Monthly Archives: July 2010

By Doug Draper

Let Stephen Harper and his federal Conservatives take the low road, said Canada’s Liberal leader after he road into St. Catharines, Ontario this July 30 for a town hall meeting as part of his “Liberal Express” swing through the country this summer.

Canada's Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, field's questions at town hall meeting in St. Catharines, Ontario. Photo by Doug Draper

“I want to take the high road,” said Michael Ignatieff to a mostly enthusiastic audience of more than 100 locals who attended the meeting at the Old Merritton Town Hall. “I want to have a conversation with you” rather than spin messages for the purposes of manipulating people, he added, and “you can’t be a good leader unless you are willing to listen to people.”

“You are looking at someone who wants to be your prime minister,” Ignatieff said, and “I respect the institutions that keep us free and I accept institutions that limits my authority as a leader.”

That is hardly the way it is with Harper and his government, Ignatieff went on to say. He ignores the courts, when it is convenient for him to do so, and “when parliament gets in the way, (Harper) shuts it down.”

Ignatieff also defended the need for a full, mandatory census forms to get a good snapshot of the country and its people for Statistics Canada, and he called Harper’s drive to kill the mandatory census as something based on “ideology” rather than anything that seems rational – driven by a government “that seems to prefer ignorance to knowledge.” He questioned how a government could know who needs the most help in what parts of the country if it doesn’t have the information a thorough census can provide. Continue reading →

 A Commentary By Susan Howard-Azzeh

Canadians need to step back and analyze what is really at play here regarding the G20, specifically regarding civil liberties, participatory democracy and foreign interference, or Canada, as we know, it may be changed beyond recovery.

Representatives of unions, environmental and other activist groups march in the streets of Toronto during the G20 summit this June.

Yes, there were decent and reasonable police at the G20 who showed restraint and tried to diligently perform their duties to maintain public safety. However, there were also those who did not, and all en masse were used as political pawns by (Canada’s prime minister) Stephen Harper, (Ontario’s premier) Dalton McGuinty, G20 organizers and foreign agendas.

It is vital that we have public access and democratic input into what takes place behind closed doors by world leaders. Many believe the G20 should not take place at all and certainly not in downtown Toronto. Tactics chosen by the minority Black Bloc were designed so that no other city in the world would want to host the G20, which would satisfy
Black Bloc political aims because they feel the G20 is illegitimate, doesn’t represent the peoples’ best interests, and are the rich and powerful making decisions regardless of their impact on the world’s disempowered and often poor majority.

We already have the UN so why the G20? Because business interests, profits and economic globalization are not the number one priority at the UN. Continue reading →

By John Nicol

The human spirit endures many threats to its desire to commune.

Niagara, Ontario's Emil Breur

In Niagara, politicians play with our hospitals, amalgamate towns and create regional governments distant from our front doors. Schoolboards become such fiefdoms, ignorant of the desire for a sense of community, that they poach kids from, let’s say, Niagara-on-the-Lake, such that the town doesn’t have enough students for its own high school.

“Progress” wiped out hamlets like Homer (the Welland Canal), Glen Elgin (river mills were passé) and there are places like St. John or McNab where only the churches mark an olden day commingling at the crossroads.

Bucking these forces have been neighbourhood barbecues, ethnic clubs, and sporting organizations that allow us to form our own societies.

And then there’s the Emil Breuer Soccer Tournament, it’s own Brigadoon that, for the last 25 years, has sprung to life every Simcoe Day weekend on the once-remote grounds of German Village in Niagara Falls.

The weekend is a community gathering at its finest, a magical snapshot of what life should be, all inspired by a charismatic man named Emil Peter Breuer. Continue reading →

A Commentary By Mollie Stovell

It’s always nice to see a local resident really making a name for themselves. It always gives me a sense of pride, having grown up in Niagara. Then, once in a while you come upon a story, with a name, that diminishes that joy you once shared with your neighbours.

Omar Khadr then and more recently

For me, most recently, that story stars our (Niagara Falls) MP, Mr. Rob Nicholson, and his involvement with the Omar Khadr case. One could argue that Mr. Nicholson is merely doing his job by following the direction of our Prime Minister. However, as Canada’s Minister of Justice he must be held accountable for upholding our rights as Canadians, and, as his title implies, ensuring that justice is served.

For Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen, he has not only failed on this front, but continues to fight against those standing on the just side of the law, that is, the Federal Court and previously, the Supreme Court of Canada. Continue reading →

A Commentary By Dan Wilson
 
If Facebook is any indication, there are a whole lot of people out there upset that all the farm animals at Happy Rolph’s petting zoo are gone.

These goats are among the many animals recently removed from popular Happy Rolph's park in St. Catharines, Ontario where animals were violently assaulted by still-unknown persons this spring. File photo by Doug Draper.

Paul Vanderzanden, the West Lincoln turkey farmer who leased the animals to the park, announced earlier this week that he had removed them after a number of questionable decisions (questionable to Mr. Vanderzanden anyways) were made by the city.
 
Regardless of what those decisions were, the fact remains that the animals are gone. Is this a bad thing? I say no. I’ve never really been a big fan of petting zoos and the only reason I go down to Happy Rolph’s is to photograph the ducks and turtles.
 
