The Cancer Diaries, Part 30

Cancer / Daily life / Musings / Personal Reminiscences / ShakespeareOne Comment

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The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together… (Shakespeare: All’s Well That Ends Well, Act IV, Sc II.) Elumbated.* It’s an archaic word meaning “weakened in the loins” according to the OED. It apparently derives from the Latin elumbis “having a dislocated hip (from e out + lumbus loin).” I thought that the word itself might be well resurrected to describe someone who had had a radical prostatectomy. Like me: If the cancer is tangled with the nerves, it may not be possible to maintain the nerve function or structure. Sometimes nerves must be cut ……… click below for more ↓

Petitioning Mayor Saunderson to Actually Act Like a Mayor

Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Ineptitude and bungling5 Comments

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There’s a petition being shared online that calls on Mayor Brian Saunderson to actually do his job as head of council and discipline the misbehaving Councillor Madigan. You can read my post about Madigan’s behaviour here, and download a PDF copy of the petition here (or download a Word version here). I doubt he will heed it, but I admire the sentiment. After all, Saunderson has yet to show he actually cares about his role as mayor or even about the community he was elected to lead. And his favourite, Madigan, has been acting puerile for too long to change. ……… click below for more ↓

How Can Anyone Afford a New House Here?

Collingwood / Musings / TaxesOne Comment

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My sources suggest that a local retailer recently bought the Blue Shores house shown on the right, paying more than $100,000 over the asking price, for a total of $1.15 million By my standards, that’s a helluva lot of money. Where would anyone working in retail get the funds to buy and maintain a home that sold for that much? I did some rough calculations. The minimum down-payment for a house selling at more than $1 million requires a $230,000 (20%) down-payment, plus another $19,000 in land transfer tax, legal fees of around $1,000, plus title insurance of $1,150, you’d ……… click below for more ↓

Why is Our Mayor Being Sued?

Collingwood / Conflicts of Interest / Council / deception & secrecy / Entitlement / Saunderson's MPP campaignLeave a comment

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Ontario civil court records found online show our Mayor, Brian Saunderson, is listed as the first defendant in a recent lawsuit, along with his allegedly former employers. The lawsuit is for $150,000 and was filed Sept. 17, 2019. The plaintiff is Grand Mortgage Investment Corporation, which the Financial Services Registry Authority office shows has a local office at 192 First Street, in Collingwood, with John Dopp listed as the mortgage administrator. M. Christopher Diamond, of DiamondPantel LLP, is listed as the company’s legal representative. I have not yet found other details about the lawsuit, or why Saunderson is the only ……… click below for more ↓

More Disrespect From Madigan

Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement4 Comments

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After my last post, I was informed about a similar incident of disrespectful behaviour during a previous public council meeting this year. It’s also by Councillor Bob “Lapdog” Madigan. And again his disrespect is again aimed towards female council members. Are you seeing a trend here? And why are local media silent about what seems to be abusive behaviour? The meeting was held March 15, 2021, and the discussion in question was about spending taxpayers’ money to create yet more work for staff on Saunderson’s Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (the SVJI) and his vendetta against people who thwarted his personal ambitions ……… click below for more ↓

Bad Behaviour, Disrespect in Council Meetings

Collingwood / Conflicts of Interest / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Legal issues / Saunderson's MPP campaign / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry2 Comments

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There’s a video clip being shared on social media from the “special” meeting of the Strategic Initiatives Standing Committee Agenda, on Thursday, October 14, 2021 (full video here). It shows a dishevelled Councillor Bob “Lapdog” Madigan in the upper right corner of the screen. It’s worth watching to see how poorly some of our councillors treat their role and their office. The meeting was held to continue the discussions on the judicial report’s recommendations that councillors should disclose their personal financial relations and holdings when elected. Seems many on council (and some staff) think they know better than the judge ……… click below for more ↓

Ammon Shea is My New Hero

Books & Reviews / Books about books / Musings / What I'm Reading Now4 Comments

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Eyyyyyyy Wssup guys This was the entire first post that started a thread in a group I belonged to on Facebook. I think seeing it aged me a decade, and encouraged me to leave the group afterwards. Walking barefoot on broken glass would cause me less distress. All the poster needed to do to make me despair enough to seriously consider slitting my wrists would have been to write “yall” instead of “guys” (thus removing any actual words from the post) I tire of the many posts and comments that flout even the simplest of grammatical or spelling conventions as ……… click below for more ↓

Are Secular Nations Happier?

