Niagara At Large

 By Doug Draper

Reilly Anzovino would have been 19 years old this Jan. 26.

Some of her friends gathered at her home in Fort Erie on that day to celebrate her life and, at the same time, console grieving members of her family.

Reilly Anzovino

Lest we forget, Reilly was the young woman involved in a tragic accident on a stretch of Hwy. 3 in her hometown of Fort Erie this past Boxing Day and whose chances for survival drained to a point where she passed away slightly before or after she arrived in a 19-and-a-half-minute ride on a cold, icy night to the emergency at the Welland hospital.

Since then, thousands of residents in her community and others across this Greater  Niagara Region, including her parents Denise Kennedy and Tim Anzovino, and three of Niagara’s provincial members of parliament – Kim Craitor, Peter Kormos and Tim Hudak – have called on Dr. Andre McMallum, Ontario’s chief coroner, to hold a public inquest into the circumstances surrounding Reilly’s death.

They want to know if the decisions by two agents of the Liberal provincial government of Dalton McGuinty – the Niagara Health System (NHS) and Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brand Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) – that lead to the closing of emergency rooms at hospitals in Fort Erie and Port Colborne last summer may have had a hand in this tragedy. (more…)

Until the wee small hours, the region's meeting on our transit future drags on

By Doug Draper

“Patience, patience,” Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badeway implored others on the regional council and dozens of us listening in the gallery as the marathon meeting over whether or not the region should play a role in cobbling together an inter-municipal transit system for Niagara dragged on and on.

Patience was not in the cards for some.

Judy Casselman, a veteran regional councillor for St. Catharines, looked frustrated as she stressed more than once that any further delay in moving forward with an inter-municipal transit system would show a “void of leadership” to far too many in the public, including students, seniors and lower-income people who’ve been waiting for years for  a good, reliable transit system to get them to school, to job, to visit with a loved one in a hospital, or just get out to buy a few groceries.

St. Catharines Mayor Brian McMullan said he walked into the special meeting the region was holding on transit services this Jan. 28 expecting to participate in a “historic” session in which, after 40 years of the region running hot and cold on the idea of building a transit system for all Niagara’s residents, it was finally going to do it. Anything less that driving forward with a launch of an inter-municipal transit system amounts to “failure,” McMullan added, “and I don’t accept that.” (more…)

By Doug Draper

It may be cold out there. But the last week of this January has seen the battle with Ontario’s government over what it is allowing its appointed hacks to do to Niagara’s hospital system approach the boiling point.

Fort Erie Mayor Doug Martin slams province on hospital services

During the week, Fort Erie Mayor Doug Martin fired off a letter to Ontario’s health minister, Deborah Matthews, challenging recent comments she made in The Globe & Mail that the closing of the emergency room in the hospital in his municipality was undertaken to provide better health care for residents and not to save money.

In the meantime, Sue Salzer, a south Niagara resident and leader of the Yellow Shirt Brigade, a citizens dedicated to fighting for better hospital services, was a guest on CBC’s Radio Noon program on 99.1 FM. On the program, she discussed questions raised  by many in the community about the death of Fort Erie teen Reilly Ansovino, who died in a Boxing Day traffic accident in the municipality, and whether she might still be alive today if the emergency rooms at either the Fort Erie or Port Colborne hospitals – closed last year by the provincially sponsored Niagara Health System – were still open.

You can hear the entire CBC interview with Sue Salzer (if you have speakers on your compute)r by clicking on the following link http://www.cbc.ca:80/ontariotoday/story_archive.html  and scrolling down Radio Noon Ontario’s home page in the ‘Audio Archives’ section until you reach the title “ER Closing,” then click on that and listen.

Niagara At Large is also posting the Fort Erie mayor’s letter to Ontario’s health minister in its entirety, which you can read by clicking on ‘keep reading’ now. (more…)

 By John Bacher

 On January 23rd 2010, a major milestone took place when the people of the Niagara Region lost one of the most prophetic figures in the advocacy of our beautiful landscapes, particularly our unique Niagara fruit lands, from the combined blight of new expressways and urban sprawl.

Niagara conservation pioneer Bob Hoover

Robert Hoover – a founder and the first president of the Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society (PALS), one of the longest standing conservation groups in southern Ontario – died on January 23rd at age 89.  (more…)

 By Doug Draper

Another one of the few popular beaches left along the lakeshores of Niagara. Another plan to construct a high-rise condominium next to them.

A depiction of the high-rise condo many Crystal Beach residents are fighting to keep off of the popular Bay Beach in their community.

