so malnourished her skin had started to fall off.

“It was like wet tissue paper on a car windshield in the rain or something,” said Maskalyk, an emergency doctor at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and author of Six Months in Sudan. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Advances in organization and medical technology have streamlined famine relief, but front-line workers still encounter dire cases.

“There’s lots of research about diabetes and heart disease and things like that. But in the developing world, in places like Dadaab, with problems like malnutrition, there’s just experience,” said Maskalyk.

The first stage

Procedures for evaluating malnutrition in children have been fine-tuned to be used by anybody. A colour-coded band is used to check the size of a child’s bicep. Anything smaller than 11.5 centimetres — slightly larger than the circumference of a toonie — is classified as severely malnourished.

“The big change is we went from the hospital to health clinic for treating severe acute malnutrition. Now we’re trying to go from the health clinic to the community, making even more decentralization,” said Stephane Doyon, manager of the Doctors Without Borders malnutrition campaign.

In 2002, a famine in Angola prompted an emergency intervention by the group. It took 2,000 staff to care for 8,000 starving people. In 2004, they treated 10,000 in Niger with 120 staff, Doyon said.

Those hit hardest by famine are children under 5, who lack the ability to convince themselves to eat.

“If you were to go into a fast, you’d lose your appetite after a couple days, but you know you’re supposed to eat so you convince yourself that it’s the right thing. But if you’re 3 years old and you haven’t eaten, or become sick with diarrhea and don’t want to eat, then I can’t make you,” said Maskalyk.

Those without an appetite, or with other illnesses, are admitted. Children who can eat are sent home with packets of ready-to-eat food.

The worst cases

Hunger prompts the body to begin shutting down, including the immune and digestive systems.

“You could have a serious infection but not manifest any signs of it. It’s like being on chemo,” said Maskalyk. “It’s a prolonged dying process.”

Children admitted to the ward are often fed through a feeding tube to start, receiving enriched milk . When they eat willingly, they are discharged with rations of ready-to-eat food like Plumpy’nut, a peanut-based paste.

“What happens if I give someone a Big Mac after they haven’t eaten for 10 days or two weeks, they’ll get diarrhea and abdominal pain. So you have to start off with something a little more gentle,” said Maskalyk.

Conclusion

When the girl whose skin was falling off cried, it was a moment of triumph — a sign her health was returning.

Advances in technology have made it possible to give more attention to the worst cases and quickly treat simple ones.

Maskalyk points out that hunger is rarely at the core of the problem.

“If you hear the word famine, you want to look around for the nearest war becauseit’s often political inequity that allows these things to perpetuate,” he said.

She was working as an inserter in 1978, putting flyers into the newspapers. He was a foreman, her supervisor.

“The first time I saw him he was by the Line 1 conveyor belt,” she said. “He had the most beautiful blue eyes, beautiful. As soon as I saw him I liked him.”

A few short years later, in 1983, the two would marry. It was a match made in the mailing room.

“He was funny, gentle,” said Cindy Kriina. “He was everything.”

Egon “Eddy” Kriina died of a heart attack on Feb. 7, at the age of 66. He worked at the Star for more than 40 years.

“He was my first boss when I started there. I was 17,” said Val Sammut, a supervisor in the mailing room at the Vaughan printing plant.

Sammut began at the Star in 1978. He worked with Kriina for 34 years, climbing the ranks to become a supervisor.

Mailing room employees are the last hands that touch the Star as the newspaper leaves the plant. They insert flyers, pack the papers for delivery and load trucks.

Sammut described Kriina as a mentor and a reliable boss who kept a cool head in the workplace.

“He was honest. If you weren’t doing something right, he’d tell you. If you were doing something right, he’d tell you too,” said Sammut. The two became close friends.

Kriina worked at three different plants used by the Star, ending his career at the press centre in Vaughan, where the paper is printed today.

He retired in 2006.

Kriina leaves his wife, Cindy, children Robert, Alex, Karen and Kristopher, and grandchildren Ryan, Jake, Mya, Morgan, Payton, Rayne and Regan.

Of course, the 19-year-old looks forward to the independence it will give her, but she is especially happy to be leaving the Communist-era prefab building where she has lived all her life.

“There’s just a small hall with bathroom and toilet, one small room and one bigger room. The kitchen is inside the bigger room,” said Honova.

The flat is one of thousands in Prague’s South Town, the largest housing estate in the Czech Republic and reportedly one of the largest in Europe.

