Monthly Archives: April 2010

By Doug Draper

(Click on www.niagaraatlarge.com for Niagara At Large for more news and commentary on this and other matters of concern to our greater binational Niagara region.)

Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak returned to his hometown of Fort Erie, Ontario this April 29 to promise that he is the province’s next premier, the Fort Erie hospital’s emergency room will be reopened.

Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak in front of his hometown hospital in Fort Erie, Ontario, promising to reopen its emergency room if he is elected premier.

“Today, I am committing that if elected premier, I will ensure that if this community wants the emergency room re-opened, a Tim Hudak government will re-open it,” said the Conservative leader at a media conference he held in front of Fort Erie’s Douglas Memorial Hospital.

Hudak went on to charge that the Hamilton-Niagara-Haldimand-Brant Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) ordered the closing of Fort Erie’s ER even as its Ontario Liberal government “appointees … helped themselves to fat pay increases – paid for by local health care dollars.”

At the Hamilton-Niagara-Haldimand-Brant LHIN, the number of people making $100,000 or more has doubled since its creation four years ago, added Hudak. This includes the LHIN CEO who now gets paid $289,000 a year after being handed $53,000 worth of raises since 2006.

There are just a couple of questions this reporter has here. Continue reading →

(Click on www.niagaraatlarge.com for Niagara At Large and more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our greater binational Niagara region.)

By Doug Draper

Well here we are folks – a quarter of the way through the first year of the second decade of the 21^st century – and Niagara, Ontario has yet to launch an inter-municipal transit system for residents and visitors to this region.

We ought to be ashamed to admit that we are the last region of any size in all of southern Ontario that is not operating a region-wide network of buses, at the very least, as an alternative to ever more roads and highways and trucks and cars.

If I sound a little frustrated at this point, it is because I have been watching our local municipalities and regional government knock heads over the very concept of building a regional transit system going back to the dying days of my environmental beat at a St. Catharines daily newspaper more than a decade ago. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Fort Erie’s Point Abino Lighthouse may not get the care it deserves, but it certainly is getting some attention.

The iconic Point Abino Lighthouse, still standing off the shores of Lake Erie.

The stately old lighthouse, located along the shores of Lake Erie, is one of six Ontario lighthouses (and the only one in Niagara) featured in the latest spring/summer issue of ‘Boating Ontario Magazine’ – a publication that goes out to about 50,000 boaters through marinas and marine retailers across the province. Continue reading →

(Please click on www.niagaraatlarge for Niagara At Large and more news and commentary on this and other matters of interest and concern to our binational region.)

 The following April 26 report, from Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey,

Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey, speaking earlier this spring on hospital cuts, at a town hall meeting in neighbouring Welland, Ontario. Photo by Doug Draper

calls on Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and his government to release a report by the province’s ombudsman, Andre Marin, on the state of the Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) that is supposed to be representing Niagara and surrounding regions, around hospital services in the region. Continue reading →

(Please click on www.niagaraatlarge.com for Niagara At Large for more news and commentary on this and other matters of interest and concern to our greater Niagara region.)

 By Doug Draper

The council of Fort Erie, Ontario voted overwhelmingly this April 27 to call on the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians to investigate and report on the impacts of emergency room and other hospital service cuts in Fort Erie and Port Colborne.

The closure of the ERs (or Eds for emergency departments, as the council calls them) in those two southern tier communities, carried out last year by the Niagara Health System, the provincially created body responsible for managing most of the hospital services in the Niagara region, was greeted with outrage by many residents in the region’s southern tier. Continue reading →

(The following post by Niagara-on-the-Lake resident Clifford James makes a case for an eco park for federally owned lands along Lake Ontario that are now being viewed by a consortium called Project Niagara for Tanglewood, Massachusetts-like summer-long music festivals.)

By Clifford James

 The public land administered by Parks Canada along the Lake Ontario shores of Niagara-on-the-Lake is the natural location for Tecumseh National Park.

Tecumseh, a Native American leader of the Shawnee and iconic War of 1812 warrior for the British, deserves a nature park in Niagara in his name.

For not only is this land environmentally unique, thus of scientific interest, it is also of national historical significance because it is where the U.S. Army landed on May 27, 1813 and the Battle of Fort George began.