Atheism & Spirituality / Books & Reviews / Faith / Musings / Talibangelists and pseudo-Christians3 Comments

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Are less-religious or more secular nations happier than religious ones? Studies suggest yes. Personally, I would certainly be happier in a more secular nation if it meant fewer angry, nasty, fanatic believers like the Westboro Baptist congregation (see picture, right), or the faux-faith anti-mask/anti-vaccine, pro-disease protestors,* or any of the frothing anti-choice, anti-abortion protestors who appear around medical clinics. I suspect many among us would also live much more happily without their disruptive, often vicious, pseudo-religious behaviour. But as a democratic, liberal society we are remarkably tolerant of their bullshit and antics because they claim it’s religion-based and we seem ……… click below for more ↓

What is Council Trying to Hide?

Collingwood / Conflicts of Interest / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Legal issues2 Comments

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In an article in CollingwoodToday titled 18 simple rules? Council receives draft of new Code of Conduct, we learn that council is looking to update and revise its current Code of Conduct. Again. The article says, A new set of 18 rules aims to help town councillors navigate the sometimes-complicated situations they may find themselves in through their public service roles. You’d almost think it was a good thing when the article adds that the proposed code “seeks to incorporate recommendations to tighten up and clarify the rules for councillors, members of committees and local boards based on recommendations out ……… click below for more ↓

Council Considers Possibly Thinking About Maybe Doing Something Important Sometime in the Future

Collingwood / Council / COVID-19 responses / Ineptitude and bungling / Planning & PoliciesOne Comment

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We’re almost two years into an ongoing pandemic, yet all the lessons learned in jurisdictions worldwide about vaccinations and public safety have apparently simply drifted past our inept and gormless council. People are still getting ill and dying even in our own community, but our council is sort-of thinking about possibly sometime maybe in the future considering the potential to discuss the likelihood of looking at having a municipal vaccination policy. Or not to have one. And maybe they’ll even think about discussing the possibility of the likelihood of perhaps doing it before the pandemic ends. According to a recent ……… click below for more ↓

Casanova Dies in Bohemia

Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Translations & translating / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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At the end of his long and storied life, Giacomo Casanova found himself a lonely man in a damp, cold castle in Bohemia, a small German kingdom distant from all the places where he had lived and loved. The servants mocked him, making fun of his stuffy, outdated and foreign fashions, his powdered wigs and stiff formality. He is from an older world, a more refined and gentile world than everyone around him, and as the 19th-century approaches, he struggles to avoid becoming a fossil. Casanova was ostensibly the librarian for Count Waldstein, but instead of cataloging the count’s large ……… click below for more ↓

Why is Millennium Park so Poorly Maintained?

Collingwood / Conflicts of Interest / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ineptitude and bungling / Local history / TaxesOne Comment

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We took a walk along the sidewalk and trail into the inappropriately-named “Millennium” Park* this week and were deeply disappointed by the lack of maintenance there. Aside from seeing a private pickup truck driving on the sidewalk for 100 or more metres before turning onto Waterside Lane (where were the police when you need them?) and the trees along the eastern side of the road that were abandoned to die, it was the poor condition of the trail at the north end, the sinkholes, and the lack of maintenance for the commemorative bricks and benches that we noticed most. I’ve ……… click below for more ↓

Another Council Facepalm Moment

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ineptitude and bungling / Legal issues / Planning & Policies / Wacky WTF ideasLeave a comment

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In a story on CollingwoodToday, this week council again discussed their job-growth-and revenue-killing interim control bylaw (ICBL) that has stopped the town from issuing new home building permits for the next four or more years, until a new water treatment plant is built. Of course, none of the developers or the construction industry, or anyone in the water treatment plant business, were consulted about the ICBL before it was passed. Why would council want to set a precedent and actually engage anyone that their dictates affected?

Uppercase Imperialism?

Canadian Politics / History & Biography / Indigenous issues / Language & Grammar / Political fadsLeave a comment

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Dr. Linda Manyguns has stylized herself as Dr. linda manyguns because she stopped using uppercase (capital) letters to protest the “symbols of hierarchy.” Manyguns is the associate vice-president of indigenization and decolonization at Mt. Royal University in Alberta. On her own office’s website, she wrote: we resist acknowledging the power structures that oppress and join the movement that does not capitalize. the office of indigenization and decolonization supports acts that focus on inclusion and support the right of all people to positive inclusion and change. I get it, sort of: language is culture. Language can be imperialist, oppressive, and controlling. ……… click below for more ↓

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