I personally don’t see what’s so appealing about seeing animals in cages. Of course, they’re not exactly cages, more like enclosures, but the principle is the same: they’re locked up and they can never leave. Their whole world is a pen measuring 10 feet by 10 feet, or in the case of the larger animals, 20 feet by 20 feet. Continue reading →

(Niagara At Large Is pleased to post the following media release from the Binational Economic & Tourism Alliance, a not-for-profit organization representing members of the toursist industry and others across our greater binational Niagara Region.)

The Buffalo Sabres, hosts to the 2011 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship taking place December 26, 2010 to January 5, 2011 in Buffalo NY, have endorsed the Binational Economic & Tourism Alliance (BETA) and Niagara Sport Commission (NSC) as the Southern Ontario leads for the upcoming games.
 
The BETA and NSC, both members of the Host Organizing Committee for the Championship, will work together with a consortium of Canadian and U.S. partners, to assist with the coordination of Southern Ontario community stakeholder communications, visitor packaging, border-crossing logistics and providing one point of contact to ensure quality delivery, ease of transportation, and customer/fan satisfaction during the World Junior Hockey Championship. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

The provincial government may be asking its million or so public employees to accept a wage freeze for the next couple of year. But obviously that does not apply to our police.

This July 27 – a week to the day that Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan hauled more than 50 representatives for public union employees across Ontario to urge them to accept a two-year wage freeze – an abitrator for the province approved a wage increase of close to 10 per cent for the Niagara Regional Police Service over the next three years.

This means that taxpayers across Niagara, Ontario are going to have to pay for this increase through their property taxes – not through income taxes or anywhere else. The province gets to be the hero here and give the police the salary increases they want, and they don’t have to pay for it. Pretty good deal for a province that has it enshrined in an Ontario Police Act only it can change. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Canada’s federal Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff is wheeling his “Liberal Express” into Niagara this July 30th for what he is billing as a “town hall meeting” and you are all invited.

The Friday public meeting begins at 1:45 p.m. and will take place at the Old Merritton Town Hall on 343 Merritt Street in St. Catharines, Ontario.

This meeting is another in a series of get-togethers Ignatieff is hosting across the country in a bid to strike enough of a connection with Canadians to prevail in an election that could within the next 12 months.

Since members of the federal Liberal Party officially endorsed him as leader of the party in May of last year, Ignatieff – or Iggy as he is often called – has found himself sagging in public-opinion polls suggesting, more and more, that the Conservative government of Stephen Harper might finally win a majority if Iggy is one of Harper’s only real opponents in the next election. Continue reading →

If you are up for a great summer festival in one of Niagara’s historic port and canal communities, then follow the crowds to Canal Days in Port Colborne, Ontario this July 30^th through August 2^nd.

Canal Days, Port Colborne, Ontario. File photo by Doug Draper

The Canal Days Marine Heritage Festival is celebrating its 32^nd year as an event that, earlier this year was designated by Festivals & Events Ontario, through a nomination process that included more than 3,000 festivals and events across Ontario, as among the top 100 best to go to across the province.

In recent years, countless tens-of-thousands of people of all ages and from both sides of Niagara’s binational border have flocked to Canal Days for live music, craft shows, car and motorcycle shows, carnival rides, fireworks displays and much more along the shores of Lake Erie and the Welland Canal.

For more information on this festival and events featured this year, visit canaldays.ca or call 1-800-Port-Fun.

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

By Doug Draper

As the days and weeks go by since that infamous weekend in late June at the G20 summit, the call for a full and open inquiry into security operations around the summit builds.

Riot police around Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario during recent G20 summit.

And so does the gallery of digital images – most captured using all those new-fangled gadgets that can now be brought into play by mostly younger people. Many may not be journalists in the traditional sense and may therefore not deserve mass attention, according to journalistic elites like Toronto Globe and Mail columnist Christie Blatchford and others.

But what these amateur journalists are posting on youtube and through other venues may be more important than any of the crap that Blatchford and other mainstream-media dish out to the powers-that-be.

In that spirit, Niagara At Large is offering the following link to one video and there are many others you can find on line. All should lead to a growing call from anyone who cares about freedom and democracy in Canada for a full and open inquiry.

Here is the link for the video we are posting at the moment at – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbLU9tdDwxo 
 

There may be other digital stills or video you wish to offer. We would consider posting them.

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

By Doug Draper

Niagara, Ontario’s regional government is spending more to treat and pipe water and wastewater across the region than it is getting back in charges for water use, and that can only mean one thing.

One of Niagara Region's wastewater treatment plants in the St. Catharines community of Port Dalhousie. Photo courtesy of Niagara Region.

Get ready to pay more – and in some Niagara municipalities, significantly more – for the water you use in your homes and businesses.

That was the overall message Niagara’s directly elected regional councillors and mayors of local municipalities received from the Region’s public works and corporate services staff at a special committee-of-the-whole session this July 20 to discuss how best to set water and wastewater rates over the next four years.

“We have got to get this right,” said the Region’s public works commissioner, Ken Brothers, of the need for a new way of charging residents and businesses for water – a way that addresses a shortfall in revenue for operating water and wastewater works that has added up to about $22 million over the last six years alone. “Without the appropriate revenue, we are heading down an unsustainable path.” Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

How do you get municipal honchos in Toronto so hopping annoyed that they are hopping higher than the CN Tower?

