What’s on the menu

I don’t like liver. I don’t eat liver. I don’t buy liver. I won’t cook liver for someone even if they love liver and I love them. The thing about me not liking liver is I don’t need a degree in nutrition science nor do I need to be a dietitian to have an opinion about liver. So where am I going with this? Well, I want people to know they don’t need to be versed, schooled or experienced in anything to have an opinion of something. Sometimes it helps to have a bit of background on a topic. As regards “liver” and my dinner plate, all I know is I don’t like it and I don’t need to eat it. But I will raise a forkful of dark, leafy greens to all of the liver-lovers out there.

A lot like my lack of nutritional expertise regarding my aversion to liver, I haven’t done much research regarding the proposed housing development in Fawcettville, either. I just don’t like it. However, I did read a bit of what’s out there and, so far I still don’t like it. It gives me the “liver is delicious and good for you” vibe. Even if it’s cooked properly I don’t like liver. As with the proposal, even if it’s “cooked properly” I don’t like it. As all y’all know, I don’t live in Fawcettville. (Psst, I don’t live in Welly, either) I don’t spend hours everyday visiting Fawcettville. I currently have no intention of moving to Fawcettville. And, in all of the years I’ve been living in The County I could probably say I’ve been in Fawcettville about thirty or forty times. I think that may be a generous estimate. However, there are people who call Fawcettville “home”. Real, honest-to-goodness people live in Fawcettville. And from what I have read about the potential addition of eighty-five housing units to that community, the people who currently call Fawcettville their home are not exactly pleased with the proposal, either. Regardless of what the rest of us may have read, Fawcettvillians don’t seem to be onboard with the potentially massive expansion and dusty disruption in their community. Some of those people living in Fawcettville may even be “lovers-of-liver”, but have a bad taste for this deal. It seems to make “no never mind” to the people involved in the potential development. The people who live there and oppose the proposal should be top-of-the-list of who to heed as far as this plan of subdivision goes. Those naysayers should be the people the municipality, the planners and the developer have to answer to before one shovelful of dirt is shovelled or one tree is removed. I would guess most of the people who live in that community are not urban planners, or nutritionists for that matter. But, they have a very real, vested interest on the preservation of their unique neighbourhood. They want to preserve the flavour of Fawcettville.

And Fawcettville is a unique neighbourhood.

Mr. DenOuden, the president of Hilden Homes, mentioned his company had “built throughout Prince Edward County for the last twenty-five years” including an on-going project in Carrying Place, which happens to be in Northumberland County. Well, LOML and I have often driven past that Northumberland subdivision. I can’t remember the exact name of it, but the marketing campaign alludes to “life in The Cove” and suggests it’s an idyllic setting. There was a time when it was an idyllic setting. Now it’s just a collection of monster homes built upon what most of us would consider marshland. “The Cove” was once a wetland that edged the lake and was once dominated by herbaceous plants. That marshland has been scraped away and backfilled with mountains of “clean fill”, then smoothed out, dug up again and built upon. The marshland has disappeared from the view of passersby. Was there a hint of a promise to retain or recreate the marsh? I often wonder if, in the long run, the marsh in The Cove will rise up and cause no end of problems to the homeowners. Nature has a way of defending itself, dontcha know! Perhaps there was a similar hint of a promise made in the Fawcettville proposal when after clear-cutting the existing forest and building eightyfive housing opportunities whereby the developer makes it all better by planting a solitary tree on each lot and pays the fine for uprooting the trees?

I think a lot of people who live in the County are tired of being told what’s good for them by developers who are mostly interested in what’s good for investors.

County Council meets on June 19 and Fawcettville is on the menu. If you want to have your say, contact Shire Hall to register as a speaker at this meeting.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca