The Greenhouse Gas go-ahead
Last Thursday, Canada’s Supreme Court issued a judgment finding the federal Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act to be constitutionally valid. Therefore, Canada can go ahead and administer a rising floor price for carbon and invite the provinces to set up their own systems, failing which the federal system kicks in. The decision is an important […]
March into April
The last moments of March, 2021 and here we are, still staring down the double-barrel of a pandemic we just didn’t see coming. Last March, I remember looking forward to June, when we’d all be out-and-about and the virus would be dead and gone. But here we are, in the throes of a third wave, […]
Keeping The Times
My wife and I decided to move to the County before we decided exactly where in the County to move. Eventually, we settled on Wellington. It was a working village, a community. It had its own hockey team, bank, grocery store, hardware store, pharmacy and library, as well as its own cheerful slogan—“The coolest spot […]
Choose, Chose, Choice
I am not a “woke” person. Up until a few months ago I didn’t even know what “woke” meant. I thought it had something to do with not being asleep, literally. I was asleep, but then I woke up kinda thingy. I am a woke-in-progress person. I have always been a “woke” in progress, and […]
Not a Magic Wand
The County has taken its first steps towards shifting some of the cost of operating the Wellington Beach onto the shoulders of visitors. At its committee of the whole meeting on March 11, Council adopted a series of staff recommendations. A confirming by-law must still be passed at a council meeting. Chief among the recommendations […]
Try it. You’ll like it
It’s not that I dislike the music of Leonard Cohen, it’s that I don’t like being “told” that Leonard Cohen is good for me. Or hearing that someone can’t believe I’m not a fan of his work, or worship at the altar of Cohen. Maybe I haven’t been told as much in as many words, […]
The Big Push Blues
I’ve got the Big Push Blues this week. All I can think about are the negative aspects of the vaccination campaign that’s Coming To A Major Public Facility Near You. First of all, I can’t bring myself to watch the COVID-19 news on television anymore. It’s not that I’m squeamish (although my wife would say […]
Sense and Scent-sibility
When I think about 2020, my memories are very sensory. Twenty-twenty is a bit like music. Whenever I hear The Fifth Dimension sing Bill, I am transported to of our apartment in Toronto in the early ’70s. But more than music, 2020 is the smell of bread baking. I don’t think I know any adult, […]
Comparing the Great with the Small
The feat of coming up with an approved vaccine for COVID-19 within a year after the pandemic was first declared reminds us just how capable we are of doing great things. At the other end of the spectrum, however, are the trivial and banal things that persist in bothering us because they should, by comparison, […]
Anything but housing
Whenever I sit down to write a column, I’m never really sure where it’s going to go. Never. Lots of ideas are left “on the cutting room floor”, or just erased. This week I thought for sure I was going to say something about The Times’s edition published last week. Wall-to-wall opinions on the housing […]