Niagara At Large

A Call to Action from the Sierra Club Niagara Group in Western New York

All are invited to attend a CLIMATE RALLY in Buffalo: Rise Up for Climate Justice! 

WHEN: Thursday, Sept. 24 at 5pm; *Festivities at 4pm The same day Pope Francis meets with the U.S. Congress and is expected to call for moral action to address the injustice of human-caused Climate Change as laid out in his recent Encyclical.

WHERE:  Niagara Square in Buffalo, NY  MAP with Metro Rail stations & Bus routes, Click Here

Continue reading →

• The Globe and Mail Would Not Invite Her, But May’s Green Team Has Found Another Way In 

News from the Green Party of Canada

Ottawa, Ontario, September 17^th, 2015 – Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada (Saanich – Gulf Islands), participates in today’s (this Thursday, September 17^th) Globe and Mail Leaders’ Debate using new, real-time video technology in partnership with Twitter Canada.

The Green Party’s Elizabeth May Finds Another Way To Join The Debate with the Conservatives’ Stephen Harper, the NDP’s Tom Mulcair and Liberal’s Justin Trudeau

During the economic themed debate, May will respond to questions posed by the debate moderator in real-time via Twitter. The debate will focus on the economy including energy and housing, taxation and jobs.

Ms. May will take media questions prior to and immediately following the debate. Debate details provided below: Continue reading →

A Niagara At Large  News Brief

Niagara At Large is pleased to post the following for this valuable service operated by students for students at Brock University.

Here is a few lines from the Centre’s website followed by an invitation to meet members of the Centre and consider joining them as a volunteer.

The Student Justice Centre seeks to educate the student body about racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of prejudice, while advocating for equity through campaigns, programming and workshops. 

We provide a safe space on campus where students can be who they are without fear of judgement. Our staff are trained to provide Peer-to-peer support to victims of injustice, including those who have experienced assault, harassment, discrimination, or prejudice.

​Finally, we address food security by operating the only food bank on campus.

For more on the Student Justice Centre and the services it provides click on http://www.brocksjc.com/ .

Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary for and from the greater bi-national Niagara region.

(NOW IT IS YOUR TURN. Niagara At Large encourages you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)

A Call Out from Canada’s Green Party Executive Director Emily McMillan

Elizabeth May and the Green Party will be excluded from Thursday’s (September 17^th) leaders’ debate, but that is probably what Stephen Harper had in mind when he hand-picked the Globe and Mail to host it.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May

Tell the Globe what you think about their decision to interfere with the democratic process by arbitrarily excluding Elizabeth May. Fill out our online form and add a personal message to be emailed to Phillip Crawley, Publisher and CEO of the Globe and Mail.

Polls show that over 80% of Canadians want Elizabeth May to be included in all the national leaders’ debates. The Globe and Mail didn’t get that message – make sure they get yours. Tell them how you feel: greenparty.ca/tell-them-how-you-feel

Thanks, Emmily McMillan Executive Director Green Party of Canada

Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary for and from the greater bi-national Niagara region.

(NOW IT IS YOUR TURN. Niagara At Large encourages you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)

News from Canada’s Conservative Party’s campaign office

September 14th, 2015 – Our Conservative government has a strong record of economic and fiscal management.

Canada’s Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper

Our government achieved a balanced budget last year – one full year ahead of schedule.

This is good for our economy and good for Canadian families.

Spending beyond our means, as Justin’s Liberals and Thomas Mulcair’s NDP propose, would lead to permanent deficits, massive tax hikes, and economic chaos. Continue reading →

News from the Toronto-based citizens group the Ontario Clean Air Alliance

September 14^th, 2015 -The lights appear to be coming on for the governments of Ontario and Quebec when it comes to seeing the mutual benefit of increased electricity trade.

Following the joint cabinet meeting held by the two governments last week, Ontario announced that “On energy, the provinces took another significant step in their partnership by signing an MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] that will explore the potential for increased trade in electricity to provide savings to Ontario ratepayers and help meet Ontario’s energy needs through Québec’s clean and renewable electricity supply.” Continue reading →

A Brief Note from NAL publisher Doug Draper

A majority of Canadians may want to see Green Party leader Elizabeth May participating in the coming Thursday, September 17^th leaders debate with Conservative Stephen Harper, NDP Tom Mulcair and Liberal Justin Trudeau.

Canadian Green Party Leader Elizabeth May not included in upcoming leaders’ debate

But despite calls to The Globe & Mail, the media organization hosting the debate, and all of the positive reviews May’s performance received during the first leader’s debate – held on August 6^th and hosted by Maclean’s magazine – it is now almost certain May will be left out of this next one.

Given that, I am doing something I would not normally do for any of the parties – running a message below from the federal Green Party about the Globe-hosted debate which includes a request for people to donate to the party’s campaign. Continue reading →

A Call Out To You From Zoocheck Canada

Reminder that submissions on the proposed marine mammal standards for Ontario are due by September 14th.

