Monthly Archives: December 2009

By Doug Draper

Hard to believe but more  than a month  has gone by since we launched Niagara At Large and we are already receiving plenty of good vibrations from people across our greater Niagara region – from  both sides of our binational border.

Overlooking the mouth of the Niagara River and the shores of Youngstown, N.Y. fromi Niagara-on-the-Lake. Photo by Doug Draper

A good flow of email and calls of ‘Congratulations’, ‘Wow, what a great idea’,’It’s about time’ and ‘We desperately need alternatives to the old media” has already come pouring in from citizens from both sides of the border, and from some of the people representing us in government, and from business leaders and others who are looking for a new, independent source of news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our region.

Niagara At Large has also been receiving a growing number of requests from individuals and groups to contribute content to this site. They have offered to contribute even though they know that the only compensation this site can offer to all of us, right up and including this writer and publisher, is the promise of building something that might one day give us back the kind of edgy, vital coverage and commentary our communities need and deserve.

Now that we are in to the New Year, Niagara At Large will be ramping up this site with the goal in 2010 of making it the most vital and go-to site for news and commentary in Niagara and you can click on the ‘keep reading’ tab at the end of this sentence to find out more. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

The controversy swirling around the Niagara Health System and the way it manages hospital care across the region won’t be taking a rest during the holiday season – at least not for Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor.

NHS CEO Debbie Sevenpifer, flanked by senior staff, answers complaints from Niagara Falls councillors this fall. Photo by Doug Draper

The Liberal MPP says he will be spending at least some of the holiday period preparing a brief on the beleaguered hospital system for Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews.
“I will be arranging a meeting with (the minister) in the month of January,” Craitor told Niagara At Large in a recent interview. “I am putting together a brief for her and I will also be sharing it with the public.”
Craitor’s decision to meet with the minister follows a resolution the city council in Niagara Falls passed late last month, urging the province to “step in and appoint an investigator to investigate and report on the quality of the management and administration of the Niagara Health System.” Continue reading →

 By Doug Draper

Ontario Transportation Jim Bradley says he’s willing to work with Niagara’s regional government in helping a coalition in the State of New York win federal stimulus funding to bring a high-speed rail system to the greater Niagara area.
“We are interested in helping the region with this,” said Bradley, adding in an interview with Niagara At Large that he’s prepared to commit some staff time from his ministry to helping Niagara regional officials in Ontario support the New York bid. Continue reading →

(Click on ‘keep reading’ in this story for a complete list of new doctors in your area.)

By Doug Draper

Niagara’s ‘Physician Recruitment Program’ managed to attract 19 new family doctors this year, slowly but surely closing a gap on a chronic physician shortage that has left many in the region without a family doctor of their own for more than a decade.
“This has been a great year in regards to recruitment,” Josie Faccini, regional recruiter for the program told Niagara At Large recently. “I would like to express my gratitude to all the family physicians who have decided (to) set up a practice in one of (Niagara’s) we communities. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

For the first time in its 124-year history, Ontario’s Niagara Parks Commission is opening its board meetings to the public.

A view of the Falls from Niagara Park's famed Table Rock. Photo by Doug Draper

The decision to swing the meeting doors at its Oaks Hall headquarters in Niagara Falls open to members of the media and public follows the sudden resignation earlier this December of commission chairman Jim Williams and months of controversy over the way it handles it business affairs – particularly a 25-year lease it recently negotiated, without going to an open tender, with the Lewiston, N.Y. owner of the Maid of the Mist Steamship Company. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

There was a time – some 20 or 30 years ago – when we Canadians thought we were so clean when it came to protecting the environment that practically no other country on earth could take a front seat to us.

