Wynne’s New Year’s gift
It feels vaguely ill-fitting, so close to Christmas and all, to use this page to illuminate yet another ill-conceived energy scheme concocted by the provincial government and set to be inflicted on Ontario residents beginning on January 1. (If uplifting is what you’re looking for, however, may I recommend you turn to page 12, where […]
Undoing
Rural Ontario wandered into a lot of bad deals in 1997 and 1998. In some cases, perhaps most, we had these arrangements thrust upon us. There can hardly be a worse deal than the one that saw our communities trade control of funding of our schools for the care and maintenance of formerly provincial roads. […]
Unbounded Bea
My favourite drawing by Bea Lotz is of a lone mourning dove perched at the end of a long, thin branch. Observant and a wee bit vain, the bird calls out for attention. She can wait all day. Next month we say goodbye to Bea’s art and poems in The Times. Her much-loved contribution is […]
Navigation aids
How do we know what we know? It is an important question when making a big decision. Even when all the signposts point in one direction, we can still be led astray. Not intentionally, mind you.But through poor design, lack of context and bad assumptions we can be convinced we are headed the right way, […]
The fall
Winter is coming. It’s a season, particularly in Canada, that can inflict hardship and enduring suffering upon the unprepared. In another era, we knew instinctively to fill our cupboards and root cellars in the fall, to ready our lives for the coming winter. We cut and chopped wood to stay warm. Because winter can be […]
Past due
It wasn’t idle curiosity, but neither was there a specific purpose to my request. In reading and writing about the County’s waterworks these past 13 years, and specifically about the escalating costs of keeping this system of pipes and pumps flowing smoothly, there was no obvious measure of how consumers were coping. There is plenty […]
Get out of the way
The challenges we face in Prince Edward County—declining school enrollment, decaying roads, a shortage of affordable housing and a sputtering economy due to a shrinking manufacturing and industrial base—aren’t unique to this community. Across rural Ontario, these trends chip away at the fading veneer of once vital and optimistic towns and villages. These forces are […]
A necessary fight
Taking back Pleasant Bay Road will be hard. There are other roadways and many more unopened road allowances where the County’s claim may be challenged. The County could find itself entangled in a legal thicket for years. Yet, that is precisely what it must do. Consciously and deliberately. When gates were erected across Pleasant Bay […]
Bad actors
The image remains seared into the consciousness of everyone who witnessed the grotesque spectacle. The full power and fury of the state and its legal might, side by side with one of most powerful law firms in Canada, arrayed against the grey-haired volunteers of the Prince Edward County Field Naturalists. Five Goliaths against one David. […]
Why vote?
2016 has been an unsettling year. It feels, in some ways, like the first act in a Shakespearean tragedy—the part where the quiet lives of peasants are about to be turned over by an invading horde. We sense that trouble is brewing, yet we are helpless to do anything but wait for the storm to […]