Daily Archives: July 3, 2010

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.)