It is a scenario that is all too familiar to the residents of Port Dalhousie in St. Catharines and it is now one the residents of Crystal Beach area of Fort Erie find themselves embroiled in.

And just as I remember trying to shoehorn my way into a jam-packed legion hall in Port Dalhousie six years ago to hear residents duke it out with a consortium of high-priced developers and lawyers over plans to erect a multi-storey condo tower in the middle of a designated heritage district, the municipal hall in Fort Erie was crammed this past Jan. 25 with hundreds of  people from the area – more than a dozen of them who stood up before the town’s council to speak for and more than two dozen who spoke against plans to build a 12-storey condo tower in front of Bay Beach.

And just as the developers won their bid to erect a 17-storey condo near Port Dalhousie’s Lakeside Park – despite a regional planning report that listed several reasons why the proposal conflicted with municipal and provincial planning rules, and a newly elected city council that joined in opposing it at Ontario Municipal Board hearings – those in Fort Erie opposed to this one have a long and costly fight on their hands. And the Fowler’s Toad (a threatened species in this province that apparently inhabits the site) is probably not going to help them. (more…)

 By Doug Draper

Can we finally settle on a plan for constructing a companion span to the Peace Bridge between Buffalo and Fort Erie?

One of five proposed design plans for companion span to the Peace Bridge, looking southwest from the Buffalo side of the Niagara River. See images of other designs below.

It is a wide open question that has found no answer for more than a decade now as proposal after proposal has fallen by the wayside and as the three lanes of the 83-year-old Peace Bridge – one of the busiest border crossings in North America – get ever more bottlenecked with traffic.

Now, U.S. federal and state agencies have approved five possible designs for a companion span they hope will not draw the wave of environmental and other concerns that have blown away plans for a new crossing over the head waters of the Niagara River in the past and members of the public on both sides of the river still have an opportunity to view and comment on them at open houses on the Fort Erie side of the river this coming Feb. 4 through Feb. 6.

Details on the dates, times and locations can be found on this site, along with more images of the bridge designs under consideration, by clicking on the link that follows this sentence for reading more. (more…)

(The following article by Malcolm Howe, a professor in Niagara College’s School of Business, is a response to a commentary Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper posted on this site and in Niagara This Week on Jan. 21. That commentary, entitled ‘College Teachers Who Strike This Time Should Be Fired’ in NTW and ‘Any College Teacher Who Strikes This Time Should Be Sacked’ has been republished below Howe’s article. We encourage you to share your views in the comment boxes below these articles.)

By Malcolm Howe

I felt a sensational title, much like “College Teachers Who Strike This Time Should Be Fired”, was appropriate as this is the response you invited.

I understand, Mr. Draper, that you have a job to do and expressing your opinion is certainly within the rules. I wish, however, that you would take the time to make sure you understand the facts before you start writing. 

I am a College teacher. Please understand that my opinions may not be shared by all of my colleagues. Also understand that I do not make the “Sunshine List” of those who earn $100,000+ per year. I will not make the list next year, regardless of the settlement we receive when the dust settles.  (more…)

By Doug Draper

The Niagara region will need continued assistance from the Ontario government to help it address one of the highest jobless rates in the country and a host of other economic challenges, members of the province’s Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs was told this Jan. 25.

Niagara regional councillor and Pelham Mayor Dave Augustyn

“Our citizens tend to be older on average, tend to have greater health problems and are worse off economically than the rest of the province,” Dave Augustyn, a Niagara regional councillor and mayor for Pelham stressed during a pre-budget consultation session the committee was holding in Niagara Falls.

Speaking to the committee on behalf of Niagara’s regional government, Augustyn went on to tell that in general “household incomes (in the region) are lower and our youth have to leave Niagara to find good-paying jobs.”

To help address these and other financial problems, the region is urging the province to continue providing funding for roads and other infrastructure to stimulate the economy, Augustyn said. He also urged the committee to recommend the that the government give clearer direction to provincial arbitrators that ensures they take into consideration a region’s “ability to pay” when it comes to wage settlements with police and fire services.

“Our police forces and fire departments play a vital role in our communities and we have to have them. But their arbitrated wages settlements are becoming unsustainable and unaffordable,” Augustyn said. To continue reading a prepared text of the key points Augustyn made to the committee, click on the following tab: (more…)

By Doug Draper

In front of a standing committee of Ontario’s legislatures this Jan. 25, Sue Salzer, a Fort Erie resident and head of a ‘Yellow Shirt Brigade’ of residents fighting to preserve hospital services in south Niagara, made the call for fairer access to those vital services for her friends and neighbours.