For submittal information, consultation notice, sample letter, copy of Zoocheck, CFHS and WAP submission, go to: https://www.zoocheck.com/consultation-on-marine-mammal-standards/

For more information on the animal advocacy group Zoocheck click on www.zoocheck.com .

Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary for and from the greater bi-national Niagara region.

(NOW IT IS YOUR TURN. Niagara At Large encourages you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)

By Nick Fillmore

September, 2015 – The primary objective of Stephen Harper’s absurdly-named Fair Elections Act  is to prevent hundreds-of-thousands of Canadians from voting for the NDP, Liberals, Greens, etc.

The Conservatives are, in effect, “cheating” the electoral process again, just as blatantly as in the past. They know that a large number of people – students, marginalized people and First Nations – will have a hard time voting because of the changes. And they know those people would not likely vote Conservative. Continue reading →

News from Niagara Parks Commission & Friends of the Niagara Glen

 (Foreword Note from NAL – If you’ve never explored this beautiful piece of Niagara, Ontario nature, here is a good chance to do it with a group that helps keep it lush and prestine.)

 Niagara Falls, Ontario, September, 2015 – The Niagara Parks Commission (NPC), in partnership with the Friends of the Niagara Glen, will be hosting a clean-up event in the Glen on Saturday September 12, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Overlooking the white waters of the Lower Niagara River from the Niagara Glen located off the Niagara Parkway in Niagara, Ontario.

All are welcome to join the group and come out to help remove litter and graffiti from these magnificent natural areas. All help is appreciated!

The Niagara Glen is an undeniable treasure trove of natural beauty. The rugged terrain masks a much more sensitive side that needs our help. Approximately 490 species of vulnerable plants and animals call the Glen home and an unprecedented number of them are listed as either “at risk” or “rare” in the province; one of the largest concentrations anywhere in Ontario. Continue reading →

The green area highlights the Greenbelt stretching from the Niagara River in Niagara, Ontario around Lake Ontario east of the Greater Toronto Area

News from the Hamilton, Ontario-based group Citizens at City Hall (CATCH)

(Niagara At Large is posting this in part because there are also individuals and groups in Niagara who would like to roll back or dismantle restrictions on building on good growing land inside the Greenbelt zone here.)

Many owners of rural lands want their properties removed from the Greenbelt that was established by the province ten years ago to preserve agricultural lands and natural areas treasured by many urban residents. But urban supporters led by Environment Hamilton may be drowned out or left out in the city’s formal public consultation on the Greenbelt which is taking place exclusively in rural areas not accessible by transit. Continue reading →

A Brief Commentary by Doug Draper

Obviously not everyone was touched by that image of the three-year-old Syrian boy’s body washed up on a Turkish beach around the 1^st of this September.

One of the photos of three-year-old Ala Kurdi that wrenched the hearts of people around the world.

At a campaign stop Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper made in the Niagara, Ontario riding of Welland this September 9^th, one Conservative supporter lashed back at a reporter asking Harper about his response to the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis with the following line; “How many kids drowned in pools in Canada this summer? Do you blame the government for that?”

It’s just my gut impression since I have no scientific data to back it up (not that Harper and his supporters have any respect for science anyway), but it seems like a disproportionate number of people who have so far yelled out creepy remarks like that are supporting Harper’s party. Continue reading →

A Message from the desk of Pelham Mayor Dave Augustyn

September, 2015 – As I wrote about in the spring, the Ontario Government is reviewing the Greenbelt Plan, Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, Oak Ridges Moraine Plan, and Niagara Escarpment Plan.

Pelham, Ontario Mayor Dave Augustyn

In April, I wrote to the Expert Advisory Panel overseeing this Review and implored them to increase the protection of the Fonthill Kame. I recently sent another letter to the Panel, and I am hoping that you will too!

The “Fonthill Kame-Delta” is Niagara’s rare, 75-metre-tall, 1,000 hectare landmark that was formed by retreating glaciers 13,000 years ago. As the “hill” in Fonthill and Shorthills and the “ridge” in Ridgeville, the Kame boasts the highest point in the Niagara Region and serves as a significant water recharge area and forms the headwaters of the Twelve Mile Creek. Further, the Kame’s microclimatic and soil conditions create an ideal environment for tender fruit including peaches, sweet and sour cherries, and plums. Continue reading →

A  Message from the Office of the Premier

September 9^th, 2015 – Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne released the following statement on the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II:

Queen Elizabeth II now Britian’s longest serving monarch

“Today marks a historic occasion as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II surpasses her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, as the longest-reigning British monarch.

For more than 63 years, Her Majesty has remained steadfast in her responsibilities, serving through times of turbulence and prosperity with strength, integrity and a sense of duty. Today, she is an enduring symbol of stability for the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. On behalf of the government of Ontario, I want to congratulate Her Majesty on this significant milestone and her remarkable reign, and extend our best wishes to her and the Royal Family.”

Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary for and from the greater bi-national Niagara region.

(NOW IT IS YOUR TURN. Niagara At Large encourages you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)

A Commentary from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

“Leadership is not waiting for others to act.”

I received that great line in the form of a comment I received this September from Niagara, Ontario resident Dick Halverson – a great citizen activist in the region who I first met when he was helping to found the Niagara chapter of Habitat for Humanity some two decades ago.

Canadian citizen and journalist Mohamed Fahmy

Dick Halverson used that line in a brief congratulatory note to Town of Pelham Mayor Dave Augustyn and his council for launching their own public transit service for the community.

Of course the line can also be used for many of the issues being debated in Canada’s current federal election, including health care, climate change and the Harper government’s grossly poor response to the Syrian refugee crisis unfolding overseas.

Another issue the line can very well apply to is Harper’s continued refusal to make a direct phone call to the president of Egypt to demand the release of Canadian citizen and journalist Mohamed Fahmy who was recently sentenced to three years in jail their on completely bogus charges. Continue reading →

A Foreword by NAL’s Doug Draper

I first saw the following sign – designed by Niagara resident Terry Nicholls who has a real talent when on that computer when it comes to creating signs and posters – at a rally of citizens this past September 7th Labour Day in front of the campaign office of St. Catharines Conservative MP Rick Dykstra.

The hundreds of people participating in the rally were calling on the Harper government Dykstra is apart of to open Canada’s doors to more Syrian refugees, whose plight is being broadcast day after day on major news networks for all the world to see.

Here is Terry Nicholls’ response to the Harper clan’s pathetic response to what leading aid workers around the world are calling a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions.

Print this sign off and pin it on a wall in your house or apartment, and pin under it a hand-written pledge to yourself that you will go to the polls this coming October 19th with the following mission firmly in mind – to defeat the Harper government.

If you have what you think is a good ‘Sign of our Times’ depicting some of the madness we are struggling against in today’s world, email it to Niagara At Large at drapers@vaxxine.com in a jpeg format and we will consider posting it.

Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary for and from the greater bi-national Niagara region.

(NOW IT IS YOUR TURN. Niagara At Large encourages you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)

Niagara Park’s Old Fort Erie, overlooking the mouth of the Niagara River and Buffalo, New York skyline. From NPC photo gallery

News from Ontario’s Niagara Parks Commission

Fort Erie, Ontario, September 7^th, 2015 – The Niagara Parks Commission’s Old Fort Erie is pleased to announce the return of its popular Murder Mystery evening, taking place on Saturday, September 12 at 7 p.m. Continue reading →

News from Brock University in Niagara, Ontario

September 7^th, 2015 – As Brock University’s Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts opens a new era in its new urban setting, it is launching a performance series to celebrate the bond between the community and the new arts centre of excellence in downtown St. Catharines.

Brock’s new Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine & Performing Arts in downtown St. Catharines, Ontario. Photo courtesy of Brock University

The series Imagining the City – part of the Walker Cultural Leaders Program, 2015/16 – consists of performances, exhibitions, concerts and conferences, all themed around ideas of the urban, and the relationship between the City and the University.

“Our goal is to invite the community to engage with us in a series of celebratory events, 40 or more, that run the course of the academic year,” said Derek Knight, MIWSFPA Director. Continue reading →

News from the St. Catharines & District Council of Women

On Thursday, September 10^th at 8 p.m., the Council of Women will be hosting free and open meeting on Alzheimer’s at the St. Catharines Centennial Library on 54 Church Street in that city’s downtown.

The guest speaker at the meeting is Denise Verreault, Director of the Education, Mind in Motion Program and Co-ordinator for the Alzheimer’s Society of the Niagara Region. Continue reading →

A Niagara At Large News Brief

Word is circulating in the social media that a number of Niagara, Ontario residents will hold a rally this Monday (September 7^th) in response of the growing Syrian refugee crisis and the Canadian government’s demonstrably pathetic response to it.

This sign, bearing the name of Alan Galib, the young Syrian boy in that heart-wrenching set of photos taken on the Turkish beach, mysteriously showed up on the front of St. Cathrines MP Rick Dystra’s campaign office in recent days and is making the rounds in social media.

The Niagara rally comes on the same long weekend similar gatherings are occurring in other cities and towns across Canada and is scheduled to take place in front of the campaign office of St. Catharines federal Conservative canadidate Rick Dykstra at 22 Geneva Street near the heart of St. Catharines’ downtown from 1 to 2 p.m.

