Niagara At Large

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. (more…)

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.” (more…)

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. (more…)