A view from Niagara Parks Commission lands of the rapids foaming above the Horseshoe Falls. Photo by Doug Draper.

Try running a few ads on Toronto-area television stations and a website urging people to consider Niagara as an escape from all of the gridlock, noise, crime and other chaos in the city. That might do it.

In case you have not yet heard all the crying from across the lake, Toronto has its knickers tied in a knot over something a Niagara body said about it in a bundle of ads late this July. The Niagara Parks Commission launched an ad campaign – featured on its website and on Toronto TV stations – encouraging Torontonians to visit its scenic parklands along Falls and Niagara River corridor, as well as other Niagara area attractions. And why? To “shake off the city,” that’s why.

Suffice to say, Toronto officials and some media outlets based in that city seem ready to throw at least a few people down our way over the Falls in the wake of these ads. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Here’s a bit of encouraging news for people who want to believe there is a robust future for more public transit in the province of Ontario.

Waterloo Region's Rapid River Transit system and other transit services on both sides of our binational border are leaving Niagara, Ontario in the dust

The Ontario government recently announced a $300-million grant for a light rail system in one the province’s region, and that region just happens to be the Region of Waterloo.

And why? Well maybe because Waterloo, unlike Niagara, has already demonstrated the foresight the courage to move forward with a truly regional transit system, and has a fleet of buses serving one end of the region to the other and soaring numbers of residents leaving their cars at home and using public transit to prove it.

Unlike Niagara, Waterloo’s regional government, including its seven local municipalities (Kitchener, Cambridge and Waterloo, and four rural townships) took the bull by the horns a decade ago and agreed to turn over all responsibilities for operating transit services to the region. The result has been one transit agency, focused on providing the most accessible services possible to even the smallest communities in the region, and a ridership on regional buses that has increased by 80 per cent since the year 2000. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

When it comes to getting rid of another unpopular tax Ontario’s Liberal government is trying to impose on consumers, it helps to have one of the country’s major retailers on your side.

Canadian Tire's opposition helps kill eco-tax on Ontario consumers.

It was only a day before the province’s environment minister, John Gerretsen, was forced this July 20 to pull the plug on the government’s controversial “eco fee” on potentially hazardous toxic products, that Canadian Tire – one of the largest retailers of cleaners and other products that fall under that category – declared that it would no longer participating in collecting the fee from its customers.

All of that just 20 days after Premier Dalton McGuinty and his government used Canada Day (this July 1) to slip in this fee on top of the infamous Harmonized Sales Tax (HST), another regressive tax it imposed on consumers across Ontario on the same day. Continue reading →

Foreward by Doug Draper

Okay, so which is it? Is Niagara, Ontario’s hospital system still in the red or is it now in the black?

The Niagara Health System's Welland hospital site has experienced 22 more bed closings in recent months and it is not alone in coping with service cuts across the Niagara, Ontario region.

It is the same question Pat Scholfield, a Port Colborne resident and advocate for Niagara hospitals services, asks in a letter to the editor Niagara At Large is posting below. And there is good reason for the question.

According to a report broadcast this June 18 by the CBC, and based on figures it obtained from Local Health Integration Networks overseeing hospitals across the province, the Niagara Health System, as of this past March, has a surplus of $19 million, thanks to an infusion of funding from the province that erased an $18.8 million deficit (one of the worst in the province) it was wrestling with last year.

But this July 20, according to stories published in the St. Catharines Standard, Welland Tribute and Niagara Falls Review chain of newspapers, the NHS is still nursing a deficit of about $3 million – keeping it on the left side of the ledger with about third of the other hospital systems in the province that are collectively experiencing a funding shortfall from the Ontario government of about $107 million. Continue reading →

 By Doug Draper

Well, well, well.

Port Colborne hospital advocate Pat Scholfield wants Niagara Health System investigated.

That compared to drowning in red ink with one of the largest deficits for any hospital board in the province – running at $18.8 million and counting – a year ago at this time.

And how did the Niagara Health System manage to go from broke to a surplus in such a short period of time?

Certainly a recent infusion of about $49 million from the province’s Liberal government to partially make up for under-funding of Niagara’s hospitals going back to the Conservative government years of Mike Harris and one of his favourite former cabinet ministers – the now leader of the provincial Conservative Party and Niagara area MPP Tim Hudak – has been a big help. Continue reading →

English and tropical gardens surround this classic Victorian-style home on Buffalo's West Delavan Avenue, one of the many popular stops on the garden walk. File photo by Doug Draper.

By Doug Draper

If you live within reasonable driving distance of Buffalo, New York and love classic urban neighbourhoods and architecture, and have a passion for gardening on top of that, then mark July 24 and 25.

This coming weekend marks the 16th anniversary of Garden Walk Buffalo – what has grown into the largest free garden walks in all of North America, featuring more than 340 gardens at homes and other places in neighbourhoods often dating back more than a century.

Garden Walk Buffalo now attracts tens-of-thousands of visitors each year for an event that remains free of charge, unless you are interested in purchasing a t-shirt, poster, a great book of Buffalo Gardens with a fine DVD taking you on a virtual tour of gardens and those who care for them in some of the city’s most historic neighbourhoods. Continue reading →

Ontario justice critic and Niagara area MPP Peter Kormos speaks at rally protesting G20 security measures. Photo by Doug Draper.

