I’m not a fan of Taylor Swift. That said, I’m not not a fan a Taylor Swift either.
Like many of us, I know of her, I’ve heard her music, probably bopped around in the car to one of her tunes if I thought nobody was watching. So outside of Swifties and Swift-haters, I fall in the middle of the spectrum with respect to the pop megastar, and I hope I haven’t offended with the word pop, since she kind of straddled the country/pop line for a bit there at the beginning.
I love my kids, and I feel they love me too. But if that love were to be dependant upon me lining up for weeks or moving heaven and earth to get tickets for Taylor’s shows in Toronto, I fear, then, that the love of child to father might be in trouble. Fortunately for me, my children haven’t insisted upon that being included in the father-child contract, and I hope I haven’t given them any ideas for the next round of negotiations. Luckily for me again, I don’t think my kids read my stuff.
Sometimes you have to do the little jobs right in order to get the big jobs. And then sometimes you don’t.
Peter Emon is off and running as a candidate for the chair of Warden of Renfrew County, a chair he’s sat in several times now, a chair where the memory foam makes it virtually impossible for anyone else to sit there comfortably.
He does this while his chair on Renfrew town council sits idle and vacant, where periodically the roller function is engaged when the cleaners pass through the chamber on their regular rounds.
Normally, I guess I’d feel proud that one of our own — well, tenuously anyway — gets selected to occupy the top spot on the top-tier of local government, that being Renfrew County Council. Never mind the fact that he’s been warden several times over the years, originally as a mayor from Greater Madawaska and now as the reeve of Renfrew.
And there’s the thing right there, that reeve of Renfrew thing.
Getting ready for Tuesday’s Renfrew Town Council meeting, I went through the meeting agenda that was released the Friday before, three days before the meeting itself and with a weekend in the middle of it, so that if anyone had any questions, there’d be no way to pose them since staff was off for the weekend, not that they answer their emails anyways under any conditions that I can discern.
I had no such questions of my own, so that’s a bit of a moot point personally, but Councillor Dick raised the timeline since he’s an elected councillor, responsible to electors, and clearly under the same timeline as I am, a retired dude with the time to spend on such late-breaking documents. In other words, I had a better opportunity to go over the agenda and prepare for the same meeting than an elected councillor had, a gentleman with many other things to do than I.
The egalitarian streak that sort of runs through me found that to be appealing to a degree, but the common sense part of me kind of screamed out that this was just not a good “business” practice, where the principals receive the information at the same time as the non-actors. It’s also a state of affairs that gives significant advantage to a guy like me who, blessed with retirement, good health and nothing better to do, can arrive at the same time and in the same place more thoroughly briefed on the minutiae of the agenda items, and the often-redundant appendices that make going through the agenda document about as much fun as walking through muck. You’d think they were actually attempting to dissuade people from reading this documentation, although, in my experience, it’s often in the murky water where you find the most concealed gems of information. But that’s me, and I’m not a Renfrew councillor, one who has to appear in public, live-streamed or available afterward, who has every statement or non-statement right there on the public record of YouTube. I could see how there would be a strong incentive to say nothing for a councillor, since your options are to wade through the miasma of “late-breaking” information, stay quiet and perhaps appear stupid, or say something and remove all doubt, or so the saying goes. I could completely understand the incentive to remain quiet, not that I witnessed that.
Attending a local council meeting can be a marathon of eye-glazing procedural this-and-that, and it can be a real challenge to whatever you drink for coffee, as no level of caffeine can fully protect you from the head-nodding minutiae these affairs can showcase. That said, there is absolutely no substitute for attending in person.
China is dead. And what isn’t dead is dying. Give it maybe ten years, then watch the place collapse from within.
Demographics can be a real bitch, and the Chinese aren’t the only ones having to deal with it, but they’re the ones who will have to deal with it so quickly. Other industrialized countries, including Canada, will face this danger themselves, but will do so over a longer period of time, most likely because of immigration that’s intended to stave off this prospect.
