Niagara At Large

By Doug Draper

Here’s a bit of encouraging news for people who want to believe there is a robust future for more public transit in the province of Ontario.

Waterloo Region's Rapid River Transit system and other transit services on both sides of our binational border are leaving Niagara, Ontario in the dust

The Ontario government recently announced a $300-million grant for a light rail system in one the province’s region, and that region just happens to be the Region of Waterloo.

And why? Well maybe because Waterloo, unlike Niagara, has already demonstrated the foresight the courage to move forward with a truly regional transit system, and has a fleet of buses serving one end of the region to the other and soaring numbers of residents leaving their cars at home and using public transit to prove it.

Unlike Niagara, Waterloo’s regional government, including its seven local municipalities (Kitchener, Cambridge and Waterloo, and four rural townships) took the bull by the horns a decade ago and agreed to turn over all responsibilities for operating transit services to the region. The result has been one transit agency, focused on providing the most accessible services possible to even the smallest communities in the region, and a ridership on regional buses that has increased by 80 per cent since the year 2000. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

When it comes to getting rid of another unpopular tax Ontario’s Liberal government is trying to impose on consumers, it helps to have one of the country’s major retailers on your side.

Canadian Tire's opposition helps kill eco-tax on Ontario consumers.

It was only a day before the province’s environment minister, John Gerretsen, was forced this July 20 to pull the plug on the government’s controversial “eco fee” on potentially hazardous toxic products, that Canadian Tire – one of the largest retailers of cleaners and other products that fall under that category – declared that it would no longer participating in collecting the fee from its customers.

All of that just 20 days after Premier Dalton McGuinty and his government used Canada Day (this July 1) to slip in this fee on top of the infamous Harmonized Sales Tax (HST), another regressive tax it imposed on consumers across Ontario on the same day. Continue reading →

Foreward by Doug Draper

Okay, so which is it? Is Niagara, Ontario’s hospital system still in the red or is it now in the black?

The Niagara Health System's Welland hospital site has experienced 22 more bed closings in recent months and it is not alone in coping with service cuts across the Niagara, Ontario region.

It is the same question Pat Scholfield, a Port Colborne resident and advocate for Niagara hospitals services, asks in a letter to the editor Niagara At Large is posting below. And there is good reason for the question.

According to a report broadcast this June 18 by the CBC, and based on figures it obtained from Local Health Integration Networks overseeing hospitals across the province, the Niagara Health System, as of this past March, has a surplus of $19 million, thanks to an infusion of funding from the province that erased an $18.8 million deficit (one of the worst in the province) it was wrestling with last year.

But this July 20, according to stories published in the St. Catharines Standard, Welland Tribute and Niagara Falls Review chain of newspapers, the NHS is still nursing a deficit of about $3 million – keeping it on the left side of the ledger with about third of the other hospital systems in the province that are collectively experiencing a funding shortfall from the Ontario government of about $107 million. Continue reading →

 By Doug Draper

Well, well, well.

Port Colborne hospital advocate Pat Scholfield wants Niagara Health System investigated.

That compared to drowning in red ink with one of the largest deficits for any hospital board in the province – running at $18.8 million and counting – a year ago at this time.

And how did the Niagara Health System manage to go from broke to a surplus in such a short period of time?

Certainly a recent infusion of about $49 million from the province’s Liberal government to partially make up for under-funding of Niagara’s hospitals going back to the Conservative government years of Mike Harris and one of his favourite former cabinet ministers – the now leader of the provincial Conservative Party and Niagara area MPP Tim Hudak – has been a big help. Continue reading →

English and tropical gardens surround this classic Victorian-style home on Buffalo's West Delavan Avenue, one of the many popular stops on the garden walk. File photo by Doug Draper.

By Doug Draper

If you live within reasonable driving distance of Buffalo, New York and love classic urban neighbourhoods and architecture, and have a passion for gardening on top of that, then mark July 24 and 25.

This coming weekend marks the 16th anniversary of Garden Walk Buffalo – what has grown into the largest free garden walks in all of North America, featuring more than 340 gardens at homes and other places in neighbourhoods often dating back more than a century.

Garden Walk Buffalo now attracts tens-of-thousands of visitors each year for an event that remains free of charge, unless you are interested in purchasing a t-shirt, poster, a great book of Buffalo Gardens with a fine DVD taking you on a virtual tour of gardens and those who care for them in some of the city’s most historic neighbourhoods. Continue reading →

Ontario justice critic and Niagara area MPP Peter Kormos speaks at rally protesting G20 security measures. Photo by Doug Draper.

“When the police cross the line,
slippery slope to the dark side”

– from a song composed by Dave Toderick and performed by the Niagara-based band ‘Bag of Hats’ at a G20 rally this July 17 in St. Catharines, Ontario’s Montebello Park.

By Doug Draper

Of all the images I walked away with following a rally this July 17 in St. Catharines, Ontario’s Montebello Park for a public inquiry into the actions of security forces at the recent G20 summit, the one that haunted me the most was that of a young girl crying hysterically for her mother.

“There was a 14-year-old girl … being carried in there (by police) and literally screaming that her mother had sent her out to get some milk,” recalled Curtis Dignard, a Welland, Ontario resident who, along with his friend Jason Bernard, was arrested and placed ‘in there’ – meaning the makeshift cages set up in warehouses for those taken into custody during the summit – after police closed in on them and others on the streets of Toronto while they were singing ‘O Canada’.

That young girl – whom we don’t know by name but whose story should be told to all Canadians who claim to care about freedom and democracy in this country – was just one of more than 900 people arrested during the two-day summit this past June 26 and 27 – at least 400 more than were arrested during the 1970 October Crisis when militant elements of the Front de liberation du Quebec (FLQ) kidnapped two government officials, killed one and the federal government of the day imposed a ‘War Measures Act’ that temporarily suspended the civil liberties of every person alive in the country at the time. Continue reading →

One Canadian named Barrett Smith keeps lone vigil at Niagara rally protesting G20 security measures. Photo by Doug Draper.

By Doug Draper

Every community has its share of colourful characters.

In the community where I live – Thorold, Ontario, located just south of St. Catharines for some of our American friends and others who may never have heard of the place before – one of our colourful characters is an aging curmudgeon almost everyone who’s lived here for any length of time knows by name.

He is Barrett Smith and he’s often been seen over the years, waving his long arms sharply during a presentation to the local council over the budget, or standing out in front of the grocery store at the plaza with a petition, or hoisting a picket sign he whipped together for a public rally.

This July 17, I found Barrett Smith sitting off on a bench with one or two others holding yet another picket sign that he almost apologized for making up with a black-felt pen on the fly. “I feel like I’m kind of alone out her,” said Barrett as I approached and asked for a picture of him displaying his sign at a rally in St. Catharines, calling for a public inquiry into security measures exercised at the recent G20 summit in downtown Toronto this past June. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Niagara, Ontario’s regional council is giving the body responsible for operating a majority of the hospitals across the region until the end of August to respond to calls from local municipalities and a provincial coalition of citizens for an independent investigation into “serious complaints” and “unresolved issues” members of the public have expressed about the management of those hospitals.

 During its July 15 meeting, the region’s council set the same deadline for a response from the province’s Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and the provincially created Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) for Niagara and surrounding Ontario regions and municipalities. The decision to send resolutions by the Ontario Health Coalition and its Niagara Health Coalition chapter, along with similar resolutions approved by Town of Fort Erie and the cities of Port Colborne, Welland and Thorold, to the province for an independent investigation of the operation of hospital services in St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Welland, Fort Erie and Port Colborne became the subject of heated debate. Continue reading →

By Don Alexander

The Niagara Escarpment Plan is marking its 25th anniversary this year. 

A sign promoting the Niagara Escarpment's designation as a globally significant biosphere with the verdant slopes of the escarpment looming behind in St. Catharines, Ontario.

It has also been 15 years since the Niagara Escarpment and its plan area were named a United Nations Biosphere Reserve.

The provincial legislation establishing the Niagara Escarpment Commission and its planning responsibilities was adopted in 1973 and that, along with the U.N. designation a decade and a half ago, are anniversary years that we should measure and mark.

For the Niagara Escarpment itself and its natural systems, time is measured over decades, centuries and eons.