Yellow Shirt Brigade leader Sul Salzer

In Salzer’s address to the committee, holding public sessions for one day in Niagara Falls, she stressed the concerns so many people in southern and cental communities of the Niagara region feel – that their services are being diminished as the Niagara Health System,  the body the province created for amalgamating hospital services in Niagara, moves forward with its plans to integrate more and more services in a new hospital complex it is building at a west St. Catharines site in north Niagara, at a cost of more than $1.5 billion.

Salzer went on to conclude that additional funds from the province is not the answer to a fiscal hole the Niagara Health System has found itself in.

“It is now (the NH’S's time) to practice fiscal prudence and live within their existing budgets.  It is now time for Health Care Dollars to reach the hospital floor. … With your recommendation, and legislative support, you can start a new trend across Ontario and send the message that you really are concerned about the care of your constituents. …

“That destination should not be the grandiose LHIN Headquarters, or for salaries for the 32 staff supporting a nine member supposed volunteer board. …
“That destination should not be for the $357,000 salary for a non-medical CEO (Debbie Sevenpifer) or the 169 staff on the sunshine list or for more consultants.

To read the full text of Salzer’s address to the provincial legislative committee on financial matters click on and keep reading. (more…)

By Doug Draper

The Social Assistance Reform Network of Niagara, a not-for-profit body representing a host of agencies and organization, along with churches and individuals across the region, demanded more social justice for Niagara residents in need during an address one of its leader, Gracia Janes, presented to a standing committee of the government in Niagara Falls this Jan. 25.

Gracia Janes

Among the mesages Janes and the network presented to this standing committee were; * What is more important than an adequate income to provide healthy food for those in need and lower health costs in future? * How can children take full advantage of their schooling if they are hungry, and how can poor parents work if there are not enough child care spaces? * What good is served in adding provincial dollars to the OCB, while taking $s out of the basic benefit.? Don’t children live in families who need an adequate basic benefit in 7 order to feed, clothe and educate them ?

For a full text of Gracia Jane’s remarks to the provincial committee, read on. (more…)

 By Fiona McMurran

Niagara area residents joined more than 10,000 Canadians in Ottawa and Toronto along with thousands of others in towns and cities across the country this Jan. 23  to protest Prime Minister’s Stephen Harper’s Conservative government’s continued proroguing of parliament.

Those who gathered in front of the constituency office of Conservative MP Rick Dykstra in St. Catharines – more than 50 in all – and sites across Canada demanded that the proroguing of parliament be ended and that our MPs get back to work.

Sporting signs reading; “Wanted – Stephen Harper, For Crimes Against Democracy,” “Don’t Run Away From Democracy” and “Honk For Democracy,” those who rallied in St. Catharines were angered by Dykstra’s recent comment that his constituents and those of other MPs across the country don’t care about the fact that the government he’s a member of has prorogued the business of parliament until the first week of March. (more…)

The innkeeper of one of the most historic mansions in Niagara is hosting a series of dinner discussions on governance, revitalizing our downtowns and other issues vital to the region’s future.

The Keefer Mansion Inn & Restaurant in Thorold “is pleased to host a special dinner series (starting Tuesday, Jan. 26) designed to foster discussion on subjects of importance to the development of Niagara,” says innkeeper Phil Ritchie. “It’s an important year for Niagara as we ‘set the table’ for (this coming fall’s) municipal and regional elections.”

For further information on this series of discussions, including how to reserve a place and costs, keep reading. (more…)

By Doug Draper

So what if the commissioners of one of the oldest government agencies in the greater Niagara region – in the wake of years of public pressure – at long last held their first ever meeting in the open and survived?

Oak Hall in Niagara Falls, Ont. was the site this January of the first open meeting the Niagara Parks Commission has held in its 124-year history. Photo by Doug Draper

And survive they did.

More than 50 members of the public squeezed in to a room on the first floor of the Niagara Parks Commission’s stately Oak Hall headquarters in Niagara Falls this Jan. 22 where 10 of its commissioners and about half a dozen of its senior staff were meeting.

There were no outbursts from the public gallery as the commissioners worked their way through the agenda. People sat back quietly listening to the proceedings and taking the odd note. And at the end of it all, Archie Katzman, a longtime commissioner and the NPC’s acting chairman, seemed to have a look of relief on his face as he thanked the people in attendance for being “a great audience.”

It was enough to make one wonder why it took 124 years since the NPC was created by an act of provincial parliament to protect and preserve parklands along the Ontario side of the Niagara River to swing its meeting doors open in the first place! (more…)

 By Doug Draper

The Globe and Mail has joined Niagara At Large and other media and residents across Niagara in asking if a Fort Erie teen, who died enroute to a Welland hospital emergency room the day after Christmas, would still be alive today if the emergency room at Fort Erie’s hospital had not been shut down.

