Monthly Archives: June 2010

A foreword by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

Isn’t it about time politicians in the north end of Niagara, Ontario stopped treating people in the southern tier of the region like collateral damage when it comes to hospital care?

Niagara hospital care advocate Pat Scholfield

At long last, isn’t it?

If that sounds a little harsh, too bad. As a resident of Niagara’s north end, I can hardly say how sad it is that so few municipal and provincial politicians on my end of the region – so parochial and out of touch with the rest of the region they are in their vision – care so little about the gutting of hospital services in Niagara’s southern tier. And why is that? Is it because they feel they can take some comfort in the fact that the Niagara Health System – a body created by the former provincial government of Mike Harris and Tim Hudak – is building its spanking new hospital complex, complete with a regional cancer and cardiac centre, in the region’s north end?

That may be okay for them but what about residents in Niagara’s central and south ends who are seeing their hospital services, including emergency room services, gutted while the Niagara Health System moves forward with investing more than $1 billion for new services at a north-end site in west St. Catharines?

Don’t people in central and south ends of the region deserve fair and equal access to hospital services too? Why, when it comes to hospital services, should they be treated like human garbage? Continue reading →

By Fiona McMurran

I’ve just returned from protesting the G20 in the streets of Toronto.

A peaceful demonstration near Queen's Park before riot police moved in. Photo courtesy of Fiona McMurran.

Soon after midday, we assembled with thousands upon thousands of other protesters in Queen’s Park, getting soaked to the skin as the heavens opened. My march with other colleagues and friends from the Council of Canadians, was uneventful – we got back to Queen’s Park in mid-afternoon – about 4:00 p.m. – and then strolled the couple of blocks to O’Grady’s pub on College Street, now full of soccer fans cheering on Ghana against the United States.

Ghana beats the U.S. There’s much cheering and as fans take their leave, the TVs are switched to news channels. From then on, the talk in the pub is all about the events taking place a few blocks away. We are getting nervous as we wait for two of our foursome from Niagara to join us.
As the scenes unfold on the screen, and as other protesters entered the pub and the discussion to give us updates, my little group of demonstrators is caught in an odd sort of suspended animation.
 
We had all been more or less of one mind: a peaceful demonstration was what was desirable to get our various messages across. Anything else would be totally unwelcome. It would simply steal the attention from what we wanted the Canadian public – never mind the leaders, who haven’t and won’t listen to us anyway – to hear. We would condemn any individual or group that attempted to put our sincere protests in the shade. Violence of any sort is always wrong. It simply re-enforces the argument that all this expensive security was entirely necessary. Etc. etc. etc.
 
But that’s not what we are feeling as we watch the events in the downtown core. The sensation is that we are witnessing a game play out, one that both sides understand. One side has the numbers, the power. The other side certainly has the upper hand when it comes to tactics. It reminds me of nothing so much as the war in Afghanistan. Guerrilla warfare. Continue reading →

From Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

Most of the messages G20 summit protesters wanted to get out may have been hijacked by a few hundred thugs bent on smashing windows and torching cars.

Ole Woody Guthrie

But social activist and writer Naomi Klein was at least able to get a column in The Globe and Mail this June 28, talking about how unwilling the G20 leaders did to control bankers and other financial institutions that played such a major role in causing the latest global recession.

Coincidently enough, and just a few days prior to the June26/27 summit, CBC Radio’s The Current interviewed American folk singers Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger about protest songs fitting for events such as this.

During the interview, Arlo Guthrie read the following lines written by his father, the late folk-singing legend Woody Guthrie, more than half a century ago but in too many ways, still just as relevant today. They read as follows; “I never stopped to think about it before, but you know a police man will just stand there and let a banker rob a farmer or a finance man rob a working man. But if a farmer robs a banker, you would have a whole darn army of cops out shooting at him. Robbery is a chapter in etiquette.”

Meanwhile you can read the Naomi Klein column by clicking on the following link – http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/g8-g20/opinion/sticking-the-public-with-the-bill-for-the-bankers-crisis/article1620729/ .

(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 region.)