I think of the Niagara Escarpment as a place where time is of a different order than everyday.  That is what makes it special for many of us.  It is sometimes described as a “sacred space” where people go into the natural setting to reflect.  The pace slows.      

Consider the formative years of the escarpment! Continue reading →

A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

Over the first week of this July, Niagara At Large experienced an unprecedented number of hits on this fledgling news and commentary site – close to 40,000 in a span of two days – for a story we posted first on a Thorold, Ontario amputee, John Pruyn, who was attending a peaceful rally during the G20 summit on the lawns of the provincial legislature at Queen’s Park in Toronto.

Toronto during G20 summit - 'This ain't Canada right now'.

The 57-year-old federal employee and part-time farmer says he could not maneuver his one good leg and walking sticks fast enough for police lines sweeping in on the Queen’s Park lawns and ordering people who had attended the rally to  “move.” So in short order, he had his artificial leg ripped off by riot police, had his hands tied behind his back and was held in detention for 27 hours before he was finally let go without charges.

While in detention, he was never read his rights and was not allowed to make a phone call to a lawyer or member of his family. Instead, he and other detainees were kept with their hands tied behind their backs, making it hard to perform the most simple of functions like going to the bathroom. In other words, they were afforded fewer rights than those enjoyed by notorious killers like Paul Bernardo and Clifford Olsen when they were taken into custody.

Indeed, as one security cop was heard saying in a video to a group of young people who were questioning why their backpacks should be searched by police before they could walk further down the roads of Toronto; “This ain’t Canada right now.” Continue reading →

 By Randy Hillier, Ontario Conservative Party MPP

(Niagara At Large is posting the following commentary on concerns around G20 security operations by a Conservative MPP and contender last year for his party’s leadership. This site will be pleased to post other commentary by our provincial representatives on this important subject.)

It has been said that in war, truth is the first casualty. Yet in the wake of the Toronto G20 summit, it is clear that truth is an unwelcome intruder within the realm of politics as well.

Ontario Conservative MPP Randy Hillier

Call it my inherent cynicism about politics or maybe put it down to my observation and experience, but the discussion and media coverage surrounding the G20 summit has been ignorant at best, or deliberately misleading at worst. The facts are clear when the political spin is replaced by reasoned evaluation.

The truth is that Dalton McGuinty arbitrarily suspended and abrogated our most sacred civil liberties — our freedoms and privacy — without discussion, debate or public awareness. The premier then justified this abuse of power by asserting that we needed law and order instead. Instead of choosing a more controlled and less populated location that would not be such a powerful magnet for the few juvenile anarchists, Stephen Harper agreed to host the G20 in a location that he had to have known would draw the greatest opposition and most violent response, therefore justifying an outrageous expenditure of public dollars and creating an army of police equipped with a siege mentality. Continue reading →

Niagara At Large is posting the following media release from representatives of the South Niagara Chapter of the Council of Canadians and CAPP Niagara (Canadians Advocating  Political Participation)  for a rally this coming Saturday, July 17 from 1 to 5 p.m. in Montebello Park in St. Catharines, Ontario. The rally is being held in support of a public inquiry on security operations at the recent G20 summit in Toronto.

St.Catharines – Residents and concerned citizens from across Niagara announced today that a rally will be held in St.Catharines on Saturday, July 17, calling for a full and impartial public inquiry into events at the G20 summit.

Police forces in streets of downtown Toronto during recent G20 summit.

The Niagara Day of Solidarity rally is being organized in conjunction with other rallies and public events that will be held across Canada during the week of July 11th – 17th by Council of Canadian members and Canadians Advocating Political Participation (CAPP), the group that organized massive rallies against the prorogation of Parliament last year. On July 17th, the National Day of Solidarity, rallies are expected in hundreds of cities across the country.

The G20 Summit was held in Toronto June 25th-27th and there are a number of issues around the event. In advance of the summit, the Ontario provincial government made a cabinet regulation to the Public Works Protection Act (PWPA) that granted addition powers to the police near the summit site, but was not made public in advance. During the summit, large numbers of protestors, most of whom were peaceful, were arrested by police officers. Many of those arrested were released without charge after being held for extended periods of time in questionable conditions. Continue reading →

By Tim Hudak, Ontario Conservative Party Leader

(The following column was originally printed in The Toronto Sun on July 5 under a headline that read; ‘Don’t blame cops for G20 mayhem’.  It is being posted here in its entirety with the permission of the office of Tim Hudak who, as well as being leader of the province’s Conservative Party,  is a Niagara area MPP and was a cabinet minister in the former Conservative government of Mike Harris.
Niagara At Large will be pleased to post remarks by Ontario Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty or other members of his government should anyone in the Liberal camp choose to comment publicly on the way security was handled at the recent G20 summit in Toronto.)

Exactly one week ago, the downtown core of Toronto was turned into a conflict zone by a group of lawless hooligans.

Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak

These reckless thugs were not in Toronto to protest a legitimate political cause. Instead they are part of a circuit of criminals who travel to international summits with one goal in mind – to destroy property, incite mayhem and terrorize law-abiding citizens.

Sadly, in the wake of the violence, a number of usual-suspect special interest groups are attempting to pin blame, not on the hooligans, but instead on our police services or the federal government.

But it wasn’t frontline police officers who spent a weekend smashing in storefront windows, nor was it federal government officials who torched police cars.
Instead these were the acts of violent anarchists, with a long history of using ‘peaceful’ protest marches at international summits as cover for reckless acts of extreme violence.

That is why I oppose the orchestrated attempt by these activists to demonize our police services in the wake of the G20 violence. I proudly stand behind the men and women of our police services that were faced with a daunting and difficult task of protecting the public against these professional vandals and hooligans. Continue reading →

(Niagara At Large is posting the following media release from the office of Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin for all those who have visited this site at www.niagaraatlarge.com in recent days for accounts of the mahem in Toronto during the recent G20 summit by Niagara area residents.)

TORONTO, Friday, July 9, 2010 – Ontario Ombudsman André Marin today announced he is launching an investigation into the origin and subsequent communication of the controversial security regulation passed by the province prior to the June 26-27 G20 summit.

Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin

By Doug Draper

While we’ve been watching a environmental and economic catastrophe unfold on and along the waters, wetlands and beaches of the Gulf of Mexico, the world’s largest reserve of freshwater – the Great Lakes -may soon face a catastrophe of their own.

This Asian carp was caught in the upper Mississippi watershed near Chicago and Lake Michigan. Photo from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

This one would not come in the form of oil gushing from a well but from a voracious fish that could virtually destroy a Great Lakes fishery worth billions of dollars annually to communities on both sides of the Canada/U.S. border. 

The fish of concern are Asian carp and just as their name implies, they were alien to North America until they were imported to this continent in the 1970s to control the growth of algae in aquaculture pools (fish farms) in the southern U.S. where they eventually managed to escape to the Mississippi River and migrate north to tributaries connected to the Great Lakes. U.S. agencies have been using submerged electrical barriers in an effort to keep the fish from entering Lake Michigan near Chicago.

Then this June, according to recent reports in the Associated Press and other media, spawning Asian Carp have been found in the Wabash River near Fort Wayne, Indiana where nothing more than a floodplain separates them from the Maumee River and Lake Erie.

This latest discovery has coalitions of environmental and other citizen groups in both countries and on all sides of the Great Lakes renewing their call to the U.S. government to build physical barriers to separate the lakes from waters where, if the fish get in and grow in numbers, they have the potential to out compete native species for food and ultimately displace them.

“Lake Erie is well over a billion-dollar fishing industry and in Ohio, a $10.75 destination stop,” said Kristy Meyer, director of Agricultural & Clean Water Programs for the Ohio Environmental Council, in a media release circulated July 1 by the a U.S.-based citizens group called the Alliance for the Great Lakes. “Now, more than ever, (U.S.) state and federal agencies have to stop the finger-pointing and get their act together before these natural wonders become desolate carp ponds.” Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

There is no scientific evidence showing a “direct link” between wind turbines and health effects for people living near them, concludes a report prepared for Niagara, Ontario’s regional government by its public health department and signed by its public health commissioner Dr. Robin Williams.

A wind farm along a shore area in the United States not unlike one that would include four towers and turbines near the shores of Lake Erie in Wainfleet, Ontario.