This Saturday, Jan. 23 Globe features a heart-wrenching account by Denise Kennedy, mother of 18-year-old Reilly Anzovino, of the circumstances around Reilly’s death from internal injuries following a traffic accident on a stretch of Hwy. 3 in Fort Erie during the late hours of this past Boxing Day.

Reilly’s parents, along with Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor and numerous other residents in southern and central areas of Niagara, have since called on the Ontario coroner’s office to hold a public inquest to determine if a decision by the Niagara Health System  (the body responsible for operating most of the region’s hospitals) to close the Fort Erie hospital’s emergency room this past year may have been a factor in Reilly’s death.

Niagara At Large cannot run the Globe and Mail article in its entirety. But you can read it and reach your own conclusions by clicking on the following link: 
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/teens-death-ignites-debate-over-emergency-room-closures/article1441451/

Please share your own views in the comment box below and please visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com if you have received this post in a separate email as a subscriber. It is the best way of supporting this new online publication.

 Niagara’s regional council is exploring options for aiding the children of earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Members of the Niagara, Ontario council unanimously approved a motion this Jan. 21 to spend up to $50,000 identifying ways of possibly working with humanitarian agencies and municipalities on initiatives that “will focus on improving the quality of life and well-being of the children of Haiti.”

The motion, put forward by St. Catharines regional council Judy Casselman, call on regional government staff to report back to council soon on options for providing assistance. “I’m sure we can come up with (ways of helping that are) Niagara born,” she said.

Share your ideas for assisting Haiti’s earthquake victims by filling out a comment box below.

By Doug Draper

Niagara, Ontario’s top municipal politician will not be seeking another term on the regional council.

Niagara Regional Chairman Peter Partington announcing decision not to seek another term of office.

“Tonight’s meeting is important for a number of reasons,” said Peter Partington after he and other councillors were escorted into the region’s council chambers by a lone piper on Thursday, Jan. 21. “It’s the first meeting of a new year in this last year of this term of council. It’s also the first meeting of (the Niagara regional government’s) 40th anniversary year – truly a year to celebour and many achievements and the difference the region has made in the lives of our resident and in the health and vibrancya of our communities.”

“And it is the first meeting in what will be my final year as your chairman and as a member of regional council.” (more…)

By Doug Draper

How does the ring of ‘President Sarah Palin’ sound to you?

Yes I know. Some of you might actually like the sound of that. I mean to the extent to which there is apparently one hell of a lot of people across our binational region tuning in to Rush Limbaugh – his assaults on virtually anything Barack Obama has to say or do are blasting across the airwaves, courtesy of WBEN Radio in Buffalo, almost every day – who wish Palin was president now.

This hearse carrying the remains of Senator Ted Kennedy in Cape Cod, Massachusetts last August may have spelled the end of Kennedy-style progressive liberalism in North America. Photo by Doug Draper

I was mainly putting that opening question to all of you out who may think that the idea of Sarah Palin standing on the steps of the U.S. Capital building in January of 2012 – just as Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy did in times gone by – with a hand on a Bible, taking the oath of office for the presidency of the United States is impossible.

Impossible? If you had told me, even two months ago, that a virtually unknown Republican candidate by the name of Scott Brown, who is opposed to publicly funded health care, regulating Wall Street and the banks, etc., etc., would win a senate seat in one of the most liberal of U.S. states, Massachusetts, held by John Kennedy and his younger brother, the recently deceased Senator Ted Kennedy, for more than 50 years, I might have said that was impossible.

But it happened this Jan 19 – just one day before the first anniversary of President Obama’s inauguration – and it may signal the beginning of the end, not only for Obama, but for progressive, liberal politics in the U.S. and anywhere else on this continent, including Canada. It may also spell the beginning, whether we like it or not, of the Palin era. (more…)

 By Fiona McMurran

Wow!

It was a big victory in the Welland council chambers on Tuesday, Jan 19 for those residents in this city fighting to keep hospital services at Welland’s hospital and for others fighting for better hospital services throughout Niagara.

Welland councillor Frank Campion

The city’s council finally passed a motion put forward by one of its councillors, Frank Campion, to join Niagara Falls, Port Colborne, Fort Erie and Wainfleet in urging the province to investigate the way hospital services are being managed by the Niagara Health System – the body the former Conservative government of Ontario created a decade ago to amalgamate hospital operations in Niagara and that the province’s Liberal government continues to have calling the shots when it comes to most of the hospitals in the region. (more…)

 By Pamela Minns

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and his government have done a very good job each February of recognizing Black History Month and the Family Day the government established as a new civic holiday in the province on the third Monday of the month.

