Author Archives: dougdraper

A Commentary by Doug Draper

I’ve argued this point before and I will argue it again, however much the union representing Niagara Regional Police and other police officers across Ontario dislike it.

 The catapulting costs of police services in this and other regions in the province – mostly due to the unreasonable and unsustainable wage and benefit demands of the Police Association of Ontario which is one of the province’s most powerful unions – is bankrupting municipal governments and assaulting the pocket books of municipal taxpayers.

Niagara Regional Police headquarters in St. Catharines, Ontario

In that spirit, I was heartened to see a full-page story, entitled ‘What Price For Law And Order’, in the Saturday, January 8 edition of The Globe and Mail, hardly a radical paper in this country, that made exactly the same point.

That Globe story begins like this: “At a time when cash-strapped cities are bringing down austerity measures to reign in spending, police budgets have continued their steady growth, forcing civic leaders to make tough choices between funding law and order and paying for other major services.”

“Despite declining crime rates,” the story continues, “spending on police forces – one of the largest single items on municipal ledgers – has risen 41 per cent per capita across the country over the last decade for which Statistics Canada numbers are available. Much of that cost is being driven by police raises that consistently top the inflation rate.”

“The dilemma is stark: Let policing costs continue to rise and governments must make cuts elsewhere – whether road repairs, libraries or parks – to compensate.” 

Well hallelujah to The Globe for making that point (you can read the whole article by clicking on  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/whats-the-price-for-law-and-order/article1862544/ ) and certainly Niagara is one of those regional municipalities that is being strong armed to financial death by a police union that seems not to give a damn about the rest of the people, many of whom are struggling to keep their homes and pay their bills.

The question is always this: When will a critical mass of our municipal and provincial politicians stand up for the ordinary resident and taxpayer, and stand up against this bully police union and the provincially appointed arbitrators that give this union and its members virtually everything they want? Are our politicians that afraid of this union that they would rather saddle residents in this and other municipalities across this province with costs they can no longer afford?

Just this past fall in Niagara, the regional council felt it had ‘no choice’ but to approve a new contract for the region’s police that amounts to a 9.96 per cent raise hike for unionized members of the Niagara Regional Police Service over the next three years. It is a hike that will see first-class constable on the force making more than $83,000 by the end of this New Year while the median annual income for workers, most of whom have private-sector jobs in this region, is down around $35,000.

Our police like to talk about protecting us against muggers. Well this is a financial mugging of the very people our police are sworn to serve and protect. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

In the week leading up to what would have been Martin Luther King’s 82nd birthday, Buffalo, New York’s Downtown Library is hosting a free event commemorating the life of American civil rights leader.

The late American civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

The Buffalo library’s tribute ceremony will take place on Thursday, January 13, four days before the January 17 Martin Luther King Day commemorated by countless millions across the United States.

King played a leadership role in breaking down racial barriers in 1950s and 60s America when it came to desegregating schools and other public and private institutions, and in finally guaranteeing African Americans the right to vote a century after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery.

One of the world’s leading advocates for non-violent protest at the time, King was assassinated in 1968.  We all received a wake-up call around violence and assassination with the tragic attempted assassination of Arizona Congresswoman Gabriell Giffords and the killing of six other people by another in what seems like a continuous stream of disturbed people in America who are able to still go into a store and purchase a lethal weapon. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Possibly not to be outdone by U.S. President Barack Obama when it comes to recognizing citizens who provide voluntary service to their communities, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper used a stop in Welland, Ontario this January 7 to announce a new awards program for celebrating volunteers.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, file photo.

“Our government is proud of the millions of volunteers and other everyday Canadians who generously give their time, experience and expertise to make their communities stronger,” said the Conservative PM during his first visit to Niagara in more than a year. “These awards will celebrate their enormous contributions and we hope it encourages others to participate and make a difference in their own communities.”

Niagara At Large is pleased to include the Prime Minister’s Media Release and a Backgrounder from his office, providing more details on the new volunteer awards program below. Read through them, and then share your comments with us on this announcement. Remember that we only post comments by readers who are willing to include their real name. Continue reading →

(Niagara At Large regularly posts media releases and public addresses by our municipal representatives or member of parliament for all parties at the provincial and federal levels of government on matters of interest to our readers.
In that spirit we are posting this January 7 media release from Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath on the application of the controversial Harmonized Sales Tax to hydro and home heating bills.)

Take Unfair HST off Hydro & Home Heating – Horwath
 
Queen’s Park – Ontario’s New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath says the Ontario Government must take the unfair HST off hydro and home heating bills.

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath

“In these tough times it’s just wrong to stick a new tax on hydro and home heating bills. Today New Democrats are calling for a simple step to make life more affordable for Ontario families,” said Horwath.
 
In September Ontario’s New Democrats launched a campaign to take the harmonized sales tax off hydro.  Today’s announcement expands the campaign to take the unfair tax off home heating bills such as natural gas and heating oil.
 
Removing the HST from hydro and home heating would save an average family with two children $220 per year. Continue reading →

“Who’ll be the last to die for a mistake …,
Whose blood will spill, whose heart will break,
Who’ll be the last to die for a mistake.”

– from a 2007 song ‘Last To Die’ by Bruce Springsteen on the continued engagement of our young people in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A Commentary by Doug Draper

If you’ve been listening to some of the recent news wrap-ups on the year that has just passed by, you may have heard that 2010 was the bloodiest year yet for NATO troops in Afghanistan.

In 2010,  a total of 703 American, Canadian and other NATO soldiers paid the ultimate price in Afghanistan, and why?

Why are we still there, a total of 10 years and many thousands of lost NATO forces and Afghani lives later?

Don’t know how many remember, but this so-called war was  initially  supposed to be about hunting down and capturing Osama bin Laden (remember him) and his Al Qaeda operatives and their Taliban embedders in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Continue reading →

By Mark Taliano

Toxic myths are running rampant these days, but the best one so far is the notion that private health care is more cost-effective and more efficient than public health care.  Worse yet, we are led to believe that somehow privatization is the answer to the current economic mess and the response to an aging population.  I’m not sure how or when we were lead astray, particularly with the model south of us which represents one of the world’s most inefficient Health Care systems, but somehow it happened all the same.

Image courtesy of Ontario Health Coalition, a not-for-profit public interest group based in Toronto.

It may have started when people from bloated bureaucracies started referring to patients as “clients”.  The term “client” is less personal, and better lends itself to business terms, not dissimilar from the military euphemism “collateral damage”, which of course means civilian deaths.   “Clients” can be charged, discharged, lost, over-charged, without much stress. Not “patients” though: the Hippocratic Oath tells us we must take care of them, regardless of cost. Of course healthy “clients” are great.  Insurance companies don’t like unhealthy “clients”; they’re too expensive.  Private systems need to extract profit from the system, and it’s harder to do if the “client” is unhealthy, or if the care is complex.

One might ask, then, how a Universal Public System can take care of a sick patient better than a Private system, and still be more efficient. The root of the answer is money, and how it is used. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

It has almost become a cliché now to say that the Internet has “democratized” our lives more than any other technology developed on this planet since the invention more than half a millennium ago of the printing press.

Newly elected Thorold, Ontario councillor Becky Day has apparently made the mistake of launching a website for residents she represents.

Democratization in the age of the internet means that anyone who has access to a computer with a server can go online, create their own blog or website, and send their messages out to the larger community that can potentially include a “global village” of thousands,, if possbily including millions.

The Internet can be a powerful force for good or bad or just a cornucopia of useless crap in between, depending on how we choose to use it. And in recent years, growing numbers of political leaders – most notably U.S. President Barack Obama and former U.S. presidential candidate Howard Dean – have learned to use it to mobilize large number of people at the grassroots level to learn more about their take on the great issues of the day and their campaigns.