“While some people living near wind turbines report symptoms such as dizziness, headaches and sleep disturbance, the scientific evidence available to date does not demonstrate a direct causal link between wind turbine noise and adverse health effects,” says the report that was based on a review of available scientific evidence, with the assistance of the Council of Ontario Medical Officers of Health, the province’s Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion.

That conclusion is bound to be controversial for residents already living near wind turbine farms or near sites, including one in the rural Niagara, Ontario municipality of Wainfleet, where a wind energy project has been proposed. These residents have collected numerous accounts from each other of health impacts from the constant whirl of the turbines.

Just the same, the regional government’s report goes on to say that “the reviewers were satisfied that sound level from wind turbines at common residential setbacks is not sufficient to cause hearing impairment or other direct health effects, although they acknowledged that some people may find it annoying.”

Bill Hunter, a manager in the region’s health department, told members of the region’s public health and social services committee this July 6 that compared to coal-fired energy plants, which contribute to air pollution, and nuclear, plants, which emit about 25 times more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than wind turbines, wind power has a lighter impact on the environment. Continue reading →

(Niagara At Large recently posted a story on the arrest and detainment of Thorold, Ontario resident John Pruyn during the G20 summit in Toronto. The account of his arrest, which involved  pulling off  his artificial leg by police dressed in riot gear, can be found by  clicking on www.niagaraatlarge.coom. The following post is a personal account shared with Niagara At Large by Pruyn’s daughter Sarah, who was also arrested and detained by police.)

By Sarah Pruyn

After the People First March (on June 26) my father and I walked back to Queen’s Park to look for my mother whom we had become separated from during the afternoon.  It was about quarter to six pm. Riot police were surrounding all roadways leading into the park, but we managed to find an unguarded pathway in through the University of Toronto campus.

Sarah Pruyn along a lake in Quebec during better times.

As we looked for my mother, a line of riot police began to walk towards us, ordering my father and I, along with hundreds of other protestors, to move as they did. My father refused to move, as we were on public property and had the right to be there. The police began to push him and still he would not move. At this time I noticed that officers about five meters away to my left were shooting tear gas cartridges from riot guns to force protestors to get out of their way. Eventually my father did back from the police line. The  line had advanced a few meters and stopped.

After this, my father and I decided to sit down with a group of protestors on University Avenue. Two activists, male and and in their early 20s, were sitting beside us. They offered us water and we discussed why police were pushing protestors off of Queen’s Park despite it being public property. As there were pockets of tear gas around us, I wetted my bandana with apple cider vinegar and held it to my face.

Before sitting for more than five minutes we were suddenly assaulted. The line of riot cops pressed forward while shooting more tear gas and officers from behind the riot line ran towards where we were. They slammed into us and hit us.

“These four,” one of them shouted to other police around him. We were surrounded by officers on the front, left and right (and) activists who had been behind us started to retreat. Someone ordered my father to stand. He could not do this with ease as he is an above-the-knee amputee and has an artificial left leg. Police kicked and bashed my father as my left arm was grabbed and twisted behind my back. The two activists who had offered us water attempted to help my father stand while repeatedly telling the police that my father only had one leg. The police did not listen and began to hit us more violently. Continue reading →

 We were about to post a piece reminding readers of Niagara At Large’s ‘Comments Policy’ anyway. And what better time to do it than now, with an extraordinary number of comments coming in on a piece we posted this July 5 on how an amputee from Thorold, Ontario was treated by security forces at the recent G20 summit in Toronto. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

John Pruyn wasn’t much in the mood for celebrating Canada Day this year.

John and Susan Pruyn at home and away form the G20 summit in Thorold, Ontario. Photo by Doug Draper

 
How could he be after the way he was treated a few days earlier in Toronto by figures of authority most of us were brought up to respect, our publicly paid-for police forces who are supposed to be there to serve and protect peaceful, law-abiding citizens like him.

The 57-year-old Thorold, Ontario resident – an employee with Revenue Canada and a part-time farmer who lost a leg above his knee following a farming accident 17 years ago – was sitting on the grass at Queen’s Park with his daughter Sarah and two other young people this June 26, during the G20 summit, where he assumed it would be safe.

As it turned out, it was a bad assumption because in came a line of armoured police, into  an area the city had promised would be safe for peaceful demonstrations during the summit. They closed right in on John and his daughter and the two others and ordered them to move. Pruyn tried getting up and he fell, and it was all too slow for the police.

As Sarah began pleading with them to give her father a little time and space to get up because he is an amputee, they began kicking and hitting him. One of the police officers used his knee to press Pruyn’s head down so hard on the ground, said Pruyn in an interview this July 4 with Niagara At Large, that his head was still hurting a week later.

Accusing him of resisting arrest, they pulled his walking sticks away from him, tied his hands behind his back and ripped off his prosthetic leg. Then they told him to get up and hop, and when he said he couldn’t, they dragged him across the pavement, tearing skin off his elbows , with his hands still tied behind his back. His glasses were knocked off as they continued to accuse him of resisting arrest and of being a “spitter,” something he said he did not do. They took him to a warehouse and locked him in a steel-mesh cage where his nightmare continued for another 27 hours.

“John’s story is one of the most shocking of the whole (G20 summit) weekend,” said the Ontario New Democratic Party’s justice critic and Niagara area representative Peter Kormos, who has called for a public inquiry into the conduct of security forces during the summit. “He is not a young man and he is an amputee. …. John is not a troublemaker. He is a peacemaker and like most of the people who were arrested, he was never charged with anything , which raises questions about why they were arrested in the first place.” Continue reading →

A Foreword By Niagara At Large

The late Canadian prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau once said that the United States is a great place to live if you are young, healthy and wealthy.

Niagara area residents protest hospital cuts in Toronto this April.

One of the matters Trudeau was focusing on when he made that comment was the lack a publicly funded, universal system of health care in the U.S. – the kind of which Canadians have been blessed with now for the better part of 50 years, thanks to the progressive campaigning of a politician named Tommy Douglas.

But thousands of cuts by successive provincial governments, starting with the NDP government of Bob Rae, the Conservative governments of Mike Harris and Ernie Eves, and now the Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty, along with the mismanagement of hospital services by unelected, regional boards like the Niagara Health System, Canada’s system of accessible, quality care for all appears to be heading for its death throes – in this region of the country, at least.

Unelected bodies like the NHS and the Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) for the Niagara and Hamilton regions of the province continueclosing patient beds in our hospitals while the provincial government tries wiping its hands clean of any responsibility.

Niagara At Large has posted many articles on this site – articles you can scan by y visiting www.niagaraatlarge.com –  on citizens’ continued concerns over the mess being made of hospitial services on the Ontario side of the border. And below, we are posting a note by Fiona McMurran, a Welland resident and Niagara representative for the citizens group, Council of Canadians, followed by a report from the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), representing more than 600 health care professionals in Niagara’s hospitals alone. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

What a difference a decade can make in the lives of two great neighbouring nations.

My friend Peter before he and the photographer, Doug Draper, took an unsupervised romp through the U.S. Capitol building during less fearful times.

It was 10 years ago this Canada Day that my family and I crossed the Peace Bridge from our home in Niagara, Ontario for a trip to a suburb around Washington D.C. We were on our way down to visit some fellow Canadian friends of ours who have been living and working down there to this day, and whose two daughters were born in and are therefore citizens of the United States.

When we arrived, the front of our friends’ home was decorated with Canadian and American flags, and we settled in for a few days of celebrating both countries that, by mere chance, included a visit to the floor of the U.S. Senate on the Fourth of July.

That’s right. There my friend Peter and I were, dripping with water after running through sprinklers on the lawns of the Capitol building on a day so hot, dozens of people were collapsing from exhaustion. We walked up the flights of white marble steps to the main doors of the Capitol building where we asked the only two security guards we could see if there was still time, before closing, to take a little tour of the inside.

They said ‘sure’ and while tens-of-thousands of people were gathering on the mall outside for Fourth of July concerts and fireworks, here we were wandering the halls of this iconic government building all by ourselves where we found our ways to the empty floor of the Senate chambers, sat at the desks of some of our favourite senators (I picked Ted Kennedy’s) where we shouted out some of their best-known lines. “The cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die,” were among the words I stole from Senator Kennedy before also stealing away with a half-used pencil from his desk.

