Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Doug Draper

If there is any doubt that Niagara’s southern tier holds a golden key to the region’s future, there was sure no hint of it at the annual Mayors of South Niagara luncheon this Feb. 4.

Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey addresses annual south Niagara mayors' summit as Fort Erie Mayor Doug Martin and Wainfleet Mayor Barbara Henderson listen on. Photo by Doug Draper

More than 200 makers and shakers from across the region, including many of Niagara’s top political and business leaders, packed a banquet room at the Sparrow Lakes Golf Club in Welland to hear five of the region’s mayors – Dave Augustyn of Pelham, Vance Badawey of Port Colborne, Damian Goulbourne of Welland, Barbara Henderson of Wainfleet and Doug Martin of Fort Erie – focus on the achievements and challenges facing a part of the region poised to possibly experience an unprecedented amount of business and residential growth over the next few decades.

The mayors too turns focused on five pillars for building a healthier, more prosperous future for Niagara’s southern region, including revitalizing downtowns, agriculture, transportation, stimulus funding for building roads, recreational and education facilities and other infrastructure, and building an economic gateway to people and markets across the Canada-U.S. border and around the world.

But fo a handful of women from Port Colborne and Fort Erie who attended the luncheon sporting the attire of the Yellow Shirt Brigade – a citizens group struggling to save hospitals services in Niagara’s southern tier, the 800-pound gorilla in the banquet hall was hospital services because they were never discussed. So the women in the yellow shirts walked out at the end of the luncheon, wondering how the mayors could spend an hour outlining their collective efforts for growth in south Niagara without ever once mentioning health care services.

“How can all of the grandiose plans for the future of the southern portion of Niagara be achieved without accessible health care, and hospitals to care for the sick and dying,” said Joy Russell, a Fort Erie resident and one of the Yellow Shirt Brigade members who attended the Feb. 4 event. “If they widen roads, improve water and sewers, and entice more people (to live and establish businesses in the southern tier), what is going to happen to them if they have an accident or need a hospital bed nearby?” Continue reading →

By Becky Day

The St. Catharines-Thorold Chamber of Commerce hosted its annual State of the Cities address titled “The Tale of Two Cities” on February 5. Thorold Mayor Henry D’Angela and St. Catharines Mayor Brian McMullan both shared the achievements of their cities with the business community.

The Chamber brought the two cities together for the event, not only because they represent them, but because it believe people from St. Catharines and Thorold should care about what is happening in both cities.

Chamber President Rob DePetris emphasized the idea of municipalities coming together for the common good in a motivating speech to a room full of Niagara business people and dignitaries.

“The public sector and politicians must modify the way in which they do business,” he said. “Governments in Niagara can send a powerful signal to the private sector that this region is ready for investment by showcasing that municipal boundaries are simply lines on a map and not barriers to progress. By throwing away parochialism and embracing cooperation for the greater goal of economic prosperity.” Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, once wrote that if it “were left to (him) to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter.”

Reporter and columnist Becky Day refused to let the corporate chains put her down. She has launched her own online news site called Thorold Politics

What Jefferson was essentially saying at the time – some 200 odd years ago – is that you can’t have accountable democratic government without having a free and vigilant press.

In that spirit, Niagara At Large, as a new and fledgling source of independent news and commentary in the Greater Niagara Region, will use this venue, for as long as it lasts, to stand up for journalists in this region who try against all kinds of odds these days to do their job. We are talking about journalists who too often find themselves running up against the corporate chains that own and operate too many of our media outlets, and either don’t’ provide the resources journalists need to play an effective watchdog, without fear or favour, or go out of the way to block their efforts to get at the truth.

Becky Day, a journalist in Thorold, Ont. who was about the only shining light at a pretty crappy chain-run weekly called ‘The Thorold Niagara News’, falls into the category of a journalist in that community – one that she and I happen to live in, by the way – that continues to care. The fact that she is no longer gamely employed at ‘The Thorold Niagara News’ just about says it all for that publication. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

How would you rather travel between the Buffalo area and New York City? In a Toyota with a sticky gas pedal or on a flight on one of those smaller commuter airlines subcontracted by larger airlines because they figure they can save money not taking you on their own.

I don’t know about you. But I’d choose a Toyota over a commuter plane in a New York minute! And if the gas pedal sticks, at least I’m behind the wheel and can do everything from slamming on the brakes (unless that Toyota happens to be a Prius) to turning off the ignition or both as I veer off the road into a field full of snow where I can hopefully punch open the door and jump free with a minimum of broken bones.

On a commuter jet, all I can do is sit back there in the passenger section, clutching whatever book or magazine I’m reading like a teddy bear as the pilot, who might have about as much training and salary as someone managing a fast food restaurant, works with whatever limited training and hours of experience he’s had in the air to keep to keep us from spiraling downward to that same field of snow.
 
