Monthly Archives: February 2010

By William Hogg, MD

Most people in Niagara see the Niagara Health System as an ogre.
 
Health care delivery here is bad. The lay-administrators of Niagara Health System (NHS), who should be focused on balancing finances properly, have stuck their noses into medical matters and thoroughly botched them.

Emergency department closures in the southern tier of Niagara are just part of the fiasco. But they are enough to gain the bureaucrats a new and sinister slogan to play with: NHS = DOA!!!
 
Not a happy thought. And so recently borne out by the untimely death of an exceptionally promising young girl, Reilly Anzovino. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Fort Erie Mayor Doug Martin calls it a “win-win” for the town and the residents of Fort Erie’s Crystal Beach area.

This image was produced by Crystal Beach area residents as an expression of their concern of what might happen to this historic cottage community if Fort Erie's council passes a plan for a condo tower in the community. Fort Erie's mayor, Doug Martin, insists the plan is a 'win-win' for everyone.

Many residents in Crystal Beach insist it will destroy the character of a quaint little lakeshore community that has a good deal of historical significance attached to it. A history that goes back to the time when it was a summer haven for the better half the last hundred year for residents in Southern Ontario and Western New York, when the grand old amusement park of Crystal Beach was still – up to more than decade ago before it closed – sending visitors on some of the best roller coaster rides in North America.

Many residents also argue that it will diminish access to one of the last remaining beaches along Lakes Ontario in Niagara – the popular Bay Beach are that the Town of Fort Erie purchased at a cost of slightly more than $2 million in 2001.

The “it” this commentary is referring to is a controversial proposal by the Molinaro Goup – a consortium of developers from the greater Toronto area – to build a 12-story condo tower on property in front of the beach, breaching a height restriction now on the bylaw books for the age-old cottage community of Crystal Beach of two-and-a-half storeys. And it is a conflict that may very well reach a crescendo this coming Monday, March 1, when Fort Erie’s council votes on matters that could make the first high-rise condo tower in Crystal Beach a reality – setting a precedent for possibly many more high-rise condos along the shores of Lake Erie to come. Martin believes this new development will make Bay Beach even more accessible to the public and may even make more beaches along the lakeshore open for public use.

“The entire (Bay Beach) will be open to the public,” the mayor stressed, adding that he can’t understand whom others believe the beach will become less inviting to the general public than it has since the town purchased it.

“There is overwhelming opposition to the Bay Beach project,” insists Marcia Carlyn, a Crystal Beach resident in a recent call for fellow residents to attend the March 1 meeting of Fort Erie’s town council at 6 p.m. and express their views. Continue reading →

 By Doug Draper

Great news this February 24 for students at Niagara College and 23 other colleges across the province.

The flag of Niagara College will continue to fly above its campuses with students walking in and out of their classrooms thanks to the end of a strike stand-off with the province's college teachers union.

Late this day, the Ontario Labour Relations Board has finally confirmed that a slight majority of college teachers across the province – 51.45 per cent – has accepted an offer by the province’s college presidents. This close vote in favour of the offer averts a strike that could have wreaked havoc for some 450,000 students – just as they are working to complete an academic year so many of them and their parents have sacrificed so much for in time and money.

The confirmation that a slight majority of college teachers – a total of about 54 per cent of them at Niagara College alone – has accepted this offer that gives the most senior teachers in the province’s college system the highest annual pay (more than $102,000 a year by 2011) of any college teachers in the country, is a tribute to slightly more than half of our province’s college teachers who showed some grounding in the realities most of the rest of us in the world out here are  facing today.

As for the union representatives for Ontario Public Services Employees Union – the union that continued playing a game of brinkmanship with the academic year of our province’s college students, even when it was clear, this January, that they had the thinnest of mandates to strike – I would suggest that those responsible college teachers out there take another look at them to the point of replacing them with representatives that show more respect for the concerns of students and the general public – many on fixed and lower incomes – who are struggling through their taxes to pay for our post-secondary schools and the good work they are doing.