I thought about that romp through the Capitol building on my way back home to Canada, wondering if I could ever imagine (as free and as open as our country was at the time) having the same exclusive access to our Parliament building. I thought about it again, 14 months later, in the hours following the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, 2001, when I was finally able to get through, by phone, to Peter in his Washington news office. I said to him at the time; ‘Remember when we wandered through those ‘halls of congress’ all by ourselves? We’ll never be able to do that again.” And to this day, at least, it is so unfortunately true. Continue reading →

In honour of Canada and Fourth of July celebrations on both sides of our international border and binational Fort Erie/Buffalo Friendship Festival, the Peace Bridge will glow through the evening hours with patriotic colours.

This lightshow, sponsored by the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority, is scattered across the bridge’s arches, truss and spine for residents and visitors on both sides of the border to see.

The Peace Bridge has served as one of the busiest border crossings on this continent since its opening in the 1920s. It also remains a symbol of peace between two neighbouring countries in a world where crossing borders can still get people jailed or killed. Whatever arguments or disputes Canadians and Americans may sometimes have with each other, it is important to remember that.

(Click on Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our greater binational Niagara region.)

By Doug Draper

High jobless rates, talk of ever deeper recession, cuts to education and health care, oil gushing from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, rising casualty rates for our troops in Afghanistan, and the seemingly never ending fear of another terrorist attack.

These days it takes courage to read through a newspaper or turn on the television news. No wonder so many people want to lose themselves in soccer, Lady Gaga and Dancing with the Stars? And now here we are, with Canada Day and the Fourth of July upon us, and like many of you, I have put out my Canadian flags and the stars and stripes in honour of my many American friends, even while wondering what is left to celebrate.

Certainly there is little reason to celebrate our governments that spend more time bowing to the Bay Streets and Wall Streets, and to the BPs, Exxons, ITTs and other tans-continental corporations than they do representing us.

At the recent G20 summit in Toronto, Canada’s prime minister and America’s president were holed up inside a heavily-policed, fenced-off security zone – what was sometimes referred to in the press as “the cage” – with a handful of other leaders and about 10,000 faceless bureaucrats they called delegates. In there, and without any scrutiny from the media or members of the public, they worked secretly away, ratifying agreements that could impact on the lives of the rest of us – or what the chairman of BP recently called “the small people” – for decades to come. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

One of Ontario’s largest unions has joined Niagara area municipalities in calling for an investigation into the cutting and gutting the Niagara Health System’s board is doing to hospital services in the region.

The Niagara Health System's Welland hospital site was the target of more bed closings recently as services are 'restructured' at hospital sites across the region. Photo by Doug Draper

“The Niagara community has lost confidence in the (Niagara Health System’s) hospital administration and in an unworkable ‘hospital improvement plan’, said Warren Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) in a recent letter to the province’s health minister, Deborah Matthews, as he called on her to appoint an investigator to conduct a public review of the NHS.

Thomas, whose union represents about 650 health care professions working at what is left of the seven hospital sites the NHS operates across the region, went on to remind the minister that during independent public forums in Niagara and other Ontario regions this past March, residents here “presented personal evidence alleging they or their family members failed to receive appropriate care, including preventable death. In addition to the Coroner’s Inquest (still pending) into the death of Niagara teen Reilly Anzovino, the NHS admits there is an additional investigation into the death of a papteitn from septic shock resulting from an infected leg wound.” Continue reading →

The Welland Canal Advocate, a Niagara-based group of citizens with a website dedicated to preserving and promoting more public awareness and support for the Welland Canal corridors, is holding a special event this July to raise funds for repairing recently vandalized canal corridor murals.

One of the murals gracing the Welland Canal corridor in Thorold. Photo by Doug Draper

The murals, located on the west side of the Welland Canal Flight Locks climbing the Niagara Escarpment in Thorold, Ontario, were damaged by vandals late this June and shortly before they were about to be officially unveiled by city officials and volunteers working on the mural project.

The project has already seen a number of large works of art covering walls of commercial buildings along the canal for the enjoyment of residents and countless thousands of visitors to the region who include a tour along the Welland Canal as part of their trip.

The Welland Canal Advocate is holding the fundraising event on Sunday, July 25, beginning with a hike from the Lock 7 Viewing Centre in Thorold along the Welland Canals Trail where some of the murals can already be viewed. Following the hike, there will be a barbeque and refreshments in Memorial Park on Carlton Street South in Thorold. Continue reading →

Publisher’s Note – The City of Thorold, Ontario may be known to many as a tired old Welland Canal community of  faded, rusting paper mills and other industry.

But Thorold is also a community rich in beautifully built heritage buildings and homes and Hiertage Thorold LACAC – Local Arichtectural Conservation Advisory Committee – has been one of the most active volunteer groups of its kind in the region to have as many of these properties as possible designated as provincially significant heritage sites.

Heritage Thorold celebrated two more heritage designations of historic homes in the community this June 26 and the following article by heritage advocate Pamela Minns provides some information about them.

Communities on both sides of the Niagara River in our greater binational region have a rich inventory of heritage sites of interest to residents and visitors alike, and Niagara At Large would be pleased to post articles on them. You can contact our publisher, Doug Draper, at drapers@vaxxine.com for further information on posting articles and photos of noteworthy heritage properties on this site.

By Pamela Minns

Each time we approach the matter of designating yet another important property in Thorold, I am amazed at the historical significance of these properties and the quality of the architecture we have in this city. Continue reading →

A foreword by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

Isn’t it about time politicians in the north end of Niagara, Ontario stopped treating people in the southern tier of the region like collateral damage when it comes to hospital care?

Niagara hospital care advocate Pat Scholfield

At long last, isn’t it?

If that sounds a little harsh, too bad. As a resident of Niagara’s north end, I can hardly say how sad it is that so few municipal and provincial politicians on my end of the region – so parochial and out of touch with the rest of the region they are in their vision – care so little about the gutting of hospital services in Niagara’s southern tier. And why is that? Is it because they feel they can take some comfort in the fact that the Niagara Health System – a body created by the former provincial government of Mike Harris and Tim Hudak – is building its spanking new hospital complex, complete with a regional cancer and cardiac centre, in the region’s north end?

That may be okay for them but what about residents in Niagara’s central and south ends who are seeing their hospital services, including emergency room services, gutted while the Niagara Health System moves forward with investing more than $1 billion for new services at a north-end site in west St. Catharines?

Don’t people in central and south ends of the region deserve fair and equal access to hospital services too? Why, when it comes to hospital services, should they be treated like human garbage? Continue reading →

By Fiona McMurran

I’ve just returned from protesting the G20 in the streets of Toronto.

A peaceful demonstration near Queen's Park before riot police moved in. Photo courtesy of Fiona McMurran.

Soon after midday, we assembled with thousands upon thousands of other protesters in Queen’s Park, getting soaked to the skin as the heavens opened. My march with other colleagues and friends from the Council of Canadians, was uneventful – we got back to Queen’s Park in mid-afternoon – about 4:00 p.m. – and then strolled the couple of blocks to O’Grady’s pub on College Street, now full of soccer fans cheering on Ghana against the United States.

Ghana beats the U.S. There’s much cheering and as fans take their leave, the TVs are switched to news channels. From then on, the talk in the pub is all about the events taking place a few blocks away. We are getting nervous as we wait for two of our foursome from Niagara to join us.
As the scenes unfold on the screen, and as other protesters entered the pub and the discussion to give us updates, my little group of demonstrators is caught in an odd sort of suspended animation.
 
We had all been more or less of one mind: a peaceful demonstration was what was desirable to get our various messages across. Anything else would be totally unwelcome. It would simply steal the attention from what we wanted the Canadian public – never mind the leaders, who haven’t and won’t listen to us anyway – to hear. We would condemn any individual or group that attempted to put our sincere protests in the shade. Violence of any sort is always wrong. It simply re-enforces the argument that all this expensive security was entirely necessary. Etc. etc. etc.
 
But that’s not what we are feeling as we watch the events in the downtown core. The sensation is that we are witnessing a game play out, one that both sides understand. One side has the numbers, the power. The other side certainly has the upper hand when it comes to tactics. It reminds me of nothing so much as the war in Afghanistan. Guerrilla warfare. Continue reading →

From Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

Most of the messages G20 summit protesters wanted to get out may have been hijacked by a few hundred thugs bent on smashing windows and torching cars.

