A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher/reporter Doug Draper
Posted July 15th, 2026 on Niagara At Large
It was earlier this July when I had someone doing some work on the outside of my house.
Within a matter of minutes of him beginning that work, it grew menacingly dark and a sudden violent windstorm set in.
That someone looked up at the skies and said; “My God. What is that?”
I replied; “I think they call it climate change,” to which he responded; “I don’t believe in climate change.”
He’s not alone. If he was, Doug Ford wouldn’t be Ontario’s Premier, Danielle Smith wouldn’t be Alberta’s Premier and our current current Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, wouldn’t be making deals with them to invest billions of dollars of our money to build more gas and oil pipelines.
So we now continue to have episodes of highly destructive floods and winds wreaking havoc across the country, and right now we have air quality in Niagara and surrounding regions so diminished by smoke drifting in from wildfires across the province and the rest of the nation that health experts are urging us to avoid doing much of anything outside.
And where is our Niagara regional government and almost any other representative at all levels of government on this?
Almost nowhere!
We have municipal elections across Niagara this fall and we desperately need candidates that we can vote for – younger people for sure – that care about issues like this.
As a veteran environment reporter, going back to the late 1970s when I worked for the once time-honoured St. Catharines Standard, I am growing more than tired with the lack of concern our current mainstream media and most of our politicians at all levels of government are demonstrating when it comes to taking this climate crisis seriously.
We desperately need new leadership locally and at at every level of government on this all-important issue! The future of our children and grandchildren and every other being living on this planet depends on it.
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Doug Draper, Niagara At Large
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Niagara At Large 
I spend time — too much time — on social media. I have noticed over the past few days that the number of totally silly comments on articles discussing the relation between current extreme weather events and climate change seems to have increased along with reports of related death and damage around the globe. For instance, folks, the River Loire in France is drying up. The LOIRE, for goodness sakes — what’s it going to take to convince some people?? What to make of those who casually dismiss the over 10,000 excess deaths in Europe during the recent heatwave from June 12-18? I can only conclude that those who continue to deny the reality of climate change may have unknowingly suffered some sort of brain damage…perhaps from spending too long in the sun without a hat.
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