Author Archives: dougdraper

By Doug Draper

Niagara, Ontario’s top municipal politician will not be seeking another term on the regional council.

Niagara Regional Chairman Peter Partington announcing decision not to seek another term of office.

“Tonight’s meeting is important for a number of reasons,” said Peter Partington after he and other councillors were escorted into the region’s council chambers by a lone piper on Thursday, Jan. 21. “It’s the first meeting of a new year in this last year of this term of council. It’s also the first meeting of (the Niagara regional government’s) 40th anniversary year – truly a year to celebour and many achievements and the difference the region has made in the lives of our resident and in the health and vibrancya of our communities.”

“And it is the first meeting in what will be my final year as your chairman and as a member of regional council.” Continue reading →

 By Fiona McMurran

Wow!

It was a big victory in the Welland council chambers on Tuesday, Jan 19 for those residents in this city fighting to keep hospital services at Welland’s hospital and for others fighting for better hospital services throughout Niagara.

Welland councillor Frank Campion

The city’s council finally passed a motion put forward by one of its councillors, Frank Campion, to join Niagara Falls, Port Colborne, Fort Erie and Wainfleet in urging the province to investigate the way hospital services are being managed by the Niagara Health System – the body the former Conservative government of Ontario created a decade ago to amalgamate hospital operations in Niagara and that the province’s Liberal government continues to have calling the shots when it comes to most of the hospitals in the region. Continue reading →

 By Doug Draper

The next time the Niagara Health System – the body responsible for administering most of the hospitals across Niagara, Ont. – wants to host an ‘Open House’ for the public, why not hold it in a bowling alley. And preferably on an evening when there is a tournament on.

Niagara Health System CEO Debbie Sevenpifer and Welland resident Joe Somers try to converse in noisy corridor of Y complex

It would probably be less noisy and chaotic than it was on a Monday evening, this Jan. 18, as about 40 or 50 Niagara residents tried to crowd into a corner of a corridor a crowded Welland YM/YWCA building, between a swimming pool, gymnasium and staircase leading up to exercise rooms, for an opportunity to discuss their concerns about the region’s hospital services with the health system’s president and CEO Debbie Sevenpifer. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

An article that appeared in the Sat., Jan. 16 edition of The Globe & Mail on the Niagara Parks Commission seems to be getting a good deal of buzz among Niagara area residents.

Niagara At Large has received email on with some asking if we could post The Globe piece in its entirety on this site. That we cannot do since the article is the rightful property of The Globe but we will post that newspaper’s link to the article that you can access if you click on the ‘keep reading’ tab below. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

It appears to be turning into a once-every-four years ritual for the union representing Ontario’s college teachers. And it goes something like this.

Receive a deal for a new salary and benefits contract in late summer or early fall from the presidents of the province’s 24 colleges and play around with it to the point of rejecting it by January of the following year.

This Niagara College campus In Niagara-on-the-Lake is a target of possible strike action by college teachers' union

The union then calls for and wins a strike vote from its members and, however weak or narrow the mandate for a strike might be, threaten to strike anyway. And always – and when I say always, I mean ALWAYS – make sure a deadline is set for some time in February or early March when a strike would exact maximum punishment on the very students the teachers belonging to this union claim they care so much about.

In other words, throw into jeopardy hundreds of thousands of students’ school year – one they and their families have scrimped and saved and sacrificed for  – because well, you know, the teachers are entitled to a two-to-three percent increase in wages every year, regardless of how badly the economy and the rest of us are doing outside of whatever bubble they choose to live in.

This is the stance this same grievous union – the Ontario Public Services Employees Union (OPSEU) representing more than 9,000 college teachers across the province– has taken again this January with a strike vote it won by a margin of roughly 57 per cent and a strike set for sometime in February if the college’s presidents and province don’t agree to their demand of a 2.5 per cent annual salary increase for their members over the next three years.

Well this time the college’s presidents, province, students and the rest of us who are paying for all of this should stand up to this bully union and say ‘No. We are not going to let you hold the academic year of some 150,000 full-time students and more than 300,000 part-time students hostage. Not this time.’