These OPSEU representatives – so arrogant and self-righteous during this latest, so-unnecessary stand off with a college presidents’ group that has offered them a 5.9 per cent increase in teacher’s salaries over the next three years – should be run out off  their  bully pulpits on a rail. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

As the parents of ReillyAnzovino – the Fort Erie teen who died following car crash this December – continue their call for a provincial inquest to determine if Reilly would still be alive today if emergency rooms had not been closed at hospitals in Fort Erie and Niagara Falls, they have joined others in south Niagara in establishing a bursary in her memory.

The bursary, announced this February 22 at a Fort Erie council meeting by the Yellow Shirt Brigade, a citizens group fighting for fair access to emergency and other hospital services in Niagara’s southern tier, will provide financial assistance to deserving students entering Niagara College’s Paramedic Program.

Reilly  died shortly after arriving at the Welland Hospital’s emergency department following a late night accident on a stretch of Hwy. 3 in her hometown of Fort Erie the day after this Christmas.

“We, as a family, would like to take this opportunity to say that having a Bursary fund set up for students wishing to pursue the Paramedic course at Niagara College is a great legacy for our daughter and sister Reilly Kennedy Anzovino,” said Reilly’s parents, Tim Anzovino and Denise Kennedy, and their son Kain Anzovino, in a statement they shared with Niagara At Large. Continue reading →

 (Bob Timmons, the Toronto area’s “artist for the ocean” and advocate for all creatures on this planet,  visited Niagara Friday, March 5 to speak on the disgusting practice of hunting down sharks for shark fin soup and other ocean conservation issues.  What follows is  an article Bob Timmons has prepared exclusively for Niagara At Large on the destructive practice we humans have of hunting down the last of this planet’s sharks .)
By Bob Timmons

 Back in 2007, I watched a movie called “Sharkwater” and it exposed me
 to a whole new world that was hidden.

A Tiger Shark, photo courtesy of Amanda Cotton

 This new world was the barbaric shark-fining industry that puts out thousands of miles of long lines to catch sharks, after which they remove their fins and dump the living body back into the ocean to die. Approximately 90 million or more sharks are killed
 in this manner every year.

The most targeted sharks do not have offspring yearly and can take up to 20 to 25years to become sexually mature. At this rate, the sharks are endangered and not sustainable for this type of industry. The fining  industry does not only take one type of shark. They take anything they can get from the endangered whale shark and basking shark, and from more than 200 other
shark species. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

I can still remember them marching by  so proudly, wearing their neatly tailored uniforms with all those metals pinned on their chests.

Canadian troops land in Plymouth, England on their way to the killing fields of the First World War. Photo courtesy of Great War Primary Document Archive: Photos of the Great War - http://www.gwpda.org/photos.

I was barely seven years old as I watched them march by in a parade to mark Welland’s 1958 Centennial celebrations and most of them were probably in their late 50s and early 60s. And to my youthful eyes, they all seemed so old then.

They were veterans of World War I – ‘the Great War’, as so many then called it – and they were actually a good deal younger at the time I was watching them march by than our remaining World War II veterans are today.

And now they are all gone. With the death this February 18 of Canada’s last World War I veteran John Babcock, who was born and raised in Kingston, Ontario in 1900 and died at his home in Spokane, Washington, we have lost the last living Canadian who wore a uniform during five of the bloodiest, most nightmarish years in more than two thousand years of recorded human history.

Other than the fascination I think many young boys (I can’t pretend to speak for young girls) have for wars and possibly joining the army, I have opposed wars all of my adult life. Other than agreeing that it was a good idea to finally blast our way in and put an end to that Nazi plague lead  by one of history’s maddest mass murders Adolf Hitler, I can hardly accept the possibility that we can’t resolve conflicts between one another in some other way.

As a reporter for more than 30 years, I ‘ve joined fellow staff at the old St. Catharines Standard, The Thorold News, Niagara This Week and other newsrooms where I’ve worked in covering Remembrance Days and other anniversaries of conflicts our veterans have fought it. And what almost always strikes me is this.  Very few of the veterans I’ve met have any taste for more war or the conflicts we continue to get ourselves entangled in today. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

In a week in which the state of Niagara’s hospital services has taken quite the ripping in Ontario’s legislative assembly, the head of the body responsible for operating most of the hospitals across the region capped it off with what she called some ‘long-awaited…great news’.

The $1.5-billion plus new hospital complex the NHS is building on the fringes of west St. Catharines rather than somewhere in the centre of the region.

The $1.5 billion-plus hospital complex for Niagara in the outskirts of west St. Catharines under construction. Niagara Health System CEO Debbie Sevenpifer, in a February 19 memorandum “to all Niagara Health System employees, physicians and volunteers,” announced that the province’s Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care has managed to scare up an additional $14 million in funding for the NHS’s current fiscal year.

“This is great news for the Niagara Health System and long-awaited,” said Sevenpifer in the memorandum she circulated a day after a two-day debate in the provincial legislature over hospital cuts and their impacts on residents in Niagara and surrounding regions that you can find related stories on, including hansard from those provincial debates, by clicking on www.niagaraatlarge.com.

Sevenpifer went on to say that the $14 million infusion of funds from the province, which is basically just a drop in the bucket compared to the tens-of-millions of dollars in debt load the NHS is carrying and the more than $1.5 billion it will have us paying for a new hospital complex in the wrong location, “is a gold medal day for the Niagara Health System.

Celebrate?” A “golden medal day?”

What kind of twilight zone or alternative universe is Sevenpifer and her minions living in? Continue reading →

 By Doug Draper

Opposition parties in the Ontario legislature hammered the province’s Liberal government once again this February 18 over hospital costs in Niagara and the possibility that they may have contributed to the death of Fort Erie teen Reilly Anzovino.

Reilly Anzovino

Reilly died following a car accident on Hwy. 3 in the late hours of this past Boxing Day,  enroute or very shortly after arrival by ambulance to the Welland hospital site.

Concerns that she may have lived if ambulance paramedics could have taken her to the Fort Erie or Port Colborne hospital sites instead of Welland are so pervasive that members of all three major political parties in the province – Liberal MPP Kim Craitor from the Niagara Falls/Fort Erie area, NDP MPP Peter Kormos from the Welland/Port Colborne area and Tim Hudak, a Niagara area MPP who is now leader of the province’s Conservative Party, have called for a public inquest.

A plea for a public inquest was also made this past January by Reilly’s parents, Tim Anzovino and Denise Kennedy, and that, along with other related stories on health care and hospital cuts in Niagara, can be found by clicking on www.niagaraatlarge.com. Niagara At Large will also reprise the letter Reilly’s parents sent to Ontario’s chief coroner, asking for an inquest, at the end of this post.

But before that, Niagara At Large is once again publishing hansard from the Ontario legislature this February 18, with oppositions critics slamming the McGuinty government, once again, for gutting hospital services in the southern tier of Niagara and calling on the government to hold an inquiry into the circumstances around Reilly’s death.

You can read the debate, featuring Hudak, McGuinty, Liberal health minister Deborah Matthews, Tory health critic Christine Elliott and others by clicking on ‘keep reading’ at the end of this sentence. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

A year ago last June, Hillary Clinton walked halfway across the Rainbow Bridge from the American side of the Niagara River to announce that, at long last, the United States was ready to work with Canada to renegotiate the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.

Hillary Clinton, America's Secretary of State, on the Rainbow Bridge between Niagara Falls U.S. and Canada last June, announcing plans to renegotiate the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Photo by Doug Draper.

On that 13th day of June – celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Canada-U.S. Boundary Waters Treaty as one of the precedent-setting international agreements for protecting the health of shared natural resources in the world – Canadian and U.S. environmentalists around the Great Lakes applauded. They had been urging their respective governments to update the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (first signed in 1972 and last amended in 1987) for years to better address the kinds of pollutants and their sources, the alien species like zebra mussels and Asian carp, and other threats that could ravage these great reservoirs of fresh water today and for generations to come .

But eight months after America’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, made the announcement to renegotiate this groundbreaking treaty to protect and preserve the world’s largest resource of fresh water, it looks like the tens-of-millions of U.S. and Canadian residents living around the lakes might be shut out from the talks. Continue reading →

 By John Bacher

One of the great tragedies in the effort to construct an 821-acre ‘Canadian Motorway Speedway’ on agriculturally zoned and designated lands in Fort Erie is that the scheme rips through the heart of one of the most intact areas of Carolinian forest in all of Canada.

It also rips through the heart of the planning laws that seek to protect it. 

