Category Archives: Uncategorized

A Submission from Niagara, Ontario’s Regional Government

NIAGARA REGION, April 24, 2013 – Niagara Region Transit will be alternating the departure times of its two routes that depart from St. Catharines. Niagara Region Transit will also begin the Fort Erie summer service.

Both of these changes will be effective on Monday, April 29, 2013.

St. Catharines route changes; 

• Affected routes: Route 55 from St. Catharines to Niagara Falls and Route 70 from St. Catharines to Welland Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

A new Forum Research poll, hardly the baddest ones to rely on, suggests that as much as talk of an Ontario election might be in the wind this spring, a majority of Ontario residents of voting age don’t want an election right now.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath – A new poll suggests most Ontario voters like her the most as a leader but would not necessarily vote for her party to form a government

But if for some reason the NDP and Conservatives agree to gang up on the minority Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne and there is one, the rest of the poll might have anyone speculating what would happen.

As far as the favourability ratings of the three main party leaders are concerned, NDP leader Andrea Horwath is at the top with 44 per cent, compared to Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne, who has gained some ground from 40 per cent this month from 34 per cent on the same poll in March, and Conservative opposition leader Tim Hudak who lags behind at 27 per cent. Continue reading →

Submitted by the Office of Welland, Ontario Riding MPP Cindy Forster

QUEEN’S PARK, April 25, 2013 – Laid off Vertis Communications workers who have been denied severance pay by their former employer converged on Queen’s Park where Welland MPP Cindy Forster raised their case in question period, and called on Premier Wynne to help.

Welland, Ontario MPP abd NDP member Cindy Forster

“On January 16, 100 plus people lost their jobs when U.S. owned Vertis Communications Company abruptly closed in Fort Erie,” explained Forster. “Since then, they have been fighting to get $2.4 million worth of pension plans, benefits and severance packages they are owed.”

US-based Vertis has declared bankruptcy. However, because the Canadian subsidiary of the company has not declared bankruptcy, workers are being denied severance pay under the Wage Earner Protection Program (WEPP), which normally offers benefits to workers of Canadian companies that declare bankruptcy.

“The provincial government is responsible for ensuring that workers get the severance rightfully owed to them by their employer,” said Forster. “Premier, you have a responsibility to act. What are you going to do to fix this profoundly unfair situation?” Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

It may have come a couple days late for Earth Day this April 22 but these days, any good news on the green front is a blessing – whenever it comes and however tentative it may be.

Science interns monitoring conditions at the Experimental Lakes Area in Northern Ontario.

This news – and we need to be cautious here until we know the money will come – involves an agreement the provincial governments of Ontario and Manitoba announced this April 24 to keep open the world-renown “Environmental Lakes Area” near the Manitoba border in northwestern Ontario.

You may recall that last year Canada’s Stephen Harper government decided it that it was going cut by the end of this March the roughly $2 million it costs to annually operate the ELA – a cluster of more than 50 pristine lakes that have been used by federal and provincial scientists, and other researchers around the world to generate research on everything from acid rain and phosphorus/algae pollution in rivers and lakes, to the impact of climate change on water bodies like the Great Lakes. Continue reading →

(We at Niagara At Large continue our tradition of posting pieces aimed at finding some of our fellow critters on this planet good homes.)

A Submission from Niagara Action for Animals

Molly is looking for a new home

Attention Friends of Animals. Please help us find Molly a forever home!

Molly is a one year old Great Dane with Harlequin/ Merle colouring.  

Molly was rescued approximately four months ago by a wonderful and caring family. Unfortunately there was an altercation between Molly and the family’s original dog who prefers to be the only dog of the house.

Molly’s family is devastated to give her up, but they truly feel it is in Molly’s best interests to go to a home with no small dogs. Molly is a happy puppy who is friendly and is good with children. Continue reading →

(A Brief Foreword by NAL publisher Doug Draper – This media release, from the office of Buffalo, New York area Congressman Brian Higgins, come right off the news this April 22 that Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police, working in concert with intelligence agencies in the United States, arrested two men in Toronto and Montreal they allege had ties to al-Qaeda operatives in Iran while plotting an attack on a Via Rail passenger train running between Toronto and destinations in the U.S.

By chance or not, the arrest of the men was announced at an RCMP media conference that had all the trappings of one that was well-orchestrated and had been planned days in advance, and it came at a time when Canada’s Harper government began facing parliamentary debate over a government-sponsored counterterrorism bill that, as The Globe and Mail put it in a story this April 23, “seeks Parliament’s authority to curb civil liberties in the name of keeping Canadians safe.”

Hmm. At any rate, here is the media release form Congressman Higgins.)

Submitted by the Office of U.S. Congressman Brian Higgins

U.S. Congressman Brian Higgins, representing the Western New York/Buffalo area, on floor of Congress

April 22, 2013 – “First and foremost, I commend the work of Canadian and United States intelligence and law enforcement agencies for successful efforts to thwart an attack on our nations.   The US and Canada, linked literally and figuratively by bridges of peace, remain vigilant partners in our efforts to impede terrorists actions on our soil.  

 “Canadian authorities reported today that individuals, supported by al Qaeda elements located in Iran, had the capacity and intent to proceed with an attack along our border.  After receiving testimony about Hezbollah’s growing presence in the United States and Canada, including Toronto, last year I pushed through Congress and got signed into law legislation that requires the State Department to report on Hezbollah’s activities in the United States and Canada. Although Hezbollah and al-Qaeda are different entities, the rationale for this vigilance is the same. Continue reading →

A Brief from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

“Freedom, Freedom, Freedom …”

He belted out that word so passionately, with that ever-so-rich tenor voice of his,that you swear you could hear it ringing out across every hill and valley on the continent.

Richie Havens opening the legendary Woodstock festival.

It was a word Richie Havens made a refrain for the ages in his revved up take on an old gospel song – ‘Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child’ – as he opened the now legendary Woodstock Festival with a set that left him with sweat soaking the shirt on his back.

The ‘Woodstock Nation’, as Sixties hippie leaders like Abbie Hoffman took to calling music festival/makeshift community that came together, half a million strong, in the Catskills Mountains  of New York State in August of 1969, has lost another one of its great ones with the death of Richie Havens this April 22, at age 72 from a sudden heart attack. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

You have to marvel at the nerve of some of Canada’s business leaders.

A strong Canada? Stronger for Harper’s business elite, importing foreign labour to kill Canadian jobs.

Canadian businesses, as much as some of them continue to complain that they are not getting enough of a boost from senior levels of government, have benefited in this country from one round after another of corporate tax cuts, grants and subsidies, and they continue to benefit from roads, highways, airports and other  infrastructure paid for by Canadian taxpayers.

Yet some of these same businesses have no qualms whatsoever about using the ‘Temporary Foreign Workers Program’, established by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper , to replace Canadian citizens with foreign workers that they can pay far less and have no responsible for in terms of health, pension or any other benefits. Continue reading →

–         Gary Burroughs Says He Welcomes Solutions From Council And Public, Is Tired of Negativity

This Friday, April 19, Gary Burroughs, the Chair of Niagara, Ontario’s regional government, delivered his annual ‘State of the Region’s address at an event in Niagara Falls.

The Chair’s address highlights for Niagara residents the status of services the regional government provides and key initiatives it is working on to improve the quality of life for residents across the region.

As has been our policy in the past with address to residents from our political leaders, Niagara At Large is posting the entire text of Chair Burroughs’ address for our readers’ information. So here it is –

Thank you everyone and welcome – what a great turnout.

A very special thank you goes out to today’s event sponsor, Bob Watson and the folks at Pen Financial.

Niagara Regional Chair Gary Burroughs

I would also like to thank Cogeco for airing today’s event. Our media sponsors are key to sharing our message with both our residents and our businesses.

