Ontario shifts gears on alcohol sales, but not supply

There has been talk about ‘beer in the corner store’ in Ontario for many years, and change has come incrementally, over time.

Last summer, the province announced a Request for Proposal (RFP) process in 200 communities across the province for ‘convenience store’ outlets. The process got underway in late September, and it was a quick one in government terms.

By early January, two new outlets were opened on Road 38, Gilmour’s Meats in Harrowsmith and the Godfrey General Store, and one on Perth Road, Glenburnie Grocery.

For Jordan and Nick Gilmour of Gilmour’s Meats, the whole process has been a blur. Not only were they interested in expanding their range of products to include beer, wine, and spirits, but they also realised they needed more space.

“We didn’t want to get into it without making sure we had enough space and product to make it worthwhile for people to shop here,” said Jordan Gilmour.

In order to accommodate added retail space, and a large walk-in cooler for beer, Gilmour’s has had to expand. The walk-in cooler is not in place yet, but the space is now ready for it.

“Our landlord, who has been great to work with, took care of the exterior and we are doing the finishing,” he said.

By adding on, the butcher shop, take out kitchen, and grocery sections of the store have not been affected.

“It has added some business already, helping our winter sales, but we will need to be ready when summer comes,” he said. “All of our staff have had to be trained for this. It is a lot to get everyone up to speed. It’s a good thing it happened in January instead of the end of May.”

Laurie Love of the Godfrey General Store feels the same way. She was informed about the RFP in late September and it has been a lot of work putting the application together. As well, she had to determine how to integrate the post office, gas bar, and grocery and convenience stores operation with the alcohol sales.

“I am not complaining, however, since it is an opportunity,” she said.

The Godfrey General Store will also be installing a beer fridge at the back of the store later this spring and will be preparing for the increased traffic in the store during the already busy summer season.

The two privately owned Liquor Control Board of Ontario outlets in Frontenac County Northway Home Hardware on Perth Road in Inverary, and Reid’s Foodland in Verona, are facing an adjustment as the new stores come on stream. (there are also three LCBO corporate owned stores in Frontenac County – Sydenham, Sharbot Lake and Plevna)

Clint Reid said that while he, like any other retailer, does not relish the prospect of decreased sales, he wishes the new businesses well. He did say that he was troubled with the process that was used, since it was handled by a consulting firm that looked primarily at maps to determine which communities were underserved, rather than visiting the communities to see what was really there.

The Verona Foodland opened its agency store in 2004, when the business was owned by Graham Brooks. Clint and Andrea Reid took over the store almost exactly 10 years ago. The liquor store has been an important part of their business, not only in terms of offering the breadth of products that their customers expect, but also as a community trust.

“We live in this community, so we make sure that our staff are trained to the highest degree possible, when it comes to selling alcohol. We don’t control what happens once the product leaves the store, but we take our responsibility very seriously,” he said.

While the availability of alcohol in Ontario was opened up incrementally by the Liberal governments of the past 15 years, and more quickly by the current Conservative government, it is still a closed market when it comes to the supply chain. with the LCBO maintaining control over product selection and pricing.

While LCBO corporate stores in Frontenac County continue to open at 10am, the agency stores can open as early as 9am and stay open until as late as 11pm.

On May 14, several girls and staff from Granite Ridge Education Centre and Sydenham High School tried their hand at blacksmithing. This event was arranged to show the girls that there is no job they cannot do. Stefan Duerst, Artist Blacksmith from Godfrey, Ontario, led the students through a logical sequence of techniques including forging, twisting, scrolling, and bending.

After covering safety and the basic techniques, Mr. Duerst let students work on their own to plan and make items. Mr. Duerst stressed that with the proper techniques and equipment, anyone can work with metal – it is not necessary to be built like Thor.

Students worked hard all day, and came home with several items they had made. A Grade 8 girls’ group will be going to Duerst Artist Blacksmith in June, from Land O’ Lakes Public School, Granite Ridge Education Centre, and Prince Charles Public School.