By Doug Draper

Anyone of us in Ontario, Quebec or the northeastern United States who has spent any time  in front of a television over the past 30 or so years, has no doubt watched and heard the commercial jingle for the Marineland amusement park in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Protesting in front of Marineland this June 26. Photo by Doug Draper

“Everyone loves Marineland,” the last line in the jingle goes.

Everyone?

Like most marketing lines, they are cover over, like icing on a cake, with more than a little exaggeration. Jules Henry, the late American sociologist and a student of advertising strategies, called these exaggerations “pecuniary pseudo-truths” in the sense that they are “a new kind of truth … which may be defined as a false statement made as if it were true, but not intented to be believed. No proof is offered for a pecuniary pseudo-truth, and no one looks for it. Its proof is that it sells merchandise; if it does not, it is false.”

Getting back to that marketing line; “Everyone loves Marineland,” no sane person could literally believe that if they were out in front of the 50-year-old amusement park this June 26 while more than 30 activists for animals, including members of Niagara Action for Animals, picketed in front of the park while countless cars drove by offering them honks of support. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

The chairman of Niagara, Ontario’s regional government has won support from Canadian and U.S. municipal leaders around the Great Lakes a resolution calling for more public access to the lakes’ shorelines.

A stretch of Lake Erie shoreline, fenced off to the public in the Fort Erie area.

 The resolution was passed by the municipal leaders at the annual conference this June of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Cities Initiative in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In its own words, it “encourages the U.S. and Canadian federal/ provincial, First Nations and tribes to work collaboratively with municipal governments and other parties to affirm support of the right of all citizens to walk along the shoreline of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence (River).”

Approved by the multi-member organization on June 17, the resolution goes on to call on the three levels of government on both sides of the international border “to take back into public ownership waterfront properties along the Great Lakes as they become available to ensure public access for future generations.” Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

There is another one of those editorial cartoons that can drive a columnist like me crazy, even though I love it.

We may think we still live in a democracy. But they need a wall to keep us out.

This one, by veteran cartoonist Brian Gable and featured last week on the editorial pages of The Globe and Mail, shows a nice old grandmotherly type who happens to be living inside the security zone in Toronto near the convention centre where the G20 summit is about to be held. As she is planting something in her yard, police armed with clubs and shields yell at her through a bullhorn; “Put down your elderberry!!! … Resistance is futile.” A caption accompanying the cartoon reads: “Toronto – Saplings removed because they could be used as weapons by G20 protestors.”

The reason I say a cartoon like this can drive a columnist crazy is that a great cartoonist like Gable can, with one drawing and a few words, capture the essence of an issue with as much, if not more punch than a columnist can deliver in hundreds of words. And this particular cartoon, in my view, sums up just as well as almost any column I’ve read over the past few weeks, the dark, draconian lengths our federal government is going to this month to provide security during the G20 summit in Toronto and G8 summit in the Muskoka area.

I have no illusions that I can match the punch of Gable’s June 17 cartoon with my words here. But as one Canadian who came of age feeling proud of our country’s image and its role as a democracy and peacemaker in the world, I can’t help but make some remarks on the spectacle that is unfolding for the rest of the world to see in the heart of one of our country’s largest cities. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Well, it is a start.

Buses pull up to board passengers at a major transit hub in Welland. Photo by Doug Draper

For those of us who have been waiting and hoping for years that Niagara, Ontario’s regional government would finally take the wheel and launch a robust regional transit system that serves the residents of every local municipality across this region, the June 23 decision to cobble together the possible beginnings of such a system seems like a rather anemic step in that direction.

For those just pleased to see the regional government do anything to ignite a start on inter-municipal transit services in Niagara, the June 23 decision by a committee-of-the-whole meeting of the region’s council to grant the cities of St. Catharines, Niagara Falls and Welland eight new buses and a few million dollars in operating cash to make it happen may, as some declared, be a ‘historic occasion’.

There most certainly was, at the end of it all, a round of applause from members of the public and representative of local transit authorities sitting in the gallery of the regional council chambers when a majority of the councillors finally voted to start a system that grants transit authorities in the three cities the buses and funding to provide more rides between municipalities. Continue reading →

Niagara At Large features the following announcement for our readers’ information and for our readers comments. Please feel free to wade in to the discussion and debate in the comment boxes below.

