Posts with the Queen’s Park tag

Barris Beat

Social skill without a cellphone

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Closing night flowers (“One rose is just fine”) to “Frankie and Johnny” co-stars Grant Evans and Lisha Van Nieuwenhove. Photo Michelle Viney.

This week I’ve visited the Uxbridge Music Hall a lot. We were moving staging, lights, props and actors into the facility for performances of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, Dec. 13-16. On Monday, as director Conrad Boyce and I opened the front door of the Hall to move a piece of furniture onto the stage, Benny, the custodian, greeted us with a big smile and handshakes.

“Isn’t it great? We don’t have to do this anymore,” and he mimicked avoiding somebody on the sidewalk the way we did during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It is great,” I agreed. “But we almost have to learn how to deal with people face-to-face all over again.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Hands off our Greenbelt!

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Where development and Greenbelt collide. #ONGreenbelt

On a recent nighttime flight home from a trip out West, I looked out the passenger jet window. Our landing approach toward Pearson took the flight across terrain northeast of the GTA. In the darkness, I spotted a cluster of lights I knew to be Uxbridge. A calmness came over me. The darkness around that cluster of lights reassured me that our Greenbelt looked safe. Untouched. Protected.

Then this week, I heard the municipal affairs minister at Queen’s Park describe a land swap to reporters.

“It’s a bold action to ensure that we meet our housing target,” Steve Clark said.

Bold indeed. But in my view not in a positive way. (more…)

Barris Beat

Notwithstanding democracy

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Justice Edward Morgan ruled restriction of third-party ads by Ont. Gov’t  unconstitutional.

The session bells were ringing Monday afternoon at Queen’s Park, calling Members of the Provincial Parliament into the chamber. The halls outside buzzed with MPPs and their minions. Suddenly, the Premier emerged. He’d seen reporters with cameras. A reporter asked if Opposition debate would delay passage of Bill 307, the one that used the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution to reintroduce parts of a law overruled by a judge last week.

“No,” Doug Ford said defiantly from behind his COVID mask. “We’re fighting for democracy.”

For the record, last Tuesday (June 8) Ontario Superior Court Justice Edward Morgan reached the conclusion that it was unconstitutional for the Ontario government to double the restricted pre-election spending period for third-party advertisements to 12 months before an election call. (more…)

Barris Beat

How to pay for paid sick days

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Premier Doug Ford isolating away from the Legislature at Etobicoke home. CPAC photo

It’s been seven days since the premier apologized to Ontarians. It’s been 13 days since he did what he apologized for – unnecessarily closing outdoor recreation facilities and giving police the power to randomly stop citizens during the stay-at-home order. And it’s been nine days since Doug Ford went into self-isolation at his mother’s home in Etobicoke, after a member of his staff tested positive for COVID-19. In other words, the premier has not physically served in his office, nor at the Ontario Legislature since a week ago Tuesday.

In other words, technically, Doug Ford has not been at work.

He continues, of course, to be paid… which means Premier Doug Ford is getting paid for sick days!

That means the premier has received nine days of his annual salary – about $5,148 of his $208,974 annual income – all against the stated policy of his own administration. (more…)

Barris Beat

Getting priority jabs straight

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Soldier in body armour (a.k.a. flak jacket) 1942.

It’s one of those moments that’s haunted me for years. It was a Second World War story about army medics preparing for the invasion of France in 1944. Just prior to D-Day, some U.S. Army medics apparently saw assault soldiers being issued a new piece of equipment. Incorporating two-inch-square steel plates, and sewn into a canvas vest, the device would apparently protect the wearer against shrapnel and some bullet penetration. Today, police officers call it “body armour.” At any rate, the story goes that a D-Day medic asked the officer handing these things out, “What’s that?”

“Flak vest,” the officer said.

“What about giving it to us medics?”

“They’re for assault troops,” the officer said. “Besides, there’ll be so many casualties, you can have your pick of vests from the dead.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Why not demand zero risk?

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Potential new-look classrooms.

The countdown continues to Sept. 8, when all high schools in Ontario begin the fall 2020 semester, and about the same when elementary school children begin a staggered re-entry to class. But the jostling continues too. The premier and his ministers of education and health are on one side. And the rest of us sit on the other, trying to get a handle on the way learning will look and sound come Sept. 15 or thereabouts. Then, on Tuesday, Christine Elliott responded to a question from a reporter at the government’s daily media conference.

“Why can’t the Ontario government mandate class size at 15 students?” the reporter asked. (more…)

Barris Beat

Bridging social distance

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Warning sign posted at Uxbridge Arena, March 16, 2020.

We hadn’t seen each other or talked for a while. I had gone outside Sunday afternoon, partly to get some air, but also to escape the assault of bad news about the coronavirus pandemic. But suddenly this friend dropped by for a visit in my backyard. The conversation was really welcome, but of course it was mostly about things closing, Canadians trying to get home or when this all might end. Eventually I asked how he and his family were doing.

“OK, mostly,” he said, and he then gingerly explained a member of his family had been diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing treatment.

“I’m sorry,” I said. But what I meant was, “Sorry that I let all this global chaos get in the way of caring about you and your family first.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Don’t know what we’ve got, ’til it’s gone

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Uxbridge Post Office, a symbol of what community can lose without a fight.

I’d overlooked it for years. I think it was back 2006 when a number of us organized a weekend to celebrate the township’s anniversary. We were artists, shop owners, civic workers and town boosters volunteering our time. Leading up to the event, we’d looked for a place to meet. That’s when financial specialist Brian Evans offered us a room at his Toronto Street office. I stepped into his board room for that first meeting and noticed a collage of photographs of a turn-of-the-century building framed on the wall. I’d never seen that Edwardian-era building before.

“What and where was that?” I asked.

“Don’t you know?” someone responded. “That was our original post office.” And when I asked where, they all said right where the new post office is today. “They knocked down the old one and threw up that new one.” (more…)

Barris Beat

The art and science of getting it

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Ontario Legislature at Queen’s Park. tvo.org

It took Opposition pressure at Queen’s Park, it took outspoken professional staff at libraries across the province, and it took members of a book club staging a read-in at the constituency office of MPP Sam Oosterhoff (Niagara West), but it appears as if some saner thinking has prevailed inside Doug Ford’s PC caucus. A clearly re-educated minister of tourism, culture and sport, has backed down on his planned 50 per cent cuts to Ontario Library Service-North.

“OLS-N will be reinstating their interlibrary loan program as of June 1, 2019,” Michael Tibollo said late last week. (more…)

Barris Beat

The politics where you live

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When most of this clump of black walnut trees came down, we faced a massive clean-up.
When most of this clump of black walnut trees came down, we faced a massive clean-up.

When it happened, I figured maybe the solution was close by. I wasn’t entirely certain they could or would pitch in, but I thought I’d try to find out. I’d never really gone to them for help before, but I thought this time I would. So, I sat down and wrote a letter to township council.

“The recent rain and wind storm,” I wrote, “battered the township. And among the victims were some of our old-growth trees.”

I went on to request some assistance. (more…)