Birthday bash
What a party! Strolling through the streets of Wellington in the wee hours of Tuesday morning—there was scant evidence of the festivities, celebration and activities that had lit up the village over the past four days. The sidewalks were scrubbed, the park returned to lush verdancy, and the trash had long been bagged up and […]
A good place
You can’t make communities. You can put homes together, arrayed neatly around a park, add in a few a few stores, libraries and churches, but it isn’t yet a community. It may be a place and it may have a name but it remains merely a collection of buildings—as isolated from each other as the […]
On topic
Let’s be clear—it was never a democracy. From the moment Quinte Health Care was formed in 1998 it shared more in common with Soviet era institutions than it did with the community-funded and governed hospitals it replaced. For a while QHC made an attempt to keep up appearances that it cared about what this community […]
The law of the hammer
If the only tool you have is a hammer— every problem looks like a nail. For more than a decade the masters of health care in this province have preached a single solution— that centralization of services is the cure-all for every challenge, every pressure, every problem the system encounters. Our population is getting older. […]
A place apart
It never fails to impress. Surely there can be no other community that participates so freely, so graciously and as often as the folks of Prince Edward County. On Friday morning dozens of volunteers began setting up and preparing for the Great Canadian Cheese Show on the Prince Edward County Fairgrounds. All weekend long they […]
Stalwart
Bill Wightman has seen the winds shift in Prince Edward County over the past decade and some. He was among a very small group of folks in 2000 who coalesced around an effort to resist the development of a wind turbine project on a ridge near Pleasant Bay in Hillier. Landowners who had signed contracts […]
Fresh air
There is a new air around Shire Hall these days. As if the doors were opened up and a spring breeze allowed to penetrate the deep recesses and niches in the historic seat of local government. It seems obvious now that the County, and I daresay many other communities, were illprepared to manage an amalgamated […]
Shin-kicker
Peter Worthington left us this past weekend. He died as a result of a staph infection. I was surprised to learn he was all of 86 years of age. A thick unruly mat of hair threatening to consume his forehead, coupled with a lean and overall fit appearance, conspired to present a more youthful man […]
Champions
Congratulations to the Picton Pirates—the players, coaches and organization. It was a remarkable season, capped by a remarkable final series. Now the Pirates are the All-Ontario Champions—for the first time in the team’s 24-year history. It was a victory made sweeter by the sheer improbability of it all. It has been 20 years since a […]
Natural exit
Somewhere in Don Mills, I expect Premier Kathleen Wynne is quietly giving thanks to an old turtle. And, she is surely secretly praying that more Blanding’s turtles raise their bright yellow chins elsewhere in the province, in clear view of an environmental review tribunal. For Kathleen Wynne would surely love to back out of the […]