“When the police cross the line,
slippery slope to the dark side”

– from a song composed by Dave Toderick and performed by the Niagara-based band ‘Bag of Hats’ at a G20 rally this July 17 in St. Catharines, Ontario’s Montebello Park.

By Doug Draper

Of all the images I walked away with following a rally this July 17 in St. Catharines, Ontario’s Montebello Park for a public inquiry into the actions of security forces at the recent G20 summit, the one that haunted me the most was that of a young girl crying hysterically for her mother.

“There was a 14-year-old girl … being carried in there (by police) and literally screaming that her mother had sent her out to get some milk,” recalled Curtis Dignard, a Welland, Ontario resident who, along with his friend Jason Bernard, was arrested and placed ‘in there’ – meaning the makeshift cages set up in warehouses for those taken into custody during the summit – after police closed in on them and others on the streets of Toronto while they were singing ‘O Canada’.

That young girl – whom we don’t know by name but whose story should be told to all Canadians who claim to care about freedom and democracy in this country – was just one of more than 900 people arrested during the two-day summit this past June 26 and 27 – at least 400 more than were arrested during the 1970 October Crisis when militant elements of the Front de liberation du Quebec (FLQ) kidnapped two government officials, killed one and the federal government of the day imposed a ‘War Measures Act’ that temporarily suspended the civil liberties of every person alive in the country at the time. Continue reading →

One Canadian named Barrett Smith keeps lone vigil at Niagara rally protesting G20 security measures. Photo by Doug Draper.

By Doug Draper

Every community has its share of colourful characters.

In the community where I live – Thorold, Ontario, located just south of St. Catharines for some of our American friends and others who may never have heard of the place before – one of our colourful characters is an aging curmudgeon almost everyone who’s lived here for any length of time knows by name.

He is Barrett Smith and he’s often been seen over the years, waving his long arms sharply during a presentation to the local council over the budget, or standing out in front of the grocery store at the plaza with a petition, or hoisting a picket sign he whipped together for a public rally.

This July 17, I found Barrett Smith sitting off on a bench with one or two others holding yet another picket sign that he almost apologized for making up with a black-felt pen on the fly. “I feel like I’m kind of alone out her,” said Barrett as I approached and asked for a picture of him displaying his sign at a rally in St. Catharines, calling for a public inquiry into security measures exercised at the recent G20 summit in downtown Toronto this past June. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Niagara, Ontario’s regional council is giving the body responsible for operating a majority of the hospitals across the region until the end of August to respond to calls from local municipalities and a provincial coalition of citizens for an independent investigation into “serious complaints” and “unresolved issues” members of the public have expressed about the management of those hospitals.

 During its July 15 meeting, the region’s council set the same deadline for a response from the province’s Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and the provincially created Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) for Niagara and surrounding Ontario regions and municipalities. The decision to send resolutions by the Ontario Health Coalition and its Niagara Health Coalition chapter, along with similar resolutions approved by Town of Fort Erie and the cities of Port Colborne, Welland and Thorold, to the province for an independent investigation of the operation of hospital services in St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Welland, Fort Erie and Port Colborne became the subject of heated debate. Continue reading →

By Don Alexander

The Niagara Escarpment Plan is marking its 25th anniversary this year. 

A sign promoting the Niagara Escarpment's designation as a globally significant biosphere with the verdant slopes of the escarpment looming behind in St. Catharines, Ontario.

It has also been 15 years since the Niagara Escarpment and its plan area were named a United Nations Biosphere Reserve.

The provincial legislation establishing the Niagara Escarpment Commission and its planning responsibilities was adopted in 1973 and that, along with the U.N. designation a decade and a half ago, are anniversary years that we should measure and mark.

For the Niagara Escarpment itself and its natural systems, time is measured over decades, centuries and eons.

I think of the Niagara Escarpment as a place where time is of a different order than everyday.  That is what makes it special for many of us.  It is sometimes described as a “sacred space” where people go into the natural setting to reflect.  The pace slows.      

Consider the formative years of the escarpment! Continue reading →

A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

Over the first week of this July, Niagara At Large experienced an unprecedented number of hits on this fledgling news and commentary site – close to 40,000 in a span of two days – for a story we posted first on a Thorold, Ontario amputee, John Pruyn, who was attending a peaceful rally during the G20 summit on the lawns of the provincial legislature at Queen’s Park in Toronto.

Toronto during G20 summit - 'This ain't Canada right now'.

The 57-year-old federal employee and part-time farmer says he could not maneuver his one good leg and walking sticks fast enough for police lines sweeping in on the Queen’s Park lawns and ordering people who had attended the rally to  “move.” So in short order, he had his artificial leg ripped off by riot police, had his hands tied behind his back and was held in detention for 27 hours before he was finally let go without charges.

While in detention, he was never read his rights and was not allowed to make a phone call to a lawyer or member of his family. Instead, he and other detainees were kept with their hands tied behind their backs, making it hard to perform the most simple of functions like going to the bathroom. In other words, they were afforded fewer rights than those enjoyed by notorious killers like Paul Bernardo and Clifford Olsen when they were taken into custody.