If you think I’m being a little unfair to the airlines, just check out the stories on the front page of The Buffalo News this Feb. 3 (you can find them by visiting www.buffalonews.com and plugging in a few key search words like ‘Flight 3407’ and “fatal stall”) on the fatal flight of a commuter plane, subcontracted by Continental Airlines, a year ago this February as it crashed into a neighbourhood in the Buffalo area community of Clarence. Continue reading →

One of the Buffalo area’s environmental groups dedicated to protecting and preserving the Niagara River watershed for future generations is hosting a series of fund-raising concerts to support its green efforts.

Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper – a group linked internationally to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and folk music icon and activist Pete Seeger – is receiving support from the Labatt beer company in Canada and the Good Neighbourhood to showcase six hot bands from north of the border in fund-raising venues in Buffalo from Feb. 9 through Feb. 13.

Click on the ‘keep reading’ tab at the end of this sentence to receive all the details on this fund-raising concert series for improving the quality of our environment and one of the most icon rivers in the world.  Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

There was Premier Dalton McGuinty on a CHCH television news clip last week, trying to persuade us that his Liberal government is not gutting fair access to hospital services in small communities across Niagara and the rest of the province.

A sign of the times. An American private health care provider is posting billboards like this in Niagara, Ont. to take advantage of a health care system here that is beginning to fail us. Photo by Doug Draper

 “I do sense a responsibility on behalf of Ontarians to do everything we can to ensure that they have access to the best possible health care, as close to home as is reasonably possible,” insisted McGuinty in response to questions a scrum o reporters asked him about comments made earlier by Dr. Alan Drummond, a spokesman for the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians. “I am convinced we are leaders on that score.”

McGuinty was responding to comments Dr. Drummond and his association were making on the death this past holiday season of Fort Erie teen Reilly Anzovino.

Reilly, who would have celebrated her 19th birthday last week, died in the early hours of Dec. 27 following a traffic accident in her hometown that had her being rushed to an emergency room at a Welland hospital because as of last summer, thanks to the McGuinty government, the emergency rooms at Fort Erie’s Douglas Memorial Hospital and Port Colborne Hospital have been downgraded to urgent care centres that will no longer take patients suffering some of the most serious medical emergencies. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Those opposed to the erection of a condo tower in front of Bay Beach – one of the last and most popular public beaches along Niagara’s lakefronts – have created a new coalition of homeowners, businesses and other organizations determined to fight it.

The McGuinty/Bradley vision of the future for Bay Beach, one of the last popular public beaches along the Niagara shores of Lake Erie. An image of Bay Beach, from summers past, is featured below.

The coalition, called the Fort Erie Waterfront Preservation Association, is made up of a host of community organizations, businesses, property owners and individuals in the Niagara area and, according to its spokespersons, is “firmly opposed” to plans to build a multi-storey condominium in front of the last public beach left – known affectionately by countless thousands as Bay Beach – in the iconic Crystal Beach area of Fort Erie.

“A private 12-storey tower on waterfront property that belongs to the public is simply not acceptable,” says Eric Gillespie, a lawyer representing the new coalition. “Amongst many other concerns, the scale of the building is totally inappropriate for an intimate waterfront cottage community. …

“All residents of Fort Erie should likely be concerned,” Gillespie added. “The changes to the zoning bylaw required for the (condominium) development may set an irreversible precedent for high-rise, high-density development all along the Fort Erie waterfront.”

Indeed, all residents along any waterfront throughout the rest of Niagara or any other region across the province of Ontario should be concerned. And maybe you folks who live in waterfront communities across the border should be concerned too, if you are not already.

Once again, and thanks to a recent decision by the Ontario government of Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty and the hacks he has working for him on the province’s Ontario Municipal Board, to approve the erection of a multi-storey condo tower in the heritage district of Port Dalhousie in Niagara, any land along a waterfront is open game now for development, however out of place or hostile it is to the surrounding communty. Continue reading →

 By Doug Draper

Reilly Anzovino would have been 19 years old this Jan. 26.

Some of her friends gathered at her home in Fort Erie on that day to celebrate her life and, at the same time, console grieving members of her family.

Reilly Anzovino

Lest we forget, Reilly was the young woman involved in a tragic accident on a stretch of Hwy. 3 in her hometown of Fort Erie this past Boxing Day and whose chances for survival drained to a point where she passed away slightly before or after she arrived in a 19-and-a-half-minute ride on a cold, icy night to the emergency at the Welland hospital.

Since then, thousands of residents in her community and others across this Greater  Niagara Region, including her parents Denise Kennedy and Tim Anzovino, and three of Niagara’s provincial members of parliament – Kim Craitor, Peter Kormos and Tim Hudak – have called on Dr. Andre McMallum, Ontario’s chief coroner, to hold a public inquest into the circumstances surrounding Reilly’s death.

