Feature Article - September 22, 2005

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September 22, 2005

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Gray MerriamLegaleseGeneral information and opinion on legal topics by Rural Legal ServicesNature Reflectionsby Jean GriffinNight Skiesby Leo Enright

Walk to end poverty

Augusto Paez (click image for larger view) Augusto Paez, an anti-poverty activist from Ottawa, passed through the Land o’ Lakes this week while walking from Ottawa to Peterborough to raise awareness about poverty in Canada. Paez is a member of SWAN (The Somerset Western Anti-Poverty Network), a self help group in the Somerset Region of Ottawa. Paez, who lives on a disability pension himself, decided to do the walk because he felt frustrated with the political reponse SWAN has been receiving from governent in the struggle for a dignified life for the working poor and people living on assistance. “I had to do something,” Paez says of his decision to undertake the walk, which will end when Paez joins with a group from Peterborough for a rally in Toronto at the end of September.Paez says he is mindful of this week being the 25th anniversary of the Terry Fox Marathon of Hope. “I looked at pictures of Terry Fox, and thought about his struggle, and I thought, I have two legs; if he could run on one leg, I can walk on two.”

Feature Article - September 8, 2005

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September 8, 2005

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Gray MerriamLegaleseGeneral information and opinion on legal topics by Rural Legal ServicesNature Reflectionsby Jean GriffinNight Skiesby Leo Enright

Report from the front lines: a weblog from a deputy sheriff in Slidell, Louisiana

