Read The Plea To Authorities On The Side Of The Superbus & Do What You Can To Help Your Fellow Citizens Demand Action
A Photo of a Message just added late this August, 2026 on a Superbus from The Coalition for a Better St. Catharines
Posted August 24th, 2026 on Niagara At Large
A Commentary by Doug Draper, a former environment reporter with the St. Catharines Standard and the publisher of Niagara At Large
It is pretty bad and it is unprecedented for that matter, when a citizens group in St. Catharines, Niagara has to go so far as to pay for a giant message to be placed on the sides of a superbus that wheels around the city, pleading with government authorities and other responsible bodies to clean up poisons, including PCBs, asbestos and heavy metals, on a former General Motors site next to a residential neighbourhood.
There was a time, before the Ontario government of former Conservative premier Mike Harris came to power and gutted the province’s Ministry of Environment and many of the environmental protection rules put in place in the mid- to late-1980s when St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley was environment minister in the government of David Peterson that a hazardous site like this would have been cleaned up in a reasonable period of time.
The toxic mess off Ontario Street in St. Catharines that General Motorors left behind.
If it wasn’t, the responsible parties would be dragged into court and slammed with stiff penalties.
But not anymore and certainly not under the last two Ontario Liberal governments led by Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne, and definitely not under the current Conservative government of Doug Ford. After all, why would they want to annoy the current owners of the Ontario Street site or General Motors, a corporation that benefited from the employment of working people in that community for many decades gone by?
This is a shameful situation and a show of leadership from all responsible parties is long overdue.
So do what you can to support the citizens coalition and to call the provincial government and St. Catharines City Hall to demand action.
-
Doug Draper, Niagara At Large
To read great article on the old GM site, researched and written by St. Catharines/Niagara activist Ed Smith, that first appeared earlier this summer in another independent on-line news site based in the GTA and called The Pointer, click on – https://thepointer.com/article/2026-06-16/niagara-councillor-calls-for-public-health-investigation-after-asbestos-found-in-soil-at-former-gm-site-in-st-catharines
For more on and from the Coalition for a Better St. Catharines, click on – https://www.abetterstcatharines.ca/
Thank You are now reading the region’s independent on-line news and commentary site NIAGARA AT LARGE
Niagara At Large Encourages You To Join The Conversation By Sharing Your Views On This Post In The Space Below and by sharing the Niagara At Large site at www.niagaratatlarge.com with all of your friends and associates.
Visit us every day on www.niagaraat.arge.com and on Doug Draper’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/doug.draper.180 and encourage everyone else you know to do the same. Let’s build media outlets for local news and commentary!
Niagara At Large 