At that time the land was owned by John Secord, a relative of our famous Laura, and a friend and contemporary of Colonel John Butler, the virtual founder of this town.

Colonel Butler commanded the Loyal American Regiment of Butler’s Rangers who were a thorn in George Washington’s side during the revolutionary war of 1775/83. He settled here in 1780, followed by most of his Regiment when it disbanded in 1784. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Forty years after the first Earth Day, industries in Canada and the United States are continuing to treat the Great Lakes like a toilet for their toxic fallout.

Mercury and other air-borne poisons emerge from the stack of a coal-fired energy plant. A U.S. Department of Energy photo.

A report released this April 21 by the Toronto-based citizen organizations, Canadian Environmental Law Association and Environmental Defence, the latest figures from governments in the two countries show that in 2007 some four million kilograms (more than 8.8 million pounds) of air-borne pollutants known or suspected of causing cancer have drifted into the waters of the Great Lakes.

These pollutants are reaching all five Great Lakes and their adjoining watersheds from countless smokestacks and exhaust pipes from all over the Canada-U.S. Great Lakes region and beyond, including private industries and publicly owned facilities that burn coal and other fossil fuels to generate energy.

“Chemical threats to the Great Lakes need the attention of our governments more than ever,” said Theresa McClenaghan, executive director of the Canadian Environmental Law Association CELA following the release of the report. “Our governments must commit applying an elimination and prevention approach to persistent toxic chemicals and other toxins including cancer causing chemicals.” Continue reading →

 By Brent Gibson

The founding of Earth Day 40 years ago marks one of several milestones in the formation of an environmental movement.

Our Great Lakes from space. Photo from NASA archives.

In the Great Lakes, the first Earth Day came less than one year after the Cayahoga River caught fire for the 13th time. The fire itself was small – it lasted only 30 minutes and caused $50,000 of damage. But, for the Great Lakes, the burning of the Cayahoga was the spark that enflamed a smouldering concern over the health of these waters. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Are you a retired person out there trying to make ends meet on Canada’s ‘Old Age Security pension? And if you are, did you enjoy an increase of 10 per cent in your pension payments last year?

Canada's federal members of parliament and senators get piggish about pension hikes for themselves while many of the rest of us struggle to get by.

Of course not!

As a follow-up to a report Niagara At Large posted on this site on April 17 entitled; ‘Ontario Being Pushed To Improve Pensions For Seniors In Need’, it would be a gross oversight on NAL’s part not to point out that Canada’s federal government had no bones about rubber stamping a 10 per cent hike in pensions for MPs and our un-elected (should summarily have their jobs abolished) senators.

This “gold-plated pension fund,” as a recent story in The Toronto Star called it, has been approved in apparent total denial of the realities facing many of the rest of us out here who are struggling to recover from the worst recession that has rocked the economy this country and others since the Great Recession of the 1930s. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Well, Hamilton, Ontario should have no problem getting that NHL franchise now!

And why?  Because according to the top story on the front page of The Hamilton Spectator this April 16, Sarah Palin, the former Alaskan governor who has turned her failed 2008 run for the U.S. vice presidency into a gold mine, has come onside as a booster for the city’s franchise bid.

‘Palin casts her vote for the city’s NHL dream,’ read the gushy headline above a story about Palin’s speech to a sellout audience of more than 900 in the Hamilton area this April 15.

“I’m overlooking Copps Coliseum and I thought, what a great place for an NHL franchise,” the Spectator quoted Palin saying to an adoring crowd that paid $200 a piece to hear her speak at a charity fundraiser in the city long known for its steel mills and love for sports. “You’re all set up for it (and) if I ever meet the president of the NHL, I’ll put a little bug in his ear,” she added as, reportedly, only two protesters, one of them holding a sign reading; “Honk For Our Health Care,” kept vigil outside the banquet centre.”

How sad that a newspaper that has a relatively good reputation compared to so many other failing dailies across the province, makes this its top story on a Friday and leads with Palin’s pandering over the NHL franchise. Continue reading →

 By Doug Draper

To the extent a society can be judged by the way it treats its senior citizens, Ontario may have a little explaining to do – especially when it comes to pensions.