“It’s something like (cabin fever), but let’s say it lasts for 15 years or so,” she said.

Though Prague is associated with historic architecture, the prefabs are ubiquitous once you travel out of the city centre.

South Town, also known as Jizni Mesto or Prague 11, is an endless field of these buildings, called panelak — panel buildings — in Czech, which sprung up in the early 1960s and now make up more than 30 per cent of the nation’s housing stock.

They were assembled from prefabricated concrete components, are generally poorly insulated and need replacement windows. Sound carries easily between units.

The towers are typically built around large courtyards with Brutalist concrete benches and parks. The ground-floor units were intended to house small businesses, but many sit empty or are occupied by residential tenants.

Fewer and fewer families and young persons choose live there, opting instead for apartments in the centre of Prague or newly built detached homes, said Martin Lux, a research fellow at the Institute of Sociology in Prague.

“After the change (from communism), you can assume that people will realize their own housing preferences. If not they, then their own children,” said Lux.

After the fall of communism, ownership of panel buildings was transferred to municipal governments, which sold off many units to tenants. An apartment typically fetched about one million Czech crowns ($50,000), much more than units sold off in other post-Communist countries, such as Bulgaria.

This, said Lux, accounts for why Czech panel buildings are so well maintained and frequently upgraded, especially in Prague. Their owners paid more money and therefore value their investment.

One of the most visible upgrades is to paint the building’s façade. Once a uniform grey, some now sport murals, but most are simply splashed with one or two colours.

The building where Honova lives with her parents has been upgraded with a modern elevator and keyless entry system. The windows have been replaced, and some work has been done on the bathroom.

“It’s true that prefabricated housing is the cheapest. In the future, it will trend toward lower income (tenants),” said Lux. “I expect that in a few years some will be demolished … This firstly will appear in regions affected by decline of industry.”

About five years ago developers began building large shopping malls on the outskirts of Prague in places like South Town. But for young people like Honova, the city centre still offers much more.

“I’m in the centre many times a week because there’s always something to do,” she said. “Why would we hang out here?”

Three men were arrested midway through painting the word “SPUD” on the side of a Queen St. W. building early Monday morning, police said.

The area has fought with “SPUD” for years, just as the city has grappled with its own graffiti policy.

“The city’s graffiti management plan is very effective, ” said Robert Sysak, executive director of the West Queen West business association. “But there has to be a stick.”

When police responded to the call, they found three men painting the letters “SUD” on the side of a building.

The men were interrupted, but police believe they would have gone on to paint the letter P.

Police do not yet know if the men arrested are linked to any other vandalism, but property owners do not look kindly on “SPUD.”

“I can tell you from the amount of SPUD tags I’ve seen out there, there’s going to be quite a significant dollar value in damages, ” said Const. Scott Mills, the social media officer with the Toronto police.

Mills also oversees programs to help graffiti artists and vandals alike find and take advantage of legal art opportunities.

“I kind of liken it to being an alcoholic. It’s really hard to get off the bottle – it’s really hard to get off the can, ” he said. “With these graffiti artists, you don’t have to get off the can; you can actually transfer it to a positive endeavour and have your artwork be up and seen for a long time, in places that you never thought or dreamed your artwork would be up in.”

Phillip Carter, a heritage architect, said his building was vandalized about one year ago.
“I had this nice old 1890s brick wall, suddenly I have a huge SPUD, ” said Carter.

The word is a popular one to paint on Toronto walls, often appearing unsolicited, high up in tall letters. “Certainly around Toronto there are a lot of SPUDs, ” said Carter.

He added that his daughter in Seattle has seen the tag there as well.

In Carter’s case, it would have cost about $10,000 to remove. Instead he has commissioned a new piece from three young artists working with a mentor.

“We’re going to make it a program and get some proper art, ” he said.

The new graffiti plan, worked out in May between the city, businesses and arts community, allows for commissioned murals but strictly opposes vandalism.

Police are asking any property owners who have been vandalized with the word “SPUD” painted on their building to contact police.

Jonathan Lupi, 24, Nathanial Rooyakkers, 29, and Shane Rumohr, 31, all of Toronto, have been charged in connection with the incident. They are scheduled to appear in court Nov. 30.

Pearl Gavaghan da Massa and her delighted father, Henry da Massa, were on their way back to Manchester from Canada Monday, accord-ing to a report in the Manchester Evening News.