Only more recently have politicians at the municipal level come to realize that the Internet can be a doorway for connecting with their constituents in an open discussion – a virtual town hall – on the issues of concern to our communities today. One Niagara politician who has shot out of the internet gate with a blog site that is working to do this is in Niagara is newly elected Thorold city councillor Becky Day.

Becky Day ran and won one of the eight councillor seats in Thorold after losing her job as a journalist at a weekly piece of crap published by the equally crappy daily papers in Niagara, Ontario. It is called something like ‘Thorold Niagara News’ and Becky was the last columnist that paper had that wrote about the mess Thorold residents had, and may still have, as a local municipal council. Her columns included one account after another of some of what were arguably some of the best staff the city had moving on to other municipal governments, because those who made up a deciding block of the council of the day could not care to listen to their advice, and even sometimes saw it as insubordinance. Continue reading →

The oppression and liberation of animals will be among the topics discussed by featured speaker Anthony Nocella at the Niagara Action for Animals’ ‘January Potluck’ in St. Catharines, Ontario this Friday, January 7.

Featured speaker on animal liberation, Anthony Nocella

Nocella, an author, activist and educator, comes to the region from the Syracuse, New York-based Institute for Critical Animal Studies and Syracuse University.

 Nocella’s “activism, which has lead him to be a lobbyist, assistant to a Texas State Representative, and arrested for numerous acts of civil disobedience, stretches through many social causes including youth advocacy, alternatives to incarceration, ending racism and poverty, Native American rights, LGBTQ rights, animal rights, anarchism and international human rights,” reads a short biography on the speaker. “He is the co-founder of more than 20 political organizations including the Institute for Critical Animal Studies (ICAS). He has published more than seven books including Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals (2004).” Niagara Action for Animals (NAFA) is a not-for-profit, charitable organization dedicated to the humane treatment of all living creatures great and small. Continue reading →

By William Hogg  ,MD reporting from Kirkland Lake, Ontario
 
If you were a toolmaker, would you remain in a space without a factory to work in? Not likely. Trends to outsourcing aside, you’d head to a space with a place for you to do your work. The question is this: to stay or to go? No real dilemma. Go!

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath joins south Niagara residentsat one of many protests last year over the closing of the Fort Erie hospital's emergency room. File photo by Doug Draper.

Doctors (and nurses) in many outlying areas of southern Ontario, where their workplaces, the hospitals,  are being dismantled apace, are faced with that very dilemma. To stay or to go. But no – ethics prevail.

Almost a year ago,  I visited the chairman of the Premier’s Panel on outlying hospitals. (His report, due over a year ago, was recently circulated.  To say the least, it was platitudinous nonsense.)  Coincidentally, and of much interest, that same chairman is also the well-paid CEO of the Kirkland Lake hospital.  That small gold mining town of about 8,000 people has a beautiful big hospital. Look at its picture below.  It has an emergency.  That lovely hospital has many beds, too, and few doctors.  It beckons.

At almost the same time that I was visiting several similar places up north, the far away Fort Erie hospital in the far southern tier of Niagara was already thoroughly dismantled. Almost totally inoperative.  No emergency.  No active beds. The local doctors had no place to do their tough work. And patients, young and old alike, were already dying en route – to elsewhere.  I must repeat: the isolated snow-town of Fort Erie, really a real city of thirty thousand people, has no really functioning hospital. Is there any doctor’s dilemma here? To stay or to go? Yes, there is. Continue reading →

By Dylan Powell

When a 7.0 magnitude earthquake ripped through Haiti last year, I shared in the collective grief.

Click on this poster to blow it up to a readable size.

The images coming back from that country were horrific and traumatizing. The response these images fueled was heartening, with the Canadian public donating more than $200 million in aid.

I remember organizing a bake sale just days after and being overwhelmed with support, quickly selling out and raising over $500 for Doctors Without Borders. I don’t think many people held any naive ideas about an overnight recovery, however, it was beautiful to see so many people feel so connected to this tragedy that they felt compelled to act.

One year later we mark the anniversary of that earthquake and, unfortunately, the situation in Haiti is still grim. The country has been struck with a massive cholera outbreak, political instability, a lack of funds reaching the ground, and only an estimated two per cent of the actual rubble from the earthquake has been cleaned up. To compound the issue, a lot of funding is drying up. For all those who felt compelled to act this past year, this is a call for you to continue your support. Continue reading →

A Comment by Doug Draper

I was driving south on Highway 406 a week or so before this past Christmas when it began snowing so hard it was getting kind of’ treacherous out there. You could hardly see the road in front of your face.

So I did what few other drivers seem to do any more during one of the first heavy snow falls of winter. I slowed down.

Guess I was the stupid one though because other drivers kept whipping by me as if it was a sunny day in July, including one cowboy in a light truck that splashed grimy slush across my windshield as he sped by. Every once in a while there is a bit of poetic justice though, and a few miles up the road I passed this same ranger with his truck spun off through a ditch and about 40 feet off the road.

This brings me to the suggestion some have that the answer to all this is making those of us who already spend a ridiculous amount of money keeping a vehicle on the road spend many hundreds of dollars more putting snow tires on our trucks and cars.

I’ve got an idea that might even prevent more road accidents in winter. Why not just slow down! Continue reading →

A Message from NAL Publisher Doug Draper

 Maybe I’m just turning old and crabby as I hesitate to wish people a Happy New Year any more.

I’m still stupidly doing it again though, in t\the days leading up to this January 1st whenever I cross paths with people I know in the real world, or on the phone, or in the virtual world of the internet.

It just seems like wishing people a ‘Happy New Year’ is the courteous thing to do as we count down the clock to another calendar year.

Then again, it is a tradition, and I don’t mind respecting a bit of that.

But I’d rather say something like the following to all of you out there who have been kind enough to support Niagara At Large, as a rather renegade, independent news and commentary site for a greater binational Niagara region that includes our friends in Buffalo and other communities in Erie and Niagara Counties. Id rather say the following that “from one struggling soul to another, I wish you a relatively peaceful and stress-free year, and one where if any false prophets, whether they be from the private, commercial or public sectors make promises that seem to good to be true, be careful not to drink the Kool-Aid.’ Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

“Every time it rains it rains
Pennies from heaven.
Don’t you know each cloud contains
Pennies from heaven.
You’ll find your fortune falling
All over town.
Be sure that your umbrella is upside down.”
 
From the 1936 Arthur Johnston/Johnny Burke song ‘Pennies From Heaven’, first made popular by Bing Crosby.

Well of course that old song goes back to the Great Depression times of the 1930s when a penny could still buy you one or two books of matches, some penny candy or maybe even a boal of soup for a starving hobo.

In Canada and U.S., the modest penny is losing all respect.

A penny really meant something then, and I can remember listening to parents and grandparents that lived through those times. A penny meant enough to them that they sometimes talked about a term I grew up with in my first years of life in the 1950s and 60s called “penny pinching.”

Can you imagine pinching a penny now? Who is doing that in an age when so many of us, who would not bother stooping down to pick up a penny on the sidewalk, are blowing ourselves into personal bankruptsy swiping credit and debit cards.

A lack of ‘cents’ or sense may be the reason a committee of Canada’s un-elected Senate is now floating  a recommendation to get rid of the penny. And there have been moves in the United States to do the same thing, even though good ol’ Abe Lincoln is stamped on that copper piece, for God sake! Continue reading →

 By Vickie Fagan

I forgot to tell you that I am an entrepreneur! Yes, good news, I work for myself. 

There is a lot of buzz in this climate of tossing longstanding faithful employees to the wind and about the rise of the entrepreneur. There are even government initiatives to encourage new business ventures.

Niagara 'mogul, impresario, magnate and tycoon' Vickie Fagan facing another day on the job.

The thesaurus terms used to describe my position are; mogul, impresario, magnate, tycoon.