Dave and Sandy Mitchell of Fort Erie enjoy some rural peace, while they can, near their home, less than a mile away from the proposed Nascar speedway in Fort Erie.

The area east of the Welland Canal and between the Niagara River in our region has the largest remaining concentration of the most biologically diverse woodlands in Canada – our equivalent of tropical rainforests. This precious mosaic of farmland and forests, repaired from past ecological abuse through the influence of one of Fort Erie’s greatest residents, the pioneer forester Edmund Zavitz, is now threatened by a bizarre “NASCAR-like” motorway complex – a complex that includes an associated mix of shopping centres, and a camp ground for speedway worshippers. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

 Why would anyone want to sit down on the cold pavement, locked up in a steel cage in downtown St. Catharines in the middle of February?

Tayler Staneff is caged while from left, behind her is Sarat Colling, Chris Shaperon and Kimberly Costello. On the cage is a fur coat that is the product of 15 foxes. Photo by Doug Draper

“We’re just trying to put out a message,” said Talyer Staneff as she talked to me through the mesh of that cage with animal make-up she had on.

“A lot of people who buy and wear fur coats probably don’t know how much suffering animals have to go through for them to get them.”

As I talked to her, an old fur coat hung over one corner of the cage, made from the pelts of 15 foxes. Staneff was one of more than 20 animal rights activists in Niagara who participated this February 13th in Canada’s 21st national anti-fur day, not that any federal and provincial government we’ve had in power over that time – Conservative, Liberal or NDP – has done much to recognized it.

What Kimberly Costello, a member of Niagara Action For Animals (NAFA) and one of the organizers of the demonstration had to say should leave Canadians wondering how our country could continue have such backward laws on protecting animals compared to the United States and European Union that at least bans the import of garments made from dog and cat fur, and has placed stronger restrictions on the sale of fur garments and the killing of animals for fur.

 “We are just out here to educate people,” said Costello, adding that the location, which happened to be in front of a store called Henry’s Furs in St. Catharines, which just happened to be closed during the protest, “is just symbolic.” Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

It’s a municipal election year and Niagara region’s council is on the verge of passing a budget for the year that would keep any increase on its portion of municipal taxes down to around zero.

A zero tax increase in an election year? Is that just a coincidence?

Some would say of course not.

They might say these councillors can now go out at election time and say; ‘Hey, look what we did this year. We kept the regional portion of your municipal taxes down to zero.’ Even if zero this year comes back to haunt us an big jump in taxes next year.

Others might say; ‘Hey, give the council a break. They are doing this because they are aware of all the joblessness out here, along with the all of the people struggling to get by on low and fixed incomes. They are feeling our pain.’

It is more likely that the decision the council approved this February 11 to beat down any increase on a regional budget for 2010 has something to do with all of the above. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Niagara’s regional council has granted the proponents of pans for a mammoth NASCAR speedway complex some of the key approvals they need to build the speedway outside the town of Fort Erie’s urban boundaries.

One of the posters Fort Erie area residents have made up to protest NASCAR speedway project.

The council gave its blessings to amendments to the region’s policy plan and the town’s official plan – amendments that allow for such development on rural lands – despite a plea this February 11 from a citizens group to spend more time studying the impacts the speedway could have on the lives or nearby residents and farms before making any decisions.

“Amending the official plan at this point only results in hastily thrusting opponents, local governments and proponents into the expense and time commitments of an Ontario Municipal Board hearing,” Sandy Vant, head of CARS (Citizens Against Racing Speedway) warned the regional council. Continue reading →

By David Serafino

It’s important to take a position on the Crystal Beach Gateway Project.

Why? Because it means you can influence change.

An image of how the Port Dalhousie heritage district in St. Catharines, Ontario will look if and when 'Port Place' is built.

It is not essential that you do, but ideally, a democratic society hears all opinions. Opinions matter to varying degrees, but an informed opinion matters most. I don’t have one. At least not yet. At present, I choose to maintain objectivity through ignorance.

However, my experience in a similar situation has provided me with insights that I wish to share with the Crystal Beach community. Comparisons have been drawn between the Gateway and the condo development in Port Dalhousie. Port Place includes a 17 storey, 80 unit residential building, a 450 seat theatre, a 70 room boutique hotel and a public courtyard. I don’t know the features or layout of the Gateway but I do know that, like Port Place, it’s overlooking the beach.