Council of Canadians leader Maude Barlow tries to smile on her way to a public rally at the Copenhagen climate change summit. Photo courtest of Council of Canadians

As a veteran environment writer, I know we were never quite as clean as we wanted to believe. Our American neighbours, right across the border in Niagara Falls, N.Y., may have had the infamous Love Canal dump. But in our own quieter way, we were doing our share of releasing damaging pollutants to the land, air and water.
Yet we still had reason to be proud. Agencies like Environment Canada and Ontario’s own Ministry of Environment had scientists doing groundbreaking research and our governments were taking unprecedented steps to purge our Great Lakes of pollution. We had environment ministers like the late Charles Caccia, federally, and Jim Bradley, provincially, taking a lead in protecting vital natural resources like the Niagara River – even when it sometimes drew the ire of their U.S. counterparts.
I now look back on those times with a sense of nostalgia and sadness because they are gone. If there was ever any more proof of that, it was in Copenhagen at the climate change negotiations where Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper – when he wasn’t being mocked by environmentalists around the globe as a “fossil” – barely had any presence to speak of on the international stage. He was a veritable midget compared to U.S. President Barack Obama, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and other world leaders because he has chosen to be a follower, and not a leader, when it comes to wrestling down possibly the most serious environmental issue facing us for generations to come. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Niagara’s regional council has approved putting aside $3.1 million in start-up funding in the event it moves forward this coming year with launching an inter-municipal transit system.
The council made the decision to hold the funding in reserve during its last full session of 2009 (held this past Thursday, Dec. 17) as part of a $132.5-million capital budget package it passed for roads, wastewater, waste management and other infrastructure. The decision brings Niagara another step closer to possibly realizing a 40-year vision of providing residents access to public transit, as an alternative to driving a car, from one end of the region to another. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Thing must be getting awfully desperate in Ontario when the provincial government has to consider selling off some of its richest public assets to grab some quick cash.

This Liquor Control Board outlet in Niagara may soon be on the chopping block. Photo by Doug Draper

Yes, we know the province’s Liberal government is facing a record $24.7-billion deficit thanks to a combination of the Great Recession, a massive exodus of industry and its own fiscal mismanagement. But does that mean the government should hold a fire sale that could lead to assets like Ontario One, power generating facilities like Sir Adam Beck in Niagara Falls, the LCBO and others that rake in billions of dollars in revenue annually for the province, falling into private hands?

We’ve seen this movie in Ontario before with the Conservative government of Mike Harris pushing to privatize a number of public-owned assets, including a number of the province’s conservation parks. Fortunately, the Harris government’s plans to sell our parks and our power utilities were scuttled in a tidal wave of protest from Ontario citizens and others, including the now-governing Liberals. But it did manage to get away with selling Hwy. 407 in the greater Toronto area to a private consortium and motorists have been paying for it ever since with ridiculously high toll rates for this 67-mile-road that make the tolls for driving the entire 300-mile plus stretch of New York State Thruway between Buffalo and Albany seem like a Christmas gift.
As a representative for some of the employees working for the public corporations the McGuinty government is considering selling off now said to reporters in a recent interview – this is akin to someone throwing their furniture in their fireplace to keep their house warm.
It is a desperate, shortsighted way of dealing with a serious deficit problem in the province – one that Ontarians may regret for generations to come – and it has got to be stopped. Continue reading →

 Canada’s federal government is providing Niagara’s Brock University and the Grape Growers of Ontario with $1.9 million in research funding to support the area’s grape and wind industry.

The funding announcement was made this week by Rick Dykstra, the federal government member for the St. Catharines, Niagara area, and details and reaction to it can be found in a Dec. 16 media release from Brock University by clicking ‘keep reading’ at the end of this sentence. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Whatever happened to the ‘audacity of hope’?

Less than a year after his inauguration as president of the United States, the person who turned those words into a rallying cry is already dashing hope that his country will ever establish an affordable, universal health care system for its people, and millions of Americans and possibly even Canadians are the losers.

As of this posting, it’s beginning to look like nothing short of Christmas season miracle will keep U.S. President Barack Obama’s promise of fair and affordable health care for all American citizens from turning into another windfall for private health insurance companies through a health-care bill that will make in mandatory for millions of uninsured Americans to buy insurance from them.