Lofty I know.  But basically in my case entrepreneur translates to “virtually unemployable in a small town.”

I began my quest as a video producer magnate when I had exhausted all avenues of employment in my field here in the Niagara region. After years of working in the big smoke for broadcast television, (you know that industry that is now a ghost of its former self with legions of former producers, editors, camera people wandering the streets dazed and confused wondering what hit them) I now walk the fine line of scraping up work both here and in Toronto. I sit in my state of the art office (my couch or dining room table) most days in variations of lounge wear unless I have to be out in the world on shoots or meetings.

Working from home has its benefits but one must be careful to make sure that you don’t fall prey to a few minor pitfalls. For instance, this little impresario hasn’t washed her hair in two days. When I do emerge from my cave, blinded by the hustle and bustle of work outside the home, I have to remind myself repeatedly that I am in fact wearing mascara and if I insist on rubbing my eyes, will look like a depressed raccoon by noon. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

It was just this past November, when Canada’s un-elected Senate killed a climate change bill, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper defended the Senate’s actions. He called the bill to cut carbon emissions “completely irresponsible,” claiming it could throw hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of people out of work.”

Cowboy Stephen Harper rides shotgun for his tar sands gang.

Throw possibly millions of people out of work, Mr. Prime Minister? There are only 34 million people in the entire country, and a lot of us don’t have jobs now. It’s interesting how the same individuals – a number of them climate change skeptics or deniers – who keep saying there isn’t enough scientific evidence to show that human activity has something to do with the more severe shifts in weather we seem to be experiencing more frequently these days, are demanding that Harper back up his claim that millions of jobs might be lost with some evidence.

But hey Mr. Prime Minister, we don’t need to implement a plan for reducing carbon or greenhouse emissions to eliminate jobs cost jobs in the tar sands of Alberta and other sectors of the oil industry. Your corporate pals in the industry may take care of that with plans they are reportedly now considering for outsourcing possibly thousands of Canadian energy jobs overseas. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

 “I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.”

~ the late American  astronomer Carl Sagan

Apparently former U.S. president George W. Bush never actually said ‘go shopping or the terrorists win’ in words spoken quite that starkly, as much as some of my more liberal friends still want to believe he did.

But in an address to his nation in the month following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush said something that pretty well kissed that mythical line and it went like; “People are going about their daily lives, working and shopping and playing, worshipping at churches and synagogues and mosques, going to movies and to baseball games. Life in America is going forward, and as the fourth grader who wrote me knew, that is the ultimate repudiation of terrorism.”

Isn’t it too bad that instead of just talking about working, shopping, playing and going to places of worship, then-President Bush had also told his fellow citizens and the rest of the world that continuing to invest in such vital public services as libraries, schools and other public institutions and infrastructure is also a repudiation of terrorism. Continue reading →

Niagara At Large wishes you and your family and friends a peaceful Holiday Season.

We also wish to take this time to thank each and every one of you for your support over the past year as readers and contributors to this independent online news and commentary site for our region.

With your continued support, we look forward to taking this online news project to a plateau where we can sustain it in the New Year and for many years to come as the one free and open voice for news and commentary of interest and concern to residents across our greater binational Niagara region. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

In the days following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the firefighters in my hometown of Thorold, Ontario stood in front of a local grocery store and, within a matter of a few hours, collected well over $10,000 to support the families of those who died in those attacks.

One of the many scenes of firefiighters and other 'first responders' at work in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

That was a pretty impressive outpouring of support coming from a community of less than 20,000 people, but it didn’t end there. In the weeks ahead, one good woman in our community managed to collect enough boots, gloves and other clothing to fill a tractor-trailer truck enroute to Manhattan for those firefighters and others at ‘ground zero’, searching for bodies beneath the smoldering rubble of what was the World Trade Centre.

The people of Thorold were hardly the only ones in our greater binational Niagara region who contributed everything possible, including sending some of their firefighters to New York City to relieve tired recovery and cleanup crews at the ground zero site. Communities all across this greater Niagara region, on both sides of the border, did the same.

I can’t help but recall that collective expression of support for New York City firefighters and their families, who former U.S. president George W. Bush once called heroes, as I strain to understand why it has taken all these years since for the U.S. Senate and Congress to finally approve a health care bill for firefighters and other 9/11 rescue workers suffering from the toxic fumes and dust they inhaled at the ground zero site. Continue reading →

By Mark Taliano

 I remember a local doctor protesting hospital cuts, exclaiming that the government is psychotic.  Good point.

A banner displayed in Fort Erie, Ontario last year in response to the closing by the Niagara Health System of that community's hospital emergency room.

 People who care about themselves are more apt to care about others, something about self-esteem.  If Canada were a patient then, we’d have low self-esteem.  How else to explain the self-destructive mistake of closing Emergency Departments?  We know that the experiment was tried and failed in Saskatchewan; we’ve seen local tragedies, and yet we continue to pursue this “illusion” as if it were true that the closings will improve health care in Niagara.  Diagnosis: poor self-esteem, possible psychosis. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Officials on both sides of our Ontario-New York. border have rolled out a “comprehensive planning effort” they hope will avoid what could be a perfect storm at our bridge crossings during the Holiday Season.

The planning by a coalition of custom agencies and others has been many months in the making and is a response not only to an always busy Holiday Season at Niagara’s three major bridge crossings, but to an unusual number of other activities this season that is expected to possibly draw an unprecedented number of cross-border visitors that could get tangled in enormous backups at the bridges. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Niagara’s regional council has three new representatives going to the police board who  they have a Herculean job ahead of him.

Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badeway, one of three new elected members to Niagara's police board.

Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey, former Thorold mayor and newly elected regional councillor Henry D’Angela and the regional council’s new chairman Gary Burroughs are now heading for seats on the Niagara Police Service Board. And these three individuals – the only three on the seven-member board that are elected by the taxpayers of the region  – come in at a time when growing numbers of taxpayers are  expressing open concern and sometimes even anger over police spending. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Why should the victim’s family have to pay? Why, in all fairness, should they?

Reilly Anzonino

It is an appeal that must be made soon because an Ontario coroner’s inquest into the circumstances surrounding Reilly’s death could begin as soon as this coming February and the cost for her to have proper representation at the inquest could be substantial. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

”Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
– the late American civil rights leader,  Martin Luther King Jr.

“When you are on the right side of justice and history, you never go backwards.” – former U.S. military officer and Middle East war veteran Dan Choi, thrown out of the army because he came out of the closet as a Gay under America’s finally revoked ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy.

Well, Hallelujah! We’ve had some fine hallelujah in a post featuring Vickie Fagan below, and a video of choruses of that song that went viral on Youtube.  But I am talking here about something else – about a vote by the U.S. Congress and Senate, expected to be signed before Christmas by President Barack Obama before Christmas – to finally end discrimination against gay people in the U.S. armed forces.

Dan Choi with American actress and gay rights activist Kathy Griffin at a rally earlier this year against 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy for U.S. military.

As someone who is not gay but who grew up fighting discrimination and supporting the civil rights movement for African Americans in the 1950s and 60s, I believe the repeal this December of his Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy – requiring gay men and women to hide in the closet if they want to serve their country in the military forces, – is as important as the U.S. Civil Rights Act that was finally signed in 1964 by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who apparently had every intention of signing it at the time he was cut down. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

If you are looking for a four-legged friend of the feline variety, the Welland and District Humane Society is now overrun with cats looking for a good home.

While not one of the nine cats listed below, Molly is one of the other many felines at the Welland shelter in need of a home.

In fact the Humane Society now has so many cats in need of adoption, it has asked the not-for-profit group Niagara Action For Society NAFA)to send out feelers to its members and friends who may be able to assist in finding homes for the animals.

