Wishing All of Our Niagara At Large Readers a Warm and Safe Holiday Season

A Message from Niagara At Large reporter and publisher Doug Draper

Posted December 24^th, 2020 on Niagara At Large

Well what can someone say as we live the final days of a year like this?

I have been a professional wordsmith, or at least an aspiring or struggling one,  for most of my adult life, and yet this Holiday Season I am fighting for words that might leave us all with the kind of warm Holiday Season message I normally like to send out.

Thanks to that invisible killer virus out there, though, what once passed as normal, just one past Christmas season ago, is gone, and in a way, when I hear the likes of a Doug Ford say they want to “get back to normal again,” my response is; ‘No we don’t. Let’s build a new normal. Let’s re-imagine or reshape our communities in ways that are more conducive to tolerance and civility, and to a healthier economy and environment for us all!”

At the risk of getting political in a Holiday Season message, I hope and pray that such a future does not include political leaders like Doug Ford or any other Neanderthals from the last century and pre-pandemic years of this century. Our children and our planet cannot afford another year of their vision of growth and prosperity at the expense of our health and a healthy environment to live in.

Okay, I guess that turned out to be my Holiday Season rant, and you may be glad to read that it is over.

What I wish you all now, whether you celebrate or observe this time of year in a religious, a spiritual or a secular way, is a warm, peaceful and a very safe time with those under your roof, in your protective bubble.

Let us all hope and pray for a better 2020 with vaccines rolling out. Yet as I believe the great Dr. Anthony Fauci recently said, and I paraphrase; ‘The vaccines give us a light at the end of the tunnel, but we are still in the tunnel.”

So please, let us all work together to observe the health measures we have been urged by the experts to employ since this virus first began moving in on us last winter.

In that spirit, my wife Mary, daughter Sarah and I will be doing our best to celebrate this Holiday Season at home alone with a great cat named Alice. No relatives or close friends over this year. As the same good doctor also recently said; ‘Let’s make the sacrifice this holiday season so that we are here to celebrate future Holiday Seasons for years to come.’

And speaking of great cats; I cannot end this message without paying tribute to one of our most beloved feline celebrities in Niagara, Ontario – Tigger at the Pet Valu store on Pine Street in Thorold.

Here Tigger  is, as featured on the December 2020 page of his popular calendar – one you can pick up at the store in the plaza at 9 Pine Street North in Thorold/Niagara for about 25 dollars cash, with the proceeds to the Animal Assistance Society of Niagara – a dedicated group of volunteers working to make like better for all creatures great and small.

To learn more about the work of the Animal Assistance Society of Niagara visit its website at – https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/animal-assistance-society-of-the-niagara-region/ . 

Check out Tigger’s Facebook Page at – https://www.facebook.com/petvaluthoroldTigger/ .

Please do have a peaceful and safe Holiday Season everyone and thanks for your continued support for this independent voice for news and commentary.

• Doug Draper, Niagara At Large

Finally, our family has this very talented character we discovered in Cape Cod about a decade ago, who we call our “Christmas Moose.” During the Holiday Season, he enjoys a choice spot near our tree, and if you want to hear him perform a song for you, click on the screen immediately below –

NIAGARA AT LARGE Encourages You To Join The Conversation By Sharing Your Views On This Post In The Space Following The Bernie Sanders Quote Below.

“A Politician Thinks Of The Next Election. A Leader Thinks Of The Next Generation.” – Bernie Sanders