And how much longer will it be before Canadians have no choice but to purchase health care insurance from these private corporations too? Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Will Niagara’s regional councillors finally decide to put the region on the road to building a transit system for the 21st century?
We may now be only weeks away from finding out?

Will public transit buses like this one in St. Catharines finally be rolling through every municipality in Niagara. Photo by Doug Draper

The region’s council is tentatively scheduled to hold a special meeting in late January or early February to review and vote on recommendations to build and operate a inter-municipal bus system for serving the entire Niagara region – a vision that has been championed by transit advocates, but never realized for the past 40 years of the regional government’s existence.
Now the momentum to turn that vision into a reality finally seems to be swinging in the right direction.

Niagara regional chairman Peter Partington declared in an address to council earlier this fall that he is making the creation of an inter-municipal transit system one of his major priorities as council enters the final year in 2010 of its four-year term. And survey after survey of Niagara residents over the past five to 10 years has shown support growing for a region-wide transit system.
But don’t take a “yes” vote for regional transit for granted. There are still nay Sayers out there and they are all too often the ones who will take the time to contact the 12 mayors and 18 directly elected regional councillors across Niagara before a final decision is made to let their views known.
That is why it is so important that all of you out there who support building a region-wide transit system that will start with buses but could, as we’ve seen in other southern Ontario regions, move to light rail, contact your mayors and regional councillors, and express your support for transit before possibly the most critical vote on this issue in four decades of regional government takes place.
To make it easier for you to contact your mayor and regional representatives by phone or email keep reading at the end of this sentence and scroll down to the end of this commentary.

Continue reading →

By Charles Lamb

Chemical Waste Management, the only commercial hazardous waste site in New York State,  will be full within four years and the company is making a heavily opposed  bid to New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation for a permit to expand the site.

Emergency crews respond four years ago to turned over tanker truck of toxic waste headed for the CWM site near Porter and Lewiston, N.Y. File Photo

If the permit is granted, CWM could continue to haul toxics here for another 40 years or so, bringing dangerous materials to a site near the Niagara River and Lake Ontario in the greater Niagara region from approximately 30 states.

Despite the fact that Lake Ontario already has PCBs in it from CWM’s site and other waste sites near the binational waters, and that every truck that brings toxics here passes schools and sometimes leak, and that the cancer rate for children for some kinds of cancer is higher near their site compared to others  in New York, CWM continues to push ahead hard for an expansion permit. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

A campaign by a coalition of New York State municipalities and busineses to steer a high-speed rail system into the greater Niagara region from Albany and Manhattan is winning  virtually unanimous from regional councillors on the Ontario side of the border.

Will these tracks running through Niagara, Ont. one day link with a high-speed rail system in New York?

The project has already received the blessing of a majority on the council following a presentation last week to the regional government’s planning and public works committee by Don Hannon, director of integrated modal services for the New York State Department of Transportation and a representative of the state coalition.

The Niagara, Ont. council’s support sets the stage for its political leaders and staff to get fully behind the High Speed Rail New York Coalition’s efforts to obtain stimulus funding from the U.S. federal government for the rail project. It also provides impetus for them to lobby provincial and federal governments on the Canadian side of the border to improve rail links from New York for passenger and freight through Niagara and the Toronto area.

“I would hope that (Ontario’s transportation minister and St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley) would lend the staff support that is helpful to this,” said Patrick Robson, the Niagara regional government’s commissioner of integrated community planning during a recent interview with Niagara At Large. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

More than 150 Buffalo area residents braved icy rain this past weekend to rally for a not-for-profit community organization continuing to maintain and preserve that city’s historic Olmsted Park system.

Conservancy leader David Colligan addresses supporters at Buffalo rally. Photo by Doug Draper

Those who rallied this past Sunday, Dec. 13 at Martin Luther King Jr. Park – one of several parks, including Delaware Park, boulevards and circles that make up the city’s 1,200 acres of Olmsted parklands – want to see the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy continue managing the lands. They are convinced the Conservancy can do a better job of managing them than the city, which is poised to take back control of them in this coming January.
“The (Olmsted) parks are not for the politicians. They are for the people,” said one of the conservancy’s leaders, David Colligan, during the rally. “We believe we have earned the right to maintain the parks and restore them.” Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

He was a great lover of newspapers when they deserved to be loved and one of the best friends a journalist could ever have.