Star Date 8/27/05: 7 PMStarted Evacuation convoy to Shreveport. Transport was good on I-12 for 30 miles. All traffic westbound was diverted to any northbound route. Traffic slowed to 15 mph for 1 hour.Star Date 8/28/05: Sunday, watched hurricane approach New Orleans. Chatted online.Star Date 8/29/05: Monday watched news reports of the destruction. Watched eye go right over my house. I need to get back NOW!. Friends pointed that out as premature.Star Date Tuesday 8/30/05: Had lunch in Shreveport. Purchased two generators, gas cans, water and made other preparations for a prolonged duration. Left kids with my friend. His family is so generous. Still cannot contact my wife. Her phone is based in New Orleans and she is trapped in Chicago. My family is split up. But, at least we will get together again in a few weeks. Some will not be so lucky. Arrived home before dark and assessed damage. My home has water. My shop has water. Wife’s car is under water. I am wiped out but alive. The trip home gave me plenty of time to reflect on how I would respond to this tragedy. Was my house ruined, were my friends safe and what would be there when I arrived? I-10 blocked to all access east. However, law enforcement documents gave me a pass. Checked into the sheriffs office command center and assigned to looter patrol right away. The entire staff was numb.Star Date 8/31/05: 4 am briefing was not only short and to the point, but under a small emergency light. Command center radio system is on rationed generator power. Water rationed, Food rationed. Breakfast was one muffin and water. Arrested two looters. Cigarettes and booze? This is not survival items. Besides, what’s the store money doing in your pocket? Bond set at $100,000 cash. NICE! Judge is on evacuation and cannot give a hearing. Looters are not loved here. Jail has no power, A/C or running water. This will not be good for these looters. I think I'll get 4 hours sleep tonight. Uniform of the day is anything that smells the cleanest. Sam's Club is commandeered for life support items. Sam's Club should be given an award for this. The Sam’s staff is only asking for a list of what we are taking. We take out thousands of dollars of stuff. FEMA is here. They set up a MRE site. They give out water, ice, and MRE's – now people will eat and drink. We need freezers to store the dead. Ok, this store has some. Commandeer them. Leave a list and a note. Thank you. We commandeer another huge generator from an arena show group. Sorry, you wont need this for a concert soon. I’m taken aback just a little at what the Sheriff can do. He was free reign to take anything we need from any one. Some deputies are waiting to pounce on the next 250 k generator that goes by on the interstate. It’s needed for the jail who just lost thier generator. Ah, they just got one. Another looter. Oh, you have no food or water? What are those? Diapers? Ok my friend. You are not a looter. Go on home and make arrangements to get out of here. There is not one store of food access point available.Star Date 9/1/05: More patrol. Uniform is a shirt washed in sweat from Tuesday. Smells ok. I'll use some rex body deodorant. This will smell good for the victims. Entire town is shut down. Every street and road is blocked with trees. Wires down everywhere. Main transport routes have vehicle wide paths carved through. No phones, water, or power. No birds singing, no frogs, none of the usual night-time summer noises we listen to. Eerie, and in fact, scary. Shots heard in the distance. No traffic on any street anywhere. Pure black darkness. Went to hospital to transport medical info to another hospital. Check points set up are manned with shot gun armed officers. This is no game. This is real life and death. While there I get a request as to what its like on the pearl river. Her family has a house there and stayed to ride it out while she worked at the center during the storm. She has not heard from any one. I am so sad to report her house is no longer there. I stop telling her the rest. She already knows.Star Date 9/2/05:Briefing with breakfast. Water with oatmeal and two strips of bacon. We joked about being in the matrix and eating a bowl of snot. Got some water to drink. On patrol. Assigned to removed an Emu carcass and a call to check a signal 29 (death) at a residence. Confirmed. Sorry sir, Family informed. Another dark night. Even though I live in a subdivision with 900 homes there are only a few with any one here. There is no one moving around. If looters comes by, it’s not going to go well for them. South side of town is either under water or is gone. Nothing but rubble. The smell is unbearable from the dead dogs, sewage, cats, and other reasons. Very depressing. The water is contaminated and very unsafe. Special Operations are doing search and rescue. We recovered 5 souls today – this is not going to turn out good. Work is slow. We use chain saws in the debris field. During the day a few deputies are scrambling to make arrangements for their families. They give no more than 1 hour for this. The rest of the time goes to the team. This is truly a challenge. No one complains. This is the most dedicated team I have ever been around. Some have lost everything. Entire homes cleared back to a vacant lot. There is nothing there. Not even one 2x4. But not one single deputy will accept anything that will give them anything the others could not get. We are all in this together. We are more concerned with the locals, and protecting their lives. I go to the hospital for a call. One x-ray tech wants a ride to check her house. We go and find it is rubble. I'm sorry. She is devastated. We have no mail service, no lights, no water, and no communications to anywhere. I watch a small battery operated TV and see a certain element in New Orleans taking over. It’s so wrong for the media to show only the negative. There are thousands more doing good down there. I hate the media. People flag us down medical attention. Sorry. Only if its life or death – your cut finger will just have to wait. We cannot help. People are dying all around us. There is nothing anyone can do. No phones and our radio system is barely functioning. More souls are found in the debris fields. Someone stops by the command center wanting us to take away her rotting meat out of her freezer. Sorry lady the trash man will be by in about 7 weeks. Better bury it in the back yard.Star Date 9/3/05: I think it is the 3rd. The days are running together. 30 miles to E-center to make a phone call. We have a very limited special satellite phone access. Hi Si, am alive and well. Got gas from the emergency center. Law enforcement only. Thank you. Walmart has opened another store and is GIVING away water and ice. Back to Slidell. Local shelter is having trouble with one. He from south shore, has a 4" knife and booze. Figures... A guest violates the sanctity of a shelter. Get Out! I should have put him in jail But let him wander around and suffer. I know we will see him again looting. I need cash for personal gas. The banks will not be online for weeks. Streets are getting cleared. Who are the saw fairies? We never see them. One day trees criss-cross like pickup stix, the next day the all cut and moved to clear paths. Distributed one pickup load of bread sticks and bananas around the subdivisions. Some are desperate but not uncivilized. Some fathers have tears in their eyes. I am feeling emotional too. All I see are their kids with my son’s image for faces. I feel blessed. This food mission is turning into a recon mission. We’re going to set up a looter sting tonight. Scalper is selling generators for $1100 bucks. I know they cost $319 because I just bought one in Shreveport. He’s from Oklahoma. I am upset. This one's going to be reported to attorney's general office. Lt. says next time confiscate the stuff and let them sort it out with FEMA. WOW. These scalpers are in for a surprise. Out of state vultures are setting up roofing stands with phoney work permits. Next one I find is going to jail. We are not finished recovering the dead. No respect. There are people siphoning gas. I let them do it. They are just getting means to get out to Texas. I do not see it as theft. This is a time of desperation but also a time for compassion. You need gas? Get some and go. We get reports that some are escaping from the South shore via sheets of plywood. All the bridges are out. This is their only escape. Some are stealing boats to escape the south shore. No problem. Except those who have guns and then lie about them. They are up to no good. We determine they are part of the thugs escaping by hijacking boats from honest people trying to escape. Central reports a home invasion. Every unit is racing to be the first onsite. This maggot is going to rot in jail for at least 30 days. 100k cash bond is hard to come up with... Its 9:30 pm, and my phone is working. It's amazing. Anyway, another cold water shower and find the DSL is up now too! Great, now I can store my log where it’s safe. Must get up at 4 AM again. I think ill get a few hours sleep tonight. I feel extremely fortunate. I get to eat and have water. I have nothing but neither does any one else. Before I could only imagine what Don was living. But now I know for real. One thing is different, though. I see it from an inside perspective because I have access to the entire area. There will be many deaths, yet so many others saved. I used to be an unpaid volunteer deputy sheriff. I did it to contribute to the community. I'm still an unpaid volunteer and will be broke soon enough. But, so will my neighbors. My family is split, but not as bad as too many others. I am here at the beckon of a higher authority.Star Date 9/04/05: Another day on generator power. Went to bed at 5 am and back awake at 10. Got some 5 hrs of needed sleep. Command center didn't need me until around 11 AM. Thank God because I am now suffering Plantars fasicitis or something like that. I can hardly walk. Doc says I must lay off at least 3 days. Sorry Doc, that’s out of the question. All of us are hurting and I'll be damned if I have it better than the next guy in a time like this. I shake my head with wonder to those who lost every thing, yet never say "I need a break." These guys are my role models. If they can do it, I'll do it too! We were given bottles of special hand disinfectant today. Do they know something we don't know? Well, we already refuse to touch our food with bare hands. Lunch was two slices of turkey and a hogie bun with water. Water is our beverage of choice. Water boiling is the command of the day. Sewers are backing up and the spoiled meat is starting to stink. We are under orders to bury the bad food in our yards. Roads are more back to normal. Power poles are looking more normal all the time. People are cleaning up the downed branches making a few yards look clean. It our only means of showing some control over our destiny. Checked out a roadside stand today. It was a pleasure to see someone selling items at cost just to help. Dinner at DISA site was great. One 6 oz slab of beef, cold veggies, and all the bananas I could eat. Picked up a load of ice and two boxes of MRE's – I will snack good if I need to. A high point of the day. My cell phone service is back up. This is perfect. About 200 of us have landline phones now too. Ill be in bed by 10:30 and up at 4 am, I know I will be assigned to looter patrol again. The looting is running rampant in parts of town. The sheriff deputies are keeping it down though in the rural areas. Its just a matter of time. Someone is going to get shot. Bossier city school board sent down a 5x5x10 ft box of relief supplies. Badly needed baby food, diapers and cereal for the deputies baby children. I received the load and had 8 trustees unload the trailer – another day of public service. 6PM. Suddenly the radio is humming with calls. The criminals are starting to rear their ugly heads. Phone service is improving and the morons are drinking the last of their beer. All alcohol sales are banned after mine and several other reports of drunks causing mayhem in shelters. Good. We don't need to deal with drink-induced stupidity. Some person is spotted carrying 95G (gun) on the interstate. I get to check him out. I think I'll wait for backup. Oh how I pray he is not a paranoid schizo coming off his meds.

Feature Article - September 8, 2005

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Gray MerriamLegaleseGeneral information and opinion on legal topics by Rural Legal ServicesNature Reflectionsby Jean GriffinNight Skiesby Leo Enright

Silver Lake Pow Wow

by Lesley McBride

(click image for larger view) "One of our best Pow Wows ever," expressed a PowWow Committee member during the last weekend of August 2005. Many more Native drum groups participated; over 1,000 people attended & a particularly good energy prevailed. Elder Charlotte Green's Invocation Speech stated, "All come (all cultures) as One Mind...in Honour for our Ancestors that have walked before us in this special place and prepared it for us...we give thanks for all that lives...be healthy, be strong, have fun & be good to one another."Traditional Native processions followed, Grass Dancers first blessing the ground they walked upon - all National flags and Six-Nations flags as usual placed at the central Drum Arbor (among these the Canadian flag, despite how our government has confiscated their lands and rights), and of course the dignified procession of Veterans gave thoughtful pause.

The Native dancers' spectacular array of meaningful regalia, intricately-woven deerskin, colourful symbols, beads and feathers kept one's attention from being lost in the growing outer circle of vendors selling various Native, and other, art, crafts and foods. James, a young Native from B.C. told me he had flown out especially for this occasion.His positive attitude and drive to stay closely in touch with his people's traditional ways was heartening to see. A cool breeze kept clouds continually moving; even so, the Native dancers were really working through it all to be cool, stay on their feet and keep moving, expressing a living heritage.

M.C.s Sherman Butler and Stan Taylor urged everyone to get up and dance - a Pow Wow is given so all can participate (and thus learn more about the traditional ways of this Earth-oriented culture). More young people did try out the dancing, obviously enjoying it. Lots of little ones were often leading all the dancers, showing us how to freely move and enjoy oneself.

Later on Sunday, Jim Windigo, visionary Aishiabe gave some 'words of wisdom': “I began my life when I was five years old - I was given a vision.I didn't go to school because I knew what was going on behind. I knew we were losing our way of life; I'm trying to hang onto our language and medicine and ways and pass this on..." Willie Bruce spoke for the Veterans: "Look at the sacrifices they made - it's what you do with your next footstep that counts."

Near the end of festivities a male Hoop Dancer thrilled onlookers with amazing prowess, manoeuvring over a dozen white hoops all at once while dancing!

A Native Pow Wow really needs to be experienced to be fully appreciated and understood.Even lone and rootless white folks (such as I once was) are drawn in to become part of this moving, growing Circle of many cultures honouring the Native's heartfelt traditions of living in harmony with Nature and each other. We're invited in, they're the Originals, and we can learn how to step lightly upon the Earth as they do. The central force, the 'hub' of this wheel of activity, was the men's drum groups: Lil' Bear, Mud Lake Ramblers, Bull Rock, All Nation, Red Hawk. Women's drum groups (interspersed among the dances, while a Water Drum occasionally added its unique voice) were: Ogitcheta Singers, Wshkiigam Singers, Laughing Calf.

The men's drum groups gathered at the end of the day on Sunday in the Center, all playing at once – each group sang and beat upon their large drum. No microphone was needed, the collective Native Sound strongly resounded over Silver Lake.

Anyone interested in volunteering for next year's Pow Wow may call Trudi Knapp at 375-6356.

Feature Article - September 8, 2005

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Gray MerriamLegaleseGeneral information and opinion on legal topics by Rural Legal ServicesNature Reflectionsby Jean GriffinNight Skiesby Leo Enright

A lament for NewOrleans

Editorial by Jeff Green

Much has been written about Hurricane Katrina and its impact on communities in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. In the case of New Orleans, coverage of the tragic consequences of the Katrina have also focused on questions of emergency preparedness, issues of poverty and race, and a descent into anarchy on the streets of the Crescent City.

As it happens, I spent a few days in New Orleans with my wife, Martina, five years ago last January. While this hardly makes me any kind of expert, it did provide enough of a context in the kind of city New Orleans is, and made what has happened there less of a shock to me than it would have been otherwise. It also makes this tragedy more real for me, having walked the streets that are now under water, and met some of the people who are now suffering or perhaps even dead.

The first thing about New Orleans is that it has a reputation for violence. As Martina and I drove from North Florida to New Orleans, people would see our Ontario plates and ask us where we were going. When we said New Orleans, they either said we shouldn’t go, or we should be very careful while we were there.

By the time we reached New Orleans we were on edge.

On our first night in New Orleans we went to Bourbon street, as many tourist do, and found it less than compelling. Late in the evening, we were eating a sandwich in a bar, when one of the musicians sat down next to us.

“I’m embarrassed to see you eat that,” he said, “to think that’s your introduction to my city.”

He was the first of many New Orleans citizens who helped us to understand their beloved city. He told us we should go eat at Dunbar’s restaurant to experience New Orleans’ Soul food.

The next morning we headed out on foot from our hotel on Canal Street towards Dunbar’s on Freret street, which was about 30 blocks away. We thought we would see the sights on the way.

As we walked down Freret street we realised we were not in Kansas anymore, as they say. We saw a building and yard surrounded by barbed wire. It was a school. We began to feel the colour of our skin very keenly as we looked at the people milling about the concrete block buildings. We were in the Projects, government housing plans from the sixties that never worked and ended up entrenching poverty and violence throughout American cities.

New Orleans is, physically, a small city, hemmed in by water on all sides, and wealthy districts such as the fabled garden district exist in close proximity to extremely poor neighbourhoods. In the Projects there were no gardens, no trees, no grass.

We abandoned our trip to Dunbar’s and stumbled out of the Projects.

For the next few days we went to restaurants and clubs, asking people where they thought we should eat, what music we should go and see. When we ran into the musician who told us to go to Dunbar’s, he said he hadn’t intended for us to walk along Freret Street, but he also said he was glad we had. “You saw a part of the town you wouldn’t have seen otherwise, and you learned something, didn’t you?” he said.