When it comes time to take a position, I will begin by informing myself on the benefits and detriments of the project. I will ask this question first: ‘Does the project represent good planning and is it in the public interest?’ Continue reading →

 
By Doug Draper

In a February 8 statement to his own council, Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey renewed his council’s call for an investigation into management of the Niagara Health System responsible for operating the majority of hospitals across the region.

Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey

Badawey also urged Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and his health minister, Deb Matthews, “to give Niagara their full attention (on concerns over hospital services) immediately.”

“If not,” said Badawey in his statement, “(the premier and health minister) are ignoring their responsibility to ensure that the people of Niagara receive the highest quality of health care we deserve. … Throughout the past year,” added the mayor, who is moving forward with plans to develop a South Niagara Health Care Corporation to make up for the loss of emergency rooms and other cuts the NHS and provincially appointed Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) have made to hospital services in the region’s southern tier, the city of Port Colborne has worked extremely hard to do its part.

“We now demand that the province do theirs. It is time the premier and minister of health extend their attention to the affordability of delivering health care services within the region of Niagara in 2010.”

For the record, and by clicking keep reading, we are publishing a full text of Badawey’s statement. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

In case you haven’t heard or read it already, a vote this February 10 on a contract offer Ontario’s colleges have made to their teachers is so close to call it could take several more days before the final results are known.

This parking lot of Niagara College's Welland campus could be empty soon if college teachers' union follows through on its strike threat.

That means that more than four-hundred thousand full- and part-time students at Niagara College and more than 20 other colleges across the province are left worrying about whether there will be a teachers strike that disrupts their studies as they should be working toward their final exams and the end of this academic year for possibly another 10 days or so.

The February 10 vote by some 9,000 college teachers across Ontario was reportedly so close that slightly more than 51 per cent of the teachers – by a margin of 210 votes – said “yes” to the college presidents’ offer. Apparently there are about 300 “mail-in votes” left to be counted by the Ontario Labour Relations Board which must hire the most sluggish people in the world to recount votes because we are told it may take the OLRB another week and a half to let the students and public at large in on the final count.

The whole thing is disgusting for the young people and their families investing well over $3,000 a year now for tuition and for over-priced text books (often foisted on them by college teachers who author them with information anyone can find on the internet or in any well-stocked library) to pay the freight, including the salaries and benefits of college teachers who are already among the best paid in all of Canada. Continue reading →

 (This article, shared with Niagara At Large from a leading resident in Port Dalhousie, may give those fighting a similar high-tower condo project in the Crystal Beach area some idea of the odds they are up against.)

By Carlos Garcia

Ontario’s dismal record of failing to preserve our heritage is about to get worse – much worse.

Port Dalhousie, from across the harbour, as it looks today, but apparently not for much longer.

The landmark Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) decision to allow a 20-storey height condo tower in Port Dalhousie’s low-rise Heritage Conservation District (HCD) means every one of over 90 HCDs in the province is now vulnerable to towers and inappropriate development.

The volunteer community organization PROUD Port Dalhousie’s epic struggle to preserve the heritage of Port Dalhousie included: City and Regional Council meetings, OMB pre-hearings, a failed OMB mediation, and a 71-day marathon OMB Hearing. The City of St. Catharines and PROUD put forward a very strong OMB case, supported by leading expert witnesses and provisions of  the Provincial Policy Statement and City’s Official Plan, Zoning By-Law (3-storey height limit) and Heritage Guidelines.

Despite this Herculean effort, OMB Vice-Chair Susan Campbell claimed to strike a balance between the Planning and Heritage Acts and approved the proposal in almost its entirety (the OMB had NEVER before approved a tower in a designated HCD). PROUD then requested a review of the decision arguing that, contrary to Campbell’s ruling, the HCD Plan had the elevated status of the 2005 revision to the Heritage Act and, accordingly, Council “shall not …pass a by-law for any purpose that is contrary to the objectives set out in that plan”. Continue reading →

 From Doug Draper

 I was checking out at the service desk of a retail store some three or four weeks ago when the cashier, who has been reading my columns years, asked me what I was writing about that week.