Bruce Williamson

His name was Bruce Williamson – known affectionately to his legions of friends and former colleagues in the St. Catharines area as ‘Booty’ – and he was one of the guiding spirits at the St. Catharines Standard in its final decades as an independent newspaper owned by the Burgoyne family. He also had more to do than he possibly ever knew with inspiring young journalists to go out there and dig for the kind of stories that earned the respect of the community and won provincial and sometimes even national newspaper awards, even though he never had a byline in the paper himself. Continue reading →

By Fiona McMurran

The South Niagara Chapter of the Council of Canadians – a nationwide group dedicated to preserving Canada’s independence – marked its first birthday in the region this December with the  opening of an office in Welland.

Council of Canadians national chairperson Maude Barlow flanked by South Niagara Chapter members Shari Sacco (back left), Fiona McMurran (back right), and Jen Coorsh (seated right at the Unbottle It! January 2009 event at Brock University. Photo by Terry Nicholls

The Council of Canadians is this country’s largest citizen watchdog group with its well-known chairperson, Maude Barlow, along with a staff and a volunteer board at the helm, researching and consulting on issues such as water and climate justice, food security and sovereignty, trade deals being made at the provincial and federal levels, and the battle to preserve Medicare, as well as other pressing issues related to Canadian sovereignty.
The various chapters of the Council of Canadians work at the local level, urging friends and neighbors to take action to keep governments accountable, and to work for the changes that they believe serve the common good.

Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Well here we go again!

Niagara Regional Police headquarters in St. Catharines

It’s another tough budget year for Niagara Region and it’s another year the region finds itself facing a budget request from the Niagara Regional Police Service that is above a cap it has set in an effort to keep hikes on property taxes down for Niagara residents.
“We don’t have the ability to pay this,” said St. Catharines regional councillor Bruce Timms following a presentation Police Chief Wendy Southall and other representatives of the NRP made to the region’s council at one of its ongoing budget review sessions this past Thursday (Dec. 10) for a 2010 budget increase of 4.5 per cent to almost $121 million in operating costs for the coming year. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Charles Schumer, a senior U.S. Senator for New York State, has urged his country’s Department of Homeland Security to work with Canadian officials to reverse a significant decline in people crossing the Canada-U.S. border in the Niagara Falls and Buffalo/Fort Erie areas. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Plans to site a major NASCAR-level motor speedway in the border town of Fort Erie  has received a major injection of fuel from councillors for the town and Niagara’s regional government.

Fort Erie resident and speedway critic Sandy Vant urges Niagara regional councillors to consider concerns of residents where giant track would go

The speedway plan, which includes drawings for high-speed tracks surrounded by a grandstand capable of seating 100,000 people, received the go ahead with week for a full-planning review from councillors from Fort Erie and from the Integrated Community Planning and Public Works Committee for Niagara’s regional government.
The approvals from the two levels of municipal government to move forward with a full review of the plan (see a related report  by contributor Tim Seburn on the Fort Erie council’s decision at the end of this story) has excited its supporters with an eye to seeing it come to fruition has excited the plans, who believe a NASCAR speedway here will draw waves of people from both sides of the border and provide a much-needed boost to a region that has been bleeding business and jobs. But it is a disappointment to others, including environmentalists, agricultural-land preservationists and people living and operating farms on rural lands near the sprawling 800-plus acre site for the speedway.

Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

If you or I were to take a couple of oranges across the Peace Bridge – even oranges that were grown in Florida or California – and customs officers on either side of the border caught us trying to “import” them without reporting them, they have the authority to pull us over and turn our vehicle inside out looking for any other “exotic” item we might have in our possession.