On May 15 and May 23, David Francey led songwriting workshops at Sydenham High School in the morning, and Granite Ridge Education Centre in the afternoon.

Many students participated in these intensive sessions, working alone or with partners.

David Francey has won three Juno Awards, the SOCAN Folk Music Award, the Grand Prize in the International Acoustic Music Award and the Grand Prize in the Folk category for the John Lennon Songwriting Award.

These events are part of the initiative focusing on the Arts, Indigenous Learning, and non-traditional pathways funded by various combinations of AIREE, GREC Parent Council, Live Wire Music, Blue Skies, Gillianne Mundell, and Pez.

Sculptor Stefan Duerst’s latest piece, now on view at his Godfrey Sculpture Park, is something of of a departure for him.
“I usually do visually pleasing shapes,” he said last week just before completing the installation.

While this latest piece, Oh! Canada, still is in a visually pleasing sculptural language, it differs from Duerst’s earlier works in two ways. One, while still an abstraction, it is instantly recognizable as a teepee and two, this one definitely has a narrative about it.
“The collapsing teepee structure depicts the deliberate way indigenous culture has been attacked through racist attitudes and government policies,” he said. “It is also meant to reflect on the violence and the tragedy of missing and murdered indigenous women, men and children.”
To that end, Duerst and collaborator Tony Orr (aka K-Rock’s morning news guy) took a pole each from the structure and following the Park’s walking trail, deposited them in not-too-obvious places. Visitors to the Park are encouraged to make their own journey to discover the missing poles.
“If people tell the truth and are willing to learn, education is the best path to reconciliation,” said Orr. “We didn’t do this just to make a statement.
“We’re trying to get people thinking about reconciliation.”

“This isn’t an end point, who knows where it will lead,” said Duerst. “When I learned about residential schools and some of the history, I could have chosen to do nothing but it touched me on a very emotional level.
“And that’s a very important aspect of art, its ability to touch people on a very deep emotional level.”
“Working with Stefan has opened my eyes to many things,” said Orr.

Butternut trees have been on the endangered species list in Ontario ever since the Endangered Species Act was enacted in 2008 and the list was created. Butternut’s are a medium sized deciduous tree that thrives in full sun. They can be found the limestone substrate regions of Frontenac and Lennox and Addington, and particularly in the borderline areas where the Limestone meets the Canadian Shield, roughly north of Tamworth and Verona and south of Hwy. 7.

They have been hit by a canker, and the population throughout the US and Canada have been devastated. A Butternut recovery program, which has been mainly volunteer driven, has been responsible for planting seeds of trees that have shown resistance to the canker in order to re-establish a population of healthy trees as infected trees die off.
Even with the canker damaging trees, many trees in the local region have been able to survive, although not thriving, for a number of years.
Doug Lee, currently of Enterprise, has been a fan of the Butternut for a quarter of a century, ever since the canker first began to have an impact on trees in Ontario. It was identified in the United States decades earlier but did not venture north until later. He has identified Butternuts throughout the Verona-Godfrey-Tamworth region over the years and regularly checks on the progress of the trees, paying particular attention to trees that appear to have few or no symptoms of canker infestation.

At the end of the summer, he visits different locations where he has seen Butternuts over the years to see how they are doing and to find out if they have put out any seed this year, in the form of Butternuts.
“I’ve never seen this many butternuts in one year in the 25 years I’ve been collecting them,” he said earlier this week. I have collected about 3,000 butternuts over the last week, including 195 pounds of nuts off one tree, over 2,000 butternuts,” he said, in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
To put this year’s haul in context, back in 2010, working with the Butternut recovery program, the News did a story with Doug Lee. At a property in South Frontenac, about 200 butternuts, one and a half buckets full, were collected and it was considered a very good haul.

