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I thank
you, Amanda Steinhoff, for your letter in the Independent last |
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week. There can be no debate on important
municipal issues unless readers get involved.
3/30/05 Read More... |
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Students at universities and
colleges face an increasing debt burden |
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as costs for post secondary
education continue to rise.
There is a social cost to this debt load carried by our young. In many
ways their lives are put on hold. Making the big purchases on graduation,
getting married, and buying the first house are no longer automatic.”
3/23/05 Read More... |
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Our local broadsheet reports
the newly-organized Tiverton and District |
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Ratepayers Association
“intends to launch a very public campaign….even to the extent of parading
behind the Kincardine Scottish Pipe Bands with signs – ‘We don’t want
Kincardine’s dirty, turbulent water’….”
3/16/05 Read More... |
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It is a pleasure to write about my
favourite subject, young people. |
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I have come to know many
fine young men and women who carry the values and ideals that uplift
communities and bring hope to people.
3/9/05 Read More... |
by Fred
Kirby March 2, 2005
 Kincardine
is one municipality. That is a political reality. All in all, it is a good
municipality with active and creative volunteers, an excellent secondary
school (someone else will have to speak for the primary schools),
entertaining amateur and professional theatre, a cinema better than most
in Toronto – after forty some years with an ardent film buff I can vouch
for that – and sports that are the envy of larger towns.
Yet, thousands of years in the future anthropologists might well be
writing how this community rich with resources on the shores of a great
inland lake did not survive because jealousies, bickering, and paranoia
kept bringing on tribal wars until the beautiful community and its
plentiful resources were destroyed.
Unless there is considerable maturation, that is how we will be viewed.
Those anthropologists will be puzzled for they will know we had a common
religion, spoke a common language, and basically had similar ethnic
backgrounds unlike those of the rebellious Caucasus, Balkans or Congo.
They will wonder how such a senseless tragedy could occur in the 21st
century. It does not have to occur.
My municipality has a welcoming town centre for all, with all the
amenities noted earlier, a small suburb, some exurbs along the lake, a
pleasing village, hamlets, and a number of farms: each making the whole
stronger than any one part, each adding to the attractiveness of the
whole. Scattered throughout are the cottagers, many with long time ties to
the community, who grace us with their presence and enjoy what we have to
offer.
This is my Kincardine with its quietly busy main street, its village and
hamlets and rolling fields of grain and grazing animals. This is my
Kincardine with beautiful beaches, dusty country roads, whispering woods,
and farm houses whose lights offer a warm refuge from the winter night.
My Kincardine has councilors all elected from across the one Kincardine
and who serve that whole municipality with the integrity and the fairness
we deserve.
This is my Kincardine. I only wish it was our parochial council’s
Kincardine.
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