Either accept the offer the college presidents have put on the table – one that is pretty damn generous given the fact the rest of us are suffering through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and one that would given your members an eight-per-cent salary increase over the next four years up to a maximum of $103.975 – or any of your members that go out on strike are fired! And that should be the public’s final offer to these bullies – no retreat, no surrender. Continue reading →

 By Doug Draper

In a move that has at least some people in his old hometown of Fort Erie wondering what took him so long, Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak has joined the rising call of south Niagara residents for a public inquest into the circumstances surrounding the death of Reilly Anzovino. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Chalk one up for the vegetarians of the region.

One of Niagara’s largest transit systems will be reviewing its recent decision to ban ads promoting a vegetarian diet over eating meat on its buses.

“I don’t find them offensive,” St. Catharines Mayor Brian McMullan has told Niagara At Large of the ads Niagara Action For Animals (NAFA) is prepare to pay to display on buses owned and operated by his city’s transit commission.
 
“These (ads) would trigger a concern for me if they were hateful to an individual or group, or shocking in some way. … But from what I see, they don’t fall into that category and are meant to be thought-provoking and challenging,” said the mayor. Continue reading →

(This is the first in a series of posts Niagara At Large will carry on treasured heritage sites in our binational region)

By Paul Kassay

At the far end of lake Erie near the Niagara river on the south shore, sits an historic lighthouse, Point Abino juts out into lake Erie and is less than 15 miles from Buffalo NY which is visible most times.

Point Abino Lighthouse on Lake Erie

The Abino light station as it is known has been decommisioned since 1995. The Town of Fort Erie now owns the historic light, thanks to the perserverence of a group of local historians.

From Crystal Beach where we live we can still see the structure, but alas, getting to it is not a simple undertaking.. The road leading to the light is owned by an association of wealthy summer residents, mostly from the USA.. Visitors can access the point via a trolley in the summertime maintained and operated by PALPS through a special arrangement with the Town of Fort Erie who pays the assocication some $4,000.00 anually for the privilege.

The really big problem here is that the Lighthouse proper is considered to be on the Doomsday List by some. It is literally deteriorating. In an effort to get enough money to save the light, the Town has decided to sell off the Lightkeeper’s dwelling, in order to pay for the restoration. And many, like me, are outraged. Continue reading →

(The parents of 18-year-old Reilly Anzovino, who died  on route to the Welland Hospital following a traffic accident on Hwy. 3 shortly before midnight on Boxing Day, have joined numerous others in Niagara’s southern tier in asking for an Ontario coroner’s inquest into the circumstances surrounding the death.

Many, including Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor and Welland MPP Peter Kormos, want to know if the Niagara Health System’s decision last year to close the emergency rooms at the Fort Erie and Port Colborne hospital sites could be a factor in Reilly’s death, since she died shortly before arriving on at the Welland hospital site which was further away.

Niagara At Large has run news commentaries on this tragedy over the past two weeks which can be viewed by scrolling further down this page.

Below we are sharing a transcript of the letter Reilly’s parents sent to Dr. Andre McCallum, Chief Coroner of Ontario, requesting a public inquest.) Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath came storming into south Niagara this week like a winter blizzard to slam the province’s Liberal government for letting emergency room services at hospitals in Fort Erie and Port Colborne die.

NDP leader Andrea Horwath and CAW Local 199 president Wayne Gates join area residents in front of beleaguered Fort Erie hospital site.

“The hardworking people of Niagara have the right to know that help will be there in a medical emergency or when a loved one gets sick,” said Horwath to a gathering of area residents outside Fort Erie’s Douglas Memorial Hospital. “The McGuinty Liberals found billions of dollars to provide a tax giveaway to some of Ontario’s richest corporations, but they’re closing down local emergency rooms. That’s wrong.” Continue reading →

By William Hogg, MD

The people in Niagara’s southern tier are beginning to realize that dying in an ambulance today is more likely to happen than it was just a few months ago.

A most tragic death was that of 18-year-old Reilly Anzovino a couple of weeks ago (this past Boxing Day) during her college break. She was badly injured in a car accident on the Garrison Road. It was a wintry-slippery, foggy night.

She died in the ambulance as it pulled into Welland hospital’s ER. If that ambulance had been able to go to her own home town’s hospital in Fort Erie, she would have been alive on arrival – not DOA. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

“NHS = DOA.”