NIAGARA FALLS, ONTARIO, June 24, 2010 – The City of Niagara Falls today celebrated the groundbreaking of an addition to the Children’s Aid Society office for Family and Children’s Services in Niagara. 

Federal minister John Baird and Niagara Falls, Ontario MPP Kim Kraitor join a child in a groundbreaking for new facilites in Niagara for kids in crisis.

Canada’s Minister of Transport and Infrastructure John Baird; the Honourable Rob Nicholson, P.C., Q.C. Member of Parliament for Niagara Falls, Minister of Justice, and Attorney General of Canada; Kim Craitor, Member of Provincial Parliament for Niagara Falls; and Michael Boucher, Vice President of the Board of Directors, Family and Children’s Services Niagara, participated in the groundbreaking ceremonies for this important infrastructure project. 

“The work of the Children’s Aid Society is vital to the people in our region,” said Minister Baird. “Helping to fund a new Family Centre through Canada’s Economic Action Plan is another way that the Government of Canada is supporting Canadian communities and we are pleased to be a part of this worthwhile project that has such a positive impact on this community.”

“The children, youth and families of the Niagara region will benefit immensely from the improvements this new facility will bring to the important work of Family and Children’s Services,” said Minister Nicholson. “The federal government is committed to helping communities by contributing to important local infrastructure projects such as this one.”

“Today’s investment demonstrates our government’s commitment to strengthening Ontario’s not-for-profit sector,” said Laurel Broten, Minister of Children and Youth Services. “Our Open Ontario plan ensures that we will continue to deliver valuable community services to at-risk families and children.” Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Many of you may have heard the legendary tale about the dance band on the Titanic playing the mournful hymn ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’, after the giant liner struck the iceberg and was slowly going down. Actually, according to the accounts of Titanic survivors, the band spent most of its last gig playing more cheerful music, including upbeat ragtime hits of the day like ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’.

The Niagara Health System's annual general meeting of board was an exercise in self gratification. Photo by Doug Draper

I thought about the Titanic dance band, playing on while both it and the ship it was on was sinking into oblivion, as a I left the annual meeting this June 22 of the Niagara Health System’s board.

For all of the many challenges and controversies this board – responsible for managing most of what is left of the hospital sites in Niagara, Ontario – it was a meeting It was a meeting that lasted all of 30 minutes, at the most, with a good part of it taken up by the NHS’s CEO, Debbie Sevenpifer, and the board’s chair, Betty Lou Souter, making self-congratulatory remarks about the achievements of the past year and even better things they feel lay ahead. All while most of the rest of the board members – appointed by Sevenpifer and her minions – sat there like a lump.

“Together, we are all up for the challenge and I am excited to work with others to raise the bar (for health care) in Niagara,” said Sevenpifer, as she discussed efforts to reduce waiting times for patients in what is left of Niagara’s emergency rooms and for patients awaiting surgery. Continue reading →

Foreword by Doug Draper

This July 1 through July 4 marks the 24th anniversary of the Friendship Festival, a four-day cross-border festival celebrating almost two centuries of friendship and peace between U.S. and Canadian citizens on both sides of our international Niagara border.

Fort Erie/Buffalo Friendship Festival. File photo courtesty of Brad Murphy

And you can’t get much more ‘hands across the border’ – the name of an event organized last year and to take place again this July 4 on the Peace Bridge – than this Friendship Festival organized jointly by residents in Buffalo, New York and Fort Erie, Ontario, highlighting both Canada Day on July 1 and America’s Independence Day on the Fourth of July.

In the formative years of this festival, I was a reporter for a daily newspaper in Niagara, Ontario and asked one of the Fort Erie organizers what was one of the drivers behind it. The person on the other end of the phone said that in many ways, people in the Buffalo and Fort Erie areas feel that they share more in common with each other than they do with people living in communities around, let’s say, Washington, D.C. or Ottawa, Ontario. That continues to remain the case to this day as residents on both sides work on the challenges we mutually face around generating new jobs, and regenerating our economies, communities, transportation systems and ecosystems for a health and prosperity for families, friends and neighbours in the 21st century.