The Maplehurst mansion, now the popular Keefer Inn Mansion & Restaurant in Thorold, Ont., is one of many designated heritage sites in the Niagara region. Photo by Doug Draper

But whatever happened to Heritage Day?

The Heritage Canada Foundation first established Heritage Day (also set for the third Monday of February) in 1974. In fact, the entire third week in February each year is devoted to the recognition of our common heritage, and to paying tribute to our land and landmarks, our nation’s history, and our diverse cultures and traditions.

With this being the year of the Winter Olympics in Canada, the Heritage Canada Foundation will be celebrating “The Heritage of Sport and Recreation” across the council, while this year’s theme for the Ontario Heritage Trust is “Our Changing Landscape.”

Unfortunately in Ontario, the relatively new celebration of what the province’s government calls “Family Day” has knocked Heritage Day right off the calendar. (more…)

 By Doug Draper

For the third time in six years, the only Niagara MPP who has held an

Veteran Ontario Cabinet Minister and St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley

 Ontario cabinet post since Tim Hudak, the province’s Conservative leader, held several cabinet posts in the former governments of Mike Harris and Ernie Eves, and Peter Kormos had a short stint as  a cabinet minister in the NDP government of Bob Rae,  has been shuffled once again.

Veteran Liberal MPP Jim Bradley has moved from appointments to the province’s Tourism Ministry in 2003, to the Ministry of Transportation in 2007 and, as of this January 18, to the Ministries of Municipal Affairs and Housing in the government of Premier Dalton McGuinty. (more…)

 By Doug Draper

The next time the Niagara Health System – the body responsible for administering most of the hospitals across Niagara, Ont. – wants to host an ‘Open House’ for the public, why not hold it in a bowling alley. And preferably on an evening when there is a tournament on.

Niagara Health System CEO Debbie Sevenpifer and Welland resident Joe Somers try to converse in noisy corridor of Y complex

It would probably be less noisy and chaotic than it was on a Monday evening, this Jan. 18, as about 40 or 50 Niagara residents tried to crowd into a corner of a corridor a crowded Welland YM/YWCA building, between a swimming pool, gymnasium and staircase leading up to exercise rooms, for an opportunity to discuss their concerns about the region’s hospital services with the health system’s president and CEO Debbie Sevenpifer. (more…)

“The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving our peaceful tomorrows. One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”
                                              -Martin Luther King

By Doug Draper

On this Martin Luther King Day – Jan. 18, 2010  – the American civil rights leader would have been three days past his 81st birthday and would no doubt be at the forefront, along with U.S. President Barrack Obama and others, of encouraging the world to come to the aid of the earthquake victims in Haiti.

As our American neighbours take time, once again, to observe Martin Luther King Day, one cannot help but ask why we don’t have more voices like Martin Luther King or the person who inspired him – the great leader for non-violent activist, Mahatma Gandhi of India – in this world today?

Why is it that so many people who believe that they or their people have a grievance or are being oppressed in some way feel the only way they can make their case is by stitching explosive into their underwear and trying to blow up an airplane, shooting randomly into a crowd or letting a bomb they are hiding under their shirt go off on a bus or in a marketplace full of women and children? Why is it that the voices of King and Gandhi have been replaced by crude tapes of the mad ravings of Osama bin Laden or some psycho impersonating him from some cave somewhere? (more…)

By Doug Draper

An article that appeared in the Sat., Jan. 16 edition of The Globe & Mail on the Niagara Parks Commission seems to be getting a good deal of buzz among Niagara area residents.

Niagara At Large has received email on with some asking if we could post The Globe piece in its entirety on this site. That we cannot do since the article is the rightful property of The Globe but we will post that newspaper’s link to the article that you can access if you click on the ‘keep reading’ tab below. (more…)

By Doug Draper

It appears to be turning into a once-every-four years ritual for the union representing Ontario’s college teachers. And it goes something like this.

Receive a deal for a new salary and benefits contract in late summer or early fall from the presidents of the province’s 24 colleges and play around with it to the point of rejecting it by January of the following year.

This Niagara College campus In Niagara-on-the-Lake is a target of possible strike action by college teachers' union

The union then calls for and wins a strike vote from its members and, however weak or narrow the mandate for a strike might be, threaten to strike anyway. And always – and when I say always, I mean ALWAYS – make sure a deadline is set for some time in February or early March when a strike would exact maximum punishment on the very students the teachers belonging to this union claim they care so much about.

