Niagara At Large

By Doug Draper, Niagara At Large.

When we launched Niagara At Large nine months ago as an independent, alternative venue for news and commentary for our greater Niagara region, we made it clear from the start that anonymous comments will not be posted.

Buffalo News Managing Editor Margaret Sullivan is showing leadership by imposing the first ban on anonymous comments on the website of a daily newspaper on this continent. More on that brave decision further down in this aritcle. Photo courtesy of The Buffalo News.

This decision was made to discourage uncivil comments, including insulting and defamatory attacks on individuals or groups who are either in the news or care enough to share news and commentary, along with their real name, with online sites like this. It was made to discourage the kind of verbal spitball we see being hurled by anonymous bloggers on websites, including far too many being operated by supposedly reputable newspapers and broadcast outlets.

We believed, from the start, that if we require people to post comments under their real names, there would be a far greater likelihood of receiving comments tempered with a degree of thoughtfulness and civility.

To date, Niagara At Large is pleased to say that since January of this year, this site has received more than 1,500 comments to news and commentary on the site and readers that have shared their names have posted more than 1,200. By any yardstick, that is a pretty good response considering that some very good and experienced individuals in the news business warned us at the onset that we may not get many people willing to comment to posts on this site if we required them to share their real names.

However, there are still readers, and we’ve had about 300 to date, who send us comments with pseudonyms like ‘Rick Ramrod’, ‘Torpedo Tom’ and ‘Sexy Cool’ tagged to them, or comments with names and email addresses we cannot verify as being real through attempts to email these people or call them on the phone. The majority of these comments have so far confirmed our view that people who prefer to remain anonymous or use false names are more interested in breathing fire at others than engaging in a civil debate. In fact, some of these people have engaged in commentary that leads one to believe they would be better off seeking some professional help in anger management than attempting to post their remarks here. Continue reading →

By Niagara At Large Publisher Doug Draper

“What’s the use of being a writer if you can’t irritate a great many people.”
– the late American writer Norman Mailer.

This August, while my family and I ventured out to the tip of Cape Cod to Provincetown, Massachusetts, we made a short pilgrimage to the grave of Norman Mailer.

Legendary American writer Norman Mailer's grave in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Photo by Doug Draper

Mailer, who died two years ago this coming November and who made P-Town his home for most of his Pulitzer Prize-writing years, remains one of my favourite commentators on so much of the madness I feel I’ve lived through during my short 59 years on this wonderful, mysterious and crazy planet.

Like him or not, Mailer was one of the most keen and courageous writers on the heroes and villains, and on so many of the good, bad and ugly events of our times. And yes, he did irritate a great many people.

Not that irritating people was Mailer’s sole goal. He was a far more multi-dimensional chronicler than that. The idea of irritating people, in my view, was Mailer’s take on that old line that one of the missions of a writer – especially those who call themselves journalists – should be to ‘comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable’. And that is always what this journalist believes he or any other journalist worth their salt should do when it comes to those who are so comfortable in their positions of power, they have forgotten what it means to feel afflicted any more.

Continue reading →

Commentary by Doug Draper

I don’t know about you, but I have just about had it with hearing any more from Canada’s Conservative government about cracking down on crime.

Tory Justice Minister and Niagara Falls MP Rob Nicholson talks tough on crime. So why move to kill long-gun registry?

 I am talking about all of this last couple of years of bluster and chest beating – often coming to us through Tory Justice Minister and Niagara Falls MP Rob Nicholson – about getting tougher on violent crime and spending billions of tax dollars that could be spent on health care, on education and so many other worthwhile things on building more prisons.

Here are a few questions for Nicholson and his party about their Texas-style ‘war on crime’.

 Why so much emphasis on this when statistics show that the rate of violent crime rate in Canada has actually been going down in recent years? Is this just one more crass way of pandering to a base of voters obsessed with crime and punishment over almost anything else? Or is it a make-work program for lawyers and others in the justice system who haven’t been getting as much business lately because the crime rate has gone down? Continue reading →

 By Dave Toderick

I used to be both bewildered and dismayed that there are still people who don’t believe that climate change is happening as a result of human behaviour . 