There are nine cats in particular  at the shelter (listed by Niagara At Large below) that NAFA is helping to find homes for. Six of the cats have already been spayed/neutered. Continue reading →

By Vickie Fagan

My company recently produced a video for Alphabet Photography. It was a flash mob video featuring 100 choir members from Chorus Niagara belting out the Halleluiah chorus in the middle of a food court in Welland, Ontario.  You may have heard of it- it has gone viral.

How does a video go viral? Well, Alphabet Photography had a great concept, they hired a fabulous local choir to execute it, made sure it was properly produced to capture the sound and visuals in a way to engage the viewer and chose an unassuming mall in one of Canada’s underdog towns. When the economy went south, Welland was in the front seat of the bus.  Up until now, Welland has been most recognized as a town with a burgeoning unemployment rate and a canal. Continue reading →

By Randy Busbridge

After a curious and lengthy silence, the Niagara Region held a Public Information Centre on November 30 to provide a status update on plans to finally deal with Niagara-on-the-Lake’s troublesome Wastewater Treatment Plant.  The facility is rapidly running out of capacity, and has long been a source of unpleasant odours.

Could this Parks Canada land become a popular eco park?

The session confirmed what the rumour mill has known for some time:  Region Public Works has narrowed the field down to two options.  The first option is to build a new facility on the site of the current north lagoon.  The second is to build a new facility nearby, in the southwest corner of the Parks Canada Lakeshore Road property.  Both options deliver a new, modern facility to handle current and future needs.  Both options require the draining of the current sewage lagoons and the decommissioning – and demolition – of the old wastewater treatment plant.

Much work remains to be done to establish a final plan, including detailed environmental assessments in co-operation with other levels of government.  One of the key challenges going forward will be to determine how to drain and clean the old lagoons.  Presenters at the Public Information Centre made it clear this was an area of risk, and also of expense.

So here’s an idea … Continue reading →

By Mark Taliano
 
Last week, when I was reading about West Lincoln’s resistance to locate a clean-energy wind farm nearby, I was reminded of past history lessons and their impact on the future.

Canadian tar sand in hand

 
Centuries ago, Spanish Conquistadors were thoughtful enough to bring measles, smallpox, and malaria to the natives in the New World, but they didn’t do it for free. In exchange for their gifts, they burdened themselves with gold and silver.  It seemed to be a good deal for everyone (except of course the natives of South America). In exchange for the inconveniences of sailing across the ocean and engaging in warfare, the Spanish were rewarded with precious cargos.  Relatively speaking, it was easy: instant gratification. Continue reading →

By Steve Rowan

(The following commentary flows from a note Steve Rowan, an ol’ Yankee innkeeper on ol’ Cape Cod, sent to Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper. It is a slice of some of the conservations we have around the innkeeper’s fireplace.)

ar Doug,  I owe you much gratitude.

Through your tireless coverage of the Niagara region, the threats in your towns caused by excessive and destructive commercial building, the corruption of the educational system through manipulations by the leaders of the university systems-whose strikes and actions literally cost and threaten students with tremendous financial costs and excessive time to achieve their degrees, these are issues on a local level that the average reader somehow has to hear about.

You’ve done a fine job, tirelessly telling the  story, presenting the readers with information that will enable change both in the operation of your society, but information that will enable the readers to see a balance perspective. This perspective is about the rights of man and the rights of people in a fair society. Continue reading →

A Commentary By Doug Draper

 Hey,  all you people out there in central and south Niagara.  That new hospital the Niagara Health System is building in north Niagara – the one towering beyond a jungle of strip malls and big box stores, out their on the western fringe of St. Catharines’ urban boundaries – that is a St. Catharines hospital okay!

If you think this new hospital being built in west St. Catharines in a regional hospital, forget it. It is a "St. Catharines hospital," according to St. Catharines regional councillor and the city's former mayor, Tim Rigby. Photo by Doug Draper.

 Have you folks in the central and south end finally got that!

 I’ve been meaning to bring this up in a commentary since St. Catharines regional councillor Tim Rigby pointed it out at one of the final meetings of the last regional council in late September in front of a gallery of south Niagara residents who are still foolish enough to demand that everyone in the region have fair access to emergency and other hospitals services.

At that infamous September 23 regional council meeting that dragged on for more than six hours, members of the Yellow Shirt Brigade, that group of south Niagara residents fighting against the NHS’s systematic downsizing of services in their community hospitals, had to wait until after midnight to find out that the council would not back a resolution approved by seven local municipalities for an investigation of the way the NHS manages area hospital. Continue reading →

By Dan Wilson

It’s that time of year again, usually just after the American Thanksgiving, that radio stations begin playing Christmas songs. I’ve been told that some stations begin even earlier (like in October), as soon as the advertisers start their Christmas sale promotions.

So I’m at work last week, and one of the supervisors changes the radio station from the designated classic rock station to an all-Christmas music station. Tis the season, right?

Well, somebody complained and after much ado, the station was changed back to classic rock music. So what’s the big deal? What’s wrong with playing Christmas music at work? For the record, the worker who complained was me.

I’m not a religious person.  In fact, you could call me anti-religious. I believe religions were created to control the people, plain and simple. Give them something to fear and they’re easier to manage.  I also believe, as John Lennon did, that religious institutions are responsible for much of the violence and suffering in the world.  “Imagine there’s no heaven…” Continue reading →

A Comment By Pat Scholfield

Speaking as a resident of Port Colborne for over 54 years, I was keenly interested in hearing about the Auditor General’s report just released, particularly relating to the health care system and more specifically to the Niagara Health System in Niagara where I reside.

Pat Scholfield

The LHIN (Local Health Integration Network) and the Niagara Health System (the board responsible for managing most of our region’s hospitals) have been insisting that one of the main problems with our overcrowded ERs and long wait times is because people are using emergency rooms inappropriately.

However, the Auditor General’s report said this conclusion is wrong. The report (released this fall by Auditor General Jim McCarter) concludes that a lack of inpatient beds is the culprit. Why do we have a shortage of inpatient beds? The LHIN and the Niagara Health System would have you believe the main reason for a shortage of beds is because people should not stay in the hospital, but should instead go to Long Term Care Homes and/or go home. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Gary Burroughs, the former lord mayor for Niagara-on-the-Lake and veteran regional councillor, is replacing retiring Peter Partington as chair of Niagara, Ontario’s regional government.

Niagara's new regoinal chairman, Gary Burroughs

Burroughs won the Region’s top political job this December 9 in a race that included veteran St. Catharines regional councillor Bruce Timms, former Thorold mayor and newly elected regional councillor Henry D’Angela,  former Conservative MPP and newly elected Niagara Falls regional councillor Bart Maves and former Welland mayor Damian Goulbourne who lost a bid for a regional councillor position during last October’s municipal elections.

The contest was decided rounds of voting by newly elected members of regional council from across Niagara since this region does not hold the regional chair job out to Niagara voters during municipal elections, to be elected at large. D’Angela, Timms and Goulbourne fell out in the earlier rounds, leaving the final round to Burroughs and Maves, which Burroughs won by a spread of 19 to 11.

Niagara At Large posted a piece on Burroughs and his bid for regional chair on December 1 (you can visit it by visiting NAL at www.niagaraatlarge.com and scrolling down to the story). But here is just to recap a few key points about Burroughs with more to come later. Continue reading →

By Fiona McMurran

I like this live-streaming. It’s not as good as actually being present, but it’s a darn good second best.

Here’s how things went down in Regional Council Chambers this morning, Thursday, December 9.

There were five nominations, which was a bit of surprise. One presumes that Pelham’s Brian Baty decided to withdraw his name. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

The province’s minister in charge of cops and correctional services told Niagara At Large this week he is prepared to implement the recommendations Ontario’s Ombudsman, Andre Marin if they serve to cool the chance of another security mess that occurred at the G20 summit last June in Toronto.