Those acronyms – NHS for Niagara Health System and DOA for ‘dead on arrival’ – were coupled together on a sign a man dressed up in a Grim Reaper costume was carrying last year during a protest rally in front of the one and only hospital serving the border community of Fort Erie.

Hundreds of residents from both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, who work and own homes in Fort Erie, joined the rally last September in protest of the NHS’s decision to close Douglas Memorial Hospital’s emergency room. Many expressed fear that lives would be lost ambulancing patients in critical condition further away, to already crowded emergency rooms in Niagara Falls or Welland. And many now wonder if their worst fear has come true in the wake of a tragic traffic accident that occurred on Boxing Day, along a stretch of Hwy. 3 running through Fort Erie.

One of the victims of the accident – Fort Erie teenager Reilly Anzovino – was ambulanced to the Welland County Hospital where, according to a police report, she was pronounced dead on arrival. Continue reading →

(If you’d like a little more insight into why people in Niagara’s south tier have so little confidence in the Niagara Health System and province when it comes to hospital services and their hospital care, this address by Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey should provide a few clues.

Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey

He delivered it this December, during the last session of 2009 of his city’s council, on the same night it approved a resolution by the council for the City the of Niagara Fall calling on the province to have the NHS’s operations investigated. Niagara At Large posts the address in its entirety and welcomes a rebuttle from the NHS or province if they so choose.)

By Vance Badawey

Good evening.

May I take this opportunity to elaborate on comments I had made regarding the resolution passed by Niagara Falls City Council and subsequently supported by Port Colborne City Council at our last meeting. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Hard to believe but more  than a month  has gone by since we launched Niagara At Large and we are already receiving plenty of good vibrations from people across our greater Niagara region – from  both sides of our binational border.

Overlooking the mouth of the Niagara River and the shores of Youngstown, N.Y. fromi Niagara-on-the-Lake. Photo by Doug Draper

A good flow of email and calls of ‘Congratulations’, ‘Wow, what a great idea’,’It’s about time’ and ‘We desperately need alternatives to the old media” has already come pouring in from citizens from both sides of the border, and from some of the people representing us in government, and from business leaders and others who are looking for a new, independent source of news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our region.

Niagara At Large has also been receiving a growing number of requests from individuals and groups to contribute content to this site. They have offered to contribute even though they know that the only compensation this site can offer to all of us, right up and including this writer and publisher, is the promise of building something that might one day give us back the kind of edgy, vital coverage and commentary our communities need and deserve.

Now that we are in to the New Year, Niagara At Large will be ramping up this site with the goal in 2010 of making it the most vital and go-to site for news and commentary in Niagara and you can click on the ‘keep reading’ tab at the end of this sentence to find out more. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

The controversy swirling around the Niagara Health System and the way it manages hospital care across the region won’t be taking a rest during the holiday season – at least not for Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor.

NHS CEO Debbie Sevenpifer, flanked by senior staff, answers complaints from Niagara Falls councillors this fall. Photo by Doug Draper

The Liberal MPP says he will be spending at least some of the holiday period preparing a brief on the beleaguered hospital system for Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews.
“I will be arranging a meeting with (the minister) in the month of January,” Craitor told Niagara At Large in a recent interview. “I am putting together a brief for her and I will also be sharing it with the public.”
Craitor’s decision to meet with the minister follows a resolution the city council in Niagara Falls passed late last month, urging the province to “step in and appoint an investigator to investigate and report on the quality of the management and administration of the Niagara Health System.” Continue reading →

 By Doug Draper

Ontario Transportation Jim Bradley says he’s willing to work with Niagara’s regional government in helping a coalition in the State of New York win federal stimulus funding to bring a high-speed rail system to the greater Niagara area.
“We are interested in helping the region with this,” said Bradley, adding in an interview with Niagara At Large that he’s prepared to commit some staff time from his ministry to helping Niagara regional officials in Ontario support the New York bid. Continue reading →

(Click on ‘keep reading’ in this story for a complete list of new doctors in your area.)

By Doug Draper

Niagara’s ‘Physician Recruitment Program’ managed to attract 19 new family doctors this year, slowly but surely closing a gap on a chronic physician shortage that has left many in the region without a family doctor of their own for more than a decade.
“This has been a great year in regards to recruitment,” Josie Faccini, regional recruiter for the program told Niagara At Large recently. “I would like to express my gratitude to all the family physicians who have decided (to) set up a practice in one of (Niagara’s) we communities. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

For the first time in its 124-year history, Ontario’s Niagara Parks Commission is opening its board meetings to the public.