The Friendship Festival is another opportunity each year for residents on both sides of the Niagara River to bond in a celebration of that special binational relationship. Continue reading →

A War of 1812 Bicentennial Peace Garden was dedicated on June 18 at Niagara University in Niagara, County, New York.

The garden, located between St. Vincent’s and Alumni Halls on the university’s campus, is a partnership between Niagara, the Binational Economic & Tourism Alliance, and the 1812 Legacy Council.

The speakers at the event this June included Niagara Falls, N.Y., Mayor Paul Dyster and Nancy E. McGlen, Ph.D., dean of Niagara’s College of Arts and Sciences. “This event is part of an effort between Ontario and New York state to celebrate the 200 years of peace between the United Sates and Canada,” said Dr. Thomas Chambers, chair of the university’s history department.

“These beautiful places along the borders of the two countries will help to commemorate the years of peace, and promote binational cooperation and recognition of the resources that are available for historical tourism.”

Niagara’s is the second peace garden established. The date was selected to commemorate the 198th anniversary of the United States’ declaration of war against Great Britain. The first Peace Garden coming up to the bicentennial of the War of 1812 was dedicated in the town of Grimsby in Niagara, Ontario this May.

(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

Ontario Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne calls it a “a cultural shift.”

Ontario Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne

Others may call it ‘about time’ after decades of everyone from the late and legendary advocate for sound urban planning Jane Jacobs to other respected voices in the field of planning and transportation in North America, not to mention countless citizen groups across this region and continent, pressing governments over and over again to forge more environmentally friendly and economically sustainable transportation plans.

But at least we gave a transportation minister in Ontario who finally seems to be interested in taking seriously a ‘cultural shift’ away from building ever more roads and highways for ever more trucks to cars, to a transportation system that places more emphasis on rail and buses, biking and walking, and other modes of moving around and through our communities and regions.

We will probably never seen the end of cars, said Wynne during an interview with Niagara At Large in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. this June 21 where she was about to meet with representatives in the marine transportation industry. But the province, at long last, has to get past putting so much emphasis on building more highways and roads, and move to other, more sustainable environmental alternatives.

“We have thought for generations that we have endless resources and endless space, but we can’t  just keep building roads,” said Wynne during the interview. “That is old thinking. We know now that we don’t have and that our footprint (with all the road and highway building) is having a negative impact on the environment.” Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

They don’t call them “persistent” environmental poisons for nothing!

More than three decades after the manufacture of chemicals like PCBs, Mirex and a trichlorophenol-based herbicide that produced the most toxic form of dioxin as an unwanted byproduct was banned in North America, they continue to menace the waters of the Lower Niagara River and Lake Ontario.

According to the most recent guide booklets released by the New York State and Ontario governments for consuming fish caught in state and provincial waters, there are still fish in the lower Niagara and Lake Ontario the governments are advising people to limit their consumption of or not eat at all due to an accumulation of high levels of toxic chemicals in their flesh.

This remains the case despite many years of cleanup work by governments and industries on both sides that have reduced the flow of hazardous chemicals to the Niagara River by well over 50 per cent.

That’s right, despite all of the cleanup successes the governments can rightfully boast about, a person is advised not to eat a lake trout from the lower Niagara River that is over two feet long due to the presence of worrisome levels of chemicals like PCBs, Mires and Dioxin the meat of the fish. The same is true for many other larger species of fish from the lower river and the downstream waters of Lake Ontario to the St. Lawrence River. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

As I gathered early this June with a few hundred others in the old St. Thomas Anglican Church in St. Catharines, Ontario, I felt like I was saying farewell – once again and possibly for the last time – to the last real daily newspaper residents on the Ontario side of our greater Niagara region had.

Henry Burgoyne, the last publisher of The St. Catharines Standard when it was a newspaper, with his mother, Dorothy Burgoyne Doolittle, offering a farewell party to those of us who enjoyed working for them.