This is a fantastic location here at the Fallsview Casino and I thank the event organizers for putting this event on and affording me an opportunity to address not only Chamber members, but our broader Niagara community. Continue reading →

A Commentary from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

“If you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the pollution.”

My father painted those words on a makeshift sign for me 43 years ago this April, I joined a few of my classmates at Centennial Secondary School in Welland, Ontario in a picket outside the gates of a polluting Union Carbide plant.

My first Earth Day – the first one in the world – in Welland, Ontario on April 22, 1970

It was April 22, 1970, the very first Earth Day observed by tens-of-millions of people around the world, which was pretty amazing given that there was no internet or social media or fax machines, for that matter, to transmit a rallying call from here to countries as far away as New Zealand and Australia within a matter of minutes.

“If you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the pollution,” was one of the messages citizen groups like ‘Friends of the Earth’ sent out for that first Earth Day, and it one that seems more relevant today than it was 43 years ago given how badly most governments have let us down on the environmental file. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

“Peter left an indelible mark on this region, his community and the province,” said Niagara, Ontario’s regional government chairman Gary Burroughs.

A simple orange rose – the colour of the NDP – and cowboy boots, Peter Kormos’s trademark shoe ware, graces his seat in Niagara, Ontario’s regional council chambers for the last time before verbal tributes, and a moment of silence for him. Photo by Doug Draper

Burroughs went on, in a tribute this April 18, to honour Peter Kormos, a former Ontario MPP for the Welland Riding, and a regional councillor when he died suddenly this past Easter/April weekend at age 60, as a “consummate advocate for the underdog” and an elected person who “will forever be remember as a humble servant for the people of Welland.”

Welland’s mayor, Barry Sharpe, when on to point out that Peter Kormos reminded him that the people of Niagara were “strong, resilent and generous,” and the same was true of him, said Sharpe. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Some may not care and some may not even know who Mike Trojan is, but the news of his “retirement” is no small deal.

Mike Trojan, CAO of Niagara, Ontario’s regional government, suddenly announces his retirement.

Mike Trojan has served as the chief administrator for years for a Niagara regional government with care and dedication. He has served as the chief administrator and the person who would have to feel all the pain, if things went wrong, for a multitude of vital services from water and wastewater treatment, waste management, public health, planning, housing and many others, to a region of more than 400,000 people.

But putting all that aside,if you can put all that aside,  this term of Niagara regional council, under the chairmanship of Gary Burroughs,  has seen a real turn against senior staff, even if a good guy like Burroughs has not agreed with it,  and we have seen the loss of number of what many inside the regional bureaucracy felt were the best of administrators, including others like Brian Hutchings and Mike Weir, moving out for positions Brock University and other places.

Now we see Mike Trojan leaving after what were a couple of closed sessions, including one this April 18 where his “performance” was once again under review. The public and press was given no explanations, even when they were over. You could wait around for more than an hour and go back into the council chambers and all you get is … ‘we can now approve bylaw 14,’ etc., etc., etc., then not a bloody word to us about something like this.’ Continue reading →

A Foreword by NAL Publisher Doug Draper

U.S. Congressman Brian Higgins, representing the Buffalo/Western New York area, has blown the whistle on a proposed piece of U.S. legislation that would charge border crossers a “toll” to people crossing the Canada/U.S. border for ‘homeland security’.

U.S. Congressman Brian Higgins, speaking for improving the flow of traffic across the Peace Bridge and other border crossings. File photo from the office of U.S. Congressman Brian Higgins

It is unclear how much of a toll border crossers would pay or whether this would include Americans coming back from a trip to Canada as well as Canadians taking a trip to the United States. But at a time when border communities on both sides of the border in Niagara, Ontario and Western New York are continuing to recover from both the economic and social costs of requiring passports and other identification to cross the border following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, do we really need a ‘security toll’ that might further turn visitors to both countries off? Continue reading →

(A Brief Note from NAL – Shortly after being sworn in as Ontario’s premier this winter, Kathleen said one of the things she wants to make more of a priority in the province is energy conservation and efficiency. On that note, the following post from the Toronto-based public interest group, Ontario Clean Air Alliance, is timely.)

A Submission from the Ontario Clean Air Alliance

A New Leaflet from OCAA

People in Ontario use 50% more energy per person than their neighbours in New York State. That’s a big gap that can’t be explained away by a colder climate or other factors – the bottom line is that we are simply much more wasteful in our energy use. Continue reading →

(A week and a half ago, Niagara At Large posted a plea on this site from Lawrence Pinsky, one of our friends and Montreal journalist and long-time animal advocate, about the desperate plight of a dog named Amalia, who was hungry and being beaten by someone on the streets of Greece.

Amalia, right, and another rescued street dog, Capree, are on their way to loving homes.

Well, in a month where we have been bombarded with an extraordinary amount of bad news, Lawrence has some good news to share about Amalia, thanks to donations from some of you folks out there.)

Submitted by Lawrence Pinsky

Dear Friends, Thank you so very much for your generosity.

Donations have really helped to get Amalia off the street and has ensured that she is now getting her meds. I know she is doing better because I have just seen a picture of her and another of the rescues being walked. Amalia looks a lot happier than she did in the very forlorn picture of her living on the street just a couple of weeks ago. Continue reading →

A  Brief Comment from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper with posts below from Wellandport, Ontario resident Catherine Mitchell and Niagara, Ontario’s regional government

Dalton McGuinty may be gone, but the ghost of his arrogance and lack of care for the concerns of ordinary continues to haunt us around trying to build a less costly, environmentally friendly energy future.

Then Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty pushing wind energy at the cost of giving local communities a voice in how these facilities should be cited in the best interest of everyone.

McGuinty, in league with his senior cabinet minister, including St. Cathairines MPP Jim Bradley, openly supported a Green Energy Plan that wiped out many of the opportunities local municipalities and their residents have to question a proposal for a major industrial project in their community. By doing this, McGuinty, Bradley (who was, more than a year ago, appointed environment minister by McGuinty) and company have possibly turned many who might otherwise support wind, solar and other green energy projects against them.

Indeed, there is a school of thought among at least some political pundits working for The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and other mainstream  media outlets in Ontario that McGuinty and his government lost enough votes in rural municipalities in the last, 2011 provincial election to cost the Liberals a third majority government. … And a significant percentage of loss of rural votes had to do with McGuinty and company wanting to plant wind turbines and other green energy facilities near their backyards without giving them much or any say in the matter. Continue reading →

By Pamela Minns

The Niagara Heritage Alliance was formed several years ago and is an alliance of volunteers, individuals and organizations from communities across the 12 municipalities of the Region of Niagara.  NHA is committed to heritage preservation and enhancement – speaking with a unified voice on heritage matters.

The renown RiverBrink Art Museum in the Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario village of Queenston.

On January 21^st, 2012 NHA became a branch of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario.  ACO was formed in 1933 and this year they are celebrating their 80^th anniversary.  Since the 1930’s the ACO has helped save hundreds of buildings across Ontario and raised awareness of the importance of preserving our heritage.

Niagara Heritage Alliance is holding another one of their General Meetings at the picturesque RiverBrink Art Museum, 116 Queenston Street, in the Niagara-on-the-Lake Village of Queenston, Ontario – Saturday, April 27^th, 2013, beginning with coffee at 8:30 a.m. and continuing the program until 12 noon.  Everyone is welcome. Continue reading →

Submitted to NAL by Hospice Niagara

ST. CATHARINES, Ontario –Join us in celebrating 11 years of the Hike for Hospice Niagara on Sunday May 5th at Lakeside Park in Port Dalhousie. This Nationwide event brings together local communities in support of Hospice Palliative care to raise funds and raise awareness. All funds raised in Niagara stay in Niagara. To sign up visit our brand new hike website www.hikeforhospiceniagara.ca.