Ole Woody Guthrie

But social activist and writer Naomi Klein was at least able to get a column in The Globe and Mail this June 28, talking about how unwilling the G20 leaders did to control bankers and other financial institutions that played such a major role in causing the latest global recession.

Coincidently enough, and just a few days prior to the June26/27 summit, CBC Radio’s The Current interviewed American folk singers Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger about protest songs fitting for events such as this.

During the interview, Arlo Guthrie read the following lines written by his father, the late folk-singing legend Woody Guthrie, more than half a century ago but in too many ways, still just as relevant today. They read as follows; “I never stopped to think about it before, but you know a police man will just stand there and let a banker rob a farmer or a finance man rob a working man. But if a farmer robs a banker, you would have a whole darn army of cops out shooting at him. Robbery is a chapter in etiquette.”

Meanwhile you can read the Naomi Klein column by clicking on the following link – http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/g8-g20/opinion/sticking-the-public-with-the-bill-for-the-bankers-crisis/article1620729/ .

(Click on Niagara At Large at  www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our greater binational region.)

By Doug Draper

Anyone of us in Ontario, Quebec or the northeastern United States who has spent any time  in front of a television over the past 30 or so years, has no doubt watched and heard the commercial jingle for the Marineland amusement park in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Protesting in front of Marineland this June 26. Photo by Doug Draper

“Everyone loves Marineland,” the last line in the jingle goes.

Everyone?

Like most marketing lines, they are cover over, like icing on a cake, with more than a little exaggeration. Jules Henry, the late American sociologist and a student of advertising strategies, called these exaggerations “pecuniary pseudo-truths” in the sense that they are “a new kind of truth … which may be defined as a false statement made as if it were true, but not intented to be believed. No proof is offered for a pecuniary pseudo-truth, and no one looks for it. Its proof is that it sells merchandise; if it does not, it is false.”

Getting back to that marketing line; “Everyone loves Marineland,” no sane person could literally believe that if they were out in front of the 50-year-old amusement park this June 26 while more than 30 activists for animals, including members of Niagara Action for Animals, picketed in front of the park while countless cars drove by offering them honks of support. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

The chairman of Niagara, Ontario’s regional government has won support from Canadian and U.S. municipal leaders around the Great Lakes a resolution calling for more public access to the lakes’ shorelines.

A stretch of Lake Erie shoreline, fenced off to the public in the Fort Erie area.

 The resolution was passed by the municipal leaders at the annual conference this June of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Cities Initiative in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In its own words, it “encourages the U.S. and Canadian federal/ provincial, First Nations and tribes to work collaboratively with municipal governments and other parties to affirm support of the right of all citizens to walk along the shoreline of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence (River).”

Approved by the multi-member organization on June 17, the resolution goes on to call on the three levels of government on both sides of the international border “to take back into public ownership waterfront properties along the Great Lakes as they become available to ensure public access for future generations.” Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

There is another one of those editorial cartoons that can drive a columnist like me crazy, even though I love it.

We may think we still live in a democracy. But they need a wall to keep us out.

This one, by veteran cartoonist Brian Gable and featured last week on the editorial pages of The Globe and Mail, shows a nice old grandmotherly type who happens to be living inside the security zone in Toronto near the convention centre where the G20 summit is about to be held. As she is planting something in her yard, police armed with clubs and shields yell at her through a bullhorn; “Put down your elderberry!!! … Resistance is futile.” A caption accompanying the cartoon reads: “Toronto – Saplings removed because they could be used as weapons by G20 protestors.”

The reason I say a cartoon like this can drive a columnist crazy is that a great cartoonist like Gable can, with one drawing and a few words, capture the essence of an issue with as much, if not more punch than a columnist can deliver in hundreds of words. And this particular cartoon, in my view, sums up just as well as almost any column I’ve read over the past few weeks, the dark, draconian lengths our federal government is going to this month to provide security during the G20 summit in Toronto and G8 summit in the Muskoka area.

I have no illusions that I can match the punch of Gable’s June 17 cartoon with my words here. But as one Canadian who came of age feeling proud of our country’s image and its role as a democracy and peacemaker in the world, I can’t help but make some remarks on the spectacle that is unfolding for the rest of the world to see in the heart of one of our country’s largest cities. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Well, it is a start.

Buses pull up to board passengers at a major transit hub in Welland. Photo by Doug Draper

For those of us who have been waiting and hoping for years that Niagara, Ontario’s regional government would finally take the wheel and launch a robust regional transit system that serves the residents of every local municipality across this region, the June 23 decision to cobble together the possible beginnings of such a system seems like a rather anemic step in that direction.

For those just pleased to see the regional government do anything to ignite a start on inter-municipal transit services in Niagara, the June 23 decision by a committee-of-the-whole meeting of the region’s council to grant the cities of St. Catharines, Niagara Falls and Welland eight new buses and a few million dollars in operating cash to make it happen may, as some declared, be a ‘historic occasion’.

There most certainly was, at the end of it all, a round of applause from members of the public and representative of local transit authorities sitting in the gallery of the regional council chambers when a majority of the councillors finally voted to start a system that grants transit authorities in the three cities the buses and funding to provide more rides between municipalities. Continue reading →

Niagara At Large features the following announcement for our readers’ information and for our readers comments. Please feel free to wade in to the discussion and debate in the comment boxes below.

NIAGARA FALLS, ONTARIO, June 24, 2010 – The City of Niagara Falls today celebrated the groundbreaking of an addition to the Children’s Aid Society office for Family and Children’s Services in Niagara. 

Federal minister John Baird and Niagara Falls, Ontario MPP Kim Kraitor join a child in a groundbreaking for new facilites in Niagara for kids in crisis.

Canada’s Minister of Transport and Infrastructure John Baird; the Honourable Rob Nicholson, P.C., Q.C. Member of Parliament for Niagara Falls, Minister of Justice, and Attorney General of Canada; Kim Craitor, Member of Provincial Parliament for Niagara Falls; and Michael Boucher, Vice President of the Board of Directors, Family and Children’s Services Niagara, participated in the groundbreaking ceremonies for this important infrastructure project. 

“The work of the Children’s Aid Society is vital to the people in our region,” said Minister Baird. “Helping to fund a new Family Centre through Canada’s Economic Action Plan is another way that the Government of Canada is supporting Canadian communities and we are pleased to be a part of this worthwhile project that has such a positive impact on this community.”

“The children, youth and families of the Niagara region will benefit immensely from the improvements this new facility will bring to the important work of Family and Children’s Services,” said Minister Nicholson. “The federal government is committed to helping communities by contributing to important local infrastructure projects such as this one.”

“Today’s investment demonstrates our government’s commitment to strengthening Ontario’s not-for-profit sector,” said Laurel Broten, Minister of Children and Youth Services. “Our Open Ontario plan ensures that we will continue to deliver valuable community services to at-risk families and children.” Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Many of you may have heard the legendary tale about the dance band on the Titanic playing the mournful hymn ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’, after the giant liner struck the iceberg and was slowly going down. Actually, according to the accounts of Titanic survivors, the band spent most of its last gig playing more cheerful music, including upbeat ragtime hits of the day like ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’.

The Niagara Health System's annual general meeting of board was an exercise in self gratification. Photo by Doug Draper

I thought about the Titanic dance band, playing on while both it and the ship it was on was sinking into oblivion, as a I left the annual meeting this June 22 of the Niagara Health System’s board.

For all of the many challenges and controversies this board – responsible for managing most of what is left of the hospital sites in Niagara, Ontario – it was a meeting It was a meeting that lasted all of 30 minutes, at the most, with a good part of it taken up by the NHS’s CEO, Debbie Sevenpifer, and the board’s chair, Betty Lou Souter, making self-congratulatory remarks about the achievements of the past year and even better things they feel lay ahead. All while most of the rest of the board members – appointed by Sevenpifer and her minions – sat there like a lump.

“Together, we are all up for the challenge and I am excited to work with others to raise the bar (for health care) in Niagara,” said Sevenpifer, as she discussed efforts to reduce waiting times for patients in what is left of Niagara’s emergency rooms and for patients awaiting surgery. Continue reading →

Foreword by Doug Draper

This July 1 through July 4 marks the 24th anniversary of the Friendship Festival, a four-day cross-border festival celebrating almost two centuries of friendship and peace between U.S. and Canadian citizens on both sides of our international Niagara border.