It also follows in the wake of a photo flashed around the world last week of the body a three-year-old Syrian boy, washed up on a Turkish beach. The boy drowned along with his five-year-old brother and their mother. An aunt of the boys, living in the Vancouver area, said the family was ultimately hoping to start a new life in Canada. Continue reading →

Excerpts From Pat Carney’s Open Letter With A Few Brief Comments from NAL’s Doug Draper

“Act from your guts and your heart, not the pollsters and campaign. …Otherwise the Conservative Government should be swept out of office by a tsunami wave of anger that your government is so unresponsive to a humanitarian crisis of Biblical proportions.”

Former federal Conservative cabinet minister Pat Carney

Those powerful words and others were contained in an open letter Pat Carney, a former federal Conservative Party MP from British Columbia, a cabinet minister in the 1980s, and a Senator before retiring in 2008, sent to Harper Immigration Minister Chris Alexander this past Wednesday, September 2^nd while the world was first casting eyes on the body of a three-year-old Syrian boy, washed up on a Turkish beach.

Carney – another example of earlier generations of federal Conservatives (like former Prime Minister Joe Clark and the late Flora MacDonald and Joe Reid, a St. Catharines MP who recently passed away) who bear no resemblance to the hornet’s nest of a Conservative Party governing Canada now – said she believes the country, given its size, could probably take in as many as 100,000 Syrian migrants compared to the palty 2,300 the Harper government has allowed in so far. Continue reading →

– Organization Working to Resettle and Integrate Syrian Refugees in Ontario

News from the Government of Ontario

September 4^th, 2015 -Ontario is continuing to support Lifeline Syria’s efforts to resettle and integrate 1,000 Syrian refugees in the Greater Toronto Area over the next two years.

Syrian children and their families wait in refugee camps while they seek a new home away from the death and destruction in their homeland

Lifeline Syria is a community-based initiative that is helping to recruit, train and match private refugee sponsors in Ontario with Syrian refugees approved for resettlement by the federal government.  Sponsors include organizations, individuals, or groups of individuals such as faith-based groups.

In April 2015, Ontario provided $30,000 in seed funding to Lifeline Syria to help kick start their operation. Over the past six months, Ontario has been working closely with Lifeline Syria’s steering committee to further develop its initiative. The province is now providing Lifeline Syria with an additional $300,000 so that it can continue its important work. Continue reading →

A Call For Your Input from the Toronto-based animal advocacy group Zoocheck Canada.

(A Brief Foreword from NAL publisher Doug Draper – Long before I began writing stories about the treatment of marine mammals at the popular Niagara Falls, Ontario amusement park Marineland while covering environmental issues at The St. Catharines Standard in the 1989s and 90s, there have been calls from citizen activists, marine biologists and former marine park employees for effective legislation for protecting these great creatures of the sea where ever they may be held in captivity in Ontario.

Dolphin in captivity. Photo accompanied Zoocheck news release on proposed Ontario marine mammal protection standards

Finally, three years after Canada’s largest circulation newspaper, The Toronto Star, did a series of articles highlighting alleged examples of animal mismanagement at Marineland – allegations the park’s owner John Holer has adamantly dismissed as false – Ontario’s Liberal government unveiled proposed new standards for protecting marine mammals this past July and members of the public have until this coming September 14^th to comment on them. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

For the last three days people around the world have cast teary eyes on images of a little boy, washed up on a Turkish beach like driftwood.

The image that rocked the conscience of the world.

I first saw some of these heart-wrenching images on CNN, the U.S.-based cable news channel that gave extended coverage to the continuing exodus of hundreds-of-thousands of migrants from Syria and other regions of the Middle East and Africa smeared with the blood and torn flesh of their relatives and neighbours – an exodus described by many international aid workers as the worst humanitarian crisis involving refugees since the Second World War.

The CNN report ended with a narrator saying the three-year-old boy Alan Kurdi, his five-year-old brother Ghalib and their mother Rehan all drowned when they, along with their father Abdullah who survived trying to save them, were fleeing their native Syria and were eventually hoping to begin a new life in Canada.

Oh Canada. Once – and I do mean once –this country was (with a few very sorry exceptions like the failure to allow entry to Jewish people fleeing the Nazi-occupied Europe of the 1930s and 40s) a beacon around the world when it came to offering a haven for peoples fleeing war and other life-threatening catastrophes. That was before Canada’s current and hopefully outgoing Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the following to a gathering of conservatives in the United States; “When I get done with Canada you won’t recognize it.” Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

In Canada’s Harperland, there is no recession, just a “contraction” – a word Stephen Harper and his trained seals have been using in response to everything from the economic bloodbath in once carbon-rich Alberta and chronically high, double-digit unemployment rates for Canada’s young people to a loonie that has devolved to dodo status against the American greenback.

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made the country especially vulnerable to recession or worse by putting so many eggs in the tar sands basket.

