Daily Archives: February 23, 2010

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 →