Most of the people we met in New Orleans loved the place, but they were all aware of its failings. They all knew that New Orleans attracted the world’s wealthiest tourists and contained masses of impoverished people. Everyone knew that most of the poor people were, and still are, black. Everyone knew that the police had tight control over certain parts of the city, and exercised that control in a brutal manner, and other parts of the city were basically lawless. The breakdown in the social order happened long before Hurricane Katrina

A huge aspect of New Orleans is its culture, which is mainly expressed through music and food, and this is something that will regenerate when the waters subside.

It is also expressed through architecture, and the fate of many of the historic buildings is a concern to many, although when as many as 10,000 people are dead, concern about buildings is less than secondary. Nonetheless everyone who has travelled to New Orleans has their own special places. For us they are the Mid-City Lanes Rock’n Bowl and Tipitinas’, where so much of Soul and R&B music was invented and has been reinvented 7 nights a week until a week ago.

And then there is Dunbar’s

We eventually got there and it was a beautiful place. The food was impeccable, the fresh oysters in the Po’ Boy were coated in the lightest batter and fried to perfection. The red beans and rice, as simple a dish as can be, was perfect. The owner of the restaurant was as gracious a woman as we met anywhere in the southern United States, which is saying something.

We talked to her about music, and she said we hadn’t heard the best music in New Orleans. To do that we had to go to her church on Sunday and hear the choir. We had no reason to disbelieve her.

Unfortunately we had to leave New Orleans on Saturday night, so we never got to hear the music in the Dunbars’ family church. We would hear it on our next trip to New Orleans, we promised ourselves.

Feature Article - September 15, 2005

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September 15, 2005

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Gray MerriamLegaleseGeneral information and opinion on legal topics by Rural Legal ServicesNature Reflectionsby Jean GriffinNight Skiesby Leo Enright

What's wrong with this picture?

editorial by JeffGreen

When people in Arden were informed last week by the OPP that Kelvin John Fischer, a convicted pedophile whom they describe as a high-risk offender, has taken up permanent residence just outside the village, they reacted in fear and anger.

At a public meeting early this week, some people talked about how important it was for parents to street proof their children, and the idea of establishing a kind of block parent program came up. Others made it clear they didn’t want to leave it at that. They want to figure out how they can run Kelvin John Fischer out of town. They pointed out that since his release, he has been forced to leave at least two other communities, so why not push him out of Arden?

The way the Police Services Act is set out, the OPP was obligated to provide a limited amount of information about Kelvin John (Johnny) Fischer to residents in communities where he takes up residence. There are rules about how much detail they can go into when informing the public, and there is a certain protocol around how this information is to be circulated.

The way the process of informing people about the potential danger posed to the public by high-risk offenders is seriously flawed.

People are told point blank, “you have a danger in your midst”. They react in typical fashion. They band together to rid themselves of the danger. This can be done by giving the individual the cold shoulder; harassing him in verbal ways; or resorting to crime themselves in order to remove him. This happens time and time again, in community after community.

Presumably the goal of the criminal justice system in these cases is to provide protection for the public and provide an opportunity for high-risk offenders to somehow establish themselves in the outside world so that the risk they pose diminishes over time.

Doing nothing more than turning the offender into a target has the effect of moving him from community to community, thereby constantly shuffling the danger down the line.

Any concept of rehabilitation, counselling, reintegration into the community has already gone out the window in this case.

Work has been going on in recent years to try and establish community reintegration for sex offenders. There are projects throughout Canada aimed at limiting the risk of recidivism among sexual offenders through what are called “Circles of Support and Accountability”. This is complicated process, requiring work on the part of the offender and the community.

The literature on these programs indicates that they only work when the offender is capable of empathy for their previous victims and do not deny their involvement in the offences. It is quite possible that Kelvin John Fischer is one of those individuals for whom rehabilitation is not viable, but we have no way of knowing that.

What we do know, however, is that the people in Arden and surrounding communities have been told there is threat. They have been told where the threat comes from, and told to protect themselves. They have reacted in typical ways, given the information they have been given.

For his part, Mr. Fischer has three strikes against him in Arden already. The situation is untenable on all sides.

One other thing has been made clear. The Sharbot Lake OPP detachment exists in name only. The OPP have handled this exclusively from Perth and Smiths Falls.

If this situation had taken place ten years ago, I believe there would have been a presence at that meeting in Arden from the Sharbot Lake detachment. The police may have had little to offer the people, but they would have known the meeting was taking place and would have made someone available in order to provide a calming influence, even if it only meant watching the meeting from the back of the room, a silent reminder that it is unwise to make veiled threats in public meetings.

The changeover that has taken place within the OPP has created a bureaucratic service that is far removed from the little communities in Frontenac County. This is not the fault of any of the individual officers involved, who continue to do their job, as defined by the OPP’s current operating system.

But it is a failure of the policing service. - JG

Feature Article - September 15, 2005

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Gray MerriamLegaleseGeneral information and opinion on legal topics by Rural Legal ServicesNature Reflectionsby Jean GriffinNight Skiesby Leo Enright

Letters to the Editor - September 15, 2005

Re: Walleye Spawning rehabilitation at Bobs & Crow Lake

I would like to put in a rebuttal concerning the article on Walleye Spawning Rehabilitation in your Sept. 1 edition.

The article stated that the Greater Bobs and Crow Lake Association has not done any walleye stocking on the lakes since 1992. It also states that the walleye levels have been increasing over the past 10 years, with the Walleye Netting index showing 2.5 Walleye per net captured in 1997, and 3.12 Walleye per net in 2002.

However, although the GBCLA has not done any stocking since 1992, the Can Am Fishing Club of Bobs Lake has. In 1997, 1998, and 1999, the Can-Am Fishing Club stocked over 9000 walleye fingerlings in Bobs Lake, and I submit that the increase in the Netting Index was due to this stocking.

I have spoken with several elders, with whom I fished in the 70s and 80s, and they say that this lake will never be able to restore itself because of the number of cottages that have been built. The fishing pressure has increased that much and this lake will have to be stocked or Walleye fishing will fade away.