 What: The 11^th Annual Hike for Hospice Niagara

Where: Lakeside Park in Port Dalhousie

When: Sunday May 5, 2013 Continue reading →

An Ottawa Tribute To Niagara, Ontario’s Peter Kormos

By Doug Draper

Peter Kormos, a former Ontario MPP for the Welland Riding and Niagara regional councillor for the same city, is still receiving tributes in official circles more than two weeks after his death this past Easter weekend at age 60.

Welland, Ontario federal representative Malcolm Allen

And while the federal level of government was the only one Peter Kormos never held a seat  in during his decades-long service in politics, his spirit was in Canada’s federal legislature in Ottawa this Monday, April 15 as Welland MP, friend and NDP ally paid tribute to him during the first day of parliament since the Easter recess.

Allen eulogized Kormos as “a friend and champion of the little guy,” who fought tirelessly for “workers and the oppressed.” He credited him for his “political coverage” and “unwavering courage,” and ended by saying that “every community deserves a Peter Kormos.”

You can view Welland MP Malcolm Allen’s tribute to the federal apartment to Peter Kormos by clicking on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5xvLrorZQ8&list=UUPlbB-Es16zaprMM1W1-5sg&index=1 .

(Niagara At Large invites you to join in the conversation by sharing your views on the content of this post below. For reasons of transparency and promoting civil dialogue, NAL only posts comments from individuals who share their first and last name with their views.)

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Sometimes you have to wonder what it is that is so destructive and ugly about we humans as a species.

Martin, Richard, the youngest of three fatalities so far in the Boston Marathon bombings, who was there to cheer on his father running in the marathon. His sister has lost a leg in the attacks and his mother underwent brain surgery in the hours following the bomings. At least 175 others were wounded in the blasts.

I have tried and have not always been successful, as a journalist in this hacked-up and vanishing profession, to appeal to our better hearts – to stand up for peace and tolerance, and for the protection of the natural resources we need for our survival on this earth.

Then, just as I am trying to begin to appeal to that side of ourselves for an Earth Day commentary I’ve been working on for later this week, I turn on the cable news on CNN and MSNBC this Monday, April 15^th to horrific explosions in a place I love and respect for the friends I have there – in a place called Massachusetts that my family and I will be visiting again this May – a state I have close friends in and know to be place of peace-loving, progressive-minded people, and a world-class city of Boston.

All I could think of as this wonderful place was so violently violated was,  to borrow a line from Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ about the darkest side of our nature was; “the horror, the horror.” Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

A report released this Monday, April 15 by Ontario’s auditor reveals that the cost of the province’s Liberal government’s scrapping plans to build gas-fired power plants in Oakville and Mississauga is much higher than the government has admitted up to now, according to a story on the front page of this Monday’s  Globe and Mail.

The outgoing Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty does a little photo op time with his old Liberal and St. Catharines MPP pal Jim Bradley, earlier this year.

The Globe story says that the estimated cost of cancelling plants has skyrocketed from $190 million for pulling the plug on both of the plants to somewhere between $250 million and $300 million for dumping the Mississauga plant project alone. The cost for pulling the plug on the Oakville plant was at least $40 million.

So we are now talking about at least a third of a billion dollars in Ontario tax money to scrap these energy plant proposals, which were drawing strong public opposition in two provincial ridings prior to the last, 2011 provincial election.

This is a scandal, and while it has become all too easy these days for partisan opponents of any government to hurl out the word scandal, it is a scandal. And it is one that metastasized before Dalton McGuinty, the previous leader of the provincial Liberals and premier for Ontario, decided, so suddenly retire from politics a year ago this past winter. It enveloped the then-Liberal government energy minister . Continue reading →

A Post from Hamilton, Ontario’s Watchdog Group – Citizens at City Hall – better known as CATCH

(Niagara At Large is posting this because it is an issue that is not going away for our greater Niagara region.

There is still a critical mass of politicians in the Hamilton and Niagara region who want to cut a new mutli-lane highway through this region – through some of what is left of the best food-growing lands in Ontario – above the Niagara Escarpment to connect the GTA with the U.S. border, around more car and truck traffic.

As we approach another Earth Day, can we not find 21st century alternatives to ever more trucks and car?)

City Out Of Step With Province

Ontario Transporation Minister Glenn Murray

From CATCH, Hamilton

A speech last week by the Ontario cabinet minister who oversees transit, road building and other major infrastructure indicates that Hamilton councillors are significantly out of step with provincial policies. City positions on the aerotropolis and the mid-pen highway, and council’s lack of enthusiasm for LRT, are clearly not shared by Glenn Murray, the man selected by Premier Kathleen Wynne to direct both the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Infrastructure.

Murray’s keynote address to the Transport Futures conference provided details on provincial government spending priorities for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) and the reasons behind them. While his comments were not specifically critical of Hamilton’s direction, it was clear that the Wynne government has a very different transportation and planning vision. Continue reading →

A Comment from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

For better or worse – probably worse – I have always been one of these people whose mood shifts with the weather.

So I may be one of the last people who should be picking up the morning paper to bad news during a week, and I’m talking about this past second week of April when we should have been enjoying a little spring, but instead we had ice pellets, puddles of freezing water and winds so chilly you’re were forced to put your winter coat on.

Enough of the cold, icy stuff.

Then you open up the newspaper or turn on the radio and television news to reports about hundreds super-rich Canadians shovelling their money into off-shore havens to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, and a federal government who claimed they didn’t know about these individuals doing that. Continue reading →

A Message from Canada’ Green Party 

(This April 11, Ontario’s NDP environment critic urged Ontario’s government and the province’s environment minister Jim Bradley to launch a full environmental review of plans to pipe tar through the Great Lakes region of Ontario, and received a vague response that Niagara At Large will highlight in a commentary in the next couple of days.

What is important to consider for the moment, and as the federal Green Party says, if we had a spill of a magnitude or higher of that now occurring with this tar sands material and accompanying toxic chemical fluids in the Great Lakes, it could potentially threaten the water supplies for many millions of Canadian and American residents downstream, including residents in Niagara who receive their drinking water from the Great Lakes. 

Please be sure to click on the map of where this pipeline is proposed to run through our Great Lakes region, including upstream Lakes Huron and Michigan, and ask yourself if you think it is okay for our federal and provincial governments in Canada to say no to a full environment assessment before this project is allowed to proceed.)

Ottawa, April, 2013 – The Green Party of Canada condemns the new public debate suppression requirements put in place by the National Energy Board (NEB) at the request of Harper’s Conservatives.

Canada’s Green Party leader, Elizabeth May

 “Ten-thousand barrels of dilbit, a mixture of bitumen and toxic diluent, were spilled in Arkansas last week. Citizens in Toronto and everywhere along Enbridge’s Line 9 have legitimate concerns and tough questions to ask the NEB. Muzzling their opposition is against basic principles of natural justice. These new barriers to free speech would not stand up to judicial review,” said Green Leader Elizabeth May, Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands. Continue reading →

Submitted to NAL by the Niagara Parks Commission 

Niagara Falls, Ontario – In celebration of Earth Day, The Niagara Parks Commission (NPC) is pleased to once again host a number of events on Saturday, April 20, to encourage a greater appreciation of nature and our environmental surroundings.

Overlooking the rapids of the lower Niagara River in the Niagara Glen. File photo courtesy of Niagara Parks Commission.

 Join us and take part in the following programs: 4th Annual Friends of the Niagara Glen Earth Day Event, Niagara Glen Nature Centre, 3050 Niagara Parkway, Niagara Falls, Ontario, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

 The Friends of the Niagara Glen invite everyone to gather at the Niagara Glen Nature Centre for free guided tours of the Glen, home to Ontario’s greatest concentration of Species at Risk. Tree plantings, geocaching demonstrations and a photo scavenger hunt will also be offered. The Friends Group and their partners will also be showcasing various displays and educational materials about their conservation efforts. Those planning to spend the day are encouraged to bring their own bagged lunch, refillable water bottles and appropriate footwear for rugged terrain. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Oh, now he is sorry, is he? And he really wants to “apologize.”

