Dr. Timothy Francis Ball, a regular writer in our Landowner Magazine, passed away recently on September 24, 2022. He was a British-born Canadian public speaker and writer who was a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Winnipeg where he worked from 1971 until his retirement in 1996. After that, he was very active in raising awareness of climate issues and the inconsistencies in the accepted global warming narrative.
Tom and I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Tim Ball while we had gone west to attend my niece’s wedding. Tim knew that we were going to be travelling around Vancouver Island, and invited us out for a morning tour of various sites in Victoria, where he lived and I was born, ending with lunch at a hotel. It was a lovely day and we thoroughly enjoyed our visit.
The story of how Dr. Ball became a long-time writer in the Landowner Magazine started with Tom. A farm magazine, the Country Guide, had Tim Ball’s articles in every issue and Tom enjoyed his writing and was a regular reader of his column. Several years ago, Tom noticed that Tim no longer had an article in this magazine so he suggested that I try and contact him and see if he would like to write in our magazine. I did and he seemed very happy to do so. He told us that he had been warned that the paper would ‘let him go’ if he didn’t change his opinions on climate change. He didn’t and luckily for us, he became a regular contributor to the Landowner Magazine from then on.
Back to our tour. Tim told us that he used to be a tour guide who took seniors over to England and many other countries in Europe. He thoroughly enjoyed his guided tour groups and talking about the history of the sites that they visited. One significant memory and a difficult tour was that of the Auschwitz concentration camp located in the once, German-occupied Poland. Many of the seniors had memories that were too raw for that tour and some were unable to visit when it came time to do so. Although he enjoyed his various tour groups, that time proved to be understandably, a difficult one.
It was obvious to us that Tim was a great historian with a great memory. He loved talking about the history of everywhere we went. He gave us a running commentary on ‘old and new’ Victoria with the historical facts presented in great detail. He took us to the site where the ships used to dock and showed us the huge anchoring posts with large heavy thick chains that were imbedded in cement where the boats used to tie up. This area was now inland by a couple of hundred yards as over the years, there had been some infilling done in the Bay. We walked through downtown Victoria for several hours. One interesting place was a building that was the ‘launching pad’ for the Yukon Gold Rush. It was now a real estate building but the outside cement stairs were still there. He took us inside to show us the photographs on the wall of the long line of men waiting on those stairs to get inside to sign up.
Tim continued to write his clear, well articulated and easy to understand articles for many years. They were often accompanied by graphs, photos and illustrations to help explain his article. It was only when his health deteriorated that he was unable to continue. Our readers benefited very much and learned a lot from Tim. A recent article in the Druthers newspaper, September 2022 by Michelle Zeh had the headline:
World Climate Declaration – “There is NO Climate Emergency”.
I know Tim would agree with that.
He will be missed by many.