Recently, though, I’ve come across some information that has helped me, at least with the bewildered part.  The information has to do with the way people form opinions.

It would be natural to assume that, in order to arrive at a point of view on an important topic, we first look around us for the facts, then weigh the information we have gathered to form our opinion.  In fact, researchers have found that what actually happens is that people first form an opinion and then seek out information to back up their new belief. Continue reading →

A Foreward by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

The City of Port Colborne – one of the south and central Niagara municipalities, along with Fort Erie, Wainfleet, Welland and Niagara Falls, receiving the short end of the stick from the provincial government of Dalton McGuinty and company when it comes to hospital services – decided during a council meeting this August 23 to consider legal options that include suing the provincial government and the Local Health Integration Network it hides be

The Niagara Health System, with the approval of the area's Local Health Integration Network, removes the emergency room sign at the Port Colborne Hospital last summer. Photo by Doug Draper

hind.

The South Niagara city’s decision to seek legal advice on a possible lawsuit follows the release of a report by Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin, the province’s official watchdog, charging that the LHI N representing Niagara, Hamilton and other surrounding areas acted illegally two years ago in excluding Niagara municipal councils and members of the public in participating in a fully open and transparent review of a so-called ‘hospital improvement plan’ for this region.

Marin’s charge that this hand-picked, McGuinty government body gave Niagara the bum’s rush when it come to having a full and open say in the future of hospitals services in this region is no small deal. The Niagara Health System, another provincial body now responsible for operating most of the hospital services in this region, has moved forward with its “hospital improvement plan,” since the tabling of this plan two summers ago, by closing emergency room services at hospital sites in Port Colborne and Fort Erie, and by continually closing beds and other services at those sites and others in the region. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

The people of Niagara  “deserve” to see plans for cutting a new super highway through the region resurrected with a full environmental review, says Tim Hudak.

Ontario Conservative Leader and Niagara MPP Tim Hudak

The Ontario Conservative leader and Niagara MPP was responding in a media release this Aug. 3 to a recent report from Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government that places the idea of building a new highway, from the Hamilton-Burlington area through to the Fort Erie-Buffalo border area, on the backburners indefinitely.

“I have been calling on Dalton McGuinty to get moving on this important transportation infrastructure for years,” said Hudak, who has been a strong advocate for a new highway through Niagara going back to his years in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a cabinet minister in the former Conservative governments of Mike Harris and Ernie Eves. Continue reading →

A Message From Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

If you are a regular Niagara At Large reader, you will notice a lot less action on this news and commentary site over the next few weeks.

That is because we are taking a little time during these dog days of summer to recharge our batteries and to plan ahead for a busy late summer and fall, and for much more of the kind of news and commentary that adds up to the virtual ‘Town Hall meetings’ Niagara At Large is proud to engage in with the residents of our greater binational Niagara on a host of issues.

In Niagara, Ontario, residents face possibly the most important municipal elections in a generation this October in terms of who is going to finally lead our communities in ways that are economically and environmentally sustainable through the first half of the 21st century. For residents on both sides of our binational border, there are issues like health care, employment, protecting the ecology of our Great Lakes and what is left of our manufacturing sector, the gridlock at border bridges, and protecting and preserving our heritage most treasured landscapes while building toward a more prosperous future.

And, of course, Niagara At Large also looks forward to building on a record we are proud of when it comes to covering some of the great festivals, and other cultural and heritage events that enrich the lives of all of us who make Erie and Niagara Counties, New York, and Niagara, Ontario our home. Continue reading →

A Foreward by Doug Draper

For the half century since its founding, Marineland has been a very popular amusement park and has been one of the pillars of a lucrative tourist industry in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

If anyone doubts that, just drive by the sprawling Marineland park any sunny day of the summer and check out how many cars are filling its parking lots and how many men, women and children are lining the ticket booths at its front gates.

But not ‘everyone loves Marineland, contrary to that iconic old ad jingle that repeats that line over and over again on television and radio stations for thousands of miles around. There are some – maybe just a handful, for all we know – who don’t love Marineland for its keeping of whales, including Orcas and belugas, and other marine mammals in captivity for the pleasure of the masses. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Canada’s Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff struck a positive chord during his visit to Niagara, Ontario this late July with a promise to see the region’s Welland Canal corridors, including the surviving remnants of the first canals dating back to the early 1800s, designated a heritage and/or national historical site if he is elected prime minister.