A Student Centre? This campus of Niagara College may have no students at all taking classes on it if the college teachers' union moves forward with a strike in the days ahead. Photo by Doug Draper

“Well, I’m writing about the possibility of a college teachers’ strike,” I said, “and I’m calling the piece – ‘College teachers who strike this time should be fired.’”

At that point, a young girl who was also working at the service desk turned around and told me that she is a student at Niagara College, and that about the last thing she and her fellow students need right now is a teachers’ strike. All three of us – the cashier, the young girl and I – got carried away in a discussion about this until I turned around and noticed a man behind me, weighed down with a couple of fairly heavy items, waiting to check out. I immediately apologized to him for keeping him waiting.

“That’s okay,” he said. “I have a son in college and we are worried about this too.”

Worried indeed!

These are far from the only folks I’ve talked to in recent weeks who feel the same way. Continue reading →

By Wayne Gates

Over the past six years, the provincial government has increased spending on health care in the Niagara Region by 42 per cent.

CAW Local 199 President Wayne Gates

The question today is where did it go?  It obviously didn’t improve quality! 

This increase has instead produced closures of beds, programs, and operating and emergency rooms. It has resulted in staff layoffs and buyouts. It is leading to the closure of the GNGH’s maternity ward. How can the Honeymoon Capital of the world not have a maternity ward?

Here are a few troubling facts:

·  Our emergency room wait times far exceed the provincial average.

·  Surgeries are being delayed and even cancelled. Witness last week when local surgeons complained about the postponement of serious cancer surgeries. Continue reading →

By Sue Salzer
 
A report given by Kevin Smith to the regional government of Niagara points out glaring problems that have been created by the Niagara Health System.
 
Smith , who represents the administration of the Regional Ambulance Service (EMS) , reports overwhelming wait-times for paramedics to off-load patients at the Niagara Falls Hospital emergency department. The amount of time before paramedics can release their patient to Hospital personnel has almost doubled since the closures of the Emergency Rooms in Fort Erie and Port Colborne. Hours of wait  time have increased from around 130 hours to current times of approximately 240 hours per month.
 
The ambulances, two paramedics and the unfortunate patients are delayed an average of  eight  hours daily before they can be released to the care of hospital personnel. This is neither a wise nor necessary use of our ambulance resources and personnel. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

The debate over a controversial plan to erect a 12-storey condo tower in front of one of the last stretches of lakeshore in the Fort Erie community of Crystal Beach open to the public raged on in the Sunday edition of The Buffalo News this Feb. 7.

The developer's image of a high-storey, big box condo that has become a subject of controversy over future development in the historic Fort Erie community of Crystal Beach.

The condo plan, as the front-page story in The Buffalo News reports, has received the support of Fort Erie Mayor Doug Martin and a majority on his council, even as it has drawn waves of opposition from residents – dividing this historic beachfront community as the council prepares to vote this March 1 on changing its height regulations to permit the tower.

The Buffalo News story, which you can read by clicking on the following link http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/948395.html, quotes Martin at one point saying: “There will be those who see it (the condo plan) as a great beginning, the cornerstone of the redevelopment of Crystal Beach, and there will always be those who will wish for older days when the (Crystal Beach amusement) part was still there and it had a small-town collage atmosphere… I think the new history of Crystal Beach begins with this project.”

On the other hand, Wayne Redekop, a former Fort Erie mayor who once supported the idea of selling some of the land in front of what is actually known as Bay Beach in the Crystal Beach area to generate revenue for buying up more lakefront for public use, is thumbs down on this particular project in a community of mostly one or two-cottages and businesses.

“I think the 12-story condominium is completely out of character with the neighborhood. I think it’s pitting people of good faith against each other, creating problems for the municipality in terms of trying to move forward, and I think it appears very much as if the council is trying to ram something through,” Redekop said. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

If there is any doubt that Niagara’s southern tier holds a golden key to the region’s future, there was sure no hint of it at the annual Mayors of South Niagara luncheon this Feb. 4.

Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey addresses annual south Niagara mayors' summit as Fort Erie Mayor Doug Martin and Wainfleet Mayor Barbara Henderson listen on. Photo by Doug Draper

More than 200 makers and shakers from across the region, including many of Niagara’s top political and business leaders, packed a banquet room at the Sparrow Lakes Golf Club in Welland to hear five of the region’s mayors – Dave Augustyn of Pelham, Vance Badawey of Port Colborne, Damian Goulbourne of Welland, Barbara Henderson of Wainfleet and Doug Martin of Fort Erie – focus on the achievements and challenges facing a part of the region poised to possibly experience an unprecedented amount of business and residential growth over the next few decades.

The mayors too turns focused on five pillars for building a healthier, more prosperous future for Niagara’s southern region, including revitalizing downtowns, agriculture, transportation, stimulus funding for building roads, recreational and education facilities and other infrastructure, and building an economic gateway to people and markets across the Canada-U.S. border and around the world.

But fo a handful of women from Port Colborne and Fort Erie who attended the luncheon sporting the attire of the Yellow Shirt Brigade – a citizens group struggling to save hospitals services in Niagara’s southern tier, the 800-pound gorilla in the banquet hall was hospital services because they were never discussed. So the women in the yellow shirts walked out at the end of the luncheon, wondering how the mayors could spend an hour outlining their collective efforts for growth in south Niagara without ever once mentioning health care services.

“How can all of the grandiose plans for the future of the southern portion of Niagara be achieved without accessible health care, and hospitals to care for the sick and dying,” said Joy Russell, a Fort Erie resident and one of the Yellow Shirt Brigade members who attended the Feb. 4 event. “If they widen roads, improve water and sewers, and entice more people (to live and establish businesses in the southern tier), what is going to happen to them if they have an accident or need a hospital bed nearby?” Continue reading →

By Becky Day

The St. Catharines-Thorold Chamber of Commerce hosted its annual State of the Cities address titled “The Tale of Two Cities” on February 5. Thorold Mayor Henry D’Angela and St. Catharines Mayor Brian McMullan both shared the achievements of their cities with the business community.

The Chamber brought the two cities together for the event, not only because they represent them, but because it believe people from St. Catharines and Thorold should care about what is happening in both cities.

Chamber President Rob DePetris emphasized the idea of municipalities coming together for the common good in a motivating speech to a room full of Niagara business people and dignitaries.

“The public sector and politicians must modify the way in which they do business,” he said. “Governments in Niagara can send a powerful signal to the private sector that this region is ready for investment by showcasing that municipal boundaries are simply lines on a map and not barriers to progress. By throwing away parochialism and embracing cooperation for the greater goal of economic prosperity.” Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, once wrote that if it “were left to (him) to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter.”

Reporter and columnist Becky Day refused to let the corporate chains put her down. She has launched her own online news site called Thorold Politics

What Jefferson was essentially saying at the time – some 200 odd years ago – is that you can’t have accountable democratic government without having a free and vigilant press.

In that spirit, Niagara At Large, as a new and fledgling source of independent news and commentary in the Greater Niagara Region, will use this venue, for as long as it lasts, to stand up for journalists in this region who try against all kinds of odds these days to do their job. We are talking about journalists who too often find themselves running up against the corporate chains that own and operate too many of our media outlets, and either don’t’ provide the resources journalists need to play an effective watchdog, without fear or favour, or go out of the way to block their efforts to get at the truth.

Becky Day, a journalist in Thorold, Ont. who was about the only shining light at a pretty crappy chain-run weekly called ‘The Thorold Niagara News’, falls into the category of a journalist in that community – one that she and I happen to live in, by the way – that continues to care. The fact that she is no longer gamely employed at ‘The Thorold Niagara News’ just about says it all for that publication. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

How would you rather travel between the Buffalo area and New York City? In a Toyota with a sticky gas pedal or on a flight on one of those smaller commuter airlines subcontracted by larger airlines because they figure they can save money not taking you on their own.

I don’t know about you. But I’d choose a Toyota over a commuter plane in a New York minute! And if the gas pedal sticks, at least I’m behind the wheel and can do everything from slamming on the brakes (unless that Toyota happens to be a Prius) to turning off the ignition or both as I veer off the road into a field full of snow where I can hopefully punch open the door and jump free with a minimum of broken bones.