While Lee is preparing all of the Butternuts he has harvested for planting, most of them are not viable for the Butternut recovery program, which only collects seed from trees that are considered canker free.
“I think there are about 3 or 4 trees that I have seen this year that are of that calibre,” said Lee.
He will be reporting those to the recovery program for them to evaluate later in the fall.
Meanwhile he still intends to plant all the seed that he has collected, and is making them available for others who would like to try their luck. He does use bleach on his seed to try and kill any of the canker that is carried by the seed, but the chances of success for seed from infected trees is less than ideal.
“I have had some success,” said Lee, “and I keep trying.”

For information about the Butternut Recover Program, how to identify Butternut Trees by their distinctive leaf structure, and how to identify infected and uninfected trees, you can contact Rose Fleguel, Butternut Recovery Technician with Rideau Valley conservation at 613-858-3678 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or Steve Pitt at 613-532-0701. Anyone who is interested in contacting Doug Lee to receive some of his record haul of nuts can call 613-328-9599

The Frontenac Five, events you should not miss in August, have been posted. This month they include The Wolfe Island Music Festival, which runs this coming weekend – August 12 and 13, is the first one on the calendar, check wolfeislandmusicfestival.com for details. The following weekend, August 19 and 20, the Parham Fair is featured. See Parhamfair.ca for more.

Ongoing events this month include the Godfrey Sculpture Park, see Godfreysculpturepark.ca for more, and the Thursday Night Battersea Porch Sessions, different musicians each Thursday all summer between 6:30 and 9:30 at Holiday Country Manor. Rounding out the list is the K&P Trail day grand opening on Saturday August 26 at the trailhead in Sharbot Lake.

For the full Frontenac-Five experience, go to Frontenac-live.ca/events/frontenac-five.

Godfrey native Matt Villalta was named Vaughn OHL goaltender of the Month and OHL Rookie of the Month following a stellar May with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds with a 1.34 goals-against average, a .957 save percentage and a 5-1-0-0 record including one shutout. (The Greyhounds are currently up 2-1 in their best-of-seven first round playoffs series against the Flint Firebirds.)

He finished his rookie season with a 25-3-0-0 record to go along with a 2.41 gaa and a .918 save percentage. He’s the OHL’s first 17-year-old rookie to win 25 games in a season since 2006-2007 and the 2.41 gaa sets a new Greyhounds record.

Of course dad Lawrence is very proud of his son’s accomplishments but he says “we’re a quiet family” and knows it’s a long haul.

“Matt just needs to stay focused and committed to continue on,” he said. “There is a lot of talent (in the OHL) and as a rookie, he’s still a work in progress.”

But actually, Matt isn’t the only Villalta playing junior hockey in the Soo. Matt’s twin brother Wyatt is a defenceman for NOJHL (Junior A) Soo Thunderbirds and to have both sons playing in the same city is a huge plus for the family, Lawrence said.

“They both have great coaches and great billets,” he said. “This is an especially big thing for our family.

“We just feel blessed that the boys can share this experience together.

“We sent them nine hours away but we sent them to a good place.”

Although Lawrence played a lot of sports himself, hockey wasn’t his top game, but that’s OK, the boys like it and he’s there to support them wherever he can.

And, he’s done his best to teach the boys there is more to athletics than statistics and such.

“I told Wyatt ‘you’re only going to be this age once – you gotta have fun.

“‘Enjoy it while it lasts.’”

He said he’s become quite impressed with The Soo as “a great hockey community” but stresses this advice for young hockey players “character in a hockey player is just about everything.”

The Frontenac Community Arena (FCA) Board of Directors is pleased to announce that it is the recipient of a $30,000 Ontario150 Community Capital Program grant. These funds will help fund the capital costs of replacing the Arena’s 30-year-old dehumidification system with a new, more energy-efficient Desiccant system.

“Our community arenas act as a hub where people come together to share and grow; the Ontario150 Community Capital Program grant is providing for improvements at Frontenac Community Arena will help secure the continued enjoyment and enhance the benefits of this much-loved facility,” said Randy Hillier, MPP for Lanark, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington.

