Bad spot for school
Dear Editor:
RE: Neighbours don’t want to see high school on Strathallan Street, June 6.
I attended the open house on May 28 for a new Catholic high School in Centre Wellington, situated on the recently designated “surplus” Strathallan Park.
Building here results in the loss of a daily-used park during school hours. It also means wasted money when the two newer outdoor classrooms are demolished to make room for the new building.
About three dozen mature trees (some memorial, purchased to honour a loved one) would be gone. They currently contribute to the control of the high water table in this area. Filling a large portion of this lot with brick, cement and asphalt opens up the concern of where the water will go.
Current societal increases in security lockdowns, violence, smoking, vaping, drugs, bullying, sexual experience, litter, vandalism and graffiti present other worries. Do you want the younger students exposed to all this when using the combined recreational space? Believing that this won’t come to Fergus is naïve.
Traffic is one of the biggest and possibly most dangerous concerns. Adding this school means three schools in a two- to three-block established, already busy and rapidly growing (206 new housing and seven more retail units approved) residential area.
With increased traffic, comes an increase in the chance of someone getting seriously injured or worse.
In the hopefully never needed chance that there is an emergency within the school building itself, will there be enough free space left to evacuate everyone in a timely, organized and safe manner?
With all this in mind, I wrote the Ministry of Education to ask that they not okay the placement of a school at this site. Paul Bloye, director of the ministry’s capital programs branch, replied to my concern.
It seems that the only consideration in determining funding is the actual need for a new school. Once this has been approved, the local school board decides on the location. Did he just not mention other conditions? Did he forget to mention attach to an existing building?
This lot is too small to handle the predicted future enrolment numbers. By the time all is built, both schools will be beyond capacity. There will be no room for additions to either. Why not use foresight? Pick a site and design that leaves room for additions to both schools. Don’t waste resources.
Be responsible to taxpayers and students and the community. Put the school elsewhere!
Bernice Robinet,
Fergus
Pride ‘privilege’
Dear Editor:
RE: ‘Intellectually hollow,’ May 30.
Why do we feel the need to call people nasty names? People have different opinions. It’s a fact to be celebrated. In our diverse society we can have free debate. It doesn’t make the other side “bigoted”, “hateful”, or “intellectually hollow”. Let’s not be intolerant of others’ views. There are pros and cons to be considered respectfully in everything. Respectful debate should be taught to all children in school, a skill which will serve them well all through life.
To have a mandatory celebration of one group at municipal expense to the exclusion of other groups for an entire month is going to invite some dissent. Anyone would question the wisdom of that if it were one particular civic group like Lions, or one fundraising cause like muscular dystrophy, or one political party. Somebody might even start a petition to tone it down a bit.
Why would one group have a public right of flags, banners, parades and celebrations everywhere, a privilege not afforded to any other group?
I would welcome a celebration of Pride in the same ways that other groups make themselves known; for instance an information table set up by permission, where people come and go, with real people sitting there ready to talk to me about what their organization stands for, it’s latest projects, and policies it supports. Hand me some informational material, a website, maybe even a raffle ticket to raise money. Please let me know where your table will be set up.
As your neighbour, I would love to stop by and hear about your hopes and dreams and maybe have a meaty discussion on policies you support. Let’s not just do this in the newspaper or by flags flown. I would like to sit down with a real person.
Claudette Stevens,
Southgate
*Editor’s note: “Flags, banners, parades and celebrations” are used regularly and year-round by countless other groups in municipalities across the province. Pride events are not “mandatory” celebrations.
‘Interdependence’
Dear Editor:
I have been overlooking the wastewater containment pond near Belsyde Avenue and St. David Street in Fergus. It is thickly populated with natural bulrushes, and has been a natural water source for breeding mallards, dragonflies, frogs, toads and red-wing blackbirds as well as a favourite drinking and bathing site for many species of local birds that nest in the surrounding trees.
This could be an idyllic natural place for many species to thrive were it not for adults who believe every child should have pet frogs, toads and tadpoles. Teachers bring whole classes armed with pails and nets; weekend visits from preteens raid the exposed water hoping to capture a specimen.
What about using teaching moments in nature to stress the interdependence of a chain of living things, from the microscopic life in a drop of water all the way up the food chain. Plundering large sections of the chain affects all other interdependent life.
The female mallard is forced to hide her family among the reeds, the great blue heron which visits in early mornings will soon find no frogs, the redwinged blackbirds will find it unsafe to raise their young in the reeds. Dragonfly nymphs will be doomed to die without tadpoles to feed upon. And on I could go.
Teach our kids about the interdependence that is the ecology we depend on for our own existence.
Arlene Callaghan,
Fergus
Creating chaos
Dear Editor:
An open letter to Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
Congratulations on your 19-week break from Queen’s Park so that you can return refreshed in late October. Chaos created, job done.
And on the recent appointment of the largest number of ministers and parliamentary assistants in the history of Ontario. Clever. Take the money and run.
And on underfunding social services by $4 billion. Deteriorating services, abandoning of the most vulnerable while spending a quarter of a billion dollars to break a beer store contract a year early so that taxpayers will lose about $100 million a year. Raise a beer to that one!
The cost to health care and policing of drinking continues to rise. The LCBO expects a loss of $98 to $150 million annually, and a strike is expected as well. Best to be at the cottage for that, too. Well thought out.