Yes, in Harperland the economic data released by Statistics Canada this September 1^st, showing two consecutive quarters of negative growth – a long enough slump to, by any measure used in the developed world, constitute a recession – is nothing more than “a couple of weak months,” added Harper in response to the figures and is “almost exclusively” due to air rushing out of the balloon in one sector. Continue reading →

News from Pelham Mayor Dave Augustyn

September 1^st, 2015 –  In early 2015, Town Council and Senior Staff engaged in a strategic planning session to help identify goals and priorities for moving Pelham forward. One of our key priorities from our overarching goals was to “Offer public transportation to Pelham residents.” Why? It’s consistently something that folks of all ages have requested over the years.

Pelham, Ontario Mayor Dave Augustyn

Later in January, the Town applied for funding for the Ministry of Transportation’s “Community Transportation Pilot Grant Program,” which helps municipalities implement or improve public transportation. In March, the MTO approved the maximum — $100,000 – to help cover the majority of the costs to implement transit system in Pelham.

Staff consulted with Pelham Cares; local Senior Housing Facilities and Associations; Pelham Senior Advisory Council; Mayors Youth Advisory Council; existing shuttle services; and Niagara Region and area transportation specialists. The Town also undertook a community consultation and received more than 200 responses with suggestions for routing, timing, pick-up / drop-off locations. Finally, the Town considered the times that we currently provide transit – for Summerfest, for the Thursday night events (Suppermarket, Bandshell, Farmer’s Market), and for Canada Day. Continue reading →

Sign Petition Near Bottom Of This Post To Support Him News from Avaaz, an online global citizen activist network September 1st, 2015 – Environment Canada scientist Tony Turner wrote a political protest song about Stephen Harper – and now he’s been put on leave and is being investigated by the government! Environment Canada scientist Tony Turner on forced leave for singing it like it is about Harper They want to silence free speech and stop the song, “Harperman”, from reaching a bigger audience…but it’s about to backfire big time. Because if everyone receiving this email watches the video after signing at the link below, it will be seen by 3% of Canada – if we all share it with just one other person, 6% of Canada, and so on. Let’s make this viral and timely video a political nightmare for a government trying to silence critics. Click now and help make this huge by signing a petition demanding Tony be reinstated immediately – then watch the video and help “Harperman” take-off across the country by sharing on Facebook, and everywhere else: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/harperman_loc/?bRUUpdb&v=64168 Tony Turner is a popular folk singer, and also a scientist at Environment Canada. When a recording of his “Harperman” political protest song — calling on the country to get rid of the Harper government – was posted on Youtube, he was suspended and put under investigation. Environment Canada says that all employees agree to comply with a value and ethics code that lays out expected behaviour – but the Supreme Court has said that public service workers have a right to free expression — just like the rest of us. Our government has consistently muzzled scientists and public servants whose opinions or research could threaten their policies. And we’ve seen how it views protest, passing Bill C-51 that labels environmental activists as “security threats”. Fortunately, they can’t silence the internet. Click now to stand with Tony and watch the video – and to share it around the country: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/harperman_loc/?bRUUpdb&v=64168 It’s our right to protest, and we shouldn’t be punished for it. Let’s turn this story and “Harperman” into a political nightmare (for Canada’s Harper government)as election season comes into full swing. If you could not access a youtube performance of the Harperman song in the links above try clicking on this – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei50lM6ab1c With hope, Danny, Ari, Emma, Ricken and the Avaaz team SOURCES Public servant being investigated for writing and performing anti-Tory ‘Harperman’ song (National Post) http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/public-servant-being-investigated-for-wri… Federal scientist put on leave over Harperman protest song (CBC) http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/harperman-tony-turner-scientist-investigation-1.3207390

Continue reading →

News from U.S. Congressman Brian Higgins

September 1^st, 2015 – In a letter today, Congressman Brian Higgins (NY-26), co-chair of the House of Representatives’ Norther Border Caucus, criticized Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s contention that a proposal to construct a wall on the border of the United States and Canada is “a legitimate issue.”

With Peace Bridge in background, U.S. Congressman Brian Higgins discusses Canana/U.S. border crossing challenges at a 2014 media conference

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet The Press” Sunday morning, Walker said the issue was raised during a town hall meeting.

The U.S. – Canada border is the longest international border in the world at 5,525 miles long. Congressman Higgins’s Western New York District borders Southern Ontario and includes three automobile and two rail crossings between the U.S. and Canada, including the busiest automobile border crossing, the Peace Bridge.

The text of the letter is below: Continue reading →

A News Commentary by Doug Draper

There is an old saying that goes something like – ‘Set the punishment to fit the crime.’

Texting and talking on cellphones while driving is a major cause of deaths on our roads.

With that in mind, it is good that Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation, starting this September 1^st, 2015, is finally increasing fines for texting or talking on a cellphone while driving from a paltry $280 (including a $5 court fee and $50 victim surcharge fee) to $490 plus the same two mandatory fees and the docking of three demerit points.