A view of the Falls from Niagara Park's famed Table Rock. Photo by Doug Draper

The decision to swing the meeting doors at its Oaks Hall headquarters in Niagara Falls open to members of the media and public follows the sudden resignation earlier this December of commission chairman Jim Williams and months of controversy over the way it handles it business affairs – particularly a 25-year lease it recently negotiated, without going to an open tender, with the Lewiston, N.Y. owner of the Maid of the Mist Steamship Company. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Will Niagara’s regional councillors finally decide to put the region on the road to building a transit system for the 21st century?
We may now be only weeks away from finding out?

Will public transit buses like this one in St. Catharines finally be rolling through every municipality in Niagara. Photo by Doug Draper

The region’s council is tentatively scheduled to hold a special meeting in late January or early February to review and vote on recommendations to build and operate a inter-municipal bus system for serving the entire Niagara region – a vision that has been championed by transit advocates, but never realized for the past 40 years of the regional government’s existence.
Now the momentum to turn that vision into a reality finally seems to be swinging in the right direction.

Niagara regional chairman Peter Partington declared in an address to council earlier this fall that he is making the creation of an inter-municipal transit system one of his major priorities as council enters the final year in 2010 of its four-year term. And survey after survey of Niagara residents over the past five to 10 years has shown support growing for a region-wide transit system.
But don’t take a “yes” vote for regional transit for granted. There are still nay Sayers out there and they are all too often the ones who will take the time to contact the 12 mayors and 18 directly elected regional councillors across Niagara before a final decision is made to let their views known.
That is why it is so important that all of you out there who support building a region-wide transit system that will start with buses but could, as we’ve seen in other southern Ontario regions, move to light rail, contact your mayors and regional councillors, and express your support for transit before possibly the most critical vote on this issue in four decades of regional government takes place.
To make it easier for you to contact your mayor and regional representatives by phone or email keep reading at the end of this sentence and scroll down to the end of this commentary.

Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

A campaign by a coalition of New York State municipalities and busineses to steer a high-speed rail system into the greater Niagara region from Albany and Manhattan is winning  virtually unanimous from regional councillors on the Ontario side of the border.

Will these tracks running through Niagara, Ont. one day link with a high-speed rail system in New York?

The project has already received the blessing of a majority on the council following a presentation last week to the regional government’s planning and public works committee by Don Hannon, director of integrated modal services for the New York State Department of Transportation and a representative of the state coalition.

The Niagara, Ont. council’s support sets the stage for its political leaders and staff to get fully behind the High Speed Rail New York Coalition’s efforts to obtain stimulus funding from the U.S. federal government for the rail project. It also provides impetus for them to lobby provincial and federal governments on the Canadian side of the border to improve rail links from New York for passenger and freight through Niagara and the Toronto area.

“I would hope that (Ontario’s transportation minister and St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley) would lend the staff support that is helpful to this,” said Patrick Robson, the Niagara regional government’s commissioner of integrated community planning during a recent interview with Niagara At Large. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

He was a great lover of newspapers when they deserved to be loved and one of the best friends a journalist could ever have.

Bruce Williamson

His name was Bruce Williamson – known affectionately to his legions of friends and former colleagues in the St. Catharines area as ‘Booty’ – and he was one of the guiding spirits at the St. Catharines Standard in its final decades as an independent newspaper owned by the Burgoyne family. He also had more to do than he possibly ever knew with inspiring young journalists to go out there and dig for the kind of stories that earned the respect of the community and won provincial and sometimes even national newspaper awards, even though he never had a byline in the paper himself. Continue reading →

By Fiona McMurran

The South Niagara Chapter of the Council of Canadians – a nationwide group dedicated to preserving Canada’s independence – marked its first birthday in the region this December with the  opening of an office in Welland.