The auditor general pointed out the $25 million spent on an ad campaign promoting a fiction that health care is improving in Ontario while emergency departments close down, and the system is overburdened and understaffed and underfunded. “Ignorance is Strength” is the slogan from Orwell’s 1984. Your leadership is so strong!
Cancel wastewater testing too. Why would we need to monitor that.
Cancel public labs and make citizens pay for water testing. If they want to know if their well is contaminated, make them pay! Cost savings to pay off friends and family, the real people who matter. Like the backroom deal for a foreign-owned mega spa at Ontario Place with a 95-year contract and $600 million of taxpayer’s money in subsidies.
Way to go on naming Steve Clark as house leader. Just ignore that Greenbelt debacle. What a role model and fearless leader for the gravy train team!
The premier’s personal staff, the biggest ever again, costs taxpayers $6.9 million,which matches the largest-cabinet-ever salaries. Wonder what the peasants are doing?
Create chaos in eduction, social services, health care, environmental protection – well, everywhere really. So much cost saving to hand over to your buddies!
No affordable housing in sight and municipalities reeling from the constant changes and pronouncements. Take away planning from regions and return it to small municipalities with no planners on staff. Oh, and take away third party appeals too. Nice touch.
And $10 billion for the 413 and your developer friends through the Greenbelt. Nice! Pave over that “just a bunch of weeds” farmland throughout the province with all that sprawl.
You have pulled it off, Doug.Using Ontario tax money to pay off your people at the expense of the taxpayers and they can do nothing about it. Let them eat cake!
Enjoy your 19-week vacation. Chaos created. Your work here is done. For now…
Donna McCaw,
Elora
No density?
Dear Editor:
RE: Council awards contract for new operations centre, June 13.
We know what density looks like (tall and tight), so why does the Township of Centre Wellington’s new operations centre look squat and spread out?
John Scott,
Elora
Hates squirrels
Dear Editor:
RE: Save the squirrels, June 13.
If I was Sebastian Krewenki’s teacher I would be assigning top marks to him for eliciting a response to his letter to the editor.
I hope with all my heart that our municipal representatives never take any action to increase the life span or to reduce the mortality rate of any squirrel anywhere.
Sorry Sebastian, but I hate squirrels. That animal has cost me thousands of dollars in repairs and in lost energy production revenue when they took up residence in my solar array and proceeded to chew through the wires and controllers.
Despite measures taken to prevent this from ever happening again, I will still admit to some vengeful delight when I aim my car for any squirrel that hesitates while crossing the road. You’ll never see an “I brake for squirrels” bumper sticker on my vehicles.
Good job writing your letter, Sebastian. I hope that you keep expressing your opinions in our community.
David Fast,
Ariss
Animal advocate
Dear Editor:
RE: Save the squirrels, June 13.
As a longtime wildlife rescuer – including many injured and orphaned squirrels – I commend Sebastian Krewenki for taking the time to advocate on their behalf.
Whenever I pass a dead squirrel on the road, I think of all the food they worked so hard to store in anticipation of the colder seasons to come. They had plans, just like we do. Simpler plans, sure, but they lived in anticipation of a future. A future that was almost always cut short because someone was driving just a bit faster than they needed to be.
Speaking of the future: if young people like Sebastian are out there, I think all of us (squirrels included) are in great hands.
Shannon Kornelsen,
Elora
Road, squirrels
Dear Editor:
RE: ‘Treacherous Road’ and Save the squirrels, June 13.
As the subdivision by Colborne develops, Colborne street is to be realigned and upgraded, so therefore it is better for the township to simply do cold patches to keep costs down.
My understanding is the developer is paying for replacement of this road. We will have to endure this road until then.
Most all towns and cities are being overrun by squirrels in the last few years. Why? Is it climate change, a shortage of predators, or people feeding them more? But the end result, is more dead squirrels on the roads, and more turkey buzzards in the skies over Fergus (they are scavengers) looking for quick meals, and crows are also scavengers, so I’m not sure our township does all the clean up.
It is very good to see young students writing letters to the editor, maybe a little more research on the township website is also helpful.
Paul Roberts,
Fergus
‘Thank the Lord’
Dear Editor:
I want to give Centre Wellington council high praise for saying no to cannabis stores. Way to go team!
It’s a shame that our federal government legalized it in the first place, and then to put pressure on municipalities is sad to say the least. Thank the Lord our council has backbone! God bless you all.
Nancy Seiling,
Elora
Hoping for some good
Dear Editor:
Thinking outside of the box: The former International Malleable Iron Company property has been vacant since the 1980s. The City of Guelph took possession of the site in 1997.
Following 14 days of hearings held in December and January, the Ontario Land Tribunal upheld a provincially issued certificate of permitted uses (CPU) for the city-owned site, meaning it can be turned into commercial, institutional and residential spaces as well as parkland.
The city’s CPU for this site requires the installation, inspection and maintenance of hard cap and fill cap barriers on the property, prohibiting construction without a soil vapour intrusion assessment and/or built with a vapour mitigation system; implement a groundwater monitoring program; and develop a health and safety plan for any intrusive activity that could potentially have contact with contaminants.
Now in light of all these allowances and taking the fact no developers have come forward, and taking into late news of the City of Guelph asking Wellington County to find a place for tiny homes for the homeless, I would think that Guelph just had an answer to the homeless problem handed to them by the province.
Now if the Guelph mayor and council can work with Wellington County, which is in charge of social services for both, maybe something good can come out this development.
Paul Roberts,
Fergus