While this means Ontario now has among the highest, if not the fine for distracted driving of any province or territory in Canada, and New York State where the fine is as high as $450 for a third offence, it is not as high as fines for some of the other driving offences in Ontario that cause fewer deaths and injuries. Continue reading →

A Note from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

“We are free. … Egypt is free,” cheered countless tens-of-thousands of mostly young Egyptians in the streets of Cairo just four years ago – in February of 2011 – when the country’s corrupt, autocratic strongman Hosni Mobarak was finally forced from power by what looked to the world to be a peaceful uprising of the people.

Canadian Mohamed Fahmy on trial on bogus charges in Egypt

The jubilation was shared by a large group of Niagara residents, some of them of Egyptian descent, rallied on the front steps of city hall in St. Catharines, Ontario for a new dawn of freedom and democracy in the land of ancient kings and pyramids – the “cradle of civilization” as it has come to be called.

Another Canadian of Egyptian descent, Mohamed Fahmy, who covered the uprising for CNN and joined in the celebration when Mobarak stepped down, went on to write a book titled ‘Egyptian Freedom Story.”

So much for any hope of a free and democratic though. Just as a number of governance experts many of us did not want to listen to at the time warned – ‘this George W. Bush notion that you can just take a country that has had a long history of blood-letting totalitarian and transform it into a democracy overnight is fairy tale. It is more realistic to ask the question – ‘If we get rid of the dictator behind door number one, what will we find behind door number two.’

In the case of Egypt and its beleaguered people, what was behind door number two – Mohamd Horsi and his Muslim Brotherhood – has turned out to be just as corrupt and brutal, if not more so, than the scoundrel who was thrown out. And to underscore that dark reality, we had the conviction this August 29^th of three journalists, including Mohamed Fahmy, Egyptian Baher Mohamed and Peter Greste (the later who his country, Australia, managed to get deported back home a while back) to three years in jail on bogus charges of “aiding a terrorist group.” Continue reading →

A Brief from Doug Draper, Niagara At Large

It is one of the last great festivals of summer in our binational Niagara region.

File photo of Elmwood Arts Festival in Buffalo, New York

The 16^th Annual Elmwood Avenue Festival of the Arts- so rightfully branded by its organizers as a “celebration of creativity community” and held in the heart of Buffalo, New York’s thriving Elmwood Village – takes place this Saturday, August 29^th from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and this Sunday, August 30^th from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The festival features hundreds of artists, crafts people, musicians and food vendors to a stretch of Buffalo’s Elmwood Avenue lined with unique cafes and shops and cut off to traffic for the occasion for several blocks between St. James Place and West Ferry Street. Continue reading →

News from the Sierra Club Niagara Group of Western New York

Meeting this Monday, August 31 at 6:00 in the 2nd Alliance room of the Unitarian Universalist Church, Ferry and Elmwood.

Agenda:  RISE UP FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE campaign

The Sierra Club Niagara Group, the Interfaith Climate Justice Community and many other groups have agreed to run a four month campaign leading up to the UN Paris Climate Talks at the end of 2015.

We are still completing the planning but have agreed to hold a CLIMATE JUSTICE rally in Niagara Square on Thursday, September 24, the day that Pope Francis will be speaking to the U.S. Congress. Continue reading →

–    Province Committed to Maintaining Roads and Bridges

New from Ontario’s Mnistry of Transportation

August 28^th, 2015 – Driver and vehicle licence fee increases come into effect on September 1, 2015 in order to help maintain Ontario’s road safety, support key services and improve crucial transportation infrastructure.

Fees for driver licences, renewals, replacements and commercial permits are among those increasing.

These changes support the recommendations of the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services to cover the rising costs of maintaining provincial roads, bridges and highways, enhance cost recovery for the delivery of driver and vehicle licensing services, and to support quality public services Ontarians rely on every day. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress,” said the late great Indian civil rights activist and humanitarian Mahatma Gandhi, “can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

With that, it was disgusting to read that Hybrid Turkeys – an Ontario-based corporation and one of the largest breeders and distributors of turkeys for food on the continent – was fined a mere $5,600 after pleading guilty in an Ontario court this August to one count of animal cruelty committed at one of its turkey farms in the Kitchener, Ontario area.

An alleged victim, crippled and in pain, from an undercover video in the Hybrid Turkeys animal cruelty case.

The animal cruelty case, brought to the court by the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) after an undercover video, produced by an Ottawa-based animal advocacy group Mercy for Animals Canada, allegedly showed employees inside one of the company’s barns kicking and clubbing turkeys to a point of severely maiming them.

The video, which I am providing a link to further down in this post, was broadcast, in part, on CBC’s Marketplace program and is sickening to watch, although not much more sickening than the joke of a  fine the Ontario court meted out and the fact that charges against five employees caught in the abuse of the birds were dropped. Continue reading →

• Apllications Now Open To Local Environmental Stewards

News from Ontario’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change

August 27^th, 2015 – Ontario is calling on community groups to help protect, restore and enhance the Great Lakes by applying for a Great Lakes Guardian Community Fund grant.