Fort Erie/Buffalo Friendship Festival. File photo courtesty of Brad Murphy

And you can’t get much more ‘hands across the border’ – the name of an event organized last year and to take place again this July 4 on the Peace Bridge – than this Friendship Festival organized jointly by residents in Buffalo, New York and Fort Erie, Ontario, highlighting both Canada Day on July 1 and America’s Independence Day on the Fourth of July.

In the formative years of this festival, I was a reporter for a daily newspaper in Niagara, Ontario and asked one of the Fort Erie organizers what was one of the drivers behind it. The person on the other end of the phone said that in many ways, people in the Buffalo and Fort Erie areas feel that they share more in common with each other than they do with people living in communities around, let’s say, Washington, D.C. or Ottawa, Ontario. That continues to remain the case to this day as residents on both sides work on the challenges we mutually face around generating new jobs, and regenerating our economies, communities, transportation systems and ecosystems for a health and prosperity for families, friends and neighbours in the 21st century.

The Friendship Festival is another opportunity each year for residents on both sides of the Niagara River to bond in a celebration of that special binational relationship. Continue reading →

A War of 1812 Bicentennial Peace Garden was dedicated on June 18 at Niagara University in Niagara, County, New York.

The garden, located between St. Vincent’s and Alumni Halls on the university’s campus, is a partnership between Niagara, the Binational Economic & Tourism Alliance, and the 1812 Legacy Council.

The speakers at the event this June included Niagara Falls, N.Y., Mayor Paul Dyster and Nancy E. McGlen, Ph.D., dean of Niagara’s College of Arts and Sciences. “This event is part of an effort between Ontario and New York state to celebrate the 200 years of peace between the United Sates and Canada,” said Dr. Thomas Chambers, chair of the university’s history department.

“These beautiful places along the borders of the two countries will help to commemorate the years of peace, and promote binational cooperation and recognition of the resources that are available for historical tourism.”

Niagara’s is the second peace garden established. The date was selected to commemorate the 198th anniversary of the United States’ declaration of war against Great Britain. The first Peace Garden coming up to the bicentennial of the War of 1812 was dedicated in the town of Grimsby in Niagara, Ontario this May.

(Click on Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our greater binational Niagara region.)

By Doug Draper

Ontario Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne calls it a “a cultural shift.”

Ontario Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne

Others may call it ‘about time’ after decades of everyone from the late and legendary advocate for sound urban planning Jane Jacobs to other respected voices in the field of planning and transportation in North America, not to mention countless citizen groups across this region and continent, pressing governments over and over again to forge more environmentally friendly and economically sustainable transportation plans.

But at least we gave a transportation minister in Ontario who finally seems to be interested in taking seriously a ‘cultural shift’ away from building ever more roads and highways for ever more trucks to cars, to a transportation system that places more emphasis on rail and buses, biking and walking, and other modes of moving around and through our communities and regions.

We will probably never seen the end of cars, said Wynne during an interview with Niagara At Large in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. this June 21 where she was about to meet with representatives in the marine transportation industry. But the province, at long last, has to get past putting so much emphasis on building more highways and roads, and move to other, more sustainable environmental alternatives.

“We have thought for generations that we have endless resources and endless space, but we can’t  just keep building roads,” said Wynne during the interview. “That is old thinking. We know now that we don’t have and that our footprint (with all the road and highway building) is having a negative impact on the environment.” Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

They don’t call them “persistent” environmental poisons for nothing!

More than three decades after the manufacture of chemicals like PCBs, Mirex and a trichlorophenol-based herbicide that produced the most toxic form of dioxin as an unwanted byproduct was banned in North America, they continue to menace the waters of the Lower Niagara River and Lake Ontario.

According to the most recent guide booklets released by the New York State and Ontario governments for consuming fish caught in state and provincial waters, there are still fish in the lower Niagara and Lake Ontario the governments are advising people to limit their consumption of or not eat at all due to an accumulation of high levels of toxic chemicals in their flesh.

This remains the case despite many years of cleanup work by governments and industries on both sides that have reduced the flow of hazardous chemicals to the Niagara River by well over 50 per cent.

That’s right, despite all of the cleanup successes the governments can rightfully boast about, a person is advised not to eat a lake trout from the lower Niagara River that is over two feet long due to the presence of worrisome levels of chemicals like PCBs, Mires and Dioxin the meat of the fish. The same is true for many other larger species of fish from the lower river and the downstream waters of Lake Ontario to the St. Lawrence River. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

As I gathered early this June with a few hundred others in the old St. Thomas Anglican Church in St. Catharines, Ontario, I felt like I was saying farewell – once again and possibly for the last time – to the last real daily newspaper residents on the Ontario side of our greater Niagara region had.

Henry Burgoyne, the last publisher of The St. Catharines Standard when it was a newspaper, with his mother, Dorothy Burgoyne Doolittle, offering a farewell party to those of us who enjoyed working for them.

The gathering was, in and of itself, a sad one. It was for Dorothy Burgoyne Doolittle, who passed away this May 31 in her 90th year.

And for those who may not know, Dorothy Burgoyne Doolittle was the last matriarch of the Burgoyne family when that fine family still owned The St. Catharines Standard up to the time it sold the paper in 1996.

I said my first farewell to that paper a couple of years later, in 1998, when along with many other journalists, who had love working there for years, I blasted my way out of the place in disgust after Lord Conrad Black of Crossharbour (then a newspaper baron and now a jail bird) ripped the heart and soul out of the newsroom, along with a bunch of sycophants that have bowed to their knees to every corporate boss man that has run the place like a sausage-making factory to this day.

Damn right. I found myself running out of a newsroom I once loved running into, and I have never been back. I won’t even walk or drive my car down Queen Street, past the front doors of the red-brick building still housing what’s left of The Standard, and I feel as sad about that as I did when I heard the recent news that Dorothy Burgoyne Doolittle had died.

The Burgoynes, who virtually founded that newspaper in 1891 and built it for more than a century into a formidable voice for St. Catharines and the surrounding region, exemplified the kind of owners of newspapers that are all but gone. Unlike the corporate chains that own most of the newspapers on this continent today (carpetbaggers, I often call them) the Burgoynes lived in and cared passionately for the community where they owned and operated a newspaper and, even more than that, they loved newspapers – not just as a business but (as corny as it may sound) as a public trust. Continue reading →

A foreward by Doug Draper

As many fellow residents on the Niagara, Ontario side of our border may know by now, the province’s premier, Dalton McGuinty, is marking Canada Day this July 1 with the launching of a harmonized sales tax – more infamously known as the HST – that will favour big business at the expense of middle and lower-income consumers.

McGuinty, who shows every sign of being a firm believer in the ‘trickle down’ mythology of economics foisted on peoples by the likes of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, wherein if we give huge tax breaks to corporations they may create a few more jobs, is determined to move forward with the HST as a replacement regressive tax for the GST  despite polls consistently showing that more than 70 per cent of Ontarians are against it.

Both opposition parties, the Conservatives and NDP, have been slamming the government over this tax for months now, but to little avail. There is little sign the government is listening to anyone but some members of the business community who obviously like the shift of taxes away from them and toward the rest of us. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Ding, dong, any plans for cutting a ‘mid-peninsula highway’ through the heart of Ontario’s Niagara region at long last seems dead.

Tyler Drygas, a senior environmental planner and URS consultant for Ontario's transportation ministry who is second to right in this photo and in the background, outlines transportation strategy for region with area residents. Photo by Doug Draper

At a public information session, hosted by Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation in Welland, Ontario this June 17, Roger Ward, a team leader in the ministry’s transportation planning branch, outlined to area residents in attendance the elements a strategy being developed for moving people and goods within and through Niagara and the Greater Toronto Corridor.

And here is the encouraging part. Not once, through Ward’s 15-minute presentation did he or any of his fellow ministry representatives make any reference to a ‘mid-peninsula highway’.

In fact, on the area of a map of the GTA and Niagara area where, for the better part of a decade, there was a fat line depicting where, generally, this new, multi-lane highway would go, there are now only the three words; “continue monitoring needs.”