Veteran Liberal cabinet minister Jim Bradley

 “I think the recommendations of the Ombudsman are good and implementable,” said Jim Bradley, St. Catharines MPP and Ontario’s minister of community safety and correctional services, in response to a scathing report Marin released this December 7, criticizing the province and police honchos like Toronto police chief Bill Blair for security efforts at last June’s G20 meeting in Toronto that turned ended up looking like a civil rights and public relations fiasco before the province, the country and the world.

“I have assured (Marin) that all of the recommendations will be implemented,” said Bradley. Having said that, Bradley went on to say that he thought it was a bad idea for the federal government of Stephen Harper to hold the G20 in downtown Toronto in the first place. A better place, if it had to be held in Toronto at all, may have been the old CNE grounds where there are at least some physical boundaries between any protesters inclined to do harm and the G20 leaders. But it may have been better off held some place else, he said, away from any one of a number of iconic sites anyone interested in violence may want to target in Toronto.

“It keeps coming back to this,” said Bradley of the location the Harper government picked for the G20 summit – the convention center in downtown Toronto. “It was a totally inappropriate place to have it.” Continue reading →

Charges of mispending of funds at the Niagara Parks Commission have raised calls for an independent audit of the NPC by the province’s New Democratic Party.

The Niagara Parks Commission's headquarters in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

 So far, those calls have gone unheeded by the governing Liberals and this December 8 a committee dominated by Liberal MPPs voted down an NDP-tabled motion that would have triggered an audit of the commission by the province’s Auditor General.

Below is a media release from the NDP on the latest development for your information.

Liberals vote to cover up Niagara Parks scandal QUEEN’S PARK –

The McGuinty Liberal government has used its majority on a legislative committee to vote down an NDP motion calling for an independent audit of the scandal-ridden Niagara Parks Commission.

At the committee meeting this morning, all the Liberal MPPs voted against the motion put forward by NDP MPP France Gélinas. The motion would have triggered a special audit by the province’s Auditor General.

“I’m astounded. The McGuinty government has voted to cover up the NPC scandal,” said Gélinas. “We’ve seen very troubling allegations of lavish spending, cozy relationships with contractors and lax financial record-keeping. And it’s been going on for years. You’d think the government would be all for an independent audit — but obviously the McGuinty government hasn’t learned anything from the EHealth scandal.”

The Liberal MPPs who voted against Gélinas’ motion are: Wayne Arthurs (Pickering-Scarborough), Aileen Carroll (Barrie), David Ramsay (Timiskaming-Cochrane), Liz Sandals (Guelph) and David Zimmer (Willowdale). “These MPPs will have lots of explaining to do for their vote,” said Gélinas.

(Click on Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary of interest and concern to residents in our greater binational Niagara region. And we encourage share your views on this topic in the comment boxes below.)

By Doug Draper

In a toughly-worded, condemning report he released this December 7, Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin concluded that the provincial government’s secret passage of a “relic” of a law that gave police “extravagant, sweeping powers triggered what amounted to martial  law in downtown Toronto” during last June’s G20 summit.

Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin

The Liberal government’s enactment of the Public Works Protection Act this June, without any public disclosure or debate in the provincial legislature, set off what Marin also described as “the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian history.” It resulted in “ugly scenes” and a “sad legacy” for city, the province and the country, he added at a media conference upon the report’s release, “and we can never let that happen again.”

Marin was of course speaking of the arrests of more than 1,000 people, the vast majority of them peaceful demonstrators, and the eyewitness accounts of police abuse at the G20 summit late this June. Continue reading →

A Foreword by Doug Draper

Niagara At Large is posting in its entirety the following media release from the office of Ontario Conservative’s opposition leader, Tim Hudak, slamming Premier Dalton McGuinty for reductions in frontline care at hospitals in Niagara and Hamilton.

Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak

This latest Conservative blast at McGuinty, set off in the wake of concerns raised about hospital services in an Ontario Auditor General report released this December 6, makes no mention of other culpability of other parties around longer emergency room wait times and other reductions in front line services.

Most notably, there is no reference to the Niagara Health System, the amalgamated board that has been responsible for managing the majority of Niagara’s hospitals for the past decade.

It was the NHS that put together a so-called “hospital improvement plan” that, for example, called for the closing of emergency rooms at the hospitals in Fort Erie and Port Colborne? Could the NHS not have found ways of keeping those ERs open with the overall funding it has? Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

 “I’m shot. I’m shot,” he reportedly said as he staggered closer to the entrance of the Dakota Hotel in a City of New York he loved and felt so safe in.

There were even a few reports that he may have uttered the word “why” as he crumbled to the ground, hemorrhaging to death from gunshot wounds delivered by a psychopathic stalker he gave an autograph to only a few hours earlier.

 I will never forget walking into the newsroom of The St. Catharines Standard (where I worked for the first 19 years of my career in this now shaky journalism business) a few minutes before midnight on Monday December 8, 30 years ago, and seeing the shocked and bewildered looks of the editors on the desk as they stared at the paper’s then primitive computer screens.

 Before I had the chance to ask what awful thing happened, one of them looked up and said; “John Lennon has been shot and a bulletin just came in that he is dead.” Continue reading →

By Dr. William Hogg – dare I write it? – MD

Some 30 years ago, I received a letter from OHIP, Ontario’s Medicare bureaucracy, with the salutation, “Dear Health Care Worker.” It was sort of like a punch in the stomach. Euphemistic style.

To those useless ‘turds’ I was no longer a doctor. Like an inspissated fecolith I was lumped together, indeed very democratically, right along with everyone else on the front line of the governmental delivery system of ‘health’ care, nurses included. Nowadays, everyone is used to ‘health care workers.’ Only nurses and doctors still squirm a bit at the term. But just think how inefficient is Dear Health Care Worker. A Dear Nurse (or Dear Dr.) would save twice as much in ink alone – let alone money. But more about this historically critical type of word-suppression later. Now for a brief word about word-theft, name-theft. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

This reporter first met Gary Burroughs about 30 years ago when he was at a meeting for Operation Clean, a citizens group in his hometown of Niagara-on-the-Lake that was fighting toxic chemical pollution in the Niagara River.

Gary Burroughs runs for regional chair's job

That is as much to say that he cares about environmental issues. If he didn’t, the late Margherita Howe, then chair of Operation Clean, would not have him in the room without giving him the kind of dressing down she was famous for giving significant others who sat on their duffs on the green file.

I later met Burroughs as chair of the Niagara Parks Commission when he fought an unsuccessful fight to keep the hotelling industry in Niagara Falls from doing those high-rises we see above the falls today. He tried to fight those hotels rising up above the so-called “sight lines” above the trees along the little escarpment lining the table rock area of the falls. Suffice to say, he lost that battle with the hoteliers and it may have had something to do with him losing his job as the commission’s chair.

Then Burroughs ran and won his bid to serve as Niagara-on-the-Lake’s lord mayor, even while losing a race as a Liberal candidate, against Conservative Rob Nicholson, to serve as the MP in the federal riding of Niagara Falls. Continue reading →

By Mark Taliano

The Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami of 2004, which killed over 230,000 people, annihilated local fishing communities. Those fisherfolk now reside in shanties far from the sea. And tourist resorts are being built where they once fished.

The death toll from Hurricane Katrina was 1,836. Floods broke the levees and demolished much of New Orleans, wiping out public hospitals and schools. Those institutions won’t be re-opened.

 Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, and BP have recently signed no-bid contracts to lay claim to vast oil reserves in war-torn Iraq. The war enabled those no bid contracts. What is the common thread through each of these tragedies? Shock (of the “Shock and Awe” variety). Continue reading →

A Comment by Doug Draper

I’ve always had trouble understanding the mind of someone who would deliberately destroy someone else’s property – not because they know are for some reason angry with the property owner or even know who the owner is, but just because it is there.