Gord Nixon apologizes to the Canadian people .. oh sorry did I get the wrong picture… that was Richard Nixon apololgizing to the American peope, right? And some of us may remember how much that was worth. Oh jeez, sorry. Got the wrong Nixon here. We wiill get the other Nixon from the bank in a photo below.

This rare baring of the corporate ass is coming from Gord Nixon, the president and chief executive officer of the Royal Bank of Canada, but only after it finally took a few whistleblowers from his bank and Canada’s CBC news network (and thank God it is still around) to expose RBC’s use of a bogus Canadian Foreign Workers Program administered by the Stephen Harper Conservative government to bring workers from other countries into Canada to replace our jobs for less wages and pay.

So now Thee Man from one of the big, multi-storey banking towers in Toronto – you know the ones where these soulless buildings with their one-way glass tell the rest of the world outside, as the late American author Norman Mailer once said of these corporate monoliths; ‘Whatever happens in here, we reveal nothing’, is apologizing. Continue reading →

A Submission from the Office of Niagara Falls Liberal MPP Kim Craitor

April 12, 2013 – Ontario is making it easier to travel between Toronto and Niagara Falls this summer by once again running regular weekend and holiday GO Train service between the cities. 

GO Trains will run on the following days: 

• Victoria Day long weekend
• Friday evenings, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays between June 29 and September 2
• Thanksgiving weekend Continue reading →

A  Commentary by Doug Draper

Going on almost two years following the purging of the former Niagara Health System board – Debbie Sevenpifer, her bunch hacks, Betty-Lou Souter, Paul Leon and so on – the province’s hand-picked supervisor, Kevin Smith, has announced a new board.

St. Catharines MPP and Ontario Liberal cabinet minister Jim Bradley has always been a good friend of Sevenpifer, Souter and the Niagara Health System

And what can one say, except that we can only hope it is  not a case of – to paraphrase that old Pete Townsend/The Who song – ‘meet the new board, same as the old board.’

Unfortunately, the new board very well could be just as unaccountable to the public across this Niagara region as the old board it is supposed to serve as an advocate for hospital services for all of us who live in Niagara. There is nothing that this Liberal Kathleen Wynne government has done to make it more accountable.

Did the Kathleen Wynne/Dalton McGuinty/Jim Bradley government respond to any requests from Niagara locals to have an elected Niagara Health System board? The answer is no.

Did they ever think that it might be a good idea to appoint more doctors from the NHS or even one bloody nurse, given the reported stress and burnout nurses are reported to be facing across hospital systems in this region , province and country, to this board? Once again, the answer is no. Continue reading →

By Delila Jahn-Thue

Princess’ 5^th birthday party is today. Having run out of sleep, I’ve been up since 5 a.m.

Delila

Chicken defrosts for birthday lunch and butter softens for a bunny cake, I hope. We expect family and are under a storm watch. Today is yet to be written.

Spring calves come steady now with yesterday’s #18 being my stand-out favorite. Princess named him “Diaper Boy.” He’s jet black, except his bleach-white tail, bum and underbelly. Oh incontinent one stands out from his siblings whose bums match the rest of their bodies. Diversity is a glorious gift.

My son has found great meaning trenching water away from the barn toward the culvert. He uses two specialized tools: his favorite caragana stick or a garden hoe. His work is exquisite. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Coming right off the depressing news that Ontario and the rest of Canada suffered a net loss of 54,000 jobs this March, we’re now getting reports that one of the country’s wealthiest banking corporations is moving to replace some of its Canadian employees with cheaper labour shipped over from India and other countries.

Canada’s big banks just keep shoveling it in , with record profits, while the rest of us fall further and further behind.

The Royal Bank of Canada, which last year recorded the highest increase in profits over the previous year (more than $2.2 billion or 73 per cent over a 12 month period beginning in the fall of 2011) of all five major chartered banks in the country, is replacing at least 40 of its Canadian employees in Toronto with foreign workers.

All of this, according the CBC, which was the first to break the story over the April 6/7 weekend, is taking place under a “Temporary Foreign Worker Program” set up by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government to allow companies to hire from abroad if they can’t find qualified Canadians to do the job.

Now correct me if I am wrong, but haven’t we been hearing the federal government and a number of companies in this country saying that they can’t find enough Canadians with the training or qualifications to fill the jobs out there for a while now? And how can that possibly be when there are more young Canadians than ever before – young people who are anxious to land jobs – graduating from our universities and colleges in every conceivable field? That doesn’t even take into account the number of older, skilled workers in Canada who, through no fault of their own, have lost their jobs due to restructuring and recession and are also anxious to get back into the workforce. Continue reading →

QUEEN’S PARK, April 8, 2013 – Today in the Ontario  legislature – the first day the legislature has been back in session since Peter Kormos’s passing – Welland MPP Cindy Forster offered the following statement on the passing of former Welland MPP Peter Kormos.

Niagara, Ontario’s Welland riding MPP Cindy Forster

“On March 30, 2013, the Welland riding, the Niagara region and constituents across this the province lost a friend, colleague, mentor and a fiercely outspoken advocate committed to the values of equity, fairness and justice.

 “Peter Kormos represented his constituents and the people of this province for more than a quarter of a century as a city councillor, an MPP and, finally, a regional councillor, and he represented them well. His loyalty to his constituents was unwavering and theirs to him. Continue reading →

By Lawrence Pinsky

Very rarely do I twist arms but friends, this is one of those times. And, yes, I have no shame!

Amalia may not understand you unless you speak Greek, but he urgently needs your help anyway.

I am trying to help a dog, Amalia, in Greece, to get her to safety. She is living on the street and is being beaten occasionally by someone. A rescue group has taken her on but, for lack of resources, is unable to get her to safety though.

I have been sending some money and pestering them, I must admit.The vet took xrays and found she had a fracture to her hip. Not serious, at this point, but painful. She is now getting meds from a volunteer and she is improving but they still can’t get her off the street–and that’s the key need.

I am quite invested emotionally in Amalia and am asking if you can send the rescue a modest donation by paypay. No amount is too small. I would deeply appreciate anything you can manage. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

“Only the little people pay taxes.”

–         the late American  billionaire and hotelier Leone Helmsley, who was later convicted and sent to prison on charges of tax evasion.

If you are one of the “little people” in Canada who was fortunate to have any kind of job or pension that produced income for you this past year, you are also among those required by law to file a tax return to Canada’s revenue agency by the end of this April.

Canada’s blind as a bat revenue minster Gail Shea. If she doesn’t know who the country’s biggest tax evaders are, what else doesn’t she know?

You might also know that even if you made as little as $20,000 this past year, which leaves a single person in this country hovering around the poverty level, you have had to give at least some of that income back in taxes. With that in mind, how not nice it is to turn on the CBC or open a newspaper over the past week to reports that at least hundreds, if not thousands of the wealthiest individuals in Canada are able to get away with paying little or no taxes at all by transferring vast sums of money to off-shore tax havens in the Cayman Islands, Barbados and elsewhere.

To make matters worse, the information behind these news reports did not come from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), which is supposed to be acting fairly, but determinedly to make sure everyone is paying their fair share of taxes. It came from a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of news reporters called the International Consortium of Investigative Journalist which received a massive leakage of documents exposing tax evaders in the United States and numerous other countries, including more than 400 rich Canadians who have been exporting their money to foreign tax havens. Continue reading →

Submitted by the organizers of Garden Walk Buffalo

(A brief note from NAL – You know the spring weather has finally begun to arrive when you receive media releases from the great group of volunteers responsible for the annual Garden Walk Buffalo, one of the largest and most popular neighbourhood garden tours of it kind in all of North American.