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath

At the Ontario legislature earlier this April, the province’s NDP leader, Andrea Horwath, once again urged Premier Dalton County “to get off the fence” when it comes to whether or not his Liberal government supports affordable public pensions for the two-thirds of aging residents across the province who don’t have a pension plan at work.

“The government’s silence on the pension issue is paving the way for banks and insurance companies to fill the void with a bloated, fee-laden private plans that leave retirees with less,” said Horwath in a media release. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Who owns the shorelines along our Great Lakes?

One of the fenced-off beaches along Lake Erie in Fort Erie, Ontario. Photo courtesy of Stephen Passero, Ontario Shorewalk Association.

Should members of the public have access to them for, if nothing else, a peaceful stroll along a beach? Or are they the private domain of the privileged few who own homes, cottages and businesses along the shoreline side of the road?

Many residents in our Niagara, Ontario region have had the following  experience in the summer.

They have parked their car along one of the few remaining places left in the region where there is some open access to a beach along Lake Erie or Lake Ontario. They begin walking along the shore and before they know it, there is a fence or a rope line right out to the water, with signs reading; ‘Private Property’, ‘Keep Out’, No Trespassing’ or something slightly more delicate like; ‘No Loitering’.

And so much for enjoying our lakeshores!

Now, Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor is trying once again to grant the residents and visitors to our Niagara, Ontario region at least some access to our Great Lakes shores with the reintroduction of the ‘Great Lakes Shoreline Rights of Passage Act, a private members’ bill he has tabled this April in the Ontario legislature. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Ontario’s NPD leader Andrea Horwath has put the province’s Liberal government on the line, once again, over the closing of hospital services in Niagara.

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath, at a town hall on health care in Niagara Falls earlier this April.

“The gutting of healthcare services in Niagara Region has created enormous strain and anxiety, and deserves the government’s immediate attention,” said Horwath during a debate this April 12 in the provincial legislature.

Horwath, who held a town hall meeting on health care in Niagara Falls a week earlier, went on to say that; “families I spoke with last week in Niagara Falls have been forced to stand by and watch while the McGuinty government closes their emergency rooms with one hand and doles out huge pay hikes to the hospital CEOs with the other.”

“The government’s negligence is putting the health of Niagara families at risk,” Horwath said. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

After all the ugliness that has been hurled President Barack Obama’s way during his battle for health reform in the United States, possibly one of the last things he needs is some columnist from north of the border comparing him to Tommy Douglas.

Or maybe Obama has so much on his plate at this point, from chronic joblessness in his country to any one of a number of powder-keg issues abroad, that any comparison some columnist from Canada might make between him and a professed socialist from north of the border would hardly make a difference.

Most likely, anyone in his country who is going to carry on with the Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin crowd, calling  him everything from a socialist to Adolf Hitler, is never going to give him credit for anything he does to advance health care or any other issue for his fellow Americans anyway.

So in the midst of all this, this commentator decided to dive right in and make the comparison between Obama and the late Tommy Douglas, Canada’s father of universal health care, in a column that ran on the front page of the Viewpoint section of The Buffalo News this April 11 – a column you can access by clicking on http://www.buffalonews.com/2010/04/11/1015744/canadian-health-care-works.html

In that Viewpoint piece, I try to argue that  fair, affordable access to health care should be a fundamental right in developed countries like Canada and the United States. I also try to explain why the blow back from the Sarah Palin, -Rush Limbaugh,-Fox News juggernaut south of the border is wrong , from a moral and social justice point of view, for millions of Americans who have no insurance for health care in what is still considered one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest country in the world. Continue reading →

 By Doug Draper

 Tim Hudak has used his pulpit as Ontario’s Conservative Party leader to aim a hard punch from the right at the Liberal government’s Niagara Falls backbencher Kim Craitor, accusing him in an April 9 media release of being “powerless and isolated” within his party’s caucus.

“Craitor admitted he was ‘caught by surprise’ by the decision not to reappoint (Larry) Iggulden (the now-gone Niagara Regional Police Services board chairman) and ‘disappointed’ that nobody in the premier’s or minister’s office bothered to inform him in advance of this controversial and highly political move,” states the media release from Hudak’s office with reference to news earlier this April that the Liberal government had decided not to reappoint Iggulden to the board.