St. Catharines nativity scene. Photo courtesy of City of St. Catharines.

In this case, we are talking about property that is owned by and gives pleasure to the public at this time of year – the a nativity scene in front of the City of St. Catharines’ City hall.

Now I’ll admit it. I am not a go-to-church guy. But whether you go to church or not, whether you are a religious believer or not, why would anyone want to smash up camel and shepherd statues for a nativity scene?

The nativity scene in front of St. Catharines’ classic old city hall building off King and James Streets is one of those nice, traditional displays that give many people in the community pleasure each Christmas season.  It represents an expression from this municipality of ‘good will’ toward all at this time of year, at least until someone of ill will comes along and smashes it. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Peter Kormos, the NDP representative serving a Welland Riding at Queen’s Park that spans Welland, Port Colborne, Thorold and the south end of St. Catharines, has tabled a petition from residents in the region, calling for an investigation of the Niagara Health System.

Welland riding MPP Peter Kormos slamming government on hospital care.

The same call for an investigation of the NHS – the board responsible for managing a majority of hospitals in the Niagara area – was supported earlier this year by several of Niagara’s local municipalities, including Welland, Niagara Falls, Fort Erie, Port Colborne, Wainfleet, Thorold and St. Catharines. Following lengthy debates this fall, the same call for an independent look into how the NHS is managing hospitals across the region was not supported by Niagara’s regional council.

The regional government’s naysaying has not stopped Kormos from taking a petition, signed by more than 7,000 residents, to Queen’s Park however. The wording of the petition, as written into the records at Queen’s Park this December 1, speaks for itself. Niagara At Large therefore runs it below in full.

God bless the government of this province if it chooses to ignore it. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Ontario’s Ombudsman Andre Marin will release his promised report this December 7 on controversies surrounding the way security forces dealt with demonstrators around the G20 summit in downtown Toronto last June.

John Pruyn being dragged away by police.

Last July, Niagara At Large broke the story of John Pruyn, a Welland resident, federal government worker and part-time farmer, who had his artificial leg pulled off by police before he was arrested and kept in a makeshift cage for two days before being released without any charges.

Enough stories like Pruyn’s made it to the Ombudsman’s office to trigger a special investigation, the results of which will be released by Morin at a news conference at Queen’s Park this coming Tuesday.

You can watch the media conference live at 1 p.m. on December 7 by locking on the Ombudsman’s Twitter account at www.twitter.com/Ont_Ombudsman.

In the meantime, two Niagara MPPs, Welland riding NDP critic Peter Kormos and St. Catharines riding MPP and Ontario’s minister of community safety and correctional services had an exchange on G20 security in the provincial legislature this December 1. We include the hansard of that discussion below. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Posted December 2nd, 2010 on Niagara At Large

If the voters of Welland didn’t want him representing them on regional council, why should the residents of Niagara have him possibly chosen by the newly elected regional council as our region’s chair?

Welland’s Damian Goulbourne

According to a story posted this December 1 on Niagara This Week’s website, the answer to that question from Welland’s outgoing mayor and defeated regional council candidate Damian Goulbourne is that he is going to put his hat in the ring for the regional chair’s job anyway.

Technically, there is nothing stopping Goulbourne from doing it.  Niagara Region’s bylaws continue to allow for the possibility of a chair being appointed from outside the pool of elected regional councillors, although that has not been the pattern for most of the regional government’s 40-year history.

The last three regional chairs,  Peter Partington,  Debbie Zimmerman and Brian Merritt, were all elected to the council by voters in their respective municipalities of St. Catharines,  Grimsby and Niagara Falls before putting their hats in the ring. But there is still the question.

Even though Goulbourne can, by law, place his name on the slate for regional chair,  should he? Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Bruce Timms, a veteran St. Catharines regional councillor, has thrown his hat in the ring for Niagara Region’s top political job.

St. Catharines regional councillor Bruce Timms delares for regional chair's job

Timms is also a native of Port Colborne – born in the hospital in that community that the Niagara Health System has been systematically shut down – and he promises, as regional chair, to keep the interests and concerns of people in Niagara’s central and south end fully in mind.

“I was born in Port Colborne and grew up working in Welland, … so I can bring a regional perspective to the job that few others can beat.”

On the subject of amalgamation, Timms told NAL he’s more focused on amalgamating services like water and wastewater on behalf of taxpayers than he is on amalgamating municipalities. At the same time, he strongly favours reforming regional government in ways he feels would have the Region and 12 municipalities working more closely together on matters of common concern and interest. (NAL is including below a recent comment Timms made to another story on this site that outlines his vision for regional reform.). Continue reading →

 By Doug Draper

(This profile of Peter Kormos,  the Ontario NDP representative for the riding of  Welland, was written by Doug Draper some five years ago.  It was never published because the magazine that asked for it went the usual way so many  mainstream publications go today. It became predominantly a “shopper” – a publication at that time became the equivalent of a “shopper” and features of this nature were no longer welcomed.

NAL lifts it from the vaults  now as an insight into a Niagara politician, whether you like him or not, who has taken his place as an icon in Ontario politics.)

“A working class hero is something to be.”

– a lyric by John Lennon

“I don’t change my values the way some people change their socks.”

– Peter Kormos

In the dimly lit banquet room of Club Social on Welland’s gritty east side, a raucous chant of “Peter, Peter, Peter” rolls up from the floor. It is the night of the October, 2003 provincial election and, to no one’s surprise, the numbers on a nearby tote board show Peter Kormos leading his nearest challenger by a margin of two to one.

Peter Kormos being dragged away by police at a 1960s protest for public access to our lakeshores at Sherkston Beach on Lake Erie. Photo courtesy of the Kormos constituency office and Joyce Holman, Florida.

Kormos, in this election, is one of only seven New Democratic Party candidates across Ontario to survive what some political pundits are describing as a “catastrophic night” for the NDP – leaving it one seat short of the number it needs to hold on to official party status. But there is no hint of catastrophe at Club Social on this night.

For a fifth straight election since 1988, when he replaced the retiring NDP stalwart Mel Swart in what was then the old riding of Welland-Thorold, this reputed ‘bad boy of Queen’s Park’, who many in this room regard as a working class hero, will be going back to the provincial legislature to, as many of them are proud to say it, ‘give em heck’ again. Wearing his dress shirt unbuttoned at the neck and his trademark cowboy boots, Kormos finally takes the stage and the chant of “Peter, Peter, Peter” breaks into cheers.

The man who has been called everything from a “maverick” to a “fast-tongued hard head” and juvenile delinquent” could not be more at home delivering a victory speech touching on every theme that has fueled him, first as a young activist, then as a criminal lawyer and a politician.  In this room, located a few blocks away from what he describes as the “modest red-brick bungalow” his parents built in the early 1950s and from the Atlas Steels plant where his father and so many others in the neighbourhood put in long, dirty hours to support their families, Kormos reminds his supporters of all the “hard work and sacrifice” responsible for so many of the freedoms and opportunities we take for granted today. Continue reading →

By Mark Taliano

Long ago I learned that life isn’t fair, but I still get angry when it isn’t.

If it were fair, instead of making excuses for the Tar Sands and the quick death of Bill C-311, our Prime Minister would be celebrating the creation of Green jobs.  After all, we’d be benefitting from a renaissance of research, development, and the study of the European way of saving the environment. We’d be driving small eco-friendly cars, taking fast trains and trolleys, and breathing cleaner air too.  Of course the clean air would contribute to increased longevity and fewer deaths, but that’s another story. Continue reading →

By Brent Stewart

On a rainy Tuesday evening, about 130 kilometers down the highway from where it all took place, John Pruyn and his wife Susan recount the events of that June day in Toronto, to a small but receptive crowd at St. Mark’s Anglican Church in Niagara-On-The-Lake. Accompanying them in telling their G20 ‘horror stories’ are Steve Disher and Josh Burman, two young men from Hamilton, whose paths crossed with John’s that fateful Saturday evening in Queen’s Park.