In other words, throw into jeopardy hundreds of thousands of students’ school year – one they and their families have scrimped and saved and sacrificed for  – because well, you know, the teachers are entitled to a two-to-three percent increase in wages every year, regardless of how badly the economy and the rest of us are doing outside of whatever bubble they choose to live in.

This is the stance this same grievous union – the Ontario Public Services Employees Union (OPSEU) representing more than 9,000 college teachers across the province– has taken again this January with a strike vote it won by a margin of roughly 57 per cent and a strike set for sometime in February if the college’s presidents and province don’t agree to their demand of a 2.5 per cent annual salary increase for their members over the next three years.

Well this time the college’s presidents, province, students and the rest of us who are paying for all of this should stand up to this bully union and say ‘No. We are not going to let you hold the academic year of some 150,000 full-time students and more than 300,000 part-time students hostage. Not this time.’

Either accept the offer the college presidents have put on the table – one that is pretty damn generous given the fact the rest of us are suffering through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and one that would given your members an eight-per-cent salary increase over the next four years up to a maximum of $103.975 – or any of your members that go out on strike are fired! And that should be the public’s final offer to these bullies – no retreat, no surrender. (more…)

 By Doug Draper

In a move that has at least some people in his old hometown of Fort Erie wondering what took him so long, Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak has joined the rising call of south Niagara residents for a public inquest into the circumstances surrounding the death of Reilly Anzovino. (more…)

By Doug Draper

Chalk one up for the vegetarians of the region.

One of Niagara’s largest transit systems will be reviewing its recent decision to ban ads promoting a vegetarian diet over eating meat on its buses.

“I don’t find them offensive,” St. Catharines Mayor Brian McMullan has told Niagara At Large of the ads Niagara Action For Animals (NAFA) is prepare to pay to display on buses owned and operated by his city’s transit commission.
 
“These (ads) would trigger a concern for me if they were hateful to an individual or group, or shocking in some way. … But from what I see, they don’t fall into that category and are meant to be thought-provoking and challenging,” said the mayor. (more…)

(This is the first in a series of posts Niagara At Large will carry on treasured heritage sites in our binational region)

By Paul Kassay

At the far end of lake Erie near the Niagara river on the south shore, sits an historic lighthouse, Point Abino juts out into lake Erie and is less than 15 miles from Buffalo NY which is visible most times.

Point Abino Lighthouse on Lake Erie

The Abino light station as it is known has been decommisioned since 1995. The Town of Fort Erie now owns the historic light, thanks to the perserverence of a group of local historians.

From Crystal Beach where we live we can still see the structure, but alas, getting to it is not a simple undertaking.. The road leading to the light is owned by an association of wealthy summer residents, mostly from the USA.. Visitors can access the point via a trolley in the summertime maintained and operated by PALPS through a special arrangement with the Town of Fort Erie who pays the assocication some $4,000.00 anually for the privilege.

The really big problem here is that the Lighthouse proper is considered to be on the Doomsday List by some. It is literally deteriorating. In an effort to get enough money to save the light, the Town has decided to sell off the Lightkeeper’s dwelling, in order to pay for the restoration. And many, like me, are outraged. (more…)

By Doug Draper

If you have an ad promoting vegetarianism over eating meat, good luck getting it run – at least on the sides or the back of a St. Catharines Transit bus.

One of the ads an animal activist group wanted to run on transit buses

Niagara Action for Animals, a long-time, not-for-profit organization in the region, advocating for more humane treatment of animals of the non-human kind, had their luck run out with a rejection from the St. Catharines Transit Commission this January to run an ad asking anyone who might have seen a series of their ads why they might love a dog or cat more than a pig or a chicken or a cow.

“Our intentions were to ask people to think critically about this issue,” Kimberly Costello, a spokesperson for Niagara Action for Animals (NAFA) told Niagara At Large. “Most people would be abhorred to think of their pet being genetically modified, intensively confined, mutilated, neglected, and brutally slaughtered, yet we seem to think it is okay when these acts are committed against equally sentient animals, such as cows, pigs and chickens.

But so much for that.

David Sherlock, general manager of the St. Catharines Transit Commission, exercised the veto authority he has to keep the ads from being displayed on the city’s buses. Any ad that may be “controversial” or “that takes a position that could be considered by the public to be politically sensitive…is something we don’t want on our buses,” he said. (more…)

(The parents of 18-year-old Reilly Anzovino, who died  on route to the Welland Hospital following a traffic accident on Hwy. 3 shortly before midnight on Boxing Day, have joined numerous others in Niagara’s southern tier in asking for an Ontario coroner’s inquest into the circumstances surrounding the death.

