Mind the steaming mound
Across Ontario, farmland prices are rising— up about 16 per cent on average last year and about 65 per cent since 2012. Despite generally lower commodity prices and a killing drought in some regions across the province, farmland values are higher than they were four years ago. In some cases, much higher. Closer to home, […]
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 […]
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 […]
Just play
Like moths to a flame, kids manage to find ice upon which to play. Perhaps it is related to the sense that migrating animals rely upon to return to the place of their birth. It is encouraging to know this instinct has not been extinguished. It is a cliché: The snow-covered pond amid the farm […]