Bob Daok, Vice President

Can-Am Fishing Club

People of Sydenham still at risk of losing homes

The recent Water Aid benefit concert featuring Dan Aykroyd was a huge success, raising $25,000 to assist families in Sydenham at risk of losing their homes due to the exorbitant costs of a new municipal water treatment system. Unfortunately this will only scratch the surface of the substantial financial need.

The people of Sydenham are caught between the knee-jerk reaction by the provincial government to the Walkerton tragedy, the municipality’s quest for infrastructure and the more reasoned approach to ensuring sustainable water outlined in a recently released government requested report. Although over 90% of the 273 affected residents petitioned against this $8 million system, construction got underway this spring.

The irony is that the Province’s own Water Strategy Expert Panel supports the position of the people of Sydenham. The panel’s report, entitled Watertight: The case for change in Ontario’s water and wastewater sector contains many recommendations, some of which highlight the flaws with the system being installed in Sydenham:

Ideally municipal water systems should have a minimum of 10,000 customers. The Sydenham system will have 273 customers!

Small communities with high costs should use newer ‘in-home’ technologies (such as UV lights and reverse osmosis.) Residents of the village petitioned the township council and consulting engineers to consider these systems as alternatives to the system being installed. Their petitions fell on deaf ears.

The smaller the system the more water quality issues are likely to occur and the more costly the system is to sustain. The Sydenham system will be among the smallest in the province.

If the Township of South Frontenac had followed the wishes of the people in the village, now supported by the aforementioned report, the average cost per household would be more like $3,000 to $5,000 instead of $10,000 to $15,000 and up to $25,000!

The provincial and municipal governments should recognize this unfortunate set of circumstances. As representatives of the people they need to be accountable for their decisions (including their mistakes) and make amends for the difficult financial situation in which they have placed the people of Sydenham – many of whom risk losing their homes or their life-savings.

The Sydenham water project, as it is being installed needs additional funds, needs alternative financing arrangements and needs to have the cost of this system spread across the whole township. If the Township of South Frontenac were to function as an amalgamated township and spread the costs across its tax base, each taxpayer would have a one-time expense of $180!

- Alastair Lamb

for the Sydenham Safe Water Association

Feature Article - September 1, 2005

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September 1, 2005

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Gray MerriamLegaleseGeneral information and opinion on legal topics by Rural Legal ServicesNature Reflectionsby Jean GriffinNight Skiesby Leo Enright

NFCS 30th Anniversary

by Jeff Green

Northern Frontenac Community Services (NFCS) is celebrating the 30th Anniversary of its incorporation with a series of events on the weekend of September 23-24. As a contribution to these festivities, The Frontenac News will be running a series of articles on the history of NFCS and its relation to the history of the region it serves. As many readers are aware, The Frontenac News was published by NFCS until July 2000, so our interest in the history of Northern Frontenac Community Services is more than a passing one. In this first article do the series, we will look at the years prior to incorporation of NFCS in 1975, to when the North Frontenac News and North Frontenac Community Services had their co-genesis in the early 1970’s. But first, what exactly is NFCS?

NFCS today

Northern Frontenac Community Services (NFCS) is a multi-service agency that provides a range of services for adults and children out of two buildings in Sharbot Lake. Its service area includes Central and North Frontenac and the northern part of South Frontenac. NFCS’ direct services for adults include programs for the elderly and for families facing economic or other challenges.

NFCS plays another important role through its affiliates, larger agencies that have staff housed at the NFCS office in Sharbot Lake. NFCS provides them with administrative support, and more importantly, a connection to the community they are attempting to serve. These services include mental health services, Ontario Works, the Children’s Aid Society, and others.

Through the Child Centre, day care services are offered, as well as a nursery school and a toy lending library, and counselling for young families. Child Centre staff hold regular playgroups in communities throughout Frontenac County. The Child Centre also has strong affiliations with other agencies, providing administrative support and community connections to agencies that provide a range of services concerned with early childhood development, children’s mental health, and more. The Child Centre has recently taken on a regional role as the Early Years Centre for the riding of Hastings, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington.

NFCS is currently expanding its programming by increasing services for the elderly. The Child Centre is looking to expand its role in early childhood education through participation in a new province-wide initiative called the Best Start. Transportation has been identified as a major barrier separating people in need from services they require, and NFCS is in the midst of setting up a transportation project.

NFCS has been able to survive in spite of internal strife and funding difficulties because it has always been a collection of individuals, coming from what used to be called North Frontenac and from close by, who have a network of connections within the communities, and are able to connect people and families to services that might help them.

The agency that exists today has been a work in progress for almost 35 years.

It might be up to us?

Sometime in the very early 70’s, a group of people began meeting informally to talk about the future of North Frontenac, an unofficial geographic area encompassing eight townships in Frontenac County: Bedford, Hinchinbooke, Oso, Olden, Kennebec, Palmerston-Canonto, Clarendon and Miller, and Barrie.

These townships shared many difficulties. The enterprises that had led to their development - lumbering, the railroad and farming - were either gone or in serious decline. The region was large and the population sparse. Estimates ranged between 5,000 and 6,000 people. Unemployment was high, over 50% in the wintertime in some places; the population was aging as young people left to seek a future; and small villages were dying out.

Early on it was decided that the first problem to be tackled was that of communication. There was no such thing as local media in North Frontenac. A Communications Group was formed and with support from St. Lawrence College began putting together a monthly newsletter, which was mimeographed at the Anglican Church in Sharbot Lake. The newsletter became the North Frontenac News (now the Frontenac News). But this was only a start for the Communications Group. They were interested more in affecting change than in merely communicating the problems they were collectively facing.

Early in 1972, Wayne Robinson had just returned from an extended trip to Australia. He had been raised in a local farm family, was in his mid-twenties, had graduated from Queens a few years earlier, and was available. The Communications Group had found some funding, and Wayne Robinson was hired as a “Community Animator”. Office space was found at the old Anglican rectory, which had been renovated over a period of five years under the direction of Martin Walsh, the Anglican Minister in Sharbot Lake at the time.