Many, including Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor and Welland MPP Peter Kormos, want to know if the Niagara Health System’s decision last year to close the emergency rooms at the Fort Erie and Port Colborne hospital sites could be a factor in Reilly’s death, since she died shortly before arriving on at the Welland hospital site which was further away.

Niagara At Large has run news commentaries on this tragedy over the past two weeks which can be viewed by scrolling further down this page.

Below we are sharing a transcript of the letter Reilly’s parents sent to Dr. Andre McCallum, Chief Coroner of Ontario, requesting a public inquest.) (more…)

By Doug Draper

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath came storming into south Niagara this week like a winter blizzard to slam the province’s Liberal government for letting emergency room services at hospitals in Fort Erie and Port Colborne die.

NDP leader Andrea Horwath and CAW Local 199 president Wayne Gates join area residents in front of beleaguered Fort Erie hospital site.

“The hardworking people of Niagara have the right to know that help will be there in a medical emergency or when a loved one gets sick,” said Horwath to a gathering of area residents outside Fort Erie’s Douglas Memorial Hospital. “The McGuinty Liberals found billions of dollars to provide a tax giveaway to some of Ontario’s richest corporations, but they’re closing down local emergency rooms. That’s wrong.” (more…)

By William Hogg, MD

The people in Niagara’s southern tier are beginning to realize that dying in an ambulance today is more likely to happen than it was just a few months ago.

A most tragic death was that of 18-year-old Reilly Anzovino a couple of weeks ago (this past Boxing Day) during her college break. She was badly injured in a car accident on the Garrison Road. It was a wintry-slippery, foggy night.

She died in the ambulance as it pulled into Welland hospital’s ER. If that ambulance had been able to go to her own home town’s hospital in Fort Erie, she would have been alive on arrival – not DOA. (more…)

By Doug Draper

While we in the greater Niagara region and other regions across the continent continue slugging our way through the worst economic times since the ‘Great Depression’ of the 1930s, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government in Canada has given us its answer as we enter the New Year.

No more stacking of Canada's Senate, please! Send the political hacks packing, with apologies to pigs of the four-legged variety.

Forget about calling back Parliament to deal with a bonafide economic crisis. Forget about trying to find some way of coalescing with other parties in Parliament and rest of us to forge a plan for a more promising future.
That would show a federal government that has the capacity to bring disparate groups together and can at long last play some kind of a leadership role for all Canadians. It would show a government that is at long last willing to role up its sleeves and show some responsibility on behalf of the millions of people across the country it is entrusted to serve – a government that has some heart for working to ensure that families across the land have some hope for the future.
Instead, we’ve got a Harper government that has said, in so many words, let’s take advantage of the extended Christmas break of Parliament to stack Canada’s useless and un-elected Senate with more politically appointed hacks. And while we are at it, why not   take advantage of the same period of time to prorogue Parliament so that the opposition parties cannot ask us any more questions in the legislature until March, rather than the last week in of January when Parliament was otherwise scheduled to resume. (more…)

By Becky Day
The story: On December 30, 2009, Stephen Harper asked the Governor General to prorogue parliament for the second time in only 12 months. By the Harper government making the move once again, Canada’s politics are frozen in time now until March 4. Parliament was expected to return on January 25.
As a result, 36 government legislations that were in the works have been stopped, as well as many bills that dealt with important issues.  To boot, MPs cannot bring the concerns of the Canadian people back to parliament when the house is not in session.
A Facebook group named “Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament” has been created and has received support from over 150,716 members so far. The group is urging people to tell their MPs to get back to work. (more…)

By Doug Draper

We Canadians seeking action from government on green energy and climate change have only one leader to look to – U.S. President Barack Obama.
Forget about Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper or ‘Prime Minister Tar Sands’ as we might just as well call him.
Any individual who, as recently as eight years ago, while he was still an MPP from Alberta and was busy rising to the leadership of the Canadian Alliance (the forrunner of the federal Conservative Party he lords over today) could write in a fundraising letter to party members that the Kyoto accord for reducing greenhouse gases is “essentially a socialist scheme” that will “cripple the oil and gas industry” to a point where “where workers and consumers everywhere in Canada will lose,” just doesn’t have it in their DNA to take progressive action on alternative energy and climate change.
Besides, Harper repeated as recently as the first week of this New Year in an interview with CBC news anchor Peter Mansbridge his mantra that Canada can’t act decisively in these areas unless the U.S. does because the economies of the two countries are so closely tied.
That is just as much to say that Canada – so long as Harper’s Conservatives are running the country anyway – is going to be a follower on what Obama has repeatedly ranked energy and climate change among the most serious challenges facing present and future generations in this world today.
And that brings us back to Obama as the only real hope both Americans and Canadians have in government for effectively meeting these challenges, not only for sake of our health and the environment, but for the sake of our national security, and jobs and economy for this brand new decade and well into the future.
 Unlike Harper, Obama has connected the dots and realizes that progressive energy and environmental policies are the ticket for those nations that are going to prosper in the 21st century. But he is no doubt going to have a hell of a fight getting their thanks to the same special interests Harper is in bed with, and he is going to need all of the support he can get from Americans and Canadians to succeed. (more…)