Indeed, as one security cop was heard saying in a video to a group of young people who were questioning why their backpacks should be searched by police before they could walk further down the roads of Toronto; “This ain’t Canada right now.” Continue reading →

 By Randy Hillier, Ontario Conservative Party MPP

(Niagara At Large is posting the following commentary on concerns around G20 security operations by a Conservative MPP and contender last year for his party’s leadership. This site will be pleased to post other commentary by our provincial representatives on this important subject.)

It has been said that in war, truth is the first casualty. Yet in the wake of the Toronto G20 summit, it is clear that truth is an unwelcome intruder within the realm of politics as well.

Ontario Conservative MPP Randy Hillier

Call it my inherent cynicism about politics or maybe put it down to my observation and experience, but the discussion and media coverage surrounding the G20 summit has been ignorant at best, or deliberately misleading at worst. The facts are clear when the political spin is replaced by reasoned evaluation.

The truth is that Dalton McGuinty arbitrarily suspended and abrogated our most sacred civil liberties — our freedoms and privacy — without discussion, debate or public awareness. The premier then justified this abuse of power by asserting that we needed law and order instead. Instead of choosing a more controlled and less populated location that would not be such a powerful magnet for the few juvenile anarchists, Stephen Harper agreed to host the G20 in a location that he had to have known would draw the greatest opposition and most violent response, therefore justifying an outrageous expenditure of public dollars and creating an army of police equipped with a siege mentality. Continue reading →

Niagara At Large is posting the following media release from representatives of the South Niagara Chapter of the Council of Canadians and CAPP Niagara (Canadians Advocating  Political Participation)  for a rally this coming Saturday, July 17 from 1 to 5 p.m. in Montebello Park in St. Catharines, Ontario. The rally is being held in support of a public inquiry on security operations at the recent G20 summit in Toronto.

St.Catharines – Residents and concerned citizens from across Niagara announced today that a rally will be held in St.Catharines on Saturday, July 17, calling for a full and impartial public inquiry into events at the G20 summit.

Police forces in streets of downtown Toronto during recent G20 summit.

The Niagara Day of Solidarity rally is being organized in conjunction with other rallies and public events that will be held across Canada during the week of July 11th – 17th by Council of Canadian members and Canadians Advocating Political Participation (CAPP), the group that organized massive rallies against the prorogation of Parliament last year. On July 17th, the National Day of Solidarity, rallies are expected in hundreds of cities across the country.

The G20 Summit was held in Toronto June 25th-27th and there are a number of issues around the event. In advance of the summit, the Ontario provincial government made a cabinet regulation to the Public Works Protection Act (PWPA) that granted addition powers to the police near the summit site, but was not made public in advance. During the summit, large numbers of protestors, most of whom were peaceful, were arrested by police officers. Many of those arrested were released without charge after being held for extended periods of time in questionable conditions. Continue reading →

By Tim Hudak, Ontario Conservative Party Leader

(The following column was originally printed in The Toronto Sun on July 5 under a headline that read; ‘Don’t blame cops for G20 mayhem’.  It is being posted here in its entirety with the permission of the office of Tim Hudak who, as well as being leader of the province’s Conservative Party,  is a Niagara area MPP and was a cabinet minister in the former Conservative government of Mike Harris.
Niagara At Large will be pleased to post remarks by Ontario Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty or other members of his government should anyone in the Liberal camp choose to comment publicly on the way security was handled at the recent G20 summit in Toronto.)

Exactly one week ago, the downtown core of Toronto was turned into a conflict zone by a group of lawless hooligans.

Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak

These reckless thugs were not in Toronto to protest a legitimate political cause. Instead they are part of a circuit of criminals who travel to international summits with one goal in mind – to destroy property, incite mayhem and terrorize law-abiding citizens.

Sadly, in the wake of the violence, a number of usual-suspect special interest groups are attempting to pin blame, not on the hooligans, but instead on our police services or the federal government.

But it wasn’t frontline police officers who spent a weekend smashing in storefront windows, nor was it federal government officials who torched police cars.
Instead these were the acts of violent anarchists, with a long history of using ‘peaceful’ protest marches at international summits as cover for reckless acts of extreme violence.

That is why I oppose the orchestrated attempt by these activists to demonize our police services in the wake of the G20 violence. I proudly stand behind the men and women of our police services that were faced with a daunting and difficult task of protecting the public against these professional vandals and hooligans. Continue reading →

(Niagara At Large is posting the following media release from the office of Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin for all those who have visited this site at www.niagaraatlarge.com in recent days for accounts of the mahem in Toronto during the recent G20 summit by Niagara area residents.)

TORONTO, Friday, July 9, 2010 – Ontario Ombudsman André Marin today announced he is launching an investigation into the origin and subsequent communication of the controversial security regulation passed by the province prior to the June 26-27 G20 summit.

Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin

By Doug Draper

While we’ve been watching a environmental and economic catastrophe unfold on and along the waters, wetlands and beaches of the Gulf of Mexico, the world’s largest reserve of freshwater – the Great Lakes -may soon face a catastrophe of their own.

