Why Saunderson Should Resign Now

Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour3 Comments

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Imagine an issue so important, so utterly non-partisan that both the National Post and the Toronto Star — two newspapers of widely divergent politics, perspectives, and ideology — agreed. That issue is that municipal politicians running for higher office should resign from their municipal roles on council. But our own Mayor Brian Saunderson, running for the Progressive Conservatives, has decided he’s above all that, and will stay in office. I’ve already written that I see his resignation as the only honourable and ethical acrion. Imagine, too, you’re an employer. A worker comes to you, says his job sucks, and boasts ……… click below for more ↓

Saunderson’s Role in Blocking the Hospital Redevelopment

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Development & Growth / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Hospital / Planning & Policies6 Comments

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During the previous council’s four years (2014-18), I documented the aggressive efforts to stall the local hospital’s desperately-needed redevelopment by a group of those on council (aka The Block*). Every other municipality in the region enthusiastically supported the hospital’s plan; only this group on Collingwood council put up roadblocks. And they were significant roadblocks raised at great expense to the taxpayer. Collingwood council SHOULD have taken the lead to promote their own hospital, but couldn’t get past their self-importance. As a result of the former council’s pettiness and negative interference, the hospital’s plans were set back as much as a ……… click below for more ↓

An Honourable Mayor?

Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Staff and administration8 Comments

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Mayor Brian Saunderson has announced he is running for nomination to the provincial Progressive Conservative party in our riding to be able to stand as the candidate for MPP. According  to a story in Collingwood Today, he is not stepping down from his role as mayor, and will not do so even if he wins the nomination: Should Saunderson receive the nomination, he said he would not be stepping back from his duties as mayor of Collingwood unless he were to be successful and elected in 2022. I believe that this poses a threat of both real and perceived conflicts ……… click below for more ↓

Striving for Mediocrity

Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Local media / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Staff and administration3 Comments

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On a council laden with dunces, deadwood, and dullards, it must be some consolation to our elected representatives, that they can at least claim to be less mediocre than Councillor Steve Berman. We all need someone to measure ourselves against, I suppose, and a low bar is so much easier to rise above. Berman’s first year in office was spent mostly consuming oxygen at the table and saying nothing of consequence. Of so little consequence were his words that even the normally sycophantic local media hardly ever bothered to reprint them. But when the pandemic struck and council retreated into ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries, Part 24

Cancer / Daily life / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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My final week of radiation treatment is here. I should have felt elated that I would no longer be required to drive every day for an hour or more each way as I have for the past six weeks. Everyone told me it would go by in a flash, but it seems to have dragged on and on. I felt curiously empty when the new week dawned and the end was in sight. It’s been a difficult time — almost a year since my PSA test showed something was seriously wrong, and seven months since my surgery. While most of ……… click below for more ↓

Musings of a B-Film Junkie

Culture / Daily life / Film & Reviews / Godzilla / Musings / Personal Reminiscences / Pop Culture2 Comments

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I put a DVD of the 1939 film, The Gorilla, into the player and sat back to watch. Bela Lugosi (above, centre) starred beside the Ritz Brothers (trio above), a popular American comedy trio contemporary with the Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, and the Marx Brothers. This would be the last year the Ritz Brothers worked for Fox; they stopped making films entirely in 1943. It’s the first full film of theirs I’ve seen, but am not impressed. Lugosi is best known for his starring role in the 1931 film, Dracula. After which he was typecast as the villain, mostly ……… click below for more ↓

Where is Collingwood’s Pandemic Response?

Collingwood / Council / COVID-19 responses / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies2 Comments

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I admit I am stumped. I have been looking online to find something that tells me what Collingwood council has done in response to the COVID-19 pandemic over the past year. I’m looking for real, concrete, measurable steps, things that benefit our community; things that residents and businesses can point to and say “This helped me survive.” I don’t want to read about promises, nor bloviations, nor self-serving proclamations with all the substance of a bad dream. We get enough vapid, banal content from our shambolic council already. Watching a council meeting is like being trapped in an elevator with ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries, Part 23