They want to know if the decisions by two agents of the Liberal provincial government of Dalton McGuinty – the Niagara Health System (NHS) and Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brand Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) – that lead to the closing of emergency rooms at hospitals in Fort Erie and Port Colborne last summer may have had a hand in this tragedy. Continue reading →

Until the wee small hours, the region's meeting on our transit future drags on

By Doug Draper

“Patience, patience,” Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badeway implored others on the regional council and dozens of us listening in the gallery as the marathon meeting over whether or not the region should play a role in cobbling together an inter-municipal transit system for Niagara dragged on and on.

Patience was not in the cards for some.

Judy Casselman, a veteran regional councillor for St. Catharines, looked frustrated as she stressed more than once that any further delay in moving forward with an inter-municipal transit system would show a “void of leadership” to far too many in the public, including students, seniors and lower-income people who’ve been waiting for years for  a good, reliable transit system to get them to school, to job, to visit with a loved one in a hospital, or just get out to buy a few groceries.

St. Catharines Mayor Brian McMullan said he walked into the special meeting the region was holding on transit services this Jan. 28 expecting to participate in a “historic” session in which, after 40 years of the region running hot and cold on the idea of building a transit system for all Niagara’s residents, it was finally going to do it. Anything less that driving forward with a launch of an inter-municipal transit system amounts to “failure,” McMullan added, “and I don’t accept that.” Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

It may be cold out there. But the last week of this January has seen the battle with Ontario’s government over what it is allowing its appointed hacks to do to Niagara’s hospital system approach the boiling point.

Fort Erie Mayor Doug Martin slams province on hospital services

During the week, Fort Erie Mayor Doug Martin fired off a letter to Ontario’s health minister, Deborah Matthews, challenging recent comments she made in The Globe & Mail that the closing of the emergency room in the hospital in his municipality was undertaken to provide better health care for residents and not to save money.

In the meantime, Sue Salzer, a south Niagara resident and leader of the Yellow Shirt Brigade, a citizens dedicated to fighting for better hospital services, was a guest on CBC’s Radio Noon program on 99.1 FM. On the program, she discussed questions raised  by many in the community about the death of Fort Erie teen Reilly Ansovino, who died in a Boxing Day traffic accident in the municipality, and whether she might still be alive today if the emergency rooms at either the Fort Erie or Port Colborne hospitals – closed last year by the provincially sponsored Niagara Health System – were still open.

You can hear the entire CBC interview with Sue Salzer (if you have speakers on your compute)r by clicking on the following link http://www.cbc.ca:80/ontariotoday/story_archive.html  and scrolling down Radio Noon Ontario’s home page in the ‘Audio Archives’ section until you reach the title “ER Closing,” then click on that and listen.

Niagara At Large is also posting the Fort Erie mayor’s letter to Ontario’s health minister in its entirety, which you can read by clicking on ‘keep reading’ now. Continue reading →

 By John Bacher

 On January 23rd 2010, a major milestone took place when the people of the Niagara Region lost one of the most prophetic figures in the advocacy of our beautiful landscapes, particularly our unique Niagara fruit lands, from the combined blight of new expressways and urban sprawl.

Niagara conservation pioneer Bob Hoover

Robert Hoover – a founder and the first president of the Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society (PALS), one of the longest standing conservation groups in southern Ontario – died on January 23rd at age 89.  Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

In front of a standing committee of Ontario’s legislatures this Jan. 25, Sue Salzer, a Fort Erie resident and head of a ‘Yellow Shirt Brigade’ of residents fighting to preserve hospital services in south Niagara, made the call for fairer access to those vital services for her friends and neighbours.

Yellow Shirt Brigade leader Sul Salzer

In Salzer’s address to the committee, holding public sessions for one day in Niagara Falls, she stressed the concerns so many people in southern and cental communities of the Niagara region feel – that their services are being diminished as the Niagara Health System,  the body the province created for amalgamating hospital services in Niagara, moves forward with its plans to integrate more and more services in a new hospital complex it is building at a west St. Catharines site in north Niagara, at a cost of more than $1.5 billion.

Salzer went on to conclude that additional funds from the province is not the answer to a fiscal hole the Niagara Health System has found itself in.

“It is now (the NH’S’s time) to practice fiscal prudence and live within their existing budgets.  It is now time for Health Care Dollars to reach the hospital floor. … With your recommendation, and legislative support, you can start a new trend across Ontario and send the message that you really are concerned about the care of your constituents. …

“That destination should not be the grandiose LHIN Headquarters, or for salaries for the 32 staff supporting a nine member supposed volunteer board. …
“That destination should not be for the $357,000 salary for a non-medical CEO (Debbie Sevenpifer) or the 169 staff on the sunshine list or for more consultants.

To read the full text of Salzer’s address to the provincial legislative committee on financial matters click on and keep reading. Continue reading →

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 →