Standing in front of the LHIN’s sign this August 31 and holding copies of Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin’s report titled; “The LHIN Spin” are Fiona McMurran of Welland, Pat Scholfield of Port Colborne, Merilyn Athoe, Joy Russell and Anne Kranics from the Fort Erie area and Sue Hotte of Lincoln.
 
The five activists for hospital care all attended the LHIN board meeting with their copies of the report. “The board,” said Athoe later, “made no mention of the damning report but we all carried (it in to the open portion of the meeting) just in case they needed to refer to it.”

The activists remained there until the board completed the public portion of its agenda and continued its meeting behind closed doors.

Marin’s report, released earlier this August, slammed the LHIN for holding private and closed door meetings two years ago over plans by the Niagara Health System – the body responsible for operating most of the hospitals in the region – to restructure hospital services in Niagara. The report was a response to numerous complaints by Niagara residents, including some of the politicians in the region, that the public was given little opportunity to comment on restructuring plans that have since seen the controversial closing of emergency rooms at the Port Colborne and Fort Erie hospital sites, and the continued reduction in the number of hospital beds across the region.

(Niagara At Large welcomes you to submit photos of signs you feel make a statement about the times we are living in along with a brief note on what the sign means to you. We will be pleased to consider all submissions for use in our ongoing ‘Sign of the Times’ series.)

(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 Niagara region.)

The Fowler's Toad At Bay Beach, Fort Erie. Created by Paul Kassay

That is what Paul Kassay, a longtime advocate for preserving and enhancing the Crystal Beach area, hopes the Fowler’s toad will do for Bay Beach as many residents and people who own property there on both sides of the Canada/U.S. border prepare to fight those corporate developers and their own Town of Fort Erie at Ontario Municipal Board hearings, and at the ballot box during this October’s municipal elections.

Kassay created Niagara At Large’s latest pick for our ‘Sign of the Times’ series, and there is reason to believe that the Fowler’s toad still has a toe hold on Bay Beach that can be used as one more reason not to plunk a condo tower on it.

But Fowler’s toad or no Fowler’s toad, where is Niagara, Ontario’s regional government that claims it want to spare what is left of our lakeshore lands for the public. When is it going to have the guts to say “no” to the condo developers and the town councillors that have chosen to play toady to them and stand up for a public fighting for public access to our lakeshores?

Click up the Fowler’s toad image to blow it up and read the fine print.

(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.)

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The Niagara Health System may be about as popular as the proverbial skunk at the garden party for many residents living in the region’s southern tier.

Another 'sign of our times'.

 But the NHS, the organization created a decade ago to manage most of Niagara, Ontario’s hospitals, has at least one booster there – a Fort Erie branch of the Royal Bank of Canada! The bank is now sporting a sign that reads; ‘RBC Supports The Niagara Health System’.

And as offensive as it may be to some Fort Erie residents, angered by the cuts the NHS has made to their hospital, the bank’s support shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. RBC Capital Markets is among those financial institutions, along with TD Securities Inc., BMO Capital Markets and others, that stands to profit from NHS’s decision to build a brand new, super hospital in the north end of Niagara, where many of the region’s hospital services, including first-of-a-kind cancer treatment and cardiac centres, will ultimately go.

Meanwhile, residents in the southern tier have already seen the NHS transform the emergency rooms of their Fort Erie and Port Colborne hospitals converted in to “urgent care centres” that, while the NHS insists they will still treat about 95 per cent of the patients that received medical attention at the old ERs, will no longer take the remaining five per cent of patients suffering the most critical or life-threatening conditions.

Those patients are now being ambulanced to the ERs in Niagara Falls or Welland and Ontario’s chief coroner has already agreed to hold an inquest into one incident where 18-year-old Reilly Anzovino died after being ambulanced from a traffic accident site in her hometown of Fort Erie to the Welland hospital.

Niagara south residents have been lobbying the provincial government continuously to have the ERs in Fort Erie and Port Colborne reopened but, so far, to no avail.

The new hospital complex, now being built on the outskirts of west St. Catharines, is now largely being financed, with the blessing of the province and NHS, through what is called a “public-private partnership” or “P3” process, and RBC Capital Markets is one of the financial entities that has helped mortgage the cost.

According to NHS’s own figures, available on its website, the estimated cost of the new complex, “in today’s dollars,” is $759 million. As a result of the loans being mortgaged through RBC and other money lenders, the real estimated cost to our health care system and provincial and municipal purses will reach $1.42 billion, according to NHS’s own figures.

The local municipal share of the costs, including money coming out of the pockets of regional taxpayers in Fort Erie, Port Colborne, Welland, Niagara Falls and other communities across the region, are expected to total almost $117 million by the time the time all the bills are paid.

And that doesn’t include the tens-of-millions of dollars in infrastructure costs, including the cost of a new interchange off Hwy. 406 in west St. Catharines, transit services and other improvements that are going to have to be made to routes leading to the hospital site.

Also remember that all of these cost figures are estimates that have been made well before the work on the hospital and accompanying infrastructure has been completed or even started in some cases. Ask yourselves how many building projects you know of that have come in at or near the estimated cost.

But whatever the cost, underwriting it through a public-private partnership rather than just shelling out public dollars like in the old days, means the private partners stand to profit. Given all that, William Hogg, a retired doctor from Fort Erie and a former Fort Erie town councillor, Glenn Hutton, held their own modest vigil in front of the RBC branch in their town that is sporting the sign supporting the NHS. They displayed their own sign reading; “NHS Closed Our Hospital’s ER. There Will Be Deaths!!! Does Your Bank Support NHS?”