The gathering was, in and of itself, a sad one. It was for Dorothy Burgoyne Doolittle, who passed away this May 31 in her 90th year.

And for those who may not know, Dorothy Burgoyne Doolittle was the last matriarch of the Burgoyne family when that fine family still owned The St. Catharines Standard up to the time it sold the paper in 1996.

I said my first farewell to that paper a couple of years later, in 1998, when along with many other journalists, who had love working there for years, I blasted my way out of the place in disgust after Lord Conrad Black of Crossharbour (then a newspaper baron and now a jail bird) ripped the heart and soul out of the newsroom, along with a bunch of sycophants that have bowed to their knees to every corporate boss man that has run the place like a sausage-making factory to this day.

Damn right. I found myself running out of a newsroom I once loved running into, and I have never been back. I won’t even walk or drive my car down Queen Street, past the front doors of the red-brick building still housing what’s left of The Standard, and I feel as sad about that as I did when I heard the recent news that Dorothy Burgoyne Doolittle had died.

The Burgoynes, who virtually founded that newspaper in 1891 and built it for more than a century into a formidable voice for St. Catharines and the surrounding region, exemplified the kind of owners of newspapers that are all but gone. Unlike the corporate chains that own most of the newspapers on this continent today (carpetbaggers, I often call them) the Burgoynes lived in and cared passionately for the community where they owned and operated a newspaper and, even more than that, they loved newspapers – not just as a business but (as corny as it may sound) as a public trust. Continue reading →

A foreward by Doug Draper

As many fellow residents on the Niagara, Ontario side of our border may know by now, the province’s premier, Dalton McGuinty, is marking Canada Day this July 1 with the launching of a harmonized sales tax – more infamously known as the HST – that will favour big business at the expense of middle and lower-income consumers.

McGuinty, who shows every sign of being a firm believer in the ‘trickle down’ mythology of economics foisted on peoples by the likes of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, wherein if we give huge tax breaks to corporations they may create a few more jobs, is determined to move forward with the HST as a replacement regressive tax for the GST  despite polls consistently showing that more than 70 per cent of Ontarians are against it.

Both opposition parties, the Conservatives and NDP, have been slamming the government over this tax for months now, but to little avail. There is little sign the government is listening to anyone but some members of the business community who obviously like the shift of taxes away from them and toward the rest of us. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Ding, dong, any plans for cutting a ‘mid-peninsula highway’ through the heart of Ontario’s Niagara region at long last seems dead.

Tyler Drygas, a senior environmental planner and URS consultant for Ontario's transportation ministry who is second to right in this photo and in the background, outlines transportation strategy for region with area residents. Photo by Doug Draper

At a public information session, hosted by Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation in Welland, Ontario this June 17, Roger Ward, a team leader in the ministry’s transportation planning branch, outlined to area residents in attendance the elements a strategy being developed for moving people and goods within and through Niagara and the Greater Toronto Corridor.

And here is the encouraging part. Not once, through Ward’s 15-minute presentation did he or any of his fellow ministry representatives make any reference to a ‘mid-peninsula highway’.

In fact, on the area of a map of the GTA and Niagara area where, for the better part of a decade, there was a fat line depicting where, generally, this new, multi-lane highway would go, there are now only the three words; “continue monitoring needs.”

What that phrase does, in the parlance of the ministry, is effectively put any plan to construct a new highway cutting from the Hamilton/Burlington area, and south of the Niagara Escarpment, through some of the nicest farming lands and forests and watersheds in the region, to the Queen Elizabeth Way and the U.S. border to Buffalo, is at the rock bottom of any transportation improvements now being considered.

Some may not like it, but for countless thousands of Niagara and Burlington area residents that have, for years, opposed this highway as a threat to the environment and as one more driver for ever more trucks and cars, the fact that this plan has been placed in a coma should come as good news. At an estimated cost of anywhere between $1- and $2 billion, and possibly even more, its virtual death should almost certainly be greeted as good news for the province’s taxpayers. So what is the ministry proposing in its latest ‘Draft Transportation Development Strategy’? Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

In the 1970s Academy Award- winning film ‘Network’, there is a scene where the head of the corporation that runs one of America’s major TV networks calls the news anchor in to the boardroom for a bit of a dressing down.