“The decision to freeze Craitor out of the decision to block Iggulden’s reappointment is just the latest sign that, even within the McGuinty government, Craitor is already viewed as having one foot out the door of his MPP responsibilities as he prepares for a potential run for mayor (of Niagara Falls).”

“This is unbelievable,” said Craitor during an interview with Niagara At Large shortly after the media release went into circulation. “I am wondering why he (Hudak) is saying this (and) as far as the suggestion that I have no influence or say with the premier and the party, that is an outright lie.” Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Port Colborne Vance Badawey is inviting Ontario’s health minister to come to his south Niagara city has been doing to rebuild primary health-care services in the wake of service cuts at the city’s hospital.

Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey

“Over the past year, we have worked diligently with the NHS (Niagara Health System), HNHB LHIN (Local Health Integration Network), and the MOHLTC (Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care) to enhance Community-Based Primary Health Care, in turn, relieving pressure on emergency services,” said Badawey in an April 9 letter to Health Minister Deb Matthews.

“We believe we’ve developed a blueprint for what a ‘Rural (Small Community) Emergency Centre’ should and can be,” the mayor added in the letter. “Come to Port Colborne. We’re doing some great things. Be my guest, and take the ideas we are implementing to the rest of the province.”

Badawey and his council, in concert with members of the local medical community and others, began working on plans for a new primary health-care system for the community before the Niagara Health System, the body responsible for managing most of the hospitals across the region of Niagara, Ontario, followed through last summer on its controversial plans to convert Port Colborne’s emergency room into an urgent-care centre. Continue reading →

 By Janet Truckenbrodt

Keeping a proud watch over Lake Erie, the Point Abino Lighthouse is one of the greatest of its kind in Canada.

Built in 1917-1918, the lighthouse and keeper’s dwelling are a local, provincial, and federal landmark with a unique history.  This light station was one of 40 built during the last period of manned lighthouse construction.

Preservations want this 'keeper's dwelling' for the historic Point Abino Lighthouse kept in public hands. Photo courtesy of Paul Kassay.

At the end of Point Abino, a large rocky shelf projects into the lake making it necessary to build the lighthouse at a considerable distance from the shoreline.  In stormy weather and at high-water periods, the lighthouse was inaccessible on foot.  For that reason, the keeper’s dwelling required a site on the adjoining shore. 

A portion of land, just over half an acre, was purchased from Allan Holloway, a Buffalo developer, for $1 million at today’s value.  Designed to be in harmony with the environment and the upscale homes in Point Abino, the keeper’s dwelling has a Tudor-like appearance.  It is a two-story ornamental stucco home, with basement, well-constructed and very suitable for continued use and enjoyment.  Some restoration is needed but mostly of a cosmetic nature.  The septic system and plumbing need replacing.

In 1998, the Point Abino LIghthouse Preservation Society was successful in obtaining a National Historic Site designation for the Lighthouse.  The dwelling did not have significant architectural features to be included in the designation.  However, it was deemed important as an integral part of the functioning and history of the site.  In 2009, the Town of Fort Erie obtained a heritage designation for the dwelling through the Ontario Heritage Act. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

More than 40 Niagara residents joined hundreds of others outside Toronto’s Royal York Hotel this April 7, protesting cuts to hospital services across Ontario.

Niagara residents join others in rally in front of Toronto's Royal York Hotel this April 7 to protest hospital cuts while Ontario's Health Minister Deb Matthews talks up province's health care initiatives inside. Photo courtesy of Merilyn Athoe.

Meanwhile, the province’s  health minister, Deb Matthews was inside the hotel, speaking to members of the prestigious Canadian Club about “building the health care system Ontarians deserve.”

Fiona McMurran, a Welland resident and community activist representing a local chapter of the Council of Canadians, returned from the rally in Toronto reminding others that the words ‘Patients First Means Quality First’ were also included in the title of Matthews address to the Canadian Club. Matthews, said McMurran, “is either the most appalling hypocrite or dearly in need of an education. It may be the latter, since she told the Globe and Mail Earlier today that she hasn’t heard enough from Ontario residents about their concerns over hospital restructuring, in particular ….