Administered by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, these grants will help non-profit organizations, municipalities and Indigenous communities to renovate, repair and retrofit existing community and cultural infrastructure. The one-time, Ontario150 Community Capital Program has been designed to help honour Ontario’s past, showcase the present and inspire future generations.

“We are very pleased to be a recipient of a Ontario150 Community Capital Program grant. It will support the replacement of aging equipment vital to ice making process,” said Sherry Whan, Central Frontenac Township Councillor and Arena Board Chair.

“This important Capital project along with work completed over the past two years is vital to the Frontenac Community Arena operations,” said Tim Laprade, Arena Manager. “This work reflects the Arena Boards continued commitment to investing in infrastructure that will reduce our energy consumption and support ice activities,” added Laprade.

The Ontario150 Community Capital Program is administered by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, an agency of the Government of Ontario and one of Canada’s largest granting foundations.

(The article below is a write up from last year's 101 Nativities - The 2017 celebration, which will feature over 300 Nativities, is set for November 24th (evening)   November 25 and November 26 (daytime) EAch child can make thier own nativity in the craft room. Free entry and free refreshments - including home baking.)

When Jean Freeman started up 101 Nativities at the Cole Lake Free Methodist Church in 2010 she wanted to gather up as many nativity scenes as she could, from her own collection and those of friends, neighbours, and other parishioners from her church and other churches around the region.

Putting them all together into a display for public viewing in mid-November was her way of kicking off the Christmas season by focusing in on the most intimate aspect of the tradition, the birth of Jesus Christ.

“Before all of the commercial sales and everything else gets underway we thought this display of 101 Nativities, which was just a number we hoped to get to at the time, would set a bit of a mood for the season.”

Pretty quickly, it worked.

“Some children come here on opening night all dressed up. It's an event they look forward to all year,” she said on Saturday afternoon (November 19) as the show was ending its second day this year.

Freeman is joined by Kristine Caird along with a number of other volunteers in organising the show every year. This year there were 230 Nativity scenes laid out on tables and on a newly constructed display featuring 10 foot long recently milled rustic shelving that was made by a relative to help set off the scenes.

“We spend a lot of time in the couple of days before the show moving the different Nativities around so they look just right, and everyone works at it. Each morning I find it has changed because someone has had an idea and has moved things around, which is all part of making it just so,” said Caird.

The organisers never know if a crowd will come out, and this year the weather was so nice on the Saturday that they were worried the crowds would be thinner than normal, followed by a stormy Sunday.

“We are a tradition for people now,” said Caird, “and people seem to make it out at some point in the weekend to see their favourites, to see what is new this year, and even for the treats and coffee.”

The displays have a local and an international theme, with some displays coming from far afield (Africa, Europe, Israel, Haiti, South America) while others were purchased locally or hand-made. They are made of many different materials as well; ceramic, glass, wood, even coconut shells.

“One of the reasons we hold it so early is so people can have their Nativities back for their own displays. We get nervous about making sure nothing gets lost or damaged, especially as we grow every year, but so far we have a good record,” said Caird.

“It is a lot quicker to take down than it is too put up,” she added.

So far, the name 101 Nativities has held up, even through there were over 230 this year, but as they get closer to 300, pressure may mount to re-name the event. By 2025 we could be reporting on the Cole Lake 500.

Growing up north of Verona in the vicinity of Oak Flats, Kyle Ruttan became interested in the naval forces thanks to his great grandfather, Clifford McGinnis, from Sharbot Lake.

McGInnis served aboard HMCS Strathadam for four years during the Second World War, and Ruttan knew him when he was growing up in the 1990s. McInnis lived on Road 38 south of Sharbot Lake until his death in 2006.

“I didn't join the navy until after he died, but his legacy was one of my reasons for joining the navy when I did,” said Ruttan.