“You get up on your little screen,” says the corporate head, “and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world now.”

This lesson for the news anchor crossed this commentator’s mind over the past couple of months as we have all watched, on our little screens at home, the disaster unfolding off the U.S. shores of a Gulf of Mexico that is a major habitat for wildlife and one of the most productive sources for seafood on this continent. It came to mind over and over again as it looked like BP, one of the largest petroleum corporations in the world and the perpetrator of what is now recognized by the White House as the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history, was (and still is) calling most of the shots on trying to control this monumental mess.

Even this June 15, as U.S. President Barack Obama went on the air from the Oval Office for the first time to address the disaster, his words about BP’s “recklessness” and one of his crowning lines; “Now is the moment for this generation … to embark on a national mission … to seize our destiny” were seductive, but seemed to fall short of any real detail or substance. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

 So is this what you have to do to get Canada’s government to back down on implementing a harmonized sales tax? Threaten to “shut down” the country?

Apparently it is, according to a front-page story in the June 16 edition of The Globe and Mail. Obviously the fact that more than 70 per cent of the Ontario public is against the this tax – known more simply as the HST – doesn’t make an impression on our elected politicians in Toronto and Ottawa. They appear to have every intention of imposing it on the majority of the province’s residents this July 1 anyway.

But if a segment of the population – in this case, Ontario’s aboriginals – threatens to blockade roads and take other actions that could disrupt the G8 and G20 summits set to take place in Huntsville, Ont. and Toronto later this June, then all of a sudden the federal government is ready to negotiate an exemption for this regressive tax for that group. Continue reading →

By Fiona McMurran

The G8 and the G20 Summits are making headlines. But there’s an alternative that’s not received much attention in the media.

It’s called The People’s Summit. And it doesn’t cost a billion dollars. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t cost the taxpayer anything.
Taking place this coming weekend, June 18 through 20, at Ryerson University in downtown Toronto, the overall theme of the 2010 People’s Summit is Building a Movement for a Just World. Civil society’s “counter Summit” brings together community organizers, activists, non-governmental organizations, independent media, artists, workers, ordinary people—to educate, empower, and ignite positive change.

Sponsored by a host of citizen groups, such as the Council of Canadians, and environmental, social justice, labour and peace organizations, the People’s Summit is an alternative to the ’self-appointed, undemocratic assembly of the world’s wealthiest countries.’

The three-day program features some 100 workshops, film screenings, panels, strategy sessions, art, performance, and lectures, organized into five thematic streams: Global Justice; the Environment and Climate Change; Human Rights and Civil Liberties; Economic Justice; and Building the Movement. Continue reading →

(Every year for most of the last century, Crystal Beach in Fort Erie was a summer fun place for residents in Niagara, Ontario, Buffalo and beyond. It is gone with the wind now, but this column may help bring a bit of the fun back. Too bad it is gone.)

By William Hogg

“Hey, it’s the twenty-fourth of May, Crystal Beach opens today!”

The comet rollercoaster, now a feature at a park in upstate New York, looming behind lineups of people way back when at Crystal Beach.

That was the top news. It was shouted in every schoolyard on both sides of the Niagara. And within a day or two, every Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer around began to pluck up nerve to skip school. Five of us grade six boys (plopped into a class of thirty grade seven girls) finally did it. Pocketing our stashes of nickels and dimes and hopping our bicycles, we raced up the Dominion Road – to adventure and fun – to Crystal Beach. As did the truant officers rattling along behind in their green Nashes, old gray Willy’s-Eights and chrome-plated Buicks.

All other cars, headed in the same direction, bumper to bumper, skimmed by inches from our small boys’ narrow shoulders, all made skinnier by the Great Depression and wartime rationing.