Canada's Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff (second from right), joins Niagara, Ontario residents on tour of remnants of first Welland Canal locks in St. Catharines, Ontario area. Photo courtesy of The Welland Canal Advocate.

That sounds fabulous. But the key word in that promise is “if” he gets elected the next PM, and given his standing in national polls these days, that remains an uncertainty.

What should not remain uncertain – regardless of what party is running this country – is a national designation for a Welland Canal system that has done as much to open Canada to its west and build the country’s economy as any other infrastructure, including trans-Canada rail and highway, that has been built to date.

Members of The Welland Canals Advocate, an area group with a mission to promote the history of the canals, and protect and preserve what is left of the first canals built under the leadership of William Hamilton Merritt, took Ignatieff on a short tour of earlier canal sites before he hosted a Town Hall meeting in St. Catharines this July 30. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Let Stephen Harper and his federal Conservatives take the low road, said Canada’s Liberal leader after he road into St. Catharines, Ontario this July 30 for a town hall meeting as part of his “Liberal Express” swing through the country this summer.

Canada's Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, field's questions at town hall meeting in St. Catharines, Ontario. Photo by Doug Draper

“I want to take the high road,” said Michael Ignatieff to a mostly enthusiastic audience of more than 100 locals who attended the meeting at the Old Merritton Town Hall. “I want to have a conversation with you” rather than spin messages for the purposes of manipulating people, he added, and “you can’t be a good leader unless you are willing to listen to people.”

“You are looking at someone who wants to be your prime minister,” Ignatieff said, and “I respect the institutions that keep us free and I accept institutions that limits my authority as a leader.”

That is hardly the way it is with Harper and his government, Ignatieff went on to say. He ignores the courts, when it is convenient for him to do so, and “when parliament gets in the way, (Harper) shuts it down.”

Ignatieff also defended the need for a full, mandatory census forms to get a good snapshot of the country and its people for Statistics Canada, and he called Harper’s drive to kill the mandatory census as something based on “ideology” rather than anything that seems rational – driven by a government “that seems to prefer ignorance to knowledge.” He questioned how a government could know who needs the most help in what parts of the country if it doesn’t have the information a thorough census can provide. Continue reading →

 A Commentary By Susan Howard-Azzeh

Canadians need to step back and analyze what is really at play here regarding the G20, specifically regarding civil liberties, participatory democracy and foreign interference, or Canada, as we know, it may be changed beyond recovery.

Representatives of unions, environmental and other activist groups march in the streets of Toronto during the G20 summit this June.

Yes, there were decent and reasonable police at the G20 who showed restraint and tried to diligently perform their duties to maintain public safety. However, there were also those who did not, and all en masse were used as political pawns by (Canada’s prime minister) Stephen Harper, (Ontario’s premier) Dalton McGuinty, G20 organizers and foreign agendas.

It is vital that we have public access and democratic input into what takes place behind closed doors by world leaders. Many believe the G20 should not take place at all and certainly not in downtown Toronto. Tactics chosen by the minority Black Bloc were designed so that no other city in the world would want to host the G20, which would satisfy
Black Bloc political aims because they feel the G20 is illegitimate, doesn’t represent the peoples’ best interests, and are the rich and powerful making decisions regardless of their impact on the world’s disempowered and often poor majority.

We already have the UN so why the G20? Because business interests, profits and economic globalization are not the number one priority at the UN. Continue reading →

By John Nicol

The human spirit endures many threats to its desire to commune.

Niagara, Ontario's Emil Breur

In Niagara, politicians play with our hospitals, amalgamate towns and create regional governments distant from our front doors. Schoolboards become such fiefdoms, ignorant of the desire for a sense of community, that they poach kids from, let’s say, Niagara-on-the-Lake, such that the town doesn’t have enough students for its own high school.

“Progress” wiped out hamlets like Homer (the Welland Canal), Glen Elgin (river mills were passé) and there are places like St. John or McNab where only the churches mark an olden day commingling at the crossroads.