“I’m elated. It was only when we got on the plane that I really knew we were coming home. It was the end of the mayhem and we could finally get back to normality, ” Henry da Massa told the newspaper.

Pearl was allegedly abducted three years ago in England and brought to Toronto. Police in Montreal told the Star that her mother, Helen Gavaghan, has been arrested there.

A search effort involving Toronto police, Child Find Ontario and international authorities has been underway since Pearl and her mother disappeared in 2008.

Da Massa and Gavaghan split up before Pearl was a year old. A court later issued a shared residence order, meaning Pearl would spend a lot more time with him, and he said that’s when things fell apart.

Gavaghan and Pearl initially fled to Mexico. They arrived in Toronto in January 2009, where they became known as Dana and Belle Flaherty. Police heard reports of them in Parkdale, but when they went to investigate the pair had moved on.

Back in Britain, the High Court ruled Pearl’s removal was unlawful.

When he heard of the Parkdale sightings, da Massa left his job in Manchester and moved into a basement apartment in East York to carry on the search for his daughter.

He remained here for more than six months, plastering the walls of his apartment with pictures and maps, and devoting his life to finding her.

Now Da Massa and his daughter have lost years to catch up on.

“Pearl was told she didn’t have a father, ” he told the Manchester Evening News. “We’ve had to go back to where we were three years ago and get used to each other again.”

With files from Amy Dempsey

The second floor of the Rivoli looks and sounds more like a traveller’s hostel than a Queen St. bar on Tuesday nights, as more than 100 people pack the space to practise a second language with native speakers.
Created by Beth MacLeod, a University of Toronto linguistics PhD student, Toronto Babel is a weekly language exchange meet-up that launched in January 2010. She started the group after participating in a similar event in Madrid in 2009.

“Toronto being the city that it is, so diverse even just with the people that live here, people come from all over the world to learn English and I thought we could create a space for them to get together, ” said MacLeod.

Toronto Babel began as a dozen people sitting in a circle waiting for instruction on what to discuss, but MacLeod quickly told them to talk about anything with the person next to them.
That format has stuck.

“Part of the reason it’s successful is that people have that freedom, ” said MacLeod.
She adds that many language workshops make people talk about sports or politics, rather than allowing conversations to take their natural course.

At one table, four people are engaged in a complicated, multilingual discussion.
Hayden Edwards is visiting Toronto from Vancouver and is practising Mandarin with Christina Huang, who wants to learn French. Beside her, David Del Burgo is practising Japanese with Toshihiro Deguchi, who in turn is practising English with Del Burgo.

“Meeting new people is always difficult and it’s a great way to practise, ” said Edwards, who brought a book that promised he could learn Mandarin in 10 minutes a day.

Edwards proudly demonstrated how to say, “I drink coffee” in Mandarin. His teacher, Huang, smiled.

For many, the group becomes both educational and social, a chance to practise language and meet up with friends made in previous weeks.

The success of the matching process depends on the availability of speakers, but MacLeod makes an effort to pair up learners as best as she can.

MacLeod runs the events herself, with regular attendees taking over when she travels or can’t make it.

Most people, she says, come to learn English, followed closely by French and Spanish.
“If you just go to English school, you’re not going to meet a lot of people from Toronto, so it’s a chance for people to really integrate into the city and get a feel for what it means to live here, ” said MacLeod.

Walter Kampf came to Toronto Babel for the first time this past Tuesday.

He took a year off from work in Brazil to travel and learn English. Living in East York, Kampf had a hard time meeting people to help him practise English. He was frustrated after being brushed off when approaching people in the street or at parks to help him learn.

“This is my first time here, ” said Kampf at the meet-up. “And I love (it).”

MacLeod said many language-learners suffer from a fear of talking to people in their new language.

“The first step is to come. You’re not going to get left on your own to stumble around, not meeting people, ” she said.

Toronto Babel recently spawned offshoots dedicated to Spanish and French, check www.meetup.com/TorontoBabel for their locations, and multilingual meet-ups in Ottawa and Kitchener-Waterloo.

In the future, MacLeod would like to host Toronto Babel at locations outside the Rivoli, such as an art gallery.

Toronto Babel is a free meet-up that happens every Tuesday on the second floor of the Rivoli, starting at 7:30 p.m. For more information, visit www.meetup.com/TorontoBabel