This Asian carp was caught in the upper Mississippi watershed near Chicago and Lake Michigan. Photo from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

This one would not come in the form of oil gushing from a well but from a voracious fish that could virtually destroy a Great Lakes fishery worth billions of dollars annually to communities on both sides of the Canada/U.S. border. 

The fish of concern are Asian carp and just as their name implies, they were alien to North America until they were imported to this continent in the 1970s to control the growth of algae in aquaculture pools (fish farms) in the southern U.S. where they eventually managed to escape to the Mississippi River and migrate north to tributaries connected to the Great Lakes. U.S. agencies have been using submerged electrical barriers in an effort to keep the fish from entering Lake Michigan near Chicago.

Then this June, according to recent reports in the Associated Press and other media, spawning Asian Carp have been found in the Wabash River near Fort Wayne, Indiana where nothing more than a floodplain separates them from the Maumee River and Lake Erie.

This latest discovery has coalitions of environmental and other citizen groups in both countries and on all sides of the Great Lakes renewing their call to the U.S. government to build physical barriers to separate the lakes from waters where, if the fish get in and grow in numbers, they have the potential to out compete native species for food and ultimately displace them.

“Lake Erie is well over a billion-dollar fishing industry and in Ohio, a $10.75 destination stop,” said Kristy Meyer, director of Agricultural & Clean Water Programs for the Ohio Environmental Council, in a media release circulated July 1 by the a U.S.-based citizens group called the Alliance for the Great Lakes. “Now, more than ever, (U.S.) state and federal agencies have to stop the finger-pointing and get their act together before these natural wonders become desolate carp ponds.” Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

There is no scientific evidence showing a “direct link” between wind turbines and health effects for people living near them, concludes a report prepared for Niagara, Ontario’s regional government by its public health department and signed by its public health commissioner Dr. Robin Williams.

A wind farm along a shore area in the United States not unlike one that would include four towers and turbines near the shores of Lake Erie in Wainfleet, Ontario.

“While some people living near wind turbines report symptoms such as dizziness, headaches and sleep disturbance, the scientific evidence available to date does not demonstrate a direct causal link between wind turbine noise and adverse health effects,” says the report that was based on a review of available scientific evidence, with the assistance of the Council of Ontario Medical Officers of Health, the province’s Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion.

That conclusion is bound to be controversial for residents already living near wind turbine farms or near sites, including one in the rural Niagara, Ontario municipality of Wainfleet, where a wind energy project has been proposed. These residents have collected numerous accounts from each other of health impacts from the constant whirl of the turbines.

Just the same, the regional government’s report goes on to say that “the reviewers were satisfied that sound level from wind turbines at common residential setbacks is not sufficient to cause hearing impairment or other direct health effects, although they acknowledged that some people may find it annoying.”

Bill Hunter, a manager in the region’s health department, told members of the region’s public health and social services committee this July 6 that compared to coal-fired energy plants, which contribute to air pollution, and nuclear, plants, which emit about 25 times more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than wind turbines, wind power has a lighter impact on the environment. Continue reading →

(Niagara At Large recently posted a story on the arrest and detainment of Thorold, Ontario resident John Pruyn during the G20 summit in Toronto. The account of his arrest, which involved  pulling off  his artificial leg by police dressed in riot gear, can be found by  clicking on www.niagaraatlarge.coom. The following post is a personal account shared with Niagara At Large by Pruyn’s daughter Sarah, who was also arrested and detained by police.)

By Sarah Pruyn

After the People First March (on June 26) my father and I walked back to Queen’s Park to look for my mother whom we had become separated from during the afternoon.  It was about quarter to six pm. Riot police were surrounding all roadways leading into the park, but we managed to find an unguarded pathway in through the University of Toronto campus.

Sarah Pruyn along a lake in Quebec during better times.

As we looked for my mother, a line of riot police began to walk towards us, ordering my father and I, along with hundreds of other protestors, to move as they did. My father refused to move, as we were on public property and had the right to be there. The police began to push him and still he would not move. At this time I noticed that officers about five meters away to my left were shooting tear gas cartridges from riot guns to force protestors to get out of their way. Eventually my father did back from the police line. The  line had advanced a few meters and stopped.

After this, my father and I decided to sit down with a group of protestors on University Avenue. Two activists, male and and in their early 20s, were sitting beside us. They offered us water and we discussed why police were pushing protestors off of Queen’s Park despite it being public property. As there were pockets of tear gas around us, I wetted my bandana with apple cider vinegar and held it to my face.

Before sitting for more than five minutes we were suddenly assaulted. The line of riot cops pressed forward while shooting more tear gas and officers from behind the riot line ran towards where we were. They slammed into us and hit us.

“These four,” one of them shouted to other police around him. We were surrounded by officers on the front, left and right (and) activists who had been behind us started to retreat. Someone ordered my father to stand. He could not do this with ease as he is an above-the-knee amputee and has an artificial left leg. Police kicked and bashed my father as my left arm was grabbed and twisted behind my back. The two activists who had offered us water attempted to help my father stand while repeatedly telling the police that my father only had one leg. The police did not listen and began to hit us more violently. Continue reading →

 We were about to post a piece reminding readers of Niagara At Large’s ‘Comments Policy’ anyway. And what better time to do it than now, with an extraordinary number of comments coming in on a piece we posted this July 5 on how an amputee from Thorold, Ontario was treated by security forces at the recent G20 summit in Toronto. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

John Pruyn wasn’t much in the mood for celebrating Canada Day this year.

