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 […]
Dawn’s early light
Kent Hawkins would be pleased I think. He along with a handful of others fought the lonely, and often bitter, fight against industrial wind turbines a decade ago in Prince Edward County. An engineer by training and by inclination, Hawkins occupied himself in the realm of fact and data. From his North Marysburgh home, he […]
Our community hospital
It is not a hopeful cause. Since that February day in 1998 when the shiny new hospital corporation took form to administer four hospitals in the region, Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital has been on a slow, steady march to oblivion. To nothing. With every significant decline, this community has rallied in defence of its […]
The expendables
So why? Why do it? Why travel a couple of hundred kilometres down the road to protest wrong-headed decisions about our community hospital to folks who are clearly not listening? Folks who toil in isolation in hushed meeting rooms believing they know better about health care in our community? What is the value in complaining […]
Still no answers
They were horrific crimes—vulnerable children victimized and abused by the people entrusted to care for them. Put in harm’s way by a government agency and its officials whose job it was to protect them—to look after them. Two foster parents are already in jail; another has been sentenced to a lengthy prison sentence pending appeal. […]
The list
Ontario’s Public Sector Salary Disclosure List is a rather crude measuring stick. As a friend and faithful reader is quick to point out when the Sunshine List is mentioned in these pages and elsewhere, it offers a narrow, and somewhat voyeuristic, view into the business of our public institutions. His chief complaint is that the […]
Fence line
Judging by the long lineups of folks waiting for the sweet taste of freshly boiled maple syrup at many Prince Edward County venues over the weekend, Maple in the County was another brilliant success in 2013. Rarely do the woodlots and farm lanes host so many folks young and old as they do when the […]
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 […]