At the park gate we spread out: to the Fun House to be spooked, all ‘softies’ off to the Merry-Go-Round, a ride on the Miniature Train, a whirl on Flying Scooters, and up and away in the Ferris Wheel for a breathtaking view and to get height-acclimatized for – the Cyclone which made you a he-man or made you throw up, whichever came first. And then on to gorging on hotdogs, sugared waffles, candy-apples, air-filled candyfloss, pulled taffy, buttered popcorn. And finally, an ice-cold Loganberry cooled the seething brow on a hot sticky day. Continue reading →

From  Lynda Goodridge and the Fort Erie Arts Council

Take one bright summer day and add a lovely waterfront setting.  Mix in the creativity of talented artists and musicians and you have the perfect ingredients for a fun-filled family event as the 6^th Annual Crystal Beach Arts & Folk Festival takes place on Sunday, June 27^th, from 11 am to 5 pm.

File photo from an earlier Crystal Beach show.

            With beautiful Waterfront Park in Crystal Beach, Ontario as the backdrop, this favourite summer event promises even more this year for those attending.  The Fort Erie Arts Council has expanded its focus to include artisans, in addition to visual artists of all types.  New this year, as well, will be a full day of music provided by popular local and regional musicians, including Elton Lammie, the Aurijinal Junes, Rita Visser, Richard Hunt and the duo, Brad Hiliker & Michele Guy.

            The Festival showcases artists from southwestern Ontario and Western New York whose works range from watercolours, acrylics and photography to sculpture, glass art and much more.  The variety of styles and mediums ensures that there will be something for every taste at this exciting venue. Continue reading →

By John Bacher

It is unfortunate that the Project Niagara proposal is a great scheme, in the wrong place.

Looking northeast across a stretch of the old canal in Welland where the author of this post argues would be a better site than Niagara-on-the-Lake for a summer music festival.

Having a Niagara summer music festival, with the backing of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, is a good way to promote green, environmentally friendly tourism. To achieve such an end, it is wrong to build it on lands owned by Canada’s  National Parks service. 

The proposed  site should be developed into a constructed wetland to have Niagara on the Lake’s outdated sewage lagoons work better. This goal would be complimented by the reforestation of the former Department of National Defense rifle range, a move that would enhance the protection of Lake Ontario’s shoreline from predicted more fierce storms from climate change. The entire area  should become Tecumseh National Park. It could be up and running in its vision of ecological restoration based on the zeal for protecting forests of this prophetic native Canadian statesman, in time for the War of 1812 bicentennial. Continue reading →

 By Donna Brok

The third annual Orchard Parkway Garden Walk in Niagara Falls, New York, presented by the Orchard Parkway Block Club, is being held Saturday, July 10, rain or shine. It is a self-guided, walking tour, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

One of many properties featured on Niagara Falls, New York garden walk.

The Walk is free to the public, and the organizers only ask that you bring a canned good to donate to the local food bank. Boxes will be conveniently placed at the white welcome tent for your donation.

The Walk began in 2008 with three friends discussing possibilities for promoting beautification efforts within the City of Niagara Falls, New York, and currently, this Walk is one of the eighteen Garden Walks listed on the five week long National Buffalo Garden Festival. For information on the National Buffalo Garden Festival go to their website at, www.nationalgardenfestival.com/.

With the help and hard work of the Orchard Parkway Block Club, there are now approximately 40 gardens open for public viewing on Orchard Parkway and Chilton Avenue. Garden enthusiasts of all ages are welcome, and there is a small giveaway for the kids. See photos of the unique and delightful gardens on prior Walks at the Orchard Parkway Block Club website, found at www.orchardparkway.com/. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

If you need one more reason to write off this Liberal government in Ontario, this may be it.

Remember Eleanor Slithered? I’m sure our American readers wouldn’t. But they may take some disquieting comfort (or may be just as depressed) in knowing that there are governments on the Canadian side of the border that are just as willing to reward scumbags from past administrations with lucrative pension packages.

 Obviously one Ontario government that has no bones about doing it is that of Premier Dalton McGuinty and one of his senior cabinet ministers, St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley who, in his particular case, has always tried to come off as if he gives a fig about common people while obviously not carrying about kissing up to the privileged like Clitheroe with generous rewards at the expense of common people.