Niagara At Large is always free to promote this free event, which always takes place the last full weekend in July and which not only showcasing gardens, but classic architecture in some of the most historic urban neighbourhoods on the continent.  NAL will post more on Garden Walk Buffalo as the weekend for it approaches.) Continue reading →

This Post from the Toronto-based citizens group Environmental Defence

TORONTO, April 5 – New undemocratic rules are creating a barrier to public participation in upcoming National Energy Board (NEB) hearings into the proposal for Enbridge’s Line 9 oil pipeline. For the first time, members of the public who want to send a letter with comments to the NEB about a pipeline project must first apply for permission to participate – by filling out a 10-page form that includes a request for a resume and references.

Proposed route for tar sands pipeline

This problematic new process stems from federal Bill C-38 – the omnibus budget bill last spring that gutted federal environmental laws. Enbridge’s proposal for its Line 9 pipeline could allow dangerous tar sands oil to be shipped east through an aging pipeline that crosses some of the most heavily populated parts of Ontario and Quebec. This is the first new pipeline proposal to be up for approval since Bill C-38 passed last year.

“The new rules are undemocratic. They attempt to restrict the public’s participation in these hearings and prevent a real dialogue about the environmental impacts of the Line 9 pipeline project,” said Adam Scott of Environmental Defence. “Canadians should not have to apply for permission to have their voices heard on projects that carry serious risks to their communities.” Continue reading →

A Brief Message from Niagara At Large publisher Doug DraperAs you may know, Canada’s Harper government has decided to pull its funding from the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) in the northwestern Ontario district of Kenora – an area that has served for more than four decades as a research site for studying the impacts of a changing environment, including climate change, on the Great Lakes and other vital freshwater resources.

Council of Canadians leader Maude Barlow speaks out for Experimental Lakes Area at Ottawa media conference

What is so tragic and so anger-provoking, quite frankly, is that it only costs about $2 million dollars a year to keep research projects at this cluster of small lakes going. That is hardly a fraction of the billions of dollars the government was moving to spend on over-priced fighter jets before critics forced a review on that venture or the mutli billons of dollars in revenue the government is losing each year to off-shore tax evasion schemes. Continue reading →

A Brief by Doug Draper

If you love going to movies like I love going to movies, you might also enjoy reading about them by great movie reviewers.

Roger Ebert at right with his best movie-loving buddy Gene Siskel. About the last of the best in the movie review/critic genre.

And few movie reviewers were better over the past 30 or 40 years than Roger Ebert, who died, at age 70, after a long battle with cancer this April 4.

Roger Ebert was a great movie lover and reviewer from Chicago, and he was also a great friend of what has become a Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF for short) that might not have grown, around the world, as successfully as it has without the endorsement of such a high-profile film reviewer as Roger Ebert.

Roger Ebert died this April 4^th and with him dies a good deal of what is left of any kind of thoughtful writing about movies. As someone who studied and did my best to practice good journalism back into the 1970s, 80s and for a few more years beyond that before the serpents of capitalism slithered under the tent, he was one of the last individuals left who had the integrity to tell it like it was about film and whatever movie was released at the time.

Now, movie coverage is more often about how many millions of dollars the latest ‘blockbuster’ made at the box office this week. Most broadcast or newspaper corporate chains would not dare to have someone like Ebert do an honest review on a movie that might, by the way, be produced by one of their corporate affiliates, for fear that a poor review might offend their corporate masters.

Roger Ebert was one of the last of the movie reviewers from the good old days when the best of people like him could give you and I the real goods on whether or not a film was worth a couple of hours of our lives’

No one is replacing him and it is a God-damn shame. His last words in a movie column as recently as a few days ago were; ‘See you at the movies.’

Next time I am in a movie theatre, will see you there in soul and spirit Roger. You and your old buddy Gene Siskel, who died about 20 years ago from cancer, were among the best in delivering the honest goods on movies.

And by the way, the loss of columnists like Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel falls in tandem with the loss of other journalists for national and local papers across the United States and Canada. The corporations that rule over most newspapers today could not give a fig if they have a Roger Ebert on staff.

That leaves us with a mission, if we care enough to clime on borad, to generate new voices  – free from fear or favour – on independent, online sites like this and others to replace them.

(Niagara At Large invites you to join in the conversation by sharing your views on the They NAL only posts comments from individuals who share their first and last name with their views.)

A Submission from Brock University’s Niagara Community Observatory

A mother in the Niagara Region, Ontario would have to earn almost $38,000 a year to feel that it was affordable to return to work after having just one child.
 
That number – based on economists’ calculation that families spend between 20 to 30 per cent on the mother’s annual income on child care – shoots up with two or more children.
 
These are among the findings of a new brief released April 4 by Brock University’s Niagara Community Observatory.
 
The brief, titled Can Niagara Families Afford Child Care?, outlines ongoing problems and issues of early childhood education and care faced by families in the Niagara Region and across the country.
 
“Middle-class families have been saying for years that high quality licensed child care is expensive and a strain on the household budget, yet the federal and most provincial governments have failed to significantly address the issue, primarily due to the high costs,” says the brief’s author Carol Phillips.
Continue reading →

A Commentary by Mark Taliano

Totalitarianism, aligned as it is with “rule by corporations”, is something that happens in incremental steps over time.  Nobody actually chooses it, it just happens, and it’s happening to Canada right now.

What are the conditions that foster these top-down, undemocratic trends?  Public conformity in matters of importance plays a large part.

Corporate “governance”, with its anti-social, anti-public orientation, is adept at manufacturing and perpetuating public conformity by employing subtle but effective tools that secretly subvert the populace.  These tools are employed to create what  Sheldon Wolin would describe as “inverted totalitarianism”.  The tactics persuade a population that what the government/corporation wants is also good for people, even when the opposite is the case. Continue reading →

From Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

Forty-five years ago this Thursday, April 4, Martin Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee.

Robert Kennedy speaks to gathering of people in a neighbourhood in Indianapolis, Indiana on the eventing Martin Luther King was assassinated

That same evening, Robert F. Kennedy, a U.S. Senator for New York, brother of the late, assassinated President John F. Kennedy and a candidate running for president on a stop-the-war-in Vietnam ticket, addressed a crowd of people in a predominantly black neighbourhood in Indianapolis, Indiana to share the terrible news.

Kennedy’s handlers urged him not to venture out that night since word of the assassination was already spreading and violence was breaking out in some cities across the country. Kennedy insisted on going anyway and the words he spoke that evening were unrehearsed and are still regarded as one of the most moving addresses delivered by a political figure on this continent in the past 50 years. Continue reading →

A Foreword by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper 

Going back to my years writing stories and columns on environmental topics for the then-independently owned St. Catharines Standard, I have decried the practice of capturing whales and dolphins from their ocean homes for our entertainment at aquarium and amusement parks like Marineland in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

This is where Orcas – alias ‘Killer Whales’ belong – in the ocean with their pods.

There are those who argue that by giving people an opportunity to get up close to these great creatures, such parks provide a valuable educational experience. This argument never impressed me as it repeatedly came from self-serving amusement park representatives wanting you to spend serious money at their gates to view these animals in very unnatural cement ponds in the middle of an amusement park with roller coasters and other cheap thrills like that.

If people are truly interested in learning more about these wonderful animals that we share our short journey on this earth with, there are fabulous nature documentaries available on television, online and through library collections. And as I have stressed for years, there are also opportunities to go out on responsible whale-watching adventures and view them in their natural habitat. Continue reading →

Submitted by Henri-Louis St-Martin, Executive Director of the Niagara Falls Community Health Centre

Niagara Falls, Ontario – April 3, 2013 –  A  Wednesday, April 3  announcement from Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor that the  provincial government  will invest  $3,357,000  means that 2,400 more people living in Niagara Falls  will have access to a primary health care model that improves population health, reduces health disparities and eases the pressures on the rest of the our health system.

Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor announces provincial funding for Community Health Ccentre.