Bucking these forces have been neighbourhood barbecues, ethnic clubs, and sporting organizations that allow us to form our own societies.

And then there’s the Emil Breuer Soccer Tournament, it’s own Brigadoon that, for the last 25 years, has sprung to life every Simcoe Day weekend on the once-remote grounds of German Village in Niagara Falls.

The weekend is a community gathering at its finest, a magical snapshot of what life should be, all inspired by a charismatic man named Emil Peter Breuer. Continue reading →

A Commentary By Mollie Stovell

It’s always nice to see a local resident really making a name for themselves. It always gives me a sense of pride, having grown up in Niagara. Then, once in a while you come upon a story, with a name, that diminishes that joy you once shared with your neighbours.

Omar Khadr then and more recently

For me, most recently, that story stars our (Niagara Falls) MP, Mr. Rob Nicholson, and his involvement with the Omar Khadr case. One could argue that Mr. Nicholson is merely doing his job by following the direction of our Prime Minister. However, as Canada’s Minister of Justice he must be held accountable for upholding our rights as Canadians, and, as his title implies, ensuring that justice is served.

For Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen, he has not only failed on this front, but continues to fight against those standing on the just side of the law, that is, the Federal Court and previously, the Supreme Court of Canada. Continue reading →

A Commentary By Dan Wilson
 
If Facebook is any indication, there are a whole lot of people out there upset that all the farm animals at Happy Rolph’s petting zoo are gone.

These goats are among the many animals recently removed from popular Happy Rolph's park in St. Catharines, Ontario where animals were violently assaulted by still-unknown persons this spring. File photo by Doug Draper.

Paul Vanderzanden, the West Lincoln turkey farmer who leased the animals to the park, announced earlier this week that he had removed them after a number of questionable decisions (questionable to Mr. Vanderzanden anyways) were made by the city.
 
Regardless of what those decisions were, the fact remains that the animals are gone. Is this a bad thing? I say no. I’ve never really been a big fan of petting zoos and the only reason I go down to Happy Rolph’s is to photograph the ducks and turtles.
 
I personally don’t see what’s so appealing about seeing animals in cages. Of course, they’re not exactly cages, more like enclosures, but the principle is the same: they’re locked up and they can never leave. Their whole world is a pen measuring 10 feet by 10 feet, or in the case of the larger animals, 20 feet by 20 feet. Continue reading →

(Niagara At Large Is pleased to post the following media release from the Binational Economic & Tourism Alliance, a not-for-profit organization representing members of the toursist industry and others across our greater binational Niagara Region.)

The Buffalo Sabres, hosts to the 2011 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship taking place December 26, 2010 to January 5, 2011 in Buffalo NY, have endorsed the Binational Economic & Tourism Alliance (BETA) and Niagara Sport Commission (NSC) as the Southern Ontario leads for the upcoming games.
 
The BETA and NSC, both members of the Host Organizing Committee for the Championship, will work together with a consortium of Canadian and U.S. partners, to assist with the coordination of Southern Ontario community stakeholder communications, visitor packaging, border-crossing logistics and providing one point of contact to ensure quality delivery, ease of transportation, and customer/fan satisfaction during the World Junior Hockey Championship. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

The provincial government may be asking its million or so public employees to accept a wage freeze for the next couple of year. But obviously that does not apply to our police.

This July 27 – a week to the day that Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan hauled more than 50 representatives for public union employees across Ontario to urge them to accept a two-year wage freeze – an abitrator for the province approved a wage increase of close to 10 per cent for the Niagara Regional Police Service over the next three years.

This means that taxpayers across Niagara, Ontario are going to have to pay for this increase through their property taxes – not through income taxes or anywhere else. The province gets to be the hero here and give the police the salary increases they want, and they don’t have to pay for it. Pretty good deal for a province that has it enshrined in an Ontario Police Act only it can change. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Canada’s federal Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff is wheeling his “Liberal Express” into Niagara this July 30th for what he is billing as a “town hall meeting” and you are all invited.

The Friday public meeting begins at 1:45 p.m. and will take place at the Old Merritton Town Hall on 343 Merritt Street in St. Catharines, Ontario.

