Columnists
Split again, naturally
I know I’m on hiatus, so pretend you are not reading this. While I clear my mind, and set my thoughts at ease, I suffer that ‘vacation thing’ in which your brain doesn’t know if you turned the iron off before you were 100 miles away. Until you truly hit vacation mode, your brain keeps churning on things you left behind, until you have enough piña coladas in your system that you can’t name your home country or any family members without sincere pondering.
Which brings me to this: I read everything our two newspapers have to offer. (There is a third ‘news’ paper, but if it doesn’t have a Giant Tiger flyer, it only gives me info culled from sister ‘news’ papers in Belleville and Quinte West.)
Now that I have that off my chest (I used to work for them!) let’s get down to actual editorial content.
The Times and Gazette (oddly enough, I worked for them too!) have different ideologies, and some similarities. First, they speak their minds, editorial-wise, and sign their names to it. This is important to me, as a journalist.
I once had a battle with the Belleville Intelligencer because they printed hard-hitting editorials, with no accreditation to the author. Being in the biz, I located the author, and challenged him. He said, “It’s the opinion of the newspaper.” Ridiculous. A newspaper is not a living entity, and the ink and pulp does not have an opinion. The opinions come from directives from the Chain, which controls every thought and opinion of everyone who works under their watch. Yes, I worked for them too, and can guarantee that thoughts of your own were not welcome in the edit room.
Wow! Getting a lot off my chest here! Almost piña colada time!
BACK TO HOME
A good newspaper has a balance between good comment, good news coverage, good representation of the community and, of course, the obits, which have become increasingly important to me as my friends die off.
Both papers handle this well, and I suggest you read them both. As I do. But then I started to see beyond the news, and viewed the commentary—both from editorials and letter writers.
Then it hit me. Here we are again. County people always have something to fight about. Why? Because we’re different from each other. We’ve always done this. There was a time when all the farmers voted Liberal in an election. I don’t know why. Everyone else— and I mean everyone else—voted Conservative. I don’t know why. For a good century, neither government did much for us. Nothing changed. Ponder that. As we move to:
RIGHT AND WRONG
I look out at the County community, and I see that same thing. This is right, and that is wrong. Sometimes with no reason to back it. It’s just what you believe, and what you’ve always done. Trouble is, we’re in a time when there are no concrete rights and wrongs.
Not to bring up the ghost of the industrial wind turbine fiasco, but it’s a perfect example of how something right could go terribly wrong. This issue split the County, neighbour against neighbour. It hurt us all. Facts and non-facts were flying around until no one knew what the hell was the truth, and what was right, and what was wrong. Sound familiar?
YAY! ANOTHER SPLIT!
I’ve talked about the split between old-time County folk and newcomers. Except for the hard-liners, who long for the days when Lipson’s had 99¢ jeans, we pretty much absorbed people who came to the County. This split is not completely solved, as new businesses appeared to cater to a new crowd—a moneyed crowd—and we feel left behind. More on this in a bit.
The New Split is about growth. Like every other massive change we’ve faced, we are divided on growth. Going back to the beginning of this column, our two papers are in disagreement on major growth issues.
Rick Conroy in the Times is an amazing researcher. He reads the reports and info I would not read if I was held in a jail cell and waterboarded. So, yes, he’s got the info at hand. With charts no less. Wellington Waterworks may indeed be a disaster. But this is not the issue.
The Gazette, in their coverage, seems to be readily accepting—and promoting—growth. Very thorough reports on waterworks and Picton Terminals seem to show us the light—that growth is great. I agree that growth is inevitable, but I would not call it great.
To me this is a “Once you get used to the pain, you’re going to feel great about how great you feel in the new great County.” I’m not so sure, so let’s explore that.
TWO KINDS OF GROWTH
There are two kinds of growth: Controlled Growth and Uncontrolled Growth. This is where the split comes in. Controlled growth starts with the question: “What do we want?” Sadly, we live in a world where the question is: “What are we going to get, and do we like it?” That question sends people to find their long-lost torches and pitchforks and take to the streets—or rather conference halls—which are a convenient place for us and them to vent misinformation about a future no one can predict.
Uncontrolled growth is reactionary. “What do they want?”—’they’ being developers and anyone else who sees money to be made. Council reacts because potential money-people are banging on the doors to get a piece of the action. Can’t fault that, since we spend most of our time screaming about what we don’t want, before the big question—What do we want?—has been answered.
Here’s the weird part. Council reacts. Then the people react. Most of the reaction is because some issues are close to home for our various communities. Many people bought into the County because of what we were—small and friendly and everyone connected to community—and now developments are threatening to pile up town houses and rubber-stamped housing until Picton and Wellington look like Newmarket, where you need to paint your door a different colour so you can find your way home.
WE NEED A FORTUNE TELLER
To be clear, I find fault with some of Conroy’s stats. I also find fault with the Gazette’s rosy predictions that growth is fantastic when we get used to it.
Funny thing is: Neither they, nor I, can predict the effects of growth on our future. When I’m faced with lifechanging decisions, I tend to slow my brain and my impulses down, and explore the pros and cons of the situation. Usually, I sleep on it, and earn a little insight just by resting my mind.
Sadly, this does not appear to be an option for us, as the growth train goes speeding along. If our future was predictable, then we all might get huge wins on our lottery tickets. That’s how predictable our future is.
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