On a commuter jet, all I can do is sit back there in the passenger section, clutching whatever book or magazine I’m reading like a teddy bear as the pilot, who might have about as much training and salary as someone managing a fast food restaurant, works with whatever limited training and hours of experience he’s had in the air to keep to keep us from spiraling downward to that same field of snow.
 
If you think I’m being a little unfair to the airlines, just check out the stories on the front page of The Buffalo News this Feb. 3 (you can find them by visiting www.buffalonews.com and plugging in a few key search words like ‘Flight 3407’ and “fatal stall”) on the fatal flight of a commuter plane, subcontracted by Continental Airlines, a year ago this February as it crashed into a neighbourhood in the Buffalo area community of Clarence. Continue reading →

One of the Buffalo area’s environmental groups dedicated to protecting and preserving the Niagara River watershed for future generations is hosting a series of fund-raising concerts to support its green efforts.

Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper – a group linked internationally to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and folk music icon and activist Pete Seeger – is receiving support from the Labatt beer company in Canada and the Good Neighbourhood to showcase six hot bands from north of the border in fund-raising venues in Buffalo from Feb. 9 through Feb. 13.

Click on the ‘keep reading’ tab at the end of this sentence to receive all the details on this fund-raising concert series for improving the quality of our environment and one of the most icon rivers in the world.  Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

There was Premier Dalton McGuinty on a CHCH television news clip last week, trying to persuade us that his Liberal government is not gutting fair access to hospital services in small communities across Niagara and the rest of the province.

A sign of the times. An American private health care provider is posting billboards like this in Niagara, Ont. to take advantage of a health care system here that is beginning to fail us. Photo by Doug Draper

 “I do sense a responsibility on behalf of Ontarians to do everything we can to ensure that they have access to the best possible health care, as close to home as is reasonably possible,” insisted McGuinty in response to questions a scrum o reporters asked him about comments made earlier by Dr. Alan Drummond, a spokesman for the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians. “I am convinced we are leaders on that score.”

McGuinty was responding to comments Dr. Drummond and his association were making on the death this past holiday season of Fort Erie teen Reilly Anzovino.

Reilly, who would have celebrated her 19th birthday last week, died in the early hours of Dec. 27 following a traffic accident in her hometown that had her being rushed to an emergency room at a Welland hospital because as of last summer, thanks to the McGuinty government, the emergency rooms at Fort Erie’s Douglas Memorial Hospital and Port Colborne Hospital have been downgraded to urgent care centres that will no longer take patients suffering some of the most serious medical emergencies. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Those opposed to the erection of a condo tower in front of Bay Beach – one of the last and most popular public beaches along Niagara’s lakefronts – have created a new coalition of homeowners, businesses and other organizations determined to fight it.

The McGuinty/Bradley vision of the future for Bay Beach, one of the last popular public beaches along the Niagara shores of Lake Erie. An image of Bay Beach, from summers past, is featured below.

The coalition, called the Fort Erie Waterfront Preservation Association, is made up of a host of community organizations, businesses, property owners and individuals in the Niagara area and, according to its spokespersons, is “firmly opposed” to plans to build a multi-storey condominium in front of the last public beach left – known affectionately by countless thousands as Bay Beach – in the iconic Crystal Beach area of Fort Erie.

“A private 12-storey tower on waterfront property that belongs to the public is simply not acceptable,” says Eric Gillespie, a lawyer representing the new coalition. “Amongst many other concerns, the scale of the building is totally inappropriate for an intimate waterfront cottage community. …

“All residents of Fort Erie should likely be concerned,” Gillespie added. “The changes to the zoning bylaw required for the (condominium) development may set an irreversible precedent for high-rise, high-density development all along the Fort Erie waterfront.”

Indeed, all residents along any waterfront throughout the rest of Niagara or any other region across the province of Ontario should be concerned. And maybe you folks who live in waterfront communities across the border should be concerned too, if you are not already.

Once again, and thanks to a recent decision by the Ontario government of Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty and the hacks he has working for him on the province’s Ontario Municipal Board, to approve the erection of a multi-storey condo tower in the heritage district of Port Dalhousie in Niagara, any land along a waterfront is open game now for development, however out of place or hostile it is to the surrounding communty. Continue reading →