John Pruyn. File photo by Doug Draper

I learned about John Pruyn’s experience at the G20 when Doug Draper first broke the story on Niagara At Large, in July, but there’s something altogether different about witnessing John himself detailing the events of that weekend. Hearing his first-hand account of being brutalized, degraded, and humiliated by riot police at Queen’s Park is unsettling, to say the least. John is quiet, responsible and unassuming, and practically a neighbour—the fact that he is such an ordinary, decent guy highlights the bizarre and indiscriminate nature of police actions that weekend. John and others like him were rounded up, harassed and arrested in the designated free speech zone, of all places—an area that demonstrators and bystanders were told was a safe haven for exercising their civil liberties. The police actions showed a callous disregard not only for the safety and the civil rights of those in attendance that day, but also for the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms itself.
John’s wife, Susan, goes on to tell her story of the tumultuous events of that weekend, relating the twenty-seven nerve-racking hours she spent desperately trying to locate John, and her daughter, Sarah, while they were being held at a makeshift detention center in a defunct film studio on Eastern Avenue. Steve and Josh then take turns recounting their experiences during the G20 summit weekend in Toronto. Continue reading →

 By Steve Rowan

(This guest contributor shares a voice from Brewster, Massachusetts. He  also owns a residence on Wolfe Island, Ontario.)

Well it’s nice to see that your country works like every other corrupted
government.

Enjoy the scrutiny. … Next your Christian fundamentalists
will hook up with your rabid capitalist (Whigs??) and soon you’ll be
able to save money on social security, medical costs, education costs
and other social programs. … All with the ideas of … ‘cutting
out waste’, at which time I think – ‘ what a shame’.

But who am I to complain, supporting a opportunistic exploitative, corrupt and criminal military power…even I can see Obama’s duplicity and I wonder about the reason his hair is turning gray….a young idealistic man facing really intense and dizzying pressures.  I too believe in the ‘truth and hope’ that caused his election and like others am broken and dispirited by the continued corruption of our legal and legislative branches. Continue reading →

By Fiona McMurran

American war resisters resident in Canada now have a Niagara support group.

A recent gathering of war resisters and their families along the Canada/U.S. border in Fort Erie, Ontario.

On Thursday, Nov. 18, people from both sides of the border met at the Guild Hall to form the War Resisters Support Campaign of Niagara,  Ontario. Joining concerned local residents were members from the Toronto-based War Resisters Support Campaign, including war resister Kimberly Rivera, as well as three members of the Buffalo Chapter of Veterans for Peace. We met in the Guild Hall in Port Colborne,  Ontario as guests of Anglican Minister Rev. Rob Hurkmans, who,  along with Fort Erie minister Rev. Mark Gladding, has been offering help to Iraq resister Jeremy Brockway and his family,  now residents of Port Colborne.

The War Resisters Support Campaign has been providing help and support since 2004, when Jeremy Hinzman and his family crossed the border.  Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

“Ask not what your country can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your country.”

Those words,  spoken by the late President John F. Kennedy following his inauguration on January 20, 1961,  inspired generations of Americans to service and self-sacrifice on behalf of their country, their communities and less fortunate others.

The Kennedy family compound on Cape Cod. Photo by Doug Draper

Today, it is hard to imagine almost any political leader on either side of the Canada/U.S. border speaking those sorts of words for fear of being derided by the masses as a “socialist” or something worse.

‘Putting our country before ourselves? We want a tax cut!’

I thought about those words and how far so many of us – Americans and Canadians – have strayed from them as I walked this past November 23 along a Cape Cod beach in Hyannisport where the Kennedy compound looks out over Nantucket Sound. The spirit behind them now seems as broken as a set of old wooden stairs leading up from the beach to the backyard of the compound where John and brothers Robert and Ted (all of them gone now) once picnicked with family and friends following a game of touch football. Continue reading →

By Chris George

As a volunteer with the Niagara Anaphylaxis Support and Knowledge (NASK) association, I am very hopeful for the upcoming meeting with Members of Parliament in Ottawa this December 7th.

For the past five months, our local group has worked with Niagara MPs to help raise awareness of severe, life-threatening allergies among MPs and the Ottawa bureaucracy. Since May, Niagara-West Glanbrook MP Dean Allison has introduced a motion in the House of Commons and now he is hosting a meeting of his colleagues to discuss what can be done for Canadians who must cope with the medical condition anaphylaxis.

My journey to this Parliament Hill meeting started more than five years ago, when my youngest child (now 7-years old) had two, separate horrible reactions at meal times – and our family ended up at the St. Catharines General Hospital praying he’d be alright. My son was diagnosed with severe allergies to nuts, peanuts and the whole legume family. His subsequent tests through the years have revealed his allergies will likely be with him throughout his life. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Rod Minor

I have had the “pleasure” of experiencing regional government and amalgamation from two vantage points: I’ve lived in Lowbanks all my life and our family business has been in Port Colborne for over 35 years. I’ve seen the effects of Regional Government and amalgamation at various levels and times throughout those years in two distinct regions.

 The City of Niagara!?!?! Let me tell you, that is not a very comforting thought unless you happen to live in St. Catharines.

We have gone through all of this already in Haldimand. We have went from regional government under Haldimand-Norfolk to the Town of Haldimand. There is no longer a Town of Dunnville, Caledonia, Hagersville, Cayuga, etc. There is one mega-town – Haldimand – and the benefits are miniscule under the current philosophy.
 
Peter  Partington (Niagara’s outgoing regional chairman) wants the new chair of regional council to continue where he left off in creating the mega-city of Niagara. He would be hard pressed to find anyone in support of the notion of the mega-city outside of St. Catharines and the regional council chambers. Continue reading →

From Keira Knowles, AIDS Niagara
 
AIDS Niagara is hosting a new event on Saturday, November 27 to empower teens to push back the spread of AIDS.
 
The event, called ‘Move to Change’, will host high school students at a dance at Isaac’s Pub at Brock University. The event is aimed at educating and encouraging them to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS at home and abroad. Half of new HIV infections every day are people younger than 25.
 
The dance, which is part of AIDS Awareness Week, was inspired by an international effort called Dance4Life. With Dance4Life, students from countries such as Mexico, Zimbabwe, Russia and the U.K. participate in activities that use dance, music and video to encourage action against HIV/AIDS. Move to Change is a unique Niagara event inspired by this international phenomenon. Continue reading →

From Buffalo’s Central Library

The fine press works of William Morris, the English craftsman, writer and poet who revived the art and craft of printing in the 1890s are featured in a Rare Book Room exhibit at Buffalo’s  downtown Central Library in Lafayette Square.

The Library’s exhibit celebrates the works of William Morris (1834-1896), 19th century English craftsman. He is often remembered today for Morris & Co. which manufactured and sold distinctive furnishings and décor including wallpaper, stained glass, rugs, and tapestries. However, he also founded one of the most famous private presses – the Kelmscott Press – where he produced beautiful and limited-edition, hand-crafted books.

This exhibition showcases works of the Kelmscott Press from the Library’s collection, including the renowned Chaucer, and a selection of books from presses influenced by Morris, including local presses as the Roycroft (East Aurora, N.Y.) and Aries (Eden, N.Y.). Continue reading →

 By Doug Draper

This Christmas season will obviously be a difficult one for the surviving members of Reilly Anzovino’s family.

A fundraiser for Reilly Anzovino and family

What has haunted Reilly’s family and other members of her community ever since is whether she might still be alive today had the Niagara Health System – the provincially-sponsored board responsible for operating most of the hospitals in the region – not included in a controversial “Hospital Improvement Plan” it released two summers ago decisions to close down, earlier last year, emergency departments at hospitals in Fort Erie and neighbouring Port Colborne.