“Niagara Falls Community Health Centre promotes the best possible health and wellbeing for those it serves,” said Joyce Morocco, Board Chair of  Niagara Falls Community Health Centre. “So the investment being made today will yield a very high return for tomorrow — preventing larger amounts of money being spent on sickness treatment and care.”

Ms Morocco also noted that because Niagara Falls Community Health Centre focuses on those who normally face numerous barriers to access to proper health care and whose health is most at risk, “this is also an investment in the fairer society Premier Wynne has promised us.”

Niagara Falls Community Health Centre is one of 12 CHCs and four Aboriginal Health Access Centres (AHACs) throughout the province that together have received a total of $71 million dollars to upgrade and expand their facilities.  Continue reading →

Submitted by the Social Assistance Network Of Niagara

(At a time when government in Ontario and all over North American are responding to the economic challenges we all face with rounds of tax and spending cuts, we need to ask the question – ‘Is that the best way to go or is it causing even more hardship for people?

Regardless of how you choose to respond to that question, this is a discussion we have to have. So mark the following event on your calendar.)

Trish Hennessy, Ontario director for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, is a key speaker

Join Us On Wednesday, April 24^th, 2013, 1:00-2:30 p.m., Niagara Region Headquarters, Council Chambers, 2201 St. David’s Rd., Thorold Ontario 

The impact of austerity measures in 2012 had a negative effect on many Ontarians. Some communities are struggling to return to pre-recession economic health.

Meanwhile, Ontario has become the second worst province in Canada for growing inequality.  It’s time to look beyond austerity and consider the steps we can take to make Ontario more equal and more socially, as well as economically, sustainable. Continue reading →

A Brief Note from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

One of many tributes left at the doorsteps of Peter Kormos’s home. Photo by Doug Draper

Given the many moving comments Niagara At Large has received in the wake of the sad news this past Easter weekend that former Niagara, Ontario area MPP and regional councillor Peter Kormos was found dead at age 60 in his Welland home, we want to get the following notice up as soon as possible.

The notice let’s all who are interested know that a “memorial tribute and reception” will be held at the Pleasantview Funeral Home & Reception Centre  in Thorold, Ontario starting at 1 p.m.on Saturday, May 11^th. It also includes a link to an online book of condolence that you can share your thoughts with Peter’s friends and family.

Here is the notice –

 (Niagara At Large invites you to join in the conservation by sharing your views on the content of this post below. For reasons of transparency and promoting civil dialogue, NAL only posts comments from individuals who share their first and last name with their views.)

A Foreword by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

A week ago this Wednesday, April 3, he went to Toronto to buy a cookbook, according to an April 1 story in The Toronto Star by my old colleague and friend Richard Brennan. Who would ever know, except maybe his closest friends, that such a rebel and juggernaut for the working class enjoyed collecting cookbooks?

Flowers left in cowboy boots – footwear that was a piece of the man’s character, left on the front porch of the home of Peter Kormos, where he was found dead at age 60 this March 30. Photo by Doug Draper

Yet that is what Peter Kormos was doing only three days before he was found dead in his Welland home, according to Richard’s story, when he collapsed there and was rushed to Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital. As the story goes on, the hospital wanted to run some tests on Peter to find out why he collapsed but he wanted to get back to his hometown of Welland. He wanted to get back to prepare a eulogy for a friend’s mother.

That was Peter – always putting others before himself. As Richard’s story suggested, who knows if he might still be alive today if he had of stayed for the tests and received whatever treatment that might of come out of them.

Richard’s story in The Toronto Star is a good one, well worth the read from a reporter who has been one of the best over the past three decades when it comes to covering provincial and federal politics. Continue reading →

A Submission from the Niagara Arts Centre

 On Friday, April 5, acclaimed writer and social justice advocate Jamie Swift will visit St. Catharines, Ontario to speak on the themes of his newly co-authored book Warrior Nation: Re-Branding Canada in an Age of Anxiety.

In Warrior Nation, co-author Ian McKay, a Queens University historian, and Swift document a campaign of Canada’s ‘new warriors’ to distort Canadian military history.

Through this neo-conservative-led campaign, martial culture is glorified while the imperialist politics of war are obscured. Fear mongering, romanticization of past wars and celebration of militarism underlie Canada’s rearmament and its emerging national image as a warrior nation, prepared for perpetual war. Continue reading →

A Submission to NAL from Niagara, Ontario’s regional government

 (A Brief Foreword from NAL – Ontario’s Greenbelt was established by the provincial government eight years ago, effectively sparing large tracts of prime farmland in the Niagara and GTA ‘Golden Horseshoe’ area from further urban sprawl. It has been hailed by some as a savior of vital tender fruit and other food-growing areas in southern Ontario and vilified by others who see it as an intrusion on private property rights. 

Niagara’s regional government wants your input on the Greenbelt as it moves forward with planning for the region’s future. The media release is for a public meeting on the Greenbelt to be held at the Niagara regional headquarters in Thorold this April 3.)

The greenest patches on this map show the greenbelt in full belt.The grey areas are forever gone to cement and asphalt.

 NIAGARA REGION – Media and residents are invited to attend a follow-up public engagement session on Greenbelt Plan implementation in the Niagara Region.

The Greenbelt Plan identifies where urbanization should not occur in order to provide permanent protection to agricultural lands as well as ecological features and functions occurring on the landscape. Continue reading →

A Submission to Niagara At Large from Chorus Niagara

St. Catharines Ontario – Chorus Niagara, Niagara, Ontario’s premier 100-voice choral ensemble, with Artistic Director Robert Cooper, present Giuseppe Verdi’s masterwork Requiem Saturday May 4^th, 7:30pm, at the historic Lake Street Armoury, 81 Lake Street, St. Catharines. Audiences are invited to attend a post-concert reception for the historic lighting of Chorus Niagara’s 50^th Anniversary Candles and to enjoy a sample of the anniversary celebration cake.

Chorus Niagara in perforrmance. Photo courtesy of the Chorus

This 50^th Anniversary season finale features over 200 singers and instrumentalists and showcases a brilliant quartet of Canadian Opera stars.  Joining the 100 voices of Chorus Niagara are Choralis Camerata and Chorus Niagara’s Community and Side-by-Side High School Chorales.  The Niagara Symphony Orchestra accompanies the massed choir. This gala performance celebrates not only the Golden Anniversary of Chorus Niagara, but also the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Giuseppe Verdi, Italy’s most celebrated operatic composer. Continue reading →

A Post from CATCH, also known as the ever relentless watchdog group, Citizens at City Hall in neighbouring Hamilton, Ontario

(Niagara At Large is posting the following piece from the Hamilton online site CATCH because there are still strains of interest, even in this 21^st century as some look for more earthly favourable transportation alternatives, to run a multi-lane highway from the car and truck congested GTA, through Hamilton and Niagara, above the Niagara Escarpment, where this Robert Moses 1950s auto track would cut through some of what is left of the best crop and livestock lands in southern Ontario.

Niagara’s regional council is going to Queen’s Park this spring, around what it calls ‘Niagara Week’, to promote a movement forward on what is calls a transportation “corridor” which could mean rail or some other transporation mode, or could be a euphemism for a highway for the middle half of the 21^st century for all we know – even as the soaring price of gasoline and diesel fuel might quite likely make other modes of transportation look like a free ride, for all we know.

Now here is the following piece by CATCH and let me repeat, CATCH is  a great site that is all about grassroots democracy and telling what the mainstream media, including that all-mighty Hamilton Spectator newspaper is not all that ready to tell, and Niagara At Large encourages you to visit Catch regularly.)

A mid-pennisula highway would cut a swath above the Niagara Escarpment, through numerous kilometres of croplands and wetland, watershed and other natural areas to drive ever more cars and trucks back and forth from the U.S. to the GTA. Is it worth it? How much sense does another high-cost highway make by the time it might open, in the middle of the 21st century.