Getting back to who Clitheroe is or was, she ran the former Ontario Hydro (a publicly owned corporation) until 2002 until the former Conservative government of outgoing and incoming premiers Harris and Ernie Eves, with the current Conservative leader Tim Hudak right there in cabinet, almost had no choice but to fire here out the door over reports of hefty perks she was receiving, by way of travel, etc., on top of her $2.2 million salary.

The McGuinty Liberals, including Niagara’s Bradley, were just as righteous back then in calling for Clitheroe’s head. But now we find out, according to a top-of-front-page story in the June 4 edition of The Toronto Star, that McGuinty, Bradley and the others have been continuing to feed Clitheroe a monthly pension of $25,637.08 the former Conservative of Harris/Eves/Hudak went along with, and one the McGuinty/Bradley gang has continued to feed her. Continue reading →

By Dylan Powell

Last week, people from around the world reacted with outrage and disgust at an undercover video which detailed sadistic abuse of animals at a family farm in Plain City, Ohio.

Better times at an animal sanctuary similar to Happy Rolph's.

The Farm owner Gary Conklin, swiftly fired farm worker Billy Joe Gregg Jr, offering him up to the media as a sacrifice for what happens on farms across the globe on a daily basis. At Billy Joe Gregg Jr’s hearing he asked that he be released for numerous financial reasons, but also because he wanted to look after his animals. The irony of those words exposed the grand lie that permeates our societies relationship with animals; how can we love one and not another?

For those who live in the Niagara Region, this morning brought with it news of another horrific case of animal cruelty. Police believe that two suspects broke into a local petting zoo, Happy Rolph’s, and left a wake of carnage: four dead animals, one rabbit decapitated with its head mounted on a stake, numerous other animals shot at with BB and Pellet Guns and also a missing baby goat.

Animal cruelty cases are definitely nothing new to the Niagara Region, anyone remember Bailey the Maine Coon Cat? Or even more recently the neglect and misuse of animals by the T.E.A.R.S organization? There is a void in this region that needs to be filled when it comes to proper education. Notably, when I say education, I do NOT mean entertainment. Happy Rolph’s Petting Zoo, which operates in conjunction but separate from the Bird Sanctuary, is in and of itself NOT an educational tool for children on how to properly respect animals. Continue reading →

By John Bacher

Currently there is a lull before the storm of the planned Ontario Municipal Board hearing on the Fort Erie Canadian Motorway Speed

Fort Erie residents enjoy nature walks around wetlands near lands planned for mammoth motor racing facility.

way.

This scheme, facilitated by the amendments to the Fort Erie and Niagara Region Official Plans which are under appeal, would designate some 817 acres of land that are now protected as “Good General Agricultural Land”, into a “Special Policy” area.

The delay in the OMB hearing is because the Town of Fort Erie and the Niagara Region are seeking to develop new zoning categories to replace the agricultural designation which now prohibits motorways. At the same time, proponents of the motorway are likely engaged in arm-twisting with the province over the fate of a predominately Pin Oak Swamp Forest. This is an area the developer seeks to cross with a bridge that would allow motorcars to race over the forest below. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Can’t help but think of the late Margherita Howe of Niagara-on-the-Lake – who chaired a citizens group called Operation Clean in the late 1970s and 1980s to fight for cleaner water in the Niagara River – as I urge you to join the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority to join it this June 3 for a review of the remedial actions taken to protect this great watershed.

Photo of Niagara Falls courtesy of Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority.

This Thursday, June 3, the Conservation Authority and Niagara Parks Commission is inviting the public to join it, beginning at 6:30 p.m., at the Butterfly Conservatory Classroom along the Niagara Parkway in Niagara Falls, Ont. for a presentation of the work that has been done to protect this watershed and that of the adjoining Welland River.

This work began with the cooperation of Canada’s federal government, the province, the Conservation Authority and other agencies, along with volunteers from area citizen groups, more than two decades ago when Canada signed a “declaration of intent” with the United States to reduce the flow of damaging contaminants to the shared waters of the Niagara River. That declaration was signed after almost a decade of lobbying by citizens like Howe and others on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. Continue reading →