He has made his own mark since joining the navy. He received a commendation for helping his cousin pull a man from a burning vehicle near Victoria late one night in 2014 while he was headed to the airport to come home for a leave, and he has also been identified as a hard-working team member wherever he has been stationed.

Late last week he received word that he will be traveling to Ottawa to stand guard as a sentry at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the National War Memorial on November 11 with other Canadian Armed Forces members representing the Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Air Force, along with one Royal Canadian Mounted Police member.

LS (Leading Seaman) Ruttan said it was a “complete surprise” when he learned of the honour, partly because he works as a logistics and supply officer, “which is a support trade, not a hard navy trade.”

He admits to being nervous about it, because a sentry is required to stand solemnly, head bowed and white-gloved hands on the butt of a ceremonial rifle, straight-faced and with no emotion, throughout the 90-minute ceremony.

“Straight-faced and with no emotion; that will be the hardest part, because it is an event that always tears me up, especially when they play the Last Post,” he said.

It will be the first time LS Ruttan has ever done sentry duty.

“This is not just standing sentry at one of the local ceremonies back home, which would be hard enough. It will be in Ottawa, with all the dignitaries there and in front of the whole country,” he said.

Remembrance Day will also evoke memories of LS Ruttan's mother, who died last April. The two would watch the ceremony from Ottawa when he was growing up.

His father Micheal will be his guest in Ottawa, not only at the ceremony, but for an entire week of festivities and gatherings preceding November 11.

“It is very exciting,” said Michael Ruttan. “I'm obviously very proud of what he has accomplished. I knew he was well regarded by his colleagues because when I visited him where he is stationed in Esquimault, near Victoria, everyone told me that he was really good at everything he did and had a great attitude. Everyone had a lot of respect for him.”

While standing sentry, Ruttan will be thinking about his family, and also about LS Brandon Smith, a colleague of his who died in Tanzania while the two were deployed on HMCS Regina, and about CPL Nathan Cirillo, who was killed by a gunman as he stood guard over the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on October 22, 2014.

“His memory will certainly be etched in my mind,” said LS Ruttan.

(with material from Lookout newspaper, a weekly published at CFB Esquimault)

October 1 was an overcast day, which brings the right kind of lighting to work with bright colours. It was also the right temperature for people working outdoors, painting boards graffiti-style on an old farmstead just east of Godfrey.

German graffiti legend Loomit has been called the godfather of modern graffiti and it has been said about him that he has given graffiti its current meaning. Invited by sculptor Stefan Duerst, Loomit stopped in between assignments in the Bronx and Brooklyn to lead a workshop at Godfrey’s Sculpture Park. He was accompanied by friend and fellow graffiti artist Nils, with whom he has partnered on several installations. Together they paint large walls all over the world with beautifully clear colours. Nils’ playful photo realism weaves into Loomit’s lettering; their work dances along the walls, never holding still, seemingly to open windows to somewhere else.

One interesting thing is that the names graffiti artists take on usually have very little to do with their actual names or anything else, but are letters that please them when they tag.

In the days before the workshop, Loomit and Nils had painted a mandarin orange on one of the old barn’s walls, an inspired greeting to the expectant workshop participants. The old barn was soon filled with artistic endeavours on Saturday as the workshop went on its way.

Loomit and Nils had brought smaller boards, along with their spray paints, paint cans and paint markers to the workshop. The aspiring graffiti artists spent the morning sketching and planning out ideas under the guidance of their teachers, and the afternoon brought colours to their boards. What joy to find new tools, to find a new way to express one’s visions. People of all ages and walks of life feel drawn to the medium and so, the ensuing paintings are as different as their creators. Perhaps soon we will hear of a new graffiti artist whose career started at this workshop.

Loomit himself has painted on a series of sculptures by Stefan Duerst, this being the first time a metal sculptor and a graffiti artist are working together. The two are preparing for a show at Studio 22 in Kingston, which will open on November 19.