John and Susan Pruyn at home and away form the G20 summit in Thorold, Ontario. Photo by Doug Draper

 
How could he be after the way he was treated a few days earlier in Toronto by figures of authority most of us were brought up to respect, our publicly paid-for police forces who are supposed to be there to serve and protect peaceful, law-abiding citizens like him.

The 57-year-old Thorold, Ontario resident – an employee with Revenue Canada and a part-time farmer who lost a leg above his knee following a farming accident 17 years ago – was sitting on the grass at Queen’s Park with his daughter Sarah and two other young people this June 26, during the G20 summit, where he assumed it would be safe.

As it turned out, it was a bad assumption because in came a line of armoured police, into  an area the city had promised would be safe for peaceful demonstrations during the summit. They closed right in on John and his daughter and the two others and ordered them to move. Pruyn tried getting up and he fell, and it was all too slow for the police.

As Sarah began pleading with them to give her father a little time and space to get up because he is an amputee, they began kicking and hitting him. One of the police officers used his knee to press Pruyn’s head down so hard on the ground, said Pruyn in an interview this July 4 with Niagara At Large, that his head was still hurting a week later.

Accusing him of resisting arrest, they pulled his walking sticks away from him, tied his hands behind his back and ripped off his prosthetic leg. Then they told him to get up and hop, and when he said he couldn’t, they dragged him across the pavement, tearing skin off his elbows , with his hands still tied behind his back. His glasses were knocked off as they continued to accuse him of resisting arrest and of being a “spitter,” something he said he did not do. They took him to a warehouse and locked him in a steel-mesh cage where his nightmare continued for another 27 hours.

“John’s story is one of the most shocking of the whole (G20 summit) weekend,” said the Ontario New Democratic Party’s justice critic and Niagara area representative Peter Kormos, who has called for a public inquiry into the conduct of security forces during the summit. “He is not a young man and he is an amputee. …. John is not a troublemaker. He is a peacemaker and like most of the people who were arrested, he was never charged with anything , which raises questions about why they were arrested in the first place.” Continue reading →

A Foreword By Niagara At Large

The late Canadian prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau once said that the United States is a great place to live if you are young, healthy and wealthy.

Niagara area residents protest hospital cuts in Toronto this April.

One of the matters Trudeau was focusing on when he made that comment was the lack a publicly funded, universal system of health care in the U.S. – the kind of which Canadians have been blessed with now for the better part of 50 years, thanks to the progressive campaigning of a politician named Tommy Douglas.

But thousands of cuts by successive provincial governments, starting with the NDP government of Bob Rae, the Conservative governments of Mike Harris and Ernie Eves, and now the Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty, along with the mismanagement of hospital services by unelected, regional boards like the Niagara Health System, Canada’s system of accessible, quality care for all appears to be heading for its death throes – in this region of the country, at least.

Unelected bodies like the NHS and the Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) for the Niagara and Hamilton regions of the province continueclosing patient beds in our hospitals while the provincial government tries wiping its hands clean of any responsibility.

Niagara At Large has posted many articles on this site – articles you can scan by y visiting www.niagaraatlarge.com –  on citizens’ continued concerns over the mess being made of hospitial services on the Ontario side of the border. And below, we are posting a note by Fiona McMurran, a Welland resident and Niagara representative for the citizens group, Council of Canadians, followed by a report from the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), representing more than 600 health care professionals in Niagara’s hospitals alone. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

What a difference a decade can make in the lives of two great neighbouring nations.

My friend Peter before he and the photographer, Doug Draper, took an unsupervised romp through the U.S. Capitol building during less fearful times.

It was 10 years ago this Canada Day that my family and I crossed the Peace Bridge from our home in Niagara, Ontario for a trip to a suburb around Washington D.C. We were on our way down to visit some fellow Canadian friends of ours who have been living and working down there to this day, and whose two daughters were born in and are therefore citizens of the United States.

When we arrived, the front of our friends’ home was decorated with Canadian and American flags, and we settled in for a few days of celebrating both countries that, by mere chance, included a visit to the floor of the U.S. Senate on the Fourth of July.

That’s right. There my friend Peter and I were, dripping with water after running through sprinklers on the lawns of the Capitol building on a day so hot, dozens of people were collapsing from exhaustion. We walked up the flights of white marble steps to the main doors of the Capitol building where we asked the only two security guards we could see if there was still time, before closing, to take a little tour of the inside.

They said ‘sure’ and while tens-of-thousands of people were gathering on the mall outside for Fourth of July concerts and fireworks, here we were wandering the halls of this iconic government building all by ourselves where we found our ways to the empty floor of the Senate chambers, sat at the desks of some of our favourite senators (I picked Ted Kennedy’s) where we shouted out some of their best-known lines. “The cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die,” were among the words I stole from Senator Kennedy before also stealing away with a half-used pencil from his desk.