Hamilton councillors and the senior city staff are continuing to lobby for a mid-peninsula highway to the aerotropolis despite an exhaustive provincial study that concluded three years ago that there is no need for the controversial project. Provincial officials who explained the recommendations of the Niagara to GTA study to council last month were accused of pushing a “political” decision and their responses dismissed as “hogwash” by both Brad Clark and Terry Whitehead. Continue reading →

NAL kormos death not suspicions

‘No Suspicious Circumstances’ Found In Death Of Niagara, Ontario Political Icon Peter Kormos

(Niagara At Large is posting the following April 1 media release from the Niagara Regional Police Service for our readers information.)

The Welland, Ontario home of Peter Kormos, where the politician many honoured as a a heroic and unrelentless voice for ordinary people, was found dead this March 30 and where a shrine of flowers is beginning to take shape on his front porch. Photo by Doug Draper

On Monday April 1, 2013, a post mortem examination was conducted regarding the death of Peter Kormos. The cause of death has been determined and the results of the examination revealed no suspicious circumstances regarding his death. Police investigation regarding the death of Mr. Kormos has been concluded.

On March 30, 2013 at 10:45 a.m. members of the Niagara Regional Police Service, Welland Fire Department and Emergency Medical Services responded for a medical call at the residence of Niagara Region Councillor and former Welland MPP, Peter Kormos. The Niagara Regional Police can confirm that Mr. Kormos has died. At this time, cause of death is still under investigation. An autopsy has been scheduled for Sunday March 31, 2013.

(Niagara At Large invites you to join in the conservation by sharing your views on the content of this post below. For reasons of transparency and promoting civil dialogue, NAL only posts comments from individuals who share their first and last name with their views.)

By Doug Draper

In the wake of the sad news this March 30 that Niagara, Ontario political icon Peter Kormos, the Niagara regional councillor and former Ontario MPP, was found dead in his Welland home, the tributes have been pouring in from other political leaders and ordinary citizens alike.

Long-time Niagara, Ontario political leader Peter Kormos

“This is a very sad day for Welland and Niagara,” said St. Catharines regional councillor Andy Petrowski in a statement he prepared before hosting a two-hour tribute and phone-in program for Kormos on CKTB radio this March 31. “I have come to know Peter as a very kind and genuine man, a true friend who demonstrated extraordinary bravery and dignity in the face of his health challenges,” added Petrowski in the statement. “Ontario has truly lost one of its most professional and dedicated public servants. I will miss my seat mate on Regional Council and my co-host on local radio. May God be with him.”

Numerous people from across Niagara called the radio program, which is called ‘The Region’ and which Kormos co-hosted with Petrowski each Sunday up to this one since its launch earlier this winter, with stories about how much Kormos did to help them with a problem they had, whether they lived in his riding or voted for him or not, or how much he did to inspire them to get involved in public affairs. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

He was a towering figure in the life of Niagara and Ontario – so much so that it is almost impossible to believe he, who was only 60 years old, is so suddenly gone.

Peter Kormos, at a citizens’ rally in St. Catharines in 2010, protesting police actions and mass arrests at the G20 Summit in Toronto. File Photo by Joanne McDonald.

Those of us who have followed the journey of Peter Kormos, from his early days as a student activist in the 1960s, through his years as a lawyer defending people he believed were getting a bad rap from the law, and his years as a free-spirited, fiery voice in municipal and provincial politics, knew over the past could of years that something was going terribly wrong with his health. But it was not something he cared to discuss, at least not publicly anyway.

When you phoned or crossed paths with him and began with a; ‘Hi Peter, how are you doing?’, he’d typically respond with his trademark; ‘Howdy’ and; ‘I’m doing just fine. Then it was on to the issues. Peter was not much for talking about himself. He always wanted to get on to the issues at hand. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

 “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

(This profile of Peter Kormos, Niagara regional councillor and former Ontario NDP representative for the riding of  Welland who was found dead in his home died this Saturday, March 30 at age 60, was first written by Doug Draper for a magazine published by the Metroland/TorStar media chain more than seven years ago.  It was never published because the magazine quickly went the route so many mainstream publications go these days and became the equivalent of a shopper and a feature article of this nature was no longer welcome.

Niagara At Large lifted it from the vaults and posted it in late 2010 and is reprising it once again as another tribute to the dedication and courage of an iconic political figure who has left us all too soon.)

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. – from the photo collection of Peter Kormos

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. Continue reading →

Submitted by the Office of Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath

Queen’s Park, March 28, 2013  –  New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath renewed her call for a hard cap on public sector CEO salaries following the release of the 2012 Sunshine list.

Kevin Smith, supervisor of the Niagara Health System and CEO of the St. Joseph’s Health System in Hamilton was high on the Sunshine List with a 2012 salary totalling around $721,000.

“When public sector CEOs are getting pay hikes that are bigger than most people’s pay cheques something’s not working. We need a hard cap on CEO pay in the public sector,” said Horwath.  “Money that should be going to frontline health care or lowering tuition fees, is being spent on CEO salaries, and that’s not fair for families who are struggling.”

Horwath has reiterated her call to cap publicly-paid executive salaries at double the salary of Ontario’s Premier. The Premier’s current salary is $209,000. According to the provincial sunshine list, there are over 25 public sector energy executives making more than twice the Premier’s salary, and while everyday Ontarians are told to tighten their belts, public sector executives continue to receive generous raises on top of six-figure salaries. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

While media in Niagara, Ontario focused late this March on the lack of parking needed for those visiting the just-opened hospital complex in west St. Catharines, there is also the question of whether visitors to a hospital should have to pay a fee for parking.

That question will be explored this Friday, March 29 on CBC TV’s public affairs program Marketplace, scheduled to air at 8 p.m. on CBC’s Cable 6 channel – a program which asks if charging fees for parking at a hospital is not just one more “tax on the sick.”

It is a question well worth asking at a time when the Niagara Health System – operator of most of the hospital services in Niagara, Ontario – recently raised parking rates for both visitors and staff, to $2 per half hour, $4 an hour and up to a maximum of $8 a day to help beat back a multi-million-dollar annual operating deficit.

Yet in fairness to the NHS, it is far from the only hospital system in Ontario and across the country charging more than many municipalities do per hour to park your car along a downtown street. According to the Marketplace report, hospitals across the province and country resort to parking and other user fees because they are not getting enough funding from federal and provincial governments to cover their operating costs, and perhaps we all have to ask ourselves why that is the case. Continue reading →

A Submission from Niagara Recycling

(A brief foreword by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper – This not-for-profit recycling organization and partner of Niagara, Ontario’s regional government was one of the first bodies of its kind in the province and the country to launch a curbside recycling program. Niagara Recycling, managed back in those days by Brian McMullan (who went on to become mayor of St. Catharines) and these days by Norman Kraft, has also had a long-time record of giving people with developmental disabilities an opportunity to work.

Sorting lines at Niagara Recyclings processing plant in Niagara Falls, Ontario

NAL also wishes to applaud the efforts of Niagara Recycling, along with one of its other long-time regional partners, NTEC, to raise public awareness about individuals and families faced with f autism, and about what we can do as a society to make life better for people living with this disorder.)

Niagara Falls (March 28, 2013) – As Niagara’s leading social enterprise company committed to helping people with developmental disabilities, Niagara Recycling wants to turn the spotlight on a disorder whose rates are said to be steadily climbing in Canada. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Now wait a minute. Wasn’t it just a little over three weeks ago this March, at an official ribbon cutting gala for Niagara Health System’s new hospital in west St. Catharines that was orchestrated in concert Niagara, Ontario’s Sun Media newspapers, that we were treated to one NHS honcho  after another praising themselves over the great vision and planning that went into this hospital?

A computerized rendition of Niagara’s new hospital in west St. Catharines.