What that phrase does, in the parlance of the ministry, is effectively put any plan to construct a new highway cutting from the Hamilton/Burlington area, and south of the Niagara Escarpment, through some of the nicest farming lands and forests and watersheds in the region, to the Queen Elizabeth Way and the U.S. border to Buffalo, is at the rock bottom of any transportation improvements now being considered.

Some may not like it, but for countless thousands of Niagara and Burlington area residents that have, for years, opposed this highway as a threat to the environment and as one more driver for ever more trucks and cars, the fact that this plan has been placed in a coma should come as good news. At an estimated cost of anywhere between $1- and $2 billion, and possibly even more, its virtual death should almost certainly be greeted as good news for the province’s taxpayers. So what is the ministry proposing in its latest ‘Draft Transportation Development Strategy’? Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

In the 1970s Academy Award- winning film ‘Network’, there is a scene where the head of the corporation that runs one of America’s major TV networks calls the news anchor in to the boardroom for a bit of a dressing down.

“You get up on your little screen,” says the corporate head, “and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world now.”

This lesson for the news anchor crossed this commentator’s mind over the past couple of months as we have all watched, on our little screens at home, the disaster unfolding off the U.S. shores of a Gulf of Mexico that is a major habitat for wildlife and one of the most productive sources for seafood on this continent. It came to mind over and over again as it looked like BP, one of the largest petroleum corporations in the world and the perpetrator of what is now recognized by the White House as the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history, was (and still is) calling most of the shots on trying to control this monumental mess.

Even this June 15, as U.S. President Barack Obama went on the air from the Oval Office for the first time to address the disaster, his words about BP’s “recklessness” and one of his crowning lines; “Now is the moment for this generation … to embark on a national mission … to seize our destiny” were seductive, but seemed to fall short of any real detail or substance. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

 So is this what you have to do to get Canada’s government to back down on implementing a harmonized sales tax? Threaten to “shut down” the country?

Apparently it is, according to a front-page story in the June 16 edition of The Globe and Mail. Obviously the fact that more than 70 per cent of the Ontario public is against the this tax – known more simply as the HST – doesn’t make an impression on our elected politicians in Toronto and Ottawa. They appear to have every intention of imposing it on the majority of the province’s residents this July 1 anyway.

But if a segment of the population – in this case, Ontario’s aboriginals – threatens to blockade roads and take other actions that could disrupt the G8 and G20 summits set to take place in Huntsville, Ont. and Toronto later this June, then all of a sudden the federal government is ready to negotiate an exemption for this regressive tax for that group. Continue reading →

By Fiona McMurran

The G8 and the G20 Summits are making headlines. But there’s an alternative that’s not received much attention in the media.

It’s called The People’s Summit. And it doesn’t cost a billion dollars. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t cost the taxpayer anything.
Taking place this coming weekend, June 18 through 20, at Ryerson University in downtown Toronto, the overall theme of the 2010 People’s Summit is Building a Movement for a Just World. Civil society’s “counter Summit” brings together community organizers, activists, non-governmental organizations, independent media, artists, workers, ordinary people—to educate, empower, and ignite positive change.

Sponsored by a host of citizen groups, such as the Council of Canadians, and environmental, social justice, labour and peace organizations, the People’s Summit is an alternative to the ’self-appointed, undemocratic assembly of the world’s wealthiest countries.’

The three-day program features some 100 workshops, film screenings, panels, strategy sessions, art, performance, and lectures, organized into five thematic streams: Global Justice; the Environment and Climate Change; Human Rights and Civil Liberties; Economic Justice; and Building the Movement. Continue reading →

(Every year for most of the last century, Crystal Beach in Fort Erie was a summer fun place for residents in Niagara, Ontario, Buffalo and beyond. It is gone with the wind now, but this column may help bring a bit of the fun back. Too bad it is gone.)

By William Hogg

“Hey, it’s the twenty-fourth of May, Crystal Beach opens today!”

The comet rollercoaster, now a feature at a park in upstate New York, looming behind lineups of people way back when at Crystal Beach.

That was the top news. It was shouted in every schoolyard on both sides of the Niagara. And within a day or two, every Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer around began to pluck up nerve to skip school. Five of us grade six boys (plopped into a class of thirty grade seven girls) finally did it. Pocketing our stashes of nickels and dimes and hopping our bicycles, we raced up the Dominion Road – to adventure and fun – to Crystal Beach. As did the truant officers rattling along behind in their green Nashes, old gray Willy’s-Eights and chrome-plated Buicks.

All other cars, headed in the same direction, bumper to bumper, skimmed by inches from our small boys’ narrow shoulders, all made skinnier by the Great Depression and wartime rationing.

At the park gate we spread out: to the Fun House to be spooked, all ‘softies’ off to the Merry-Go-Round, a ride on the Miniature Train, a whirl on Flying Scooters, and up and away in the Ferris Wheel for a breathtaking view and to get height-acclimatized for – the Cyclone which made you a he-man or made you throw up, whichever came first. And then on to gorging on hotdogs, sugared waffles, candy-apples, air-filled candyfloss, pulled taffy, buttered popcorn. And finally, an ice-cold Loganberry cooled the seething brow on a hot sticky day. Continue reading →

From  Lynda Goodridge and the Fort Erie Arts Council

Take one bright summer day and add a lovely waterfront setting.  Mix in the creativity of talented artists and musicians and you have the perfect ingredients for a fun-filled family event as the 6^th Annual Crystal Beach Arts & Folk Festival takes place on Sunday, June 27^th, from 11 am to 5 pm.

File photo from an earlier Crystal Beach show.

            With beautiful Waterfront Park in Crystal Beach, Ontario as the backdrop, this favourite summer event promises even more this year for those attending.  The Fort Erie Arts Council has expanded its focus to include artisans, in addition to visual artists of all types.  New this year, as well, will be a full day of music provided by popular local and regional musicians, including Elton Lammie, the Aurijinal Junes, Rita Visser, Richard Hunt and the duo, Brad Hiliker & Michele Guy.

            The Festival showcases artists from southwestern Ontario and Western New York whose works range from watercolours, acrylics and photography to sculpture, glass art and much more.  The variety of styles and mediums ensures that there will be something for every taste at this exciting venue. Continue reading →

By John Bacher

It is unfortunate that the Project Niagara proposal is a great scheme, in the wrong place.

Looking northeast across a stretch of the old canal in Welland where the author of this post argues would be a better site than Niagara-on-the-Lake for a summer music festival.

Having a Niagara summer music festival, with the backing of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, is a good way to promote green, environmentally friendly tourism. To achieve such an end, it is wrong to build it on lands owned by Canada’s  National Parks service. 

The proposed  site should be developed into a constructed wetland to have Niagara on the Lake’s outdated sewage lagoons work better. This goal would be complimented by the reforestation of the former Department of National Defense rifle range, a move that would enhance the protection of Lake Ontario’s shoreline from predicted more fierce storms from climate change. The entire area  should become Tecumseh National Park. It could be up and running in its vision of ecological restoration based on the zeal for protecting forests of this prophetic native Canadian statesman, in time for the War of 1812 bicentennial. Continue reading →

 By Donna Brok

The third annual Orchard Parkway Garden Walk in Niagara Falls, New York, presented by the Orchard Parkway Block Club, is being held Saturday, July 10, rain or shine. It is a self-guided, walking tour, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

One of many properties featured on Niagara Falls, New York garden walk.

The Walk is free to the public, and the organizers only ask that you bring a canned good to donate to the local food bank. Boxes will be conveniently placed at the white welcome tent for your donation.

The Walk began in 2008 with three friends discussing possibilities for promoting beautification efforts within the City of Niagara Falls, New York, and currently, this Walk is one of the eighteen Garden Walks listed on the five week long National Buffalo Garden Festival. For information on the National Buffalo Garden Festival go to their website at, www.nationalgardenfestival.com/.

With the help and hard work of the Orchard Parkway Block Club, there are now approximately 40 gardens open for public viewing on Orchard Parkway and Chilton Avenue. Garden enthusiasts of all ages are welcome, and there is a small giveaway for the kids. See photos of the unique and delightful gardens on prior Walks at the Orchard Parkway Block Club website, found at www.orchardparkway.com/. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

If you need one more reason to write off this Liberal government in Ontario, this may be it.