I thought about that romp through the Capitol building on my way back home to Canada, wondering if I could ever imagine (as free and as open as our country was at the time) having the same exclusive access to our Parliament building. I thought about it again, 14 months later, in the hours following the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, 2001, when I was finally able to get through, by phone, to Peter in his Washington news office. I said to him at the time; ‘Remember when we wandered through those ‘halls of congress’ all by ourselves? We’ll never be able to do that again.” And to this day, at least, it is so unfortunately true. Continue reading →

In honour of Canada and Fourth of July celebrations on both sides of our international border and binational Fort Erie/Buffalo Friendship Festival, the Peace Bridge will glow through the evening hours with patriotic colours.

This lightshow, sponsored by the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority, is scattered across the bridge’s arches, truss and spine for residents and visitors on both sides of the border to see.

The Peace Bridge has served as one of the busiest border crossings on this continent since its opening in the 1920s. It also remains a symbol of peace between two neighbouring countries in a world where crossing borders can still get people jailed or killed. Whatever arguments or disputes Canadians and Americans may sometimes have with each other, it is important to remember that.

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

By Doug Draper

High jobless rates, talk of ever deeper recession, cuts to education and health care, oil gushing from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, rising casualty rates for our troops in Afghanistan, and the seemingly never ending fear of another terrorist attack.

These days it takes courage to read through a newspaper or turn on the television news. No wonder so many people want to lose themselves in soccer, Lady Gaga and Dancing with the Stars? And now here we are, with Canada Day and the Fourth of July upon us, and like many of you, I have put out my Canadian flags and the stars and stripes in honour of my many American friends, even while wondering what is left to celebrate.

Certainly there is little reason to celebrate our governments that spend more time bowing to the Bay Streets and Wall Streets, and to the BPs, Exxons, ITTs and other tans-continental corporations than they do representing us.

At the recent G20 summit in Toronto, Canada’s prime minister and America’s president were holed up inside a heavily-policed, fenced-off security zone – what was sometimes referred to in the press as “the cage” – with a handful of other leaders and about 10,000 faceless bureaucrats they called delegates. In there, and without any scrutiny from the media or members of the public, they worked secretly away, ratifying agreements that could impact on the lives of the rest of us – or what the chairman of BP recently called “the small people” – for decades to come. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

One of Ontario’s largest unions has joined Niagara area municipalities in calling for an investigation into the cutting and gutting the Niagara Health System’s board is doing to hospital services in the region.

The Niagara Health System's Welland hospital site was the target of more bed closings recently as services are 'restructured' at hospital sites across the region. Photo by Doug Draper

“The Niagara community has lost confidence in the (Niagara Health System’s) hospital administration and in an unworkable ‘hospital improvement plan’, said Warren Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) in a recent letter to the province’s health minister, Deborah Matthews, as he called on her to appoint an investigator to conduct a public review of the NHS.

Thomas, whose union represents about 650 health care professions working at what is left of the seven hospital sites the NHS operates across the region, went on to remind the minister that during independent public forums in Niagara and other Ontario regions this past March, residents here “presented personal evidence alleging they or their family members failed to receive appropriate care, including preventable death. In addition to the Coroner’s Inquest (still pending) into the death of Niagara teen Reilly Anzovino, the NHS admits there is an additional investigation into the death of a papteitn from septic shock resulting from an infected leg wound.” Continue reading →

The Welland Canal Advocate, a Niagara-based group of citizens with a website dedicated to preserving and promoting more public awareness and support for the Welland Canal corridors, is holding a special event this July to raise funds for repairing recently vandalized canal corridor murals.

One of the murals gracing the Welland Canal corridor in Thorold. Photo by Doug Draper

The murals, located on the west side of the Welland Canal Flight Locks climbing the Niagara Escarpment in Thorold, Ontario, were damaged by vandals late this June and shortly before they were about to be officially unveiled by city officials and volunteers working on the mural project.

The project has already seen a number of large works of art covering walls of commercial buildings along the canal for the enjoyment of residents and countless thousands of visitors to the region who include a tour along the Welland Canal as part of their trip.

The Welland Canal Advocate is holding the fundraising event on Sunday, July 25, beginning with a hike from the Lock 7 Viewing Centre in Thorold along the Welland Canals Trail where some of the murals can already be viewed. Following the hike, there will be a barbeque and refreshments in Memorial Park on Carlton Street South in Thorold. Continue reading →

Publisher’s Note – The City of Thorold, Ontario may be known to many as a tired old Welland Canal community of  faded, rusting paper mills and other industry.

But Thorold is also a community rich in beautifully built heritage buildings and homes and Hiertage Thorold LACAC – Local Arichtectural Conservation Advisory Committee – has been one of the most active volunteer groups of its kind in the region to have as many of these properties as possible designated as provincially significant heritage sites.

Heritage Thorold celebrated two more heritage designations of historic homes in the community this June 26 and the following article by heritage advocate Pamela Minns provides some information about them.

Communities on both sides of the Niagara River in our greater binational region have a rich inventory of heritage sites of interest to residents and visitors alike, and Niagara At Large would be pleased to post articles on them. You can contact our publisher, Doug Draper, at drapers@vaxxine.com for further information on posting articles and photos of noteworthy heritage properties on this site.

By Pamela Minns

Each time we approach the matter of designating yet another important property in Thorold, I am amazed at the historical significance of these properties and the quality of the architecture we have in this city. Continue reading →