Lake Ontario and Lake Erie and beyond from space. Click on the image to enlarge and you may see the Niagara River connecting the two lakes. These are our precious life-sustaining fresh waters to protect and preserve.

Now in its fourth year, the fund provides a grant of up to $25,000 to not-for-profit organizations, schools, First Nations and Métis communities and other local groups for projects that have a direct environmental benefit to the Great Lakes. Past projects and activities supported by the fund have included:

• Planting trees
• Creating rain gardens
• Restoring wetland habitat
• Controlling invasive species
• Cleaning up beaches or shorelines
• Naturalizing stream banks and shorelines.

Applications will be accepted until October 23, 2015. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

If you’ve been following federal politics in Canada, you may have seen the TV ad the Harper government put out earlier this summer.

Mike Duffy (left) and Stephen Harper, who appointed him to Canada’s Senate and welcomed his presence at Conservative Party fundraisers, during better times.

It is the one that begins with a shot of harper at his desk, seemingly working away late into the day on the issues at hand.

“Most of the decisions you have to make in this job are hard ones,” says Harper in a voice over for the ad. “You have to confront issues you never expected,” he continues over an old photo of him shaking hands when then-Senator Mike Duffy, who is now fighting criminal charges in court.

“You can’t be bound by ideology (and) you don’t have the luxury of only making popular choices,” adds what we are given to believe is our hands-on, hard-working prime minister before he gets up and turns off the office lights to the line; “And on a good day you get to go home feeling you lived up to the job.”

Based on testimony coming out at the Duffy trial in recent weeks from Harper’s former chief of staff Nigel Wright and the former legal counsel to the Prime Minister’s Office Ben Perrin, the portrait of Harper painted in this ad is a steaming pile of crap. Continue reading →

A Brief from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

There goes another one of Niagara, Ontario’s iconic, locally owned businesses.

Photo courtesy of Julia Blushak

Niagara Central Hobbies – better known to generations of Niagara residents as ‘The Hobby Shop’ on St. Paul Street in St. Catharines – is closing this Saturday, August 29^th after 68 years in business.

Founded in 1947 by General Motors worker Ray Stewart whose daughter Maria Lounsbury, her husband Ray and other members of the Lounsbury family have kept operating over the years, the Hobby (shop) as I can’t stop calling it was the go-to place for electric trains, model cars and ships and planes and dollhouses, and a vast range of other inventory for anyone interested in arts and crafts. Continue reading →

By John Bacher

The electorate is catching up to the reality of climate change in Canada with a speed that should encourage the most pessimistic about the reality of human sin.

2013 flood in Calgary Alberta area wreaks devastating havoc on people and property.

While Pope Francis, in his recent Encyclical letter “Laudato S,i” recognized that; “the climate is a common good, belonging to us all and meant for all”, many despair of voters sharing  his understanding that it is imperiled “mainly as a result of human activity.” This breakthrough to higher consciousness was witnessed earlier this year in Canada’s most oil rich province when voters elected Rachel Notley to be Alberta’s Premier. Continue reading →

(A Brief Note from Niagara At Large – Check out the reference to climate change in the third paragraph of this media release.

While the climate change deniers out there continue to oppose any policies or plans that involve shifting away from oil and other carbon-emitting sources of energy, the costs we are all paying for property destruction, escalating insurance premiums and food prices due to an every higher frequency of  severe flooding, drought, wildfires, wind and hail storms and other climate-related disasters are becoming ever more unsustainable.

The Harper government never factors these costs in to its pitch for staying the course on expanding the tar sands expansion.)

News from the Ontario Government

Province to Better Support Individuals and Municipalities Following Natural Disasters

Queen’s Park, August, 2015) – Ontario is making it easier and faster for municipalities and individuals to get financial assistance following natural disasters.

Requests for provincial disaster assistance have doubled in the last five years and are expected to continue to rise due to climate change. As a result, the province is replacing the Ontario Disaster Relief Assistance Program with two new programs that will be more responsive to the needs of individuals and communities following a natural disaster. Continue reading →

A Brief  from Doug Draper at Niagara At Large

When former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was returning home this August 20^th from his first radiation treatment following his recent statements that he has been diagnosed with cancer, the following sign was lining streets in his Plains Georgia neighbhourhood.

“I think this is one campaign we can all get behind—Jimmy Carter for Cancer Survivor,” said someone who participated in placing the signs in Jimmy Carter’s neighbhourhood.

For the full article on his homecoming and the sign that greeted him, click on the Georgia-based The Daily Kos at – http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/21/1414169/-After-first-treatment-Jimmy-Carter-and-family-returned-home-to-see-the-streets-lined-with-support?detail=facebook

A related commentary posted on Niagara At Large this August 20^th can be viewed by clicking  on – https://voiceofniagara.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=14599&action=edit .

Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more newsand commentary.

(NOW IT IS YOUR TURN. Niagara At Large encourages you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)

A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

A recent headline on the front page of the business section of The Globe and Mail read; $29 Billion And Climbing’.

The headline was calling attention to the escalating costs Canadians are paying each year for pharmaceutical drugs- costs that are becoming unaffordable to growing numbers of us.

“The annual cost of prescription drugs hit near $29-billion last year – and that number is on the rise,” reads an introduction to the article under the headline. “As more Canadians seek more medication, a patchwork system of pharmaceutical coverage is under pressure.”

There is an answer to this looming crisis that threatens to bankrupt what private and public drug insurance plans are around and place an impossible burden on individuals and families that don’t have drub benefits. It is called pharmacare and several studies – the most recent one published earlier this 2015 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal – could save (not cost) Canadians somewhere between $4 billion and $11 billion a year! Continue reading →

A Note from Doug Draper

One of the last of the truly compassionate Conservatives from the Joe Clark/Flora MacDonald era, Joe Reid passed away earlier this August at age 97.

Joe Reid, a lawyer by trade, was a mayor of the Niagara, Ontario municipality of St. Catharines in from 1979 through the 1980s served as a federal Member of Parliament under the leadership of then-Progressive Conservative prime ministers Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney when there was still a streak of progressive running through a party that has nothing in common with what has metastasized under the jackboots of Stephen Harper today. Continue reading →

An electric car being re-charged

News from Niagara-on-the-Lake Hydro

August 18^th, 2015 – Niagara-on-the-Lake Hydro announced today their collaborative partnership with Tech Mahindra Ltd. to build an Intelligent Electric Vehicle Charging System (IEVCS) designed to contribute toward Ontario’s clean energy future.

“The potential load impact of electric vehicle charging on transformers is something that needs to be taken into consideration by local distribution companies,” said Tim Curtis, President, Niagara-on-the-Lake Hydro. “This innovative project will provide an alternative to expensive upgrades to our distribution system as Niagara-on-the-Lake Hydro customers contemplate switching to electric vehicles.” Continue reading →

From Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

Most media outlets wait until the final days before we vote to declare their position on the parties running in an election.

Stephen Harper has changed Canada, alright – for the worse.

They wait until the final days even though many of them – and I can say this for a fact as someone who has worked for news outlets for the better part of 40 years  – had a well-baked position in the oven before the election was even called. So much so that they have readers or viewers saying; ‘I can tell by their reporting that this newspaper has a Liberal bias or that news station has a Conservative bias’, and so on.

There is no such thing as objectivity when it comes to humans doing the reporting, however much we may try to be objective. We’re not recording machines. The most we can hope for out of anyone reporting news is fairness and accuracy

So with little more than eight weeks to go before Canadians go to the polls on October 19^th to vote in this federal election, I am not going to leave any you guessing where this online news outlet stands, if you don’t know already. As publisher and the principle writer at Niagara At Large, I’m putting all the cards I have at this point on the table now. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

For three days in a row, starting this past August 17^th, Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, rain full page ads in the back of its front section, promoting the federal leaders’ debate The Globe will be hosting this coming September 17^th.

Canada’s Green Party Leader Elizabeth May

“An epic fight four years in the making,” reads a headline for the ad above images of three, not four federal leaders. Missing and so far not invited to join in the Globe debate with Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is Canada’s Green Party Leader Elizabeth May- and that is not only unfair, it speaks poorly of a newspaper I otherwise have a great deal of respect for around the thoughtfulness and accuracy of its political coverage and commentary. Continue reading →

A Note from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper –

As a hopelessly addicted newspaper reader, one of the first sections of any newspaper I turn to is the Letters to the Editor section where more frequently than you may imagine, you can find a letter that – in just a couple of paragraphs – does a better job of pinning the tail on the donkey than a news article half a page long.

As the stench of deception and scandal continues to envelope Canada’s Harper government as the trial over former senator Mike Duffy’s alleged fraud and bribery trial, a letter to the editor ran in The Globe and Mail this past August 18^th that pinned that tail right where it belongs.

Here is the letter – Continue reading →

A Note from Doug Draper, Niagara At Large

He’s America’s Joe Clark.

And like Joe Clark, who served as leader of Canada’s Conservative Party and as the country’s prime minister for a brief time during the mid- to late 1970s, Jimmy Carter, who served one term as America’s president during the same period, has never really gotten the respect he deserves from his nation’s citizenry.

Both men brought to high office an honest and decency and intelligence we too rarely see in our politicians. Yet neither were granted the time and support they needed to fulfill agendas they may very well contributed to a better world for all of us today.

With that in mind, it was said to learn from a statement Jimmy Carter released himself this past August12th that he is now battling cancer. Continue reading →