“When, if ever, is Deb Matthews going to bother to learn her job? Before she oversees another round of nursing cuts, maybe she should just make a start on doing her own job adequately.”

There were quite likely others who feel Matthews is doing her job adequately as she delivered her speech on the province’s health care system inside the Royal York Hotel. The full text of that speech, shared with Niagara At Large courtesy of the minister’s staff is posted below. You can read it and share your own comments by clicking on ‘keep reading’ link at the end of this sentence. Continue reading →

(Niagara At Large is posting the following release on health care, delivered by Ontario Conservative Leader and Niagara area MPP Tim Hudak in Grimsby, Ontario this April 7 in the Niagara municipality of Grimsby. We encourage you to share your views on the Conservative leader’s remarks in the comment boxes at the bottom of this post.)

GRIMSBY – New evidence confirms that Dalton McGuinty’s Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) appointees were involved in many of the same contract and spending abuses that led to the billion dollar eHealth scandal.

Ontario Conservative Leader and Niagara area MPP Tim Hudak

 Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak today released evidence that confirms that the
Liberal appointees at the Hamilton – Niagara – Haldimand – Brant LHIN handed out a $75,000 contract to a private U.S. health care consultant for undefined “community engagement” products.

Further documentary evidence confirms that Dalton McGuinty’s American health care consultant, despite being based in Michigan, nonetheless proceeded to bill Ontario taxpayers for multiple flights to and from sunny Florida. Adding insult to injury, the same American health care consultant also filed frivolous expenses that included a stop at a Tennessee Starbucks and fast-food meals in Detroit. All expenses were paid out of Ontario health care dollars.

Last week, the release of Ontario’s Sunshine List revealed that, while families in Grimsby and await approvals for their long-overdue new hospital, the amount of money being paid in six-figure salaries to LHIN executives and managers has nearly doubled to more than a million dollars since 2006. This includes the LHIN CEO whose salary has shot up by 24% –from $236,000 to $289,000.

QUOTES
“Every dollar that the McGuinty Government spends on untendered contracts, U.S. consultants and frivolous expenses at the LHINs is a dollar that should be going to frontline patient care. Local families have waited long enough, they deserve better than to see their tax dollars go to waste.” – Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak
n 
“Diverting health care dollars away from patients and families and towards high-flying U.S. consultants – is proof that the LHINs are not working. Dalton McGuinty’s LHINs model is broken and has to go. — Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak

QUICK FACTS

· Dalton McGuinty created a new layer of bureaucracy with his so-called “Local Health Integration Networks” (LHINs). Since 2006-2007, more than $176 million health care dollars have been diverted away from Ontario families and directed towards salaries and administration at these boards.

· In just four years, the number of LHIN appointees making more than $100,000 per year has increased from 40 to 114 — a 185% increase. This includes 19 employees who are making more than $200,000 per year.
· In 2006, three employees at the Hamilton – Niagara – Haldimand – Brant LHIN made six figure salaries and their total compensation totaled $534, 000. Today, six LHIN executives are making $1,007,000. During this time, the salary of the LHIN CEO has shot up from $236,000 to $289,000.

· LHIN appointees handed out a $75,000 untendered contract to private U.S. Health Care consultant Jay Connor for “community engagement projects”.

· Despite being a Michigan – based consultant, Connor nonetheless billed Ontario taxpayers for multiple trips to and from Florida. Connor also billed Ontario taxpayers for frivolous expenses including a stop at a Tennessee Starbucks, bridge and highway tolls at the Canadian border,  and dinners in his hometown of Detroit. All expenses were paid out of Ontario health care dollars.

· The Hamilton – Niagara – Haldimand – Brand LHIN also handed out a $98,000 contract to consultant Dan Banko to do just two months worth of work in “community engagement”.

By Doug Draper

In a world where so many suffer and sometimes die from a scarcity of water, those of us fortunate enough to be living in this greater binational region of Niagara are truly blessed.

The lakes, rivers and adjoining watersheds coursing through and around our region sustained the Native Americans who lived here for thousand of years, and have contributed to the health and wealth of generations of people of European descent who began settling here more than 300 years ago.