This meeting is another in a series of get-togethers Ignatieff is hosting across the country in a bid to strike enough of a connection with Canadians to prevail in an election that could within the next 12 months.

Since members of the federal Liberal Party officially endorsed him as leader of the party in May of last year, Ignatieff – or Iggy as he is often called – has found himself sagging in public-opinion polls suggesting, more and more, that the Conservative government of Stephen Harper might finally win a majority if Iggy is one of Harper’s only real opponents in the next election. Continue reading →

If you are up for a great summer festival in one of Niagara’s historic port and canal communities, then follow the crowds to Canal Days in Port Colborne, Ontario this July 30^th through August 2^nd.

Canal Days, Port Colborne, Ontario. File photo by Doug Draper

The Canal Days Marine Heritage Festival is celebrating its 32^nd year as an event that, earlier this year was designated by Festivals & Events Ontario, through a nomination process that included more than 3,000 festivals and events across Ontario, as among the top 100 best to go to across the province.

In recent years, countless tens-of-thousands of people of all ages and from both sides of Niagara’s binational border have flocked to Canal Days for live music, craft shows, car and motorcycle shows, carnival rides, fireworks displays and much more along the shores of Lake Erie and the Welland Canal.

For more information on this festival and events featured this year, visit canaldays.ca or call 1-800-Port-Fun.

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

As the days and weeks go by since that infamous weekend in late June at the G20 summit, the call for a full and open inquiry into security operations around the summit builds.

Riot police around Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario during recent G20 summit.

And so does the gallery of digital images – most captured using all those new-fangled gadgets that can now be brought into play by mostly younger people. Many may not be journalists in the traditional sense and may therefore not deserve mass attention, according to journalistic elites like Toronto Globe and Mail columnist Christie Blatchford and others.

But what these amateur journalists are posting on youtube and through other venues may be more important than any of the crap that Blatchford and other mainstream-media dish out to the powers-that-be.

In that spirit, Niagara At Large is offering the following link to one video and there are many others you can find on line. All should lead to a growing call from anyone who cares about freedom and democracy in Canada for a full and open inquiry.

Here is the link for the video we are posting at the moment at – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbLU9tdDwxo 
 

There may be other digital stills or video you wish to offer. We would consider posting them.

(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

Niagara, Ontario’s regional government is spending more to treat and pipe water and wastewater across the region than it is getting back in charges for water use, and that can only mean one thing.

One of Niagara Region's wastewater treatment plants in the St. Catharines community of Port Dalhousie. Photo courtesy of Niagara Region.

Get ready to pay more – and in some Niagara municipalities, significantly more – for the water you use in your homes and businesses.

That was the overall message Niagara’s directly elected regional councillors and mayors of local municipalities received from the Region’s public works and corporate services staff at a special committee-of-the-whole session this July 20 to discuss how best to set water and wastewater rates over the next four years.

“We have got to get this right,” said the Region’s public works commissioner, Ken Brothers, of the need for a new way of charging residents and businesses for water – a way that addresses a shortfall in revenue for operating water and wastewater works that has added up to about $22 million over the last six years alone. “Without the appropriate revenue, we are heading down an unsustainable path.” Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

How do you get municipal honchos in Toronto so hopping annoyed that they are hopping higher than the CN Tower?

A view from Niagara Parks Commission lands of the rapids foaming above the Horseshoe Falls. Photo by Doug Draper.

Try running a few ads on Toronto-area television stations and a website urging people to consider Niagara as an escape from all of the gridlock, noise, crime and other chaos in the city. That might do it.

In case you have not yet heard all the crying from across the lake, Toronto has its knickers tied in a knot over something a Niagara body said about it in a bundle of ads late this July. The Niagara Parks Commission launched an ad campaign – featured on its website and on Toronto TV stations – encouraging Torontonians to visit its scenic parklands along Falls and Niagara River corridor, as well as other Niagara area attractions. And why? To “shake off the city,” that’s why.

Suffice to say, Toronto officials and some media outlets based in that city seem ready to throw at least a few people down our way over the Falls in the wake of these ads. Continue reading →

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 →