“It was the Trudeau era,” Robinson recalls, “when all sorts of ideas were floating around about the possibilities for community development. I was given an opportunity to see what could be developed. I really had carte blanche to do what I thought could be done.”

Eventually Wayne Robinson became the first Executive Director of North Frontenac Community Services in 1975, and remained with the agency until 1978.

Since then Wayne Robinson has forged a successful career as a financial planner and investment advisor at the Simonett building, not far from his old basement office at the Adult Services building of NFCS.

He recalls going to meetings every day and most nights while he worked at NFCS, where he spent his time either convincing provincial officials to support one project or another, or meeting with groups of seniors to help them to set up local seniors groups.

As the North Frontenac Project, which it came to be known as, began to develop, it had two major thrusts. One was to bring provincially and federally funded services, which people in North Frontenac were paying for through taxes, to the North.

Marcel Giroux, who was a teacher and guidance Counsellor at Sharbot Lake High School and a member of the Communications Group and the early NFCS Board, recalls that in the early 70’s “a Children’s Aid or a Manpower worker from Kingston would report to their office in Kingston at 8:30 to pick up a car. By the time they drove to Arden or Plevna, it was coffee break time. They would have one meeting, then it was lunch time. By the time they met with a second person or family, it would be getting on to 2:00 and time to return to Kingston. This was a huge waste of money, and it meant people in the north did not receive the services they were paying for with their income taxes.”

This basic insight led to the practice of seconding workers to Sharbot Lake to work anywhere from one to five days a week.

“We developed a multi-service agency model and we were able to convince the provincial government to support us. It was a model that worked then and it’s a model that still works today,” said Wayne Robinson.

The other major thrust for “The North Frontenac Project” was something much harder to define: community development.

The ‘North Frontenac Project’ was unique among rural initiatives and it attracted a significant amount of academic interest from its very beginnings. A report from 1974 by a Carleton University researcher described the project in the following way:

“Although providing services are the most frequent tasks, community animation is the foundation and the central theme of the project. To identify and solve the community’s problems with the community’s citizens, whether it be to form a youth group or to develop a plan for economic development, to facilitate a community willing and able to cope with its own future is the goal.”

It is important to realise that there was a real sense of urgency in the North Frontenac region in those days. It was felt that something had to happen or else the region would eventually drop off the map entirely.

An article called “It could be up to Us” was published in one of the early editions of the North Frontenac News.

It set out how vast the problems in the region were, and how daunting the task of ‘community animation' was going to be.

“Many citizens are concerned about the lack of development in the Northern Townships of Frontenac County. What have the 70’s to offer North Frontenac residents? Is it only game preserves, pockets of government privilege, few services and spotty seasonal employment? Why is it that Lanark County can persuade government, business, and industry to stake resources in their northern areas? Do we have to wait, cap in hand, for regional governments to take over our townships, because the Councils have not acted in their own best interests?

Although the moniker of “community animation” seems hopelessly dated nowadays, the issues are as real today as they were over 30 years ago.

One of the first projects that this burgeoning entity took on was trying to build an arena in this newly defined region of North Frontenac. With the promise of up to $100,000 from the County of Frontenac, a piece of land on Highway 38 halfway between Tichborne and Sharbot Lake (at the historic community of Oconto) was found, but the financing and population were not sufficient to build an arena.

Eventually, the township of Portland was drafted into the plan and the North Frontenac Arena, located at what is now the border between South and Central Frontenac, opened its doors in 1976.

In the meantime, North Frontenac Community Services was being developed, and in 1974 NFCS received funding from the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services to become a multi-service agency. It was one of three such agencies created; the other two were in or around Toronto, and it is the only one of the three that has survived.

In order to continue receiving provincial and federal support, it became necessary for NFCS to establish a formal board of directors and become a not-for-profit corporation. This took place in 1975.

There was some trepidation over this among NFCS supporters. Many of the volunteers that had come to meetings and joined management committees saw themselves as activists working towards building a brighter future for their community. Would they go along and become volunteer directors of a not-for-profit corporation, becoming concerned with mundane matters such as financial audits and management-employee relations?

Would the North Frontenac Community Services Corporation be the force in developing North Frontenac that people who had been involved were hoping to see, or would it become a bureaucratic arm of government?

These questions have taken 30 years to answer.

Feature Article - November 3, 2005

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Gray MerriamLegaleseGeneral information and opinion on legal topics by Rural Legal ServicesNature Reflectionsby Jean GriffinNight Skiesby Leo Enright

This Land is our Land, this Land is your Land -- Which?

by Gray Merriam

When Woody Guthrie wrote his song “This Land is Your Land” his concern was that all the people should have some say in what happened on the land – a socialistic view. Now we see and hear “This Land is Our Land”. Is this the same philosophy? Maybe ‘Yes’, maybe ‘No’.

Landowners following the slogan “This Land is Our Land” emphasize the “Our”, in objection to the government regulating their use of the land on which they pay taxes. They argue that ownership should be more absolute than allowed under government regulation. Essentially the argument is: if I own it (or rent it) and pay the mortgage and the taxes, I should be able to use this land as I, the owner, see fit. Not a socialistic view. Maybe it is just an anti-bureaucratic view, not a capitalistic view.

But the governments are supposed to represent the people and their wishes. Theoretically, a democratically elected set of governors are just the people’s representatives looking out for the welfare of the people. If that is not working, then perhaps the landowners should have a slogan about proper representation, not about absolute control of THEIR land.

Is it really their land to do with as they wish? What if the price of topsoil became very high so that it was more profitable to export your topsoil than to grow crops and take your chance on the markets? Under absolute ownership there would be nothing to stop the excavations right down to bedrock. One generation of landowners would have high short-term profits. The topography, streams and lakes would all be rearranged and the landscape would take on a new aesthetic quality. Probably the majority of the people would not be pleased.