Cancer / Daily life / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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I started the New Year with another welcome three days off, with the final third of my radiation treatment ahead in the next few weeks. I can’t say I’ve ever been quite as happy to see a year pass as I have with 2020. As if the widening pandemic, lockdowns, Trump’s madness and treason, the nail-biting US elections, the stupid and selfishanti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, the QAnon idiocy spreading among the gullible, Brexit, Jason Kenney and the UCP destroying Canadian unity as well as Alberta, the waste of $9 million locally for the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (SVJI), and Erin O’Toole’s ……… click below for more ↓

Point to Point: The Book From the Ground

Arts / Books & Reviews / Books about books / Culture / Language & Grammar / Meaning of words / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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A few years back, during one of our Toronto mini-vacations, I was browsing in the shop of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and I came across a small book that had no words, just pictures. No, it wasn’t a book with pictures of artworks or photographs: it was a story, told entirely through common icons, symbols, and emoticons. Pictograms, looking not unlike a modernized version of Egyptian hieroglyphs. There wasn’t even a book title on the cover. There were no instructions, no guides, no hints, no translations. The reader had to figure out what the story was about by him- ……… click below for more ↓

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Meaning of words / Pop Culture / Reading & Literacy / Style & usage / TV / What I'm Reading Now / Words & etymology4 Comments

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We recently watched the Darmok episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, my third time seeing it, and I was struck again at how brilliant and quirky it was. Possibly the best of all the ST:NG’s 178 episodes. And, apparently, a lot of other fans agree with my assessment. Wikipedia describes it: The alien species introduced in this episode is noted for speaking in metaphors, such as “Temba, his arms wide”, which are indecipherable to the universal translator normally used in the television series to allow communication across different languages. Captain Picard is abducted by these aliens and marooned with ……… click below for more ↓

What would $9 Million Buy Our Town?

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Development & Growth / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Financial follies / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryOne Comment

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Back a few years ago, the 2010-14 council led by Mayor Cooper approved building for the community several important structures and buying for public ownership several properties, any of which — indeed, several of which — could have been built for less than the $9 million cost we taxpayers are burdened with paying for the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (SVJI) this term. For example, the new firehall we commissioned in 2012 cost $4.75 million. For roughly twice that amount, you know what you got from this council? Right: a report. And not just any report: we got a digital report, ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries, Part 22

Cancer / Daily life / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Three days off over Xmas from the daily drive felt like a longer holiday, although it wasn’t enough time for my bowels to heal properly. So far an irritable bowel, reduced urine stream, and my hot “flashes” (or surges) are the only side effects I’ve noticed. They are, however, enough to make me less than comfortable at times. I was warned I might feel fatigued, too; not just the normal state of being tired from too little sleep (what with pets and hot “flashes”), but deep fatigue. Not yet, but I still have three weeks of treatment to go, so ……… click below for more ↓

The $9 Million Dollar Mayor

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Planning & Policies / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryLeave a comment

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More than eight million of your dollars have been spent to date on the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (SVJI), and it may top $9 million if you add in the costs the town doesn’t include in its calculations, as well as the proposed $700,000 report-about-the-report. And that should stick to our $9 million-dollar mayor. There is a breakdown of the SVJI costs as of Dec. 18, 2020, on the town’s website. Sort of. The $8,098,547.40 total doesn’t include two key components: first, the salary and expenses of the inquiry’s judge. While that was paid for by the province, not simply ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries, Part 21

Cancer / Daily life / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Hot flashes are becoming more frequent, but I was warned they would be thus in the latter part of the treatment. I’m about halfway through the first stage of the hormone therapy process. My next hormone treatment (Lupron shot) will be given in about six weeks, shortly after my next blood test. I won’t know if I need more treatment (like chemotherapy or more hormones), however, for several more months after that. I’m not sure why they’re called hot “flashes” as if they were lightning — they’re more like swelling eruptions from within; at least for me they arrive not ……… click below for more ↓

As Important as Clean Drinking Water?

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Financial follies / Planning & Policies / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Staff and administration5 Comments

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I wonder how the people of Walkerton would feel about Collingwood CAO’s statement, reported in Collingwood Today, that implementing the 300-plus recommendations of the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (SVJI) is “equivalent with the top priorities we have, like providing clean drinking water.” I wonder how many people in our town will be saved from a painful, water-borne illness and possible death if, for example, the town encourages the province to implement recommendation number two: 2 Describing the mayor as both the head of Council and chief executive officer blurs the fact that the mayor is the head of Council and ……… click below for more ↓

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