And now – less than a week after the hospital’s March 24 official opening and a media release from the NHS, telling us how “smooth” the whole move to the hospital was going, I am reading and hearing reports in the local media, and receiving email from readers to this site on a shortage of parking at the new hospital site.

“The new hospital in St. Catharines has only been open a few days and officials are starting to realize they may need more parking,” ran one report this March 27 on St. Catharines’ CKTB radio news.

Now wait a minute again. Didn’t the Niagara Health System – the body created by Ontario’s former Conservative government more than a decade ago to implement an equally smooth amalgamation of hospital services in Niagara – tell citizens across the region way back when that one of the reasons it needed to locate the new hospital out in the western fringes of St. Catharines, on former farmland, rather than somewhere in or around an urban centre was that it needed all of that extra acreage for parking? Continue reading →

A Submission from the Office of Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath 

QUEEN’S PARK – March 27, 2013 – Today the New Democrat motion to give Ontario families a break by reducing auto insurance premiums by 15 per cent passed in the legislature. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says there’s a lot more work to do to lower rates but says today’s vote is a sign that politicians are feeling the pressure from frustrated drivers.

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath

“We’re hearing lots of positive talk, but now the rubber has to hit the road. Insurance companies have seen their costs reduced. Now it’s time to give the Financial Services Commission a mandate to lower rates by 15 per cent over the next year,” said Horwath. 

In 2010, the Liberal government made changes to the auto insurance industry which slashed benefits paid out to accident victims by 50 per cent.  These changes saved the industry $2 billion annually, yet in the past two years the premiums that auto insurance drivers pay have gone up 5 per cent. New Democrat Consumer Critic Jagmeet Singh says that’s not fair. Continue reading →

By Mark Taliano

Throw a stone in the water, and ripples extend outward.

David Kawapit’s vision of a journey for his Native people

 Chief Theresa Spence’s Sacred Fast on Victoria Island did not produce a meaningful dialogue with the Crown and the Prime Minister, but it did produce something entirely different and more enduring – a vision.

Seventeen year old David Kawapit Jr., from Quebec’s Whapmagoostui First Nation on the coast of Hudson Bay, had the vision.  In it, he saw a wolf and a bear. The wolf, he explains, is the First Nations’ peoples, and the bear is the government.  Singly, the wolf is destroyed, but when the wolf is accompanied by its brothers and sisters, they can easily take down the bear.

And so began the journey, in the northern cold of minus 50 degrees Celsius. Six young Cree, all under the age of 21, led by the “White Wizard”, Issac Kawapit, aged 46. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

In a month of March when residents of Niagara, Ontario have honoured the memory of Harriet Tubman – a former black slave from America who went on to lead many enslaved people to freedom north of the Canada/U.S. border and spent time living in St. Catharines, Ontario in the 1850s – U.S. President Barack Obama has now designated a national monument in Maryland to her.

This  tribute statue to Harriet Tubman is in Harriet Tubman Park in Boston, Massachusetts, a state that was strong on abolitioning slavery  long before the Civil War.

This first black president of the United States made this designation during a month that many, including members of the Historical Society of St. Catharines and parishioners of the Salem Chapel (also know as the B.M.E. Church) in St. Catharines where this heroic conductor of the ‘underground railroad’ once worshipped, are paying tribute to her on the 100^th anniversary of her death. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Just when it looked like it would be the end for more than 100 years of horse racing in Fort Erie, Ontario, the province’s premier has announced that some “transitional funding” will be made available to keep this track and others at Flamboro and Georgian Downs galloping on for at least one more year.

The details of the deal with the three tracks have yet to be announced, but Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor, a Liberal government representative who has been fighting to save the Fort Erie track for years, told Niagara At Large this March 26 he hopes more information will be made available at a media conference scheduled in Fort Erie later this week. The public should no any and all details of taxpayers money spent to save these tracks, he said.

In the meantime, Craitor, whose Niagara Falls riding includes Niagara-on-the-Lake and Fort Erie, called the deal “positive news.” Continue reading →

A Submission to NAL from Niagara Parks Commission

Niagara Falls, Ontario – Beginning this weekend, The Niagara Parks Commission’s Floral Showhouse will once again feature a seasonal favourite, the annual Easter Display, a Niagara tradition for over 65 years. The popular addition of real chicks and bunnies will also return, which is a treat for kids and adults alike.

Photo courtesy of Niagara Parks Commission

 The Easter display features a cross of lilies surrounded by colourful and fragrant spring flowers such as daffodils, tulips, hyacinths and azaleas. The warm and serene setting is bursting with gorgeous blooms, orchids and exotic tropical plants as well as beautiful songbirds to get you in the mood for spring. Continue reading →

Submission to NAL from Niagara College

The arrival of spring and a rise in temperatures goes hand in hand with
a less welcome seasonal challenge: potholes.

Just in time for the season, Niagara College’s Niagara Research department is about to unveil its work on a new and improved pothole
patching machine for a local company.

In May 2012, Niagara Research began a project for Ryan Industrial
Technologies. The Grimsby-based machine fabricator approached Niagara
College with the idea of developing a new asphalt pothole patching
machine to be sold to construction contractors and municipal works. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

In the 1982 Hollywood movie Tootsie, one of the characters in the film had written a play about a family returning to their home in the Love Canal.

The old Love Canal neigbhourhood with one of the world’s worst toxic wast dumps in the middle. Is it leaking into the neighbourhood and into creeks flowing to the Niagara River again?

The idea of anyone moving back to the Love Canal seemed crazy and had everyone in the theatre laughing of course, since the neighbourhood bearing that name in Niagara Falls, New York had, only a few years earlier, been the setting of a toxic waste disaster that made world-wide headlines as hundreds of residents fled homes there and the first-ever ‘national emergency’ for a neighbourhood poisoned by migrating chemicals was declared by a president of the United States.

Yet in what turned out to be a case of real life imitating art, a New York State-sponsored group called the Love Canal Area Revitalization Agency was, by the beginning of the 1990s, overseeing the sale of more than 200 previously abandoned houses within one or two golf shots from the perimeter of a dump containing an estimated 20,000 tonnes of some of the most deadly chemicals produced by modern science. The homes were sold on an assurance U.S. state and federal government agencies that the dump had been securely walled off with drains, pumps and other devices, and that any contaminants detected in outer rings of the neighbourhood hosting homes that would be sold were found in concentrations that were “acceptable,” according to standards governments set in consultation with the petro-chemical industry, for human habitation.

Now we learn from a series of stories published in The Buffalo News earlier this year, that some of the people who have moved into these discount homes in the Love Canal zone have filed a $113 million lawsuit against government agencies, alleging that the dump, which contains poisons as life-zapping as dioxin (one of the most active ingredients in the God-awful defoliant used in the Vietnam War), is leaking again. Could it also be leaking , once again, to the Niagara River and Lake Ontario? Continue reading →

Submitted by the Niagara Health System

(This Sunday, March 24 marked the official opening of the Niagara Health System’s new hospital in west St. Catharines, Ontario. Up and down Fourth Avenue, running between  Hwy 406 interchange and the hospital site,, medical transfer vehicles could be seen, one after another, taking patients from the St. Catharines General and other hospitals to the new site.

 What follows is a report from the NHSt on the first day of activities at the new hospital.)

Patient transfer vehicles buzz in and out of west St. Catharines hospital site on first official day of hospital’s opening. Photo by Doug Draper

A milestone in healthcare was marked in Niagara today with the successful opening of the new St. Catharines hospital. Close to 200 patients were safely transported to the site during a complex move that took approximately six hours.

“The move went very smoothly thanks to the hard work and cooperation of the many physicians, staff, volunteers, and our community partners including Niagara Emergency Medical Services,” says Susan Kwolek, Vice President Patient Services, Executive Lead, St. Catharines Site. “We want to thank patients and their families for their patience and trust in us during the transfer.”

Highlights: Continue reading →