Yet we have not always done the best job in the world of protecting this life-sustaining resource. Industrial pollution and sewage, urban sprawl, along with any one of a number other misuses and abuses of our vital freshwater resources have taken quite a toll.

This Saturday, April 10, the Niagara Frontier (New York) Chapter of the Adirondack Mountain Club is hosting a free forum titled; ‘Conservation Conversations 2010 – Buffalo Waters – The History, Present and Future of One of Our Planet’s Most Water-Rich Environments’.

You can read more about this forum that is being held for all of us, on both sides of the U.S./Canada border, who care and share these precious waters by clicking on the ‘keep reading’ tab at the end of this sentence. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Families across the Niagara region have a “right to good-quality health care close to home”  and not more cuts to health care that put them to risk, said Ontario’s NDP leader Andrea Horwath during a town hall meeting this April 6 in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Joy Russell, a Fort Erie resident and member of the Yellow Shirt Brigade, a Niagara citizen group fighting for hospital services in the region, speaks as Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath and Welland Riding federal NDP member Malcolm Allen listen on.

“Hospitals in the Niagara region are buckling under the strain of the government’s decision to shut down local emergency rooms,” said Horwath of the provincially appointed Niagara Health System board’s decision to close emergency rooms at hospitals in Fort Erie and Port Colborne to save little more than $1 million annually – even as it passes the cost of additional ambulance services, estimated at more than $3 million, to send emergency patients off to hospitals in Welland and Niagara Falls on to Niagara’s regional government and its property taxpayers.

“Dalton McGuinty (Ontario’s Liberal government premier) is handing out $4.5 billion in corporate tax cuts but says the well has run dry for local health care,” added Horwath. “Families deserve better.” Continue reading →

The Brock Animal Rights Club from Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario is hosting its 2nd annual Radio-Action for Animals concert on April 11th 5:30 pm at L3 Nightclub on 6 James Street in St. Catharines.

Pierre is one of many "discarded" primates in this province that needs our help to live some semblance of a quality life outside his natural environment.

This year, the proceeds from the concert will be donated to Storybook Farm Primate Sanctuary which is located in Sunderland, Ontario.

Storybook Farm Primate Sanctuary is the only primate sanctuary in Canada that provides safe and permanent homes for primates discarded from years of exploitation in the entertainment industry, biomedical research, substandard road-side zoos, or from the exotic pet trade.

In addition to raising awareness about and funds for organizations dedicated to helping non-human animals, the concert offers an opportunity to raise awareness about the plight of non-human animals in today’s society and to encourage people to make more compassionate choices. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

They call her ‘Debbie Sevenfigures’.

Debbie Sevenpifer, CEO for the Niagara Health System, once again makes top ten on annual Sunshine List.

Indeed, I’ve heard that play on the name of the Niagara Health System’s CEO used so many times over the past few years – even by people who turn around and quietly confess that they work for the NHS – I’ve actually had to remind myself  from time to time that her real name is Debbie Sevenpifer.

 ‘Sevenfigures’ is an obvious reference to the fact that, compared to most of the rest of us who live and work in this region, Sevenpifer gets paid a pretty generous sum of money – about 10 times more than the media n income in Niagara, as a matter of fact – and that’s not including other bonuses and other perks.

I would only say that in fairness to Sevenpifer, it is not a seven-figure salary. It is six figures, which makes me wonder if Debbie might be a little better if she changed her last name to ‘Sixpifer’.

But that is about as fair as I am prepared to get because paying the chief executive for Niagara, Ontario $340,467 a year – the figure contained in the latest ‘Sunshine List’ released by the provincial government for public servants making $100,000 or more in 2009 – is outrageous when our hospital system is many millions of dollars in debt and front-line services to patients are being cut. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath will host a town hall meeting in Niagara Falls this Tuesday, April 6 to discuss cuts to hospitals and other local health care services with residents across the region.

Members of the Niagara citizens group the Yellow Shirt Brigade, from left, Merilyn Athoe, Joy Russell and Linda McKeller, in front of a sign protesting the loss of emergency and other services at Fort Erie's hospital. They plan to join other residents at a town hall meeting in Niagara Falls this April 6 and a rally for protecting public health care in Toronto this April 7.