Council of Canadians national chairperson Maude Barlow flanked by South Niagara Chapter members Shari Sacco (back left), Fiona McMurran (back right), and Jen Coorsh (seated right at the Unbottle It! January 2009 event at Brock University. Photo by Terry Nicholls

The Council of Canadians is this country’s largest citizen watchdog group with its well-known chairperson, Maude Barlow, along with a staff and a volunteer board at the helm, researching and consulting on issues such as water and climate justice, food security and sovereignty, trade deals being made at the provincial and federal levels, and the battle to preserve Medicare, as well as other pressing issues related to Canadian sovereignty.
The various chapters of the Council of Canadians work at the local level, urging friends and neighbors to take action to keep governments accountable, and to work for the changes that they believe serve the common good.

Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Well here we go again!

Niagara Regional Police headquarters in St. Catharines

It’s another tough budget year for Niagara Region and it’s another year the region finds itself facing a budget request from the Niagara Regional Police Service that is above a cap it has set in an effort to keep hikes on property taxes down for Niagara residents.
“We don’t have the ability to pay this,” said St. Catharines regional councillor Bruce Timms following a presentation Police Chief Wendy Southall and other representatives of the NRP made to the region’s council at one of its ongoing budget review sessions this past Thursday (Dec. 10) for a 2010 budget increase of 4.5 per cent to almost $121 million in operating costs for the coming year. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Charles Schumer, a senior U.S. Senator for New York State, has urged his country’s Department of Homeland Security to work with Canadian officials to reverse a significant decline in people crossing the Canada-U.S. border in the Niagara Falls and Buffalo/Fort Erie areas. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

“What a long strange trip it’s been,” wrote the late San Francisco songwriter Jerry Garcia of Greateful Dead fame.

Doug Draper on the job in the early years before newspapers were gobbled up by corporate chains.

What a long strange trip it has been, indeed!

Garcia and his band mates penned those lyrics nine years before I began my first job in journalism at the St. Catharines Standard in 1979. That was 30 years ago when good newspapers were still a vital force in our communities in so far as we felt we needed to spend some of our day reading through them before deciding who to vote for in the next election or whether to participate in a public meeting over taxes or a proposal for new development down the street. Now we are witnessing too many of those papers die a slow and undignified death thanks, in no small part, to the greed and lack of interest in good journalism of the corporate chains that have taken so many of them over. Continue reading →

 By Doug Draper

As the provincial government and its enablers, including the Niagara Health System (NHS) and Hamilton, Niagara, Haldimand, Brant Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), slowly but surely dismantle hospital services in Niagara’s centre and south end, one mayor and his council are determined to take their services back.

Citizen protesters watched this spring as the emergency room of the Port Colborne General Hospital was converted to an urgent care centre as part of a downsizing plan the Niagara Health System is imposing on smaller hospitals across the region. Photo by Doug Draper

“We want to take control of our own destiny,” says Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey of his city’s decision over the past year to establish what it calls a Niagara South Health Care Corporation that is separate from the NHS and is moving forward with its own “blue print” for rebuilding hospital services in Niagara’s southern tier.
And if Badawey’s boldest dream comes true, that blue print includes a successful pitch to the provincial government for a new hospital to service south Niagara. Someone has to take on the responsibility and leadership to see that health care is available and the people here have access to all of the health care they need,” said Badawey in a recent interview with Niagara At Large of the move his council is taking to develop a health care system of its own.

Continue reading →

By Becky Day

Every municipality in the greater Niagara region seems to have its sticking point when it comes to heritage preservation.

Thorold's former city hall, a designated heritage building, remains abandoned and awaiting its fate. Photo by Doug Draper

Thorold, Ontario, the city’s former city hall building has become as contentious as the Port tower condo project now destined to replace so much of the heritage district in the historic old community of Port Dalhousie, located along the southern shores of Lake Ontario in St. Catharines.
Strapped to a roller coaster of political nonsense and inaction, Thorold’s aging city hall building has been held hostage for more than three years, waiting for local politicians to decide their next move.
The heritage structure located at 8 Carleton St. n Thorold – also once home to L.G. Lorriman Public School – rots quietly as it awaits its fate. If the city doesn’t act soon, the designated site will suffer irreparable damage.
All too often, residents across the greater Niagara region have seen the same fate overcome other heritage buildings that fall into neglectful hands. In nearby Buffalo,  for  example, residents and visitors to that city have witnessed the half-collapse of a 19th century livery stable in what is lovingly known to some as the the city’s “cottage district.” Claiming ‘demolition by neglect’ on the part of the livery stable’s longtime owner, residents are working with the city and others to restore this historic treasure. Continue reading →