Remember Eleanor Slithered? I’m sure our American readers wouldn’t. But they may take some disquieting comfort (or may be just as depressed) in knowing that there are governments on the Canadian side of the border that are just as willing to reward scumbags from past administrations with lucrative pension packages.

 Obviously one Ontario government that has no bones about doing it is that of Premier Dalton McGuinty and one of his senior cabinet ministers, St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley who, in his particular case, has always tried to come off as if he gives a fig about common people while obviously not carrying about kissing up to the privileged like Clitheroe with generous rewards at the expense of common people.

Getting back to who Clitheroe is or was, she ran the former Ontario Hydro (a publicly owned corporation) until 2002 until the former Conservative government of outgoing and incoming premiers Harris and Ernie Eves, with the current Conservative leader Tim Hudak right there in cabinet, almost had no choice but to fire here out the door over reports of hefty perks she was receiving, by way of travel, etc., on top of her $2.2 million salary.

The McGuinty Liberals, including Niagara’s Bradley, were just as righteous back then in calling for Clitheroe’s head. But now we find out, according to a top-of-front-page story in the June 4 edition of The Toronto Star, that McGuinty, Bradley and the others have been continuing to feed Clitheroe a monthly pension of $25,637.08 the former Conservative of Harris/Eves/Hudak went along with, and one the McGuinty/Bradley gang has continued to feed her. Continue reading →

By Dylan Powell

Last week, people from around the world reacted with outrage and disgust at an undercover video which detailed sadistic abuse of animals at a family farm in Plain City, Ohio.

Better times at an animal sanctuary similar to Happy Rolph's.

The Farm owner Gary Conklin, swiftly fired farm worker Billy Joe Gregg Jr, offering him up to the media as a sacrifice for what happens on farms across the globe on a daily basis. At Billy Joe Gregg Jr’s hearing he asked that he be released for numerous financial reasons, but also because he wanted to look after his animals. The irony of those words exposed the grand lie that permeates our societies relationship with animals; how can we love one and not another?

For those who live in the Niagara Region, this morning brought with it news of another horrific case of animal cruelty. Police believe that two suspects broke into a local petting zoo, Happy Rolph’s, and left a wake of carnage: four dead animals, one rabbit decapitated with its head mounted on a stake, numerous other animals shot at with BB and Pellet Guns and also a missing baby goat.

Animal cruelty cases are definitely nothing new to the Niagara Region, anyone remember Bailey the Maine Coon Cat? Or even more recently the neglect and misuse of animals by the T.E.A.R.S organization? There is a void in this region that needs to be filled when it comes to proper education. Notably, when I say education, I do NOT mean entertainment. Happy Rolph’s Petting Zoo, which operates in conjunction but separate from the Bird Sanctuary, is in and of itself NOT an educational tool for children on how to properly respect animals. Continue reading →

By John Bacher

Currently there is a lull before the storm of the planned Ontario Municipal Board hearing on the Fort Erie Canadian Motorway Speed

Fort Erie residents enjoy nature walks around wetlands near lands planned for mammoth motor racing facility.

way.

This scheme, facilitated by the amendments to the Fort Erie and Niagara Region Official Plans which are under appeal, would designate some 817 acres of land that are now protected as “Good General Agricultural Land”, into a “Special Policy” area.

The delay in the OMB hearing is because the Town of Fort Erie and the Niagara Region are seeking to develop new zoning categories to replace the agricultural designation which now prohibits motorways. At the same time, proponents of the motorway are likely engaged in arm-twisting with the province over the fate of a predominately Pin Oak Swamp Forest. This is an area the developer seeks to cross with a bridge that would allow motorcars to race over the forest below. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Can’t help but think of the late Margherita Howe of Niagara-on-the-Lake – who chaired a citizens group called Operation Clean in the late 1970s and 1980s to fight for cleaner water in the Niagara River – as I urge you to join the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority to join it this June 3 for a review of the remedial actions taken to protect this great watershed.

Photo of Niagara Falls courtesy of Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority.

This Thursday, June 3, the Conservation Authority and Niagara Parks Commission is inviting the public to join it, beginning at 6:30 p.m., at the Butterfly Conservatory Classroom along the Niagara Parkway in Niagara Falls, Ont. for a presentation of the work that has been done to protect this watershed and that of the adjoining Welland River.

This work began with the cooperation of Canada’s federal government, the province, the Conservation Authority and other agencies, along with volunteers from area citizen groups, more than two decades ago when Canada signed a “declaration of intent” with the United States to reduce the flow of damaging contaminants to the shared waters of the Niagara River. That declaration was signed after almost a decade of lobbying by citizens like Howe and others on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

When graduates gather at the St. Catharines campus of Brock University this June to receive their degrees, at least some of them will be graced by the warmth and wise words of one of this region’s most distinguished citizens – Wilma Morrison.

Niagara's own Wilma Morrison. File photo by Doug Draper

Morrison – a Niagara Falls resident and one of the youngest 80 year olds this columnist has ever met – is among five notable Canadians, including fellow Niagara resident and long-time Brock supporter Val Fleming, who will receive honorary degrees from the university during spring convocation ceremonies on June 9 and June 12.

A local historian, Morrison is known by many on both sides of the border of our binational region for her many years of working to preserve and raise public awareness of our area’s rich black history, going back before, during and after the War of 1812, and the ‘Underground Railroad’ that drew fleeing slaves to this area in the years before and during the American Civil War.

Morrison is a popular speaker on the topic of black history (click on Niagara At Large at http://www.niagaraatlarge for earlier posts on her) and routinely finds herself on what amounts to a speaking tour around the region during ‘Black History Month’ each February.

What follows is a May 25 media release from Brock University, listing all five individuals who will receive honorary degrees and when they will receive them. Continue reading →

 By Doug Draper

With passing drivers offering then honks of support and Marineland’s owner John Holer giving them a stern stare from nearby parking lot, several dozen animal activists from across Niagara and surrounding regions staged a protest in front of the giant amusement park this May Victoria Day weekend against keeping whales and dolphins in captivity.

Passing drivers offer honks of support as animal advocates demonstrate in front of Marineland in Niagara Falls. Photo by Doug Draper.

The demonstration in front of Marineland’s sprawling Niagara Falls property is one of many members of Niagara Action For Animals and other animal activists on both sides of the border have staged near the parking lot and gates to the park over the past 20 or so years.

“These animals do not volunteer to be imprisoned and enslaved to perform tricks or be on display for our entertainment,” said Kimberly Costello, a member of Niagara Action for Animals, the not-for-profit group that played a lead role in staging the demonstration. “By protesting (this May 22) we hoped to communicate our message of compassion for all animals in captivity, to inform people about the inherent cruelty at Marineland, and to remind those entering the park that they can re-consider their choice to support and fund such cruelty.” Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Ontario’s NDP leader Andrea Horwath tabled a bill at Queen’s Park this May 20, calling for a cap on the salaries and benefits of high-priced public sector executives running hospital systems, universities, colleges, hydro utilities and other tax-funded agencies in Ontario.

Why is this premier who runs the whole province making $209,000 a year?

Meanwhile, the premier of Ontario is making $209,000 a year. Say what you want about Dalton McGuinty. But that is what he is getting paid for running the whole province! Compare that to Debbie Sevenpifer, CEO of the Niagara Health System, who is making $345,000 for arguably mismanaging most of the hospital sites falling under her shadow in the Niagara region.

The bill Horwath has tabled, if it gets passed (and unfortunately it probably has a snowball’s chance in late spring of getting passed with this government, would apply to all public sector executives who are subject to the annual ‘sunshine list’ – that list of publicly funded officials at the provincial and municipal level, and at other public

Why, on the other hand, is this CEO for the Niagara Health System making $345,000 a year?

bodies, including educational institutions – reporting the yearly wages and benefits of all those making more than $100,000.
“Until we have a clear, uniform cap on public salaries, Ontarians can expect to see the pay packets of public executives continue to grow at the expense of public service,” Horwath said.

It will be interesting to see how much support Horwath’s bill gets in the provincial legislature. Will the province’s Conservative leader, Tim Hudak, support it? Will any of the McGuinty’s Liberal backbenchers? We shall wait and see.

(Click on www.niagaraatlarge.com at Niagara At Large for more news and commentary on this and other matters of interest and concern to our greater binational Niagara region.)