Horvath and her party, along with Tim Hudak’s Conservatives, have been hammering away at the province’s Liberal government almost daily over the past few weeks over the closing of emergency rooms at hospitals in Fort Erie and Port Colborne, and other cuts, and over what they believe to be mismanagement of services and funding by the provincially created Niagara Health System and Local Health Integration Networks. Continue reading →

(Niagara At Large is pleased to post the following media release from Buffalo, New York’s Olmsted Parks Conservancy, a not-for-profit group of residents dedicated to preserving and enhancing the beauty of Delaware Park, Martin Luther King Jr. Park and other great green spaces in the city.)

It’s Tree Planting Time in the Olmsted Parks

Volunteers are needed to plant 600 trees this spring throughout Buffalo’s historic Olmsted Park System.

Volunteers planting trees in Buffalo's Olmsted Parks. Photo courtesy of Olmsted Parks Conservancy.

As part of the Olmsted Parks Conservancy’s master plan, The Plan for the 21st Century, the Conservancy and volunteers will plant understory, flowering and canopy trees in April and May. Over the next decade, 10,000 new trees will be planted in Olmsted green spaces. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

While many residents across the Niagara region continue to express worry and concern over the future of hospital services here, at least one bureaucratic body Ontario’s Liberal government has set up to oversee changes to our hospitals has recently been given less reason to worry.

Peter Kormos, Welland riding NDP representative says scrap LHIN health care bureaucrats.

The Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) for the Niagara and Hamilton areas, along with several other high-priced, appointed bodies of bureaucrats like it across the province – is being granted immunity from legislative review by Premier Dalton McGuinty and his government so it can go on doing the government’s dirty work of reducing services at smaller hospitals across the region.

Members of the opposition Conservative and NDP parties discovered late this March, while taking some infra-red light to the fine print of the budget papers the McGuinty government dumped on us that a legislative review of the four-year-old LHIN bureaucrats for our area and others – a review that is in no small part about checking out their performance and spending practices for public accountability purposes, by the way – has been brushed forward from happening now – meaning the end of this March or  sometime in the future, or maybe never, for all we know.

(Click on ‘keep reading’ at the end of this sentence for more news and commentary on this topic.) Continue reading →

By Jim Armstrong

After reading Doug Draper’s excellent article in Niagara At Large regarding the Whirlpool Jet Boats, I thought the following information might also be of interest to those who are concerned about the Niagara River.

A Jet Boat gets ready to unload passengers on a dock in Queenston, Ontario along the lower Niagara River with the iconic monument of War of 1812 hero Sir Isaac Brock looming behind. Photo courtesy of Louise Howe.

The Ontario Court of Appeals recently overturned a decision by Justice Quinn that defined the operation of Whirlpool Jet Boats at the Melville Street dock in Niagara-on-the-Lake as an illegal use. This reversal of a well-written and unequivocal decision has been met with great disappointment and disbelief among the members of the Niagara River Coalition, and with good reason. 

The process of challenging the Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake on the legality of the Jet Boat lease was long and expensive, and launched in the interest of protecting the integrity of the dock area and the Niagara River.  The Coalition is now faced with the prospect of either abandoning their case or facing another lengthy and costly process.

 Unfortunately, this scenario is all too typical of situations in which citizens groups seek to challenge what they believe to be unacceptable activities.  Continue reading →

By Becky Day

The arts and culture are the vital threads that weave the region of Niagara together, says Rosemary Hale, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University in Niagara.

The historic Canada Haircloth mill in downtown St. Catharines could be transformed into a performing arts centre for Niagara. Photo by Doug Draper

Hale stressed that point late this March during a talk she gave as part of an ongoing special dinner series being featured through this year at the Keefer Mansion in Thorold, Ontario.

Hale’s talk, titled ‘Arts, Culture and a bit of Haircloth’, also focused on a unique vision for the Canada Haircloth heritage property and is one of the driving forces behind the creation of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, an extraordinary facility to be located in St.Catharines, Ontario’s downtown. Continue reading →

By John Bacher

On March 13, 2010, Niagara lost one of its most effective champions for social justice and protecting the environment

Bill Lidkea, who died at age 73, was for 52 years the loving husband of his wife and partner Wilma in these great passions for the earth and human dignity. Continue reading →