Schools of Asian Carp splash their way to the Great Lakes in the waters of Illinois. If they make it, ecologists predict a potential disaster for our lakes. Photo courtesy of Great Lakes Fisheries Commission

But if a big ship from half away around the world happens to dump its ballast water in the Great Lakes, releasing an exotic species like zebra mussels or round gobbies that can wreak havoc for native species in the lakes, hardly any effective action has been taken by the Canadian and U.S. governments over the past few decades to regulate and police that kind or importation.

Now the Great Lakes face the invasion of a non-native species the likes of which could make the impact zebra mussels have had on the food chain of the waters look like a Sunday school picnic. That species – known generically as the Asian carp – could virtually trigger an ecological catastrophe for communities in the Great Lakes region and destroy a recreational and commercial fishery for Canadians and Americans worth billions of dollars a year. Continue reading →

By Don Smith

This is a message of some urgency to all seniors 65 and older who get Canada Pension Plan and Old Aid Security cheques from the federal government.
Baby Boomers should also pay attention to this message as you will find yourself being affected in a very few years. Continue reading →

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Becoming a subscriber here is easy. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

“In most industries, if your customers were leaving in droves, you would try to figure out what to do to get them back,” said Arianna Huffington during an address she delivered at a journalism conference recently in Washington, D.C.
“(But) not in the media,” she continued. “They’d rather accuse (newer online sources of news and commentary) of stealing their content.”
Arianna Hufftington, I don’t mind telling you, is one of this journalist’s inspirations as I forge ahead with Niagara At Large, an online site for news and commentary for the greater Niagara region I hope will grow to be a regional equivalent of her an internationally renown online news blog, The Huffington Post. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

“What a long strange trip it’s been,” wrote the late San Francisco songwriter Jerry Garcia of Greateful Dead fame.

Doug Draper on the job in the early years before newspapers were gobbled up by corporate chains.

What a long strange trip it has been, indeed!

Garcia and his band mates penned those lyrics nine years before I began my first job in journalism at the St. Catharines Standard in 1979. That was 30 years ago when good newspapers were still a vital force in our communities in so far as we felt we needed to spend some of our day reading through them before deciding who to vote for in the next election or whether to participate in a public meeting over taxes or a proposal for new development down the street. Now we are witnessing too many of those papers die a slow and undignified death thanks, in no small part, to the greed and lack of interest in good journalism of the corporate chains that have taken so many of them over. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

We Canadians and Americans who live across the Niagara River from one another know that down the middle of that waterway we share a border border the forefathers of our countries have drawn.

For our binational region, let's hope this isn't a bridge too far. Photo by Doug Draper

It may have been drawn for a list of reasons that have to do with historical circumstances and sovereignty. But to what degree does it have to be a barrier?  Does it have to divide the people of Erie and Niagara Counties, New York and the people of the Niagara Region in Ontario from working more closely together as a ‘Greater Niagara Region’? Does it have to keep us from getting together to overcome the common challenges we face as people living and working in this region of the world and from promoting our interests for the betterment of all?
For the first time since the catastrophic events of Sept. 11, 2001 all but killed talk between political leaders on both sides of breaking down that barrier and building a Greater Niagara Region – what former Buffalo mayor Anthony Masiello envisioned as a larger “city-region” where municipalities on both sides of the river would make up” the middle ground” – there appears to be a growing interest in moving forward with that vision.

Continue reading →

 By Doug Draper

As the provincial government and its enablers, including the Niagara Health System (NHS) and Hamilton, Niagara, Haldimand, Brant Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), slowly but surely dismantle hospital services in Niagara’s centre and south end, one mayor and his council are determined to take their services back.

Citizen protesters watched this spring as the emergency room of the Port Colborne General Hospital was converted to an urgent care centre as part of a downsizing plan the Niagara Health System is imposing on smaller hospitals across the region. Photo by Doug Draper

“We want to take control of our own destiny,” says Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey of his city’s decision over the past year to establish what it calls a Niagara South Health Care Corporation that is separate from the NHS and is moving forward with its own “blue print” for rebuilding hospital services in Niagara’s southern tier.
And if Badawey’s boldest dream comes true, that blue print includes a successful pitch to the provincial government for a new hospital to service south Niagara. Someone has to take on the responsibility and leadership to see that health care is available and the people here have access to all of the health care they need,” said Badawey in a recent interview with Niagara At Large of the move his council is taking to develop a health care system of its own.