That is why the people chose long ago to have the governments regulate what we do on the land. We regulate what we do to the column of air over our land. Over time, as society calls for them, regulations have been put in place to prevent comparable damage to various components of that complex column that we simply call 'the land'. Where we live includes the column of air above, living biota on the surface, the surface water, the soil, the ground water and the bedrock that together make up ‘Our’ and ‘Your’ ‘land’.

So we all live with some balance between the freedom gained by owning land and the regulation of how we use that land so that it will still be part of a functional system after we have passed through it. And that is exactly what happens. We are just passing through both while living and after that too. We do not have absolute ownership and the degree to which we can do as we wish depends on the values that society places on the consequences of our actions. Social values activated through democracy give us guidelines for stewardship of THE land. Not Ours. Not Yours.

As social mores and better understanding of the processes that maintain ecosystems develop and evolve, we are all given greater loads of responsibility for the land. Not just farmers and the industries along chemical row but also the builders and buyers in suburbia and the producers of urban garbage. Just being dislocated a step or two from where the damage actually happens does not break the chain of moral responsibility.

But society has to give reasonable guidelines. What is reasonable is determined by social and political give and take. If a person has been farming land for many years, we have decided that it is not reasonable for some group of suburbanites to move in next door and punish the farmer for the normal smells of farming. Guidelines change with social and cultural development and with increasing knowledge and shifting values. So we also now expect that farmer to carry on his way of life so that his activities do not let excess nutrients destroy the ecological processes of the waterways or the airways. Balance.

When society increases the priority on some guideline, it would be unreasonable to expect instant response regardless of costs. Society and its government regulators should not expect elements of our culture to remake themselves in a short time when they have evolved into their present state over several generations. And they should not expect the remake to happen regardless of costs. If society values the change they advocate, they should expect to supply some of the costs. After all, if some activity, such as piling sawdust outside small lumber mills has been the accepted practice for 3 or 4 generations, why expect the practice to be replaced quickly in an economically marginal enterprise. Balance is needed among established cultural practices, traditional ways of making a living, and new knowledge of the resulting damages that have been historically overlooked.

Similarly, if some cultural or business component of our society causes changes that affect another social group, guidelines may need to be changed or at least given flexibility. White-tailed deer have reached pest levels in some croplands as a result of historic lumbering followed by secondary forest regrowth, combined with changing farming practices such as increases in corn and soybean crops, changing climate, interacting with increasing urban growth and associated attitudes. These changes eventually combined to produce threshold increases in deer that required flexibility of regulatory agencies that was slow to come. Brittle bureaucracies are no match for complex socio-economic changes that are not gradual but instead often hit thresholds of sudden, even precipitous change. Balance between firm, enforced guidelines and responsiveness to change is required.

But response has to be balanced. Not just response to politically intense lobbying. No one person or few groups should expect instant changes in guidelines or regulations simply because it makes sense from their particular perspective. The complex that we call society has to work out their combined view and that has to be balanced, too. For too long, that societal view has been influenced by simplistic economic notions such the Gross National Product. Such measures do not reflect what is good for society. The GNP includes such things as increased flow of money into health care and money spent to repair damages from catastrophic natural disasters. Until we have economic measures that include what is good for society and subtract, as a cost, what is damaging to society and to the land, we must work to improve our democratic process for providing guidelines that give us all balance. “This Way of Life is Our Way of Life: Preserve it Government”, might be a more useful slogan.

Feature Article - November 10, 2005

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Gray MerriamLegaleseGeneral information and opinion on legal topics by Rural Legal ServicesNature Reflectionsby Jean GriffinNight Skiesby Leo Enright

Engineering disaster relief:Harrowsmith mother helps Pakistani earthquake victims

by Jeff Green

Major Julia Atherley-Blight probably wasn’t thinking about Pakistani women when she joined the Canadian Military in 1984 after obtaining an Engineering Degree from the University of Toronto.

But 21 years later she found herself in Gahri Dupatta this week talking to a Pakistani woman who had received support from the Canadian Forces DART team.

“A local woman kissed my hand today,” Major Atherley-Blight said in an interview with the News on Tuesday. “We hoped we would be able to do some useful work here, but it’s quite surprising how appreciative people have been. It’s certainly something I never expected.”

Major Atherley-Blight has spent the bulk of her military career in engineering-related postings. In 2001 she was the Site Activation Engineer leading the construction of Camp Mirage in the Arabian Gulf, and in 2003 she was the Theatre Activation Team Engineer for the Canadian contribution to the construction of Camp JULIEN in Afghanistan.

When not in some far-flung corner of the globe, she lives in Petworth, near Harrowsmith, with her husband and three children.

A year and a half ago, Major Atherley-Blight took on a new role as Deputy Commanding Officer of the Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART), which is based in Kingston.

The DART has 216 members, but the vast majority of those people, with the exception of 14 full-time people, have other duties with the military and are called on to serve with the DART only when it is deployed. It was set up, Atherley-Blight said, in response to a situation that occurred in Rwanda in 1994. “We realised that there was an imminent epidemic in Rwanda and we cobbled together a group, but it was too late.”

So the DART team was assembled in the mid-nineties, including engineers, medical personnel and others so the military would have a tool it could use for large-scale humanitarian disasters.

“I have to say that last year we were starting to have doubts about the relevance of DART,” Major Atherley-Blight offered. “It had been five years since it had been deployed and we were starting to think it was not something that was needed. That all changed with the Tsunami. We realised from Sri Lanka that it was exactly the right capability for a large scale disaster.”

The DART brings in all of its own supplies, so it does not stress the capacity of the region it is helping and it does not have to spend time finding food and shelter for its own people. The unit is deployed in a measured fashion. An advance team, which includes the Commanding officer, goes in first. Meanwhile, as the Deputy Commanding Officer, Major Atherley-Blight remains back in Canada and co-ordinates the supplies and personnel that are to follow.

The advance team determines specific needs for each situation.

“For this mission, we realised we needed to bring a female doctor with us, as women cannot be treated by a male doctor, because of their religion. We made sure we have the right cross section of skills, built a very austere camp, and got the people out working,” said Atherley-Blight.