In a recent note Hogg shared with Niagara At Large following the vigil in front of the bank branch, he wrote; The NHS, as a result of the untimely death of young Reilly Anzovino, a local girl home from school for Christmas last, has been criticized for the arbitrary, unilateral closure of the Fort Erie hospital and its emergency department. She spent critical extra minutes in transit to Welland and her death will soon be looked into by coroner’s inquest. In connection with her death, NHS acquired an unhappy label: NHS = DOA!”

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

Here is one of my favourite signs along the Niagara River corridor – erected by the Niagara Parks Commission some years ago for the benefit of any visitors to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls who might be a little bit on the daring side.

A sign one thinks would not be necessary except for the stupidity of the human species. Photo by Doug Draper

Don’t know if there are any comparable signs on the American side of the river but given how litiginous a society there seems to be south of the border (or east of the border in this case) the New York State Park authorities might want to post a few around Goat Island and Terrapin Point just as a matter of ‘due diligence’.

The sign literally warns people not to jump over a fence which is the last stop left before plunging hundreds of feet to rock and water below the roaring Horseshoe Falls of Niagara.

My view is that if you have to erect a sign like this to tell people it may be dangerous to jump over a fence protecting us from a death fall, it does not say much for the intelligence of our species when it comes to interacting with our surrounding environment, including the continued spewing of poisons into our air and water, and wrapping our wherewithal around more complex challenges like climate change. This sign might just as well say that when it comes to any of those things, there is little or no hope left for us.

If you have a sign or signs you want to contribute to our ongoing ‘Signs of our Times’ series, please send an image of it or them, along with your own caption on what you feel they mean for the state of the communities across our region, to drapers@vaxxine.com for Niagara At Large.

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

If you visit the front page of Niagara At Large and scroll down a few more stories, you will see one entry in this series already on signs by governments, bragging about spending our tax money on projects they should be spending our tax money on.

This sign was submitted to Niagara At Large with the caption - 'needs no further explanation'.

This one was submitted by Merilyn Anthoe, a Fort Erie resident and member of the Yellow Shirt Brigade, a citizens group dedicated to fighting for fair and accessible hospital services in southern Niagara. She submitted it as a photo that needs no further comment, which it probably doesn’t for Canadians and Americans living all year or part of the year on the Ontario side of Lake Erie in Niagara.

This sign speaks to the anger and concern so many residents in south Niagara have for the closing of emergency rooms at hospitals in Fort Erie and Port Colborne, and the general diminishing hospital services for people in this part of our region.

Once again, if you have a picture and caption you with to send to us from anywhere in Niagara, Ontario or the Erie and Niagara counties of New York, depicting the signs of our times, please send them to drapers@vaxxine.com  for Niagara At Large. These signs and all your other comments are about lively public engagement in issues that matter to you in our region and communities.

(Click on www.niagaraatlarge.com for further news and commentary on our greater binatinal Niagara region.)

Niagara At Large is launching a new off-and-on-and-whenever-we happen-get-a-good-submission’ series that speaks to the good, bad and ugly across our binational Niagara region called “Signs Of Our Times.”

Signs of the Times photo by Bob Liddycoat

And when we say signs, we are talking about real signs up on poles, a billboard, on a picket line or displayed on a lawn or wall somewhere that you happen to spot in your communities and can share an image of with Niagara At Large. Send us a digital image of the sign; along with a bit of commentary on why you feel whatever message the sign conveys ranges from something that may be great for our communities, to something that is sad, disgusting or absurd.

We are starting this ‘Sign Of The Times’ series with an image of a cluster of signs captured by Bob Liddycoat, now a Wainfleet, Ontario resident and old journalism colleague of mine, taken on Ormond Street in his old hometown of Thorold, Ontario. You may have viewed them already on the right, up-hand side of this column. In Bob’s note on this one, he mentioned “three billboards from three levels of government telling us what a wonderful job they’re doing – all at our expense. …

“And if this is just one stretch of one street in one town in Canada,” added  Bob, “imagine what they’re wasting across the country.”

What are they wasting, indeed!

Three signs on one street within a few hundred feet of each other, from the federal, provincial and local governments, all trumpeting their contributions to the same sanitary sewer and watermain project that has been needed desperately needed to replace the decaying pipes on this street for some time, and all paid for with our taxdollars.

And they are going to the extra trouble of posting signs making sure that we all know they are spending our taxdollars on this project. Well, what a magnanimous gesture on their part.

Except that in the case of Canada’s federal government at least – and remember, this is supposed to be a Stephen Harper Conservative government that is hell bent on cutting taxes and spending – it has reportedly spent somewhere between $5- and $45-million just on signs alone – running up a bill of at least $800 per sign on streets like this in Thorold – to let us all know how generous they are with our money.

And the punch line is this. According to several newspapers across the country, Harper and his gang contracted a U.S. firm to design its ‘Action Plan’ sign for projects that are supposed to be stimulating jobs in the Canadian economy. Sort that out.

Please share your thoughts on these signs of the times and whatever side of the Ontario/New York side of the greater Niagara region you live on, please feel free to share your images of signs for future discussion and debate in Niagara At Large.

(Click on www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary of interest and concern to our greater Niagara Region.)