This question will be a focus of an Ontario coroner’s inquest, likely to commence in the first half of next year, and a citizens’ group called the Yellow Shirt Brigade – mostly south Niagara residents fighting for fair access to hospital services in that part of the region – is hosting a Christmas fundraiser to support the Anzovino family in whatever costs they are burdened with during the course of the inquest. Continue reading →

 By Dave Toderick

It wouldn’t have been visible to you had you been in orbit around the earth, but October 10, 2010 was a special day for our planet.

Students at Maple Crest Early School in Fonthill plant a pear tree in the school's garden at a global work party to bring attention to the need to take meaningful action on climate change.

A total of 7,347 events were held in 188 countries, all with the aim of sending a message to our political leaders: “We’re getting to work to find solutions to the climate change crisis. So should you.”

People built energy efficient stoves in Guatemala, and water storage tanks in Peru. Workers planted and harvested at a former derelict site, now an urban garden in Germany. Volunteers repaired bicycles for free in New Zealand. Workers installed solar panels in the Maldives.

According to some, all of these people were wasting their time. In fact, they were actually doing harm because they were detracting attention from the real problems we face.

Among this group are some who are simply badly misinformed. They genuinely believe that the burning of fossil fuels by humans is not the reason the earth’s climate is changing. They don’t understand that climate experts have investigated and ruled out other climate forcings, such as some change in the relationship between the sun and the earth, or volcanoes.

But also among this group are some who do understand the science, and who are deliberately trying to mislead the general public. They are paid by the oil and gas industry. Continue reading →

Niagara At Large has posted a number of news and commentary pieces on the matter of climate change.

One of the most recent posts by NAL publisher Doug Draper, available for viewing on http://www.niagaraatlarge.com, slams Canada’s un-elected, Conservative-dominated Senate for killing a bill for a plan for reducing greenhouse gases that had previously received the support of a majority of duly elected members of the country’s parliament.

Niagara At Large has made it clear from its inception 11 months ago that this is a site that welcomes views that may run counter to those of its publisher and contributors. We don’t want to be an echo chamber that preaches to choir. We want to be venue for diverse views and for stimulating discussion and debate.

In that spirit, we are posting below a piece by Tom Harris, executive director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition that questions that applauds the Senate for voting down that same climate bill.  It is a column that was recently published in the Montreal Gazette and one Harris agreed to share with NAL.

As always, we encourage you to share your views in the comment boxes below this piece. Remember always to keep those views civil and attached to your own name in keeping with NAL’s comment policy, which you can visit with a click at the top of our front page. Thank you, Doug Draper

Canada’s  Senate  Right To Kill Cimate Bill – “Sober, second thought” trumps political correctness on climate change

By Tom Harris

On the surface, NDP Leader Jack Layton’s outrage appears justified. It is certainly unusual that an un-elected Senate would kill a bill passed by the majority of the elected Members of Parliament.

Tom Harris, executive director of International Climate Science Coalition

It is even more extraordinary that this was done after only five days of relatively brief debate by Senators. Yet the Senate did the right thing. Bill C-311, “An Act to ensure Canada assumes its responsibilities in preventing dangerous climate change”, set, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, “irresponsible targets” that would have led to “throwing hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of people out of work.”

But Harper missed the opportunity to tell Canadians that the bill was a disaster also because it would accomplish essentially nothing with respect to global climate even if we did meet its draconian targets. It would not have even set a good example to the world’s leading emitters of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases supposedly responsible for “dangerous climate change.”

Indeed, even it were possible to ensure “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere”, as stated in the Purpose of C-311, climate would still change. As Professor Tim Patterson of Carleton University’s Department of Earth Sciences testified before the House of Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development in 2005, “…it’s obvious that climate is and always has been variable. In fact, the only constant about climate is change; …. We certainly have no chance of stopping this natural phenomenon.” Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

This October’s municipal elections may already be fading from memory but the campaigning hasn’t stopped at the region.
                                                
A few weeks from this Thursday, a newly inaugurated regional council made up of 19 directly elected councillors and the mayors of Niagara’s 12 local municipalities will be choosing a new chairman to replace the retiring Peter Partington.

To some out there, this business of choosing a chairman or “chair” (when the job went a decade ago to Debbie Zimmerman, who was the only woman to hold it to date) may seem like little more than a ritual. “Isn’t the regional chairman just a figurehead,” one of my neighbours asked me recently
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Having watched five of them in action now, starting 40 years ago with Niagara regional government’s very first chairman, John Campbell, and continuing with Wilbert Dick, Brian Merritt, Zimmerman and Peterson, my answer to that question is a resounding ‘No’! 

Whoever gets this job will be setting an overall tone and framing policy for the next four years for a regional government that is responsible for spending five out of every ten dollars you shell out each year in property taxes. Continue reading →

 Brian Baty, who has served Niagara, Ontario for seven years as a regional councillor for Pelham, is the first to officially declare his intentions to run for chairman of Niagara’s regional government in a vote among newly elected regional councillors that will commence this December 9.

Pelham regional councillor and declared candidate for Niagara regional chair, Brian Baty

The choice of a new regional chairman to replace the retiring Peter Partington is an important one because the person who assumes that seat plays a lead role in framing policies and programs impacting on the lives of people across Niagara for years to come.

With that in mind, Niagara At Large is posting Baty’s media release and resume without modification and this news site is prepared to do the same for any other person  publicly declaring their candidacy for this important job.

We urge our many readers and subscribers to share your views below on who you would like to see at the top person on regional council for the next four years, whether they be an elected member of the council or someone chosen from outside.

The St. Catharines/Thorold Chamber of Commerce, for example, has already published their endorsement, in daily newspapers for Damian Goulbourne, an outgoing Wellland mayor who lost a bid in this October’s municipal elections to serve as regional councillor for that city, for the regional chairman position. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

We’ve had the municipal elections in Niagara, Ontario this October, but it is not over!

Should this regional chairman, Peter Partington, be replaced by someone elected by Niagara residents?

The next important decision to be made in municipal governance in Niagara, Ontario is the choice of a new chairman who will be the top politician at the regional council level for the next four years.

Whoever is elected to this position, by a vote this coming December 9 by 31 newly elected regional councillors and mayors across Niagara , will set the tone for where we go in this region around policies and programs over that four-year term. It is an election that occurs at a time in a region that faces tremendous challenges and opportunities.

There is now a grassroots petition going around, urging newly elected regional councillors not to consider a candidacy by someone outside their elected ranks. There have been reports in the local media that some un-elected people may be vying for the top seat at the region, including Damian Goulbourne, the outgoing mayor of Welland who lost his bid for a regional council seat in his city. Goulbourne declared his wish to throw in his hat for the regional chair’s seat while he was running for one of two Welland regional council seats – won by incumbents George Marshall and Cindy Forster, in her case a former mayor of Welland. Continue reading →

 A Foreword by Doug Draper, publisher of Niagara At Large

Have you Niagarians on the Ontario side of the river opened up your Hydro One bill lately?

Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan

Might give you more than a shock than you would get from sticking your finger in a light socket.

Energy costs are obviously a major concern for residents in Niagara, Ontario, given the comments and email Niagara At Large has received in recent months, and  in that spirit , this site is posting the following media release from the Ontario government and its finance minister, Dwight Duncan, released this November 18, on new measures for offering some “relief” to hydro consumers.

We encourage you, our readers, to follow this up by sharing your own comments – good or bad – on this government announcement. Our American neighbours may wish to join in with a few of their own ideas or concerns. You can post your comments at the bottom of this site.

Ontario Introduces Electricity Cost Relief – McGuinty Government Introduces New Measures to Help Ontario Families and Reduce Debt Continue reading →