Continue reading →

By Tim Seburn

Already known for its activism over Marcy Woods and most recently its hospital closing, controversy is once again brewing in Fort Erie.
The latest burning issue is the Canadian Motorsports Speedway (CMS) proposal targeting 823 acres of mostly prime agricultural land in the heart of this town. The one mile oval and two and one-half mile road course are planned to open in time for the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the War of 1812. A local newspaper has called those opposing CMS backwards facing. Now the nature club returns the aspersion, setting the scene for yet another interesting battle in this border town.

Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

A combination of recession, gridlock and heightened demands for identification at the border crossings is costing the economies of communities in the Greater Niagara Region thousands of jobs and countless lost dollars, says a representative for a not-for-profit organization promoting tourism in the region.
“We need a remedial action plan to fix this because it is affecting us dramatically,” Arlene White, the director of the Binational Tourism Alliance representing about 140 public- and private-sector tourist and business interests in Niagara, Ont. and Niagara and Erie Counties, N.Y. told members of the regional council on the Ontario side of the border recently. Continue reading →

By Becky Day

Every municipality in the greater Niagara region seems to have its sticking point when it comes to heritage preservation.

Thorold's former city hall, a designated heritage building, remains abandoned and awaiting its fate. Photo by Doug Draper

Thorold, Ontario, the city’s former city hall building has become as contentious as the Port tower condo project now destined to replace so much of the heritage district in the historic old community of Port Dalhousie, located along the southern shores of Lake Ontario in St. Catharines.
Strapped to a roller coaster of political nonsense and inaction, Thorold’s aging city hall building has been held hostage for more than three years, waiting for local politicians to decide their next move.
The heritage structure located at 8 Carleton St. n Thorold – also once home to L.G. Lorriman Public School – rots quietly as it awaits its fate. If the city doesn’t act soon, the designated site will suffer irreparable damage.
All too often, residents across the greater Niagara region have seen the same fate overcome other heritage buildings that fall into neglectful hands. In nearby Buffalo,  for  example, residents and visitors to that city have witnessed the half-collapse of a 19th century livery stable in what is lovingly known to some as the the city’s “cottage district.” Claiming ‘demolition by neglect’ on the part of the livery stable’s longtime owner, residents are working with the city and others to restore this historic treasure. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Two citizens in south Niagara have received awards from an Ontario-wide coalition of health-care advocates for their role in fighting for fair and accessible hospital services for their communities.

Port Colborne health care activist Pat Schofield addresss a public meeting on cuts to hospital services earlier this year. Photo by Doug Draper

Pat Schofield, a Port Colborne resident and leader of the People’s Health Care Coalition in that community, and Sue Salzer, a Fort Erie resident and leader of what has come to be known across the region as the Yellow Shirt Brigade, were recently presented with Dan Benedict Awards at the Ontario Health Coalition’s annual conference in Toronto.
The awards, named after the late Daniel Benedict, an Order of Canada recipient and Canadian Auto Workers representative who was a champion of universal health care, recognize the continued efforts by Schofield and Salzer to lobby governments and hospital administrators for quality hospital services across the Niagara region. Natalie Mehra, director of the Ontario Health Coalition, told Niagara At Large her citizen-based organization chose Schofield and Salzer for the awards because “they have exhibited an extraordinary commitment to their communities and we wanted to celebrate and acknowledge this. They have put in endless hours. They have worried, burned up the phone lines, organized their communities, and through it all, have shown exemplary leadership. …
“We believe that public services like hospitals are just that – public,” added Mehra. “They rely on an active and engaged community to hold them to account, to support them, to keep them viable, and to meet the needs of people who perhaps cannot speak for themselves. That is why the Health Coalition tries to recognize people like Sue and Pat who really understand the ideas of public service and community.

Continue reading →