The 46-member medical team based at Gahri-Dupatta includes 19 women.

But it is a challenge when arriving in a disaster zone just to determine how to be of help.

“The most difficult thing, in a chaotic country, is determining where the needs are, and how to get there. We had to find maps; we had to develop contacts to get information; and all of this with a language barrier to overcome,” Atherley-Blight said of the early days of the mission.

The two major thrusts for the DART are providing clean drinking water and primary medical care. In Pakistan the DART has brought four reverse osmosis purification units. Close to a million litres of water have been distributed and over 3,000 people have received medical treatment so far.

Because of the remoteness of the region, DART members found that relief agencies had not established a foothold in the region when they established their camp at Gahri Dupatta. It’s only very recently that OXFAM and Medecins-Sans-Frontieres have arrived, and there is a hospital nearby that the Red Crescent Society operates. All of these developments are very important for the DART, because the team is only mandated to stay in place for a short period of time, 40 days or thereabouts, and co-ordinating with international and Pakistani agencies to hand over the role the DART has been fulfilling is a major task as well.

All of these efforts keep DART members working from “the moment we wake up until we go to sleep at night,” says Julia Atherley-Blight.

When the DART returns home in late November or early December, Julia Atherley-Blight will be reunited with her husband and children Brianna, 12, Keifer, 11, and Dana. The children attend St. Patrick’s school in Harrowsmith.

“The kids don’t really like it when I leave, but they are being very good about it. I talk to them once a week, and I will have some time off after the mission is over.”

Major Atherley-Blight will remain as Deputy Commander of the DART until at least next summer. The experience she, and the entire DART, have gained in the past year will help them to make the DART more effective when future disasters strike.

Feature Article - December 8, 2005

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Gray MerriamLegaleseGeneral information and opinion on legal topics by Rural Legal ServicesNature Reflectionsby Jean GriffinNight Skiesby Leo Enright

Quaker roots in the Parham, Wagarville, and Tichborne areas

by Sylvia Powers

When the first exhausted band of Loyalist refugees arrived by bateau at Adolphustown in June of 1784, some members of the Religious Society of Friends, known as Quakers, accompanied them. These families had also had land and goods confiscated and many were in danger of losing their lives had they remained in the new United States of America. Their crime was refusing to join the rebel army and giving aid to their Loyalist neighbours. At least one, Thomas Dorland, had joined the British as a soldier despite the pacifist position of Friends. Consequently, when land was being granted to the Loyalists, he received a large enough grant to assist the other Quakers.

Sharing each other’s sufferings in the long journey to their new home meant that a close bond developed between the Loyalists and the Quakers. Some Loyalists such as Abraham Cronk must have been influenced by the Friends since a descendant, Jacob Cronk, donated land in Moscow for a Quaker Meeting Place in the 1800’s.

Descendants of the early Quakers spread to Prince Edward County, Colestream, Wooler, Camden, Athens, and other parts of Ontario and Quebec. Many Friends whose surnames are found in Central Frontenac today are listed in the Quaker census of 1828, the Camden censuses of 1861, 1891, and the Hinchinbrook(e) census of 1911. The names of Barker, Babcock, Hawley, Cronk, Card, Peters, Brown, Pero, Meeks, Craig, Palmer, Viely, Hartin, Vanvalkenburg, Asselstine, and Whan appeared as Friends more than a century ago.

In 1992, I started to discover my own Quaker ancestors. Jarvis Macomber and his wife Christina Sherman were married under the care of Friends in Dartmouth, Massachusetts before they moved to Canada in 1805. Both the Shermans and Macombers had been weighty Friends for over a century. In Canada, the name changed to McCumber. Their son, Edward, married Sally Card, whose family may have been among the many Cards who had joined the Quakers.

The biggest surprise turned up with the 1911 census of Hinchinbrooke. Several families in Parham, Tichborne and Wagarville listed themselves as Quakers. The Families of Titus Wagar, Robert McCullough, Cecilia Cronk, Allen Wagar, John Switzer, Terense Switzer, Charles Cox, Henry Hicks, Daniel McCoud, Harrie Babcock, and my great-great grandparents, Philip and Aurora Wagar listed themselves as Friends.

Prior to 1967 my own knowledge of Quakers was limited to high school history books that spoke of the Religious Society of Friends in England in the 1600’s and the settlement of Pennsylvania by William Penn, a Quaker. Images of men with hats and women in long black and grey gowns would spring to mind. I had the impression that this was an historical sect that had faded away with the passage of time.

In 1967 I met some Canadian Quakers for the first time and learned that Quakerism is very much alive in Canada. Friends had shed their long grey clothes and plain speech (saying “Thee” instead of “you”). They now enjoyed art and music and looked like ordinary people. While there are many evangelical Friends in the world whose services seem indistinguishable from other churches, in Canada and England the majority of Friends follow the unprogrammed tradition. Meeting is begun in silence. From the gathered stillness, some Friends may be led to speak or sing.

Friends of all traditions believe that there is a part of God in all persons. Therefore, they abhor all war and other forms of violence. Even creeds are divisive. Therefore there is no creed that all Friends accept. Friends accept that each person has his/her own relationship with God. During the wars, Friends served in humanitarian ways. Through the ambulance unit they rescued the wounded on both sides of the conflict. Relief packages were delivered to both sides of a conflict.

I think that the reason there were so many Quakers in this area in 1911 was because people could sense the impending war and wanted to prevent it in some small way. But why did it fade away even from our collective memory? I could speculate on the reasons but would appreciate hearing from some of the descendants of the people calling themselves Friends. Did you know that your great-grandparents were Friends? Do you recall any Meeting House in this area? If you have any comments, email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or phone 613-225-6377 or 484-6377. Better yet, join us once a month at the Land O’ Lakes Worship group and experience why your ancestors chose this form of worship. Time is at 3 p.m. on Sunday to allow you an opportunity to attend your regular church service first. Phone 375-8256 for details. All will be welcome.