But how can a country of 1.3 billion people be suffering from a demographic crisis? The answer is simple. When over 50% of that 1.3 billion people are over age 50, you come to the stark reality that the population is going to take a gigantic hit in the next couple of decades as these people pass on, and with no idea as to how they’re going to be replaced. That’s a staggering 600 million people gone in the next twenty years or so. And in a country where earlier laws limited parents to two children, and then one child by law, you don’t have to be brilliant to figure out the problem. In fact, China’s population is currently estimated to be under 1 billion already, and it will steadily go down.
So who’s going to work in the factories? Who’s going to keep that manufacturing juggernaut going that kicks out just about every finished product the world wants or needs? Who will be there to keep China in position to be the overlord of East Asia. Nobody, that’s who.
Initially, I had no reason to be suspicious of anything, nor am I suggesting that there would be anything to be suspicious about.
I was simply asking a question, a question I felt entitled to ask, one that would be of some interest to people who pay their property taxes in Renfrew, Ontario.
It’s like standard journalism, the kind that existed before we were left with empty shells purporting to cover “news” at a local level. The kind of stuff that goes beyond the old “cat stuck in tree” slosh. Something that’s maybe more than a short paragraph in length.
But this isn’t about local journalism, that would be a whole other story in its own right. This is about a simple request for information that has been met with opposition, deflection, institutional ambiguity, and just good-old-fashioned bewilderment. It’s like they have no idea how to respond.
Not that long ago, the downtown strip along Raglan Street in Renfrew was as bleak as perhaps bleak could get.
Multiple storefronts not just empty, but abandoned for all intents and purposes. Broken glass and boarded-up windows was a key take-away for anyone travelling along the Highway 60-Highway 132 corridor, not a very compelling place for anyone to stop and venture a stroll along the main drag.
I’m happy to say that, at least to me, there is more than enough evidence that the people occupying space downtown are taking it a lot more seriously than perhaps they once did. And by that I mean absentee building owners. To be absolutely clear, there have always been businesses along Raglan that have put their best foot forward to the public. It’s just that now they’re being joined by an assortment of others, owners, tenants, or both.
“It doesn’t matter what it costs, it’s gotta be done.”
I have to circle back to a comment made by Renfrew councillor Andrew Dick in the most recent council meeting of October 22, 2024. It concerned the lighting available at Renfrew’s Ma-Te-Way ballfields.
The councillor was reflecting a certain frustration with the lighting situation at Ma-Te-Way, particularly in the face of a Parks and Recreation report that indicated that all underground electrical infrastructure outside at Ma-Te-Way was in a condition of complete failure and degradation. So much so that contractors have advised that the lights dependant upon the proper functioning of that infrastructure not be turned on until the failed aspects of it be replaced.
Council voted to proceed with an engineering study by engineering consultants JP2G that would culminate in recommendations as to how to proceed. The only problem with that, and of particular concern to Councillor Dick, was the fact that the engineering review wouldn’t be completed until well after the 2025 baseball season had concluded. In other words, no lights in 2025.
Clearly, I’ve fallen and hit my head and just don’t know that I’m concussed yet. How else to make sense of my even-tempered outlook on the upcoming presidency of Donald J. Trump?
Honestly, where did my old self go, other than just getting older? Why am I so bloody reasonable about this clown show coming back for a second kick at the can? I’m not American. I have no money. Why would I be giving the guy the benefit of the doubt when I never had any doubts about his absolute lack of fitness to hold the presidency in the first place?
For the first time in a somewhat long life I witnessed an election be the reason for a watch party. Usually it’s a sporting event, a sporting championship, maybe a UFC beat-down. But on Tuesday, the US presidential election became the new Super Bowl, with almost everyone I talked to that day mentioning that they were going someplace to watch the election.
My goodness times have changed.
I’ll bet there was a watch-party of sorts at Rideau Cottage as well, or maybe on Wellington Street over at the PMO, or Prime Minister’s Office. And while I doubt anyone was wearing the colours and swag of the team they were rooting for, I’ll bet you’d have no trouble figuring it out regardless.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 