By Doug Draper

Does anyone in the U.S. or Canadian governments have any real idea who they are looking for when it comes to combating terrorists?
It appears not.
If you’re wondering why I’m saying this, ask yourself why our governments are applying tightening security measures in such a blanket way to all of us and consider the following. (more…)

By Doug Draper

When it comes to the body in charge of Niagara’s hospital system, it appears that arrogance and the sheer lack of respect for the guidelines and rules most everyone else has to follow knows no bounds.

Port Colborne activist Pat Scholfield on CHCH News discusing NHS's use of Superbuild funds.

As Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey disclosed in his last address to his council for 2009 (posted earlier in its entirety in Niagara At Large), the Niagara Health System has used Superbuild funds from the province that are only supposed to be used for capital projects – in this case for building a new hospital complex in Niagara – to cover its ballooning operating costs.
Badawey, who used the word “scandalous” to describe that move along with a number of others he feels have diminished hospital services in Niagara’s south end, was told the NHS was using the Superbuild funding to cover operating costs by Pat Scholfield, a Port Colborne resident who has been fighting against cuts to hospital services in her community. (more…)

By Doug Draper

“NHS = DOA.”

Those acronyms – NHS for Niagara Health System and DOA for ‘dead on arrival’ – were coupled together on a sign a man dressed up in a Grim Reaper costume was carrying last year during a protest rally in front of the one and only hospital serving the border community of Fort Erie.

Hundreds of residents from both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, who work and own homes in Fort Erie, joined the rally last September in protest of the NHS’s decision to close Douglas Memorial Hospital’s emergency room. Many expressed fear that lives would be lost ambulancing patients in critical condition further away, to already crowded emergency rooms in Niagara Falls or Welland. And many now wonder if their worst fear has come true in the wake of a tragic traffic accident that occurred on Boxing Day, along a stretch of Hwy. 3 running through Fort Erie.

One of the victims of the accident – Fort Erie teenager Reilly Anzovino – was ambulanced to the Welland County Hospital where, according to a police report, she was pronounced dead on arrival. (more…)

(If you’d like a little more insight into why people in Niagara’s south tier have so little confidence in the Niagara Health System and province when it comes to hospital services and their hospital care, this address by Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey should provide a few clues.

Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey

He delivered it this December, during the last session of 2009 of his city’s council, on the same night it approved a resolution by the council for the City the of Niagara Fall calling on the province to have the NHS’s operations investigated. Niagara At Large posts the address in its entirety and welcomes a rebuttle from the NHS or province if they so choose.)

By Vance Badawey

Good evening.

May I take this opportunity to elaborate on comments I had made regarding the resolution passed by Niagara Falls City Council and subsequently supported by Port Colborne City Council at our last meeting. (more…)

(On Friday, Jan. 8, the all-volunteer group Niagara Action for Animals, better known to many by its acronym NAFA, featured Sadie Parr, founder of the B.C.-based Canadian Wolf Coalition, as its guest speaker at its January Vegun Potluck in St. Catharines, Ont. A brief article on the plight of wolves and efforts to conserve them in the wild was submitted to Niagara At Large by Sadie Parr and is posted below.)

By Sadie Parr

Wolves used to roam the due to habitat loss and direct human exploitation.

Canada has the second largest population of wolves left in the world, and is one of the few places left where wolves are still part of a functioning ecosystem. As a top predator and keystone species, wolves help to maintain balance and biodiversity in nature. Preserving wolves means preserving wilderness. (more…)

By Joseph Somers

When Governor General Michaelle Jean was appointed five years ago as the Queen’s representative in Canada, it was heralded as a breath of fresh air for the country.

But the air certainly doesn’t seem to be as fresh any more with Jean recently being placed in the position of granting a request by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his minority Conservative government to prorogue Canada’s parliament – effectively prolonging the period of time this democratically elected body is not in session for the second December in a row. (more…)

By William F. Hogg

There are some groups of people who set themselves up as critics of the language. They pour through old euphemisms and new technical acronyms and ‘vote’ them out of the dictionary. Hopelessly, I might add.

(more…)