So there’s this property at the end of Sidney Avenue, owned in common by the owner of 253 Mclean Street, and now being considered for the construction of a home.

On the Official Plan for the town, the property is shown as being zoned for residential.  But on another environmental plan, part of the property falls within the boundaries of an area designated as being a natural hazard zone, as there’s a ravine situated right next to the property, and the property itself contains a negative slope leading down to this ravine.  The lot, then, gets caught in a municipal Venn diagram, with overlap of two different designations.

Renfrew Town Council’s newly created Signature Events Working Group has been busy planning for two events that appear to be trending in different directions:  The Bluegrass Festival and the Renfrew Craft Beer and Food Truck Festival.

It’s only a matter of time before an arrow pointing nowhere starts to make more sense.

Back in August it was reported that the town of Renfrew had reached an agreement with Trivitus Group to develop a piece of property along O’Brien Road across from the No Frills complex and gas station.

The development is planned to host three restaurants, one of which is reported to be a Starbucks.  The other two eateries are top secret.  Really.

Renfrew’s retail landscape is nudging progressively forward as one of the town’s more prominent strip malls begins to fill in the vacancies that have plagued the location in recent years.

I just noticed today that one complete section of the Rio Can property on O’Brien Road is fully occupied, which is awesome and, to me, a sign of good things to come.

A traffic circle.  For Renfrew.

Well how about that?

In anticipation of increased traffic flow, the Town of Renfrew has applied to the province for the $3 million in funding needed to install a traffic circle at the corner of O’Brien Road and Wrangler Street.  For locals, that’s the turn-off for Canadian Tire.

Blackhawks winger Patrick Kane has been keeping things more or less close to his vest when it comes to the possibility of him being moved before the trade deadline.

But something squeezed out today when he indicated that he wasn’t the happiest to hear that Blues winger Vladimir Tarasenko had been acquired by the New York Rangers.

How fortunate are we to have a hospital of the stature of Renfrew Victoria Hospital?  Simply put, very.

RVH is about as modern a health care facility as you’re going to find anywhere, providing numerous services alongside its chief mandate of being a local, in fact, regional hospital.  As an institution, it wears these many hats well.

The professional staff is top shelf, the supporting staff right there along with them.  And there’s a robust cadre of volunteers and support groups existing in the community that lean into the overall effort to offer top-quality health care.  We are, indeed, very fortunate.

Dolly, my nearly fourteen year old Maltese/Shitzu mix and remaining comrade-at-arms, had herself a close call today.  Because when I left for the vet’s this morning with her, I was pretty sure I’d be driving home alone.

Driving into Ottawa these past several months would have you witnessing the progress being made on the interchange at Highway 17 and the Calabogie Road turnoff.  This $25 million operation represents stage 1 of the larger project of expanding Highway 17 from Scheel Drive to Bruce Street, in Horton Township.

If someone had a magic wand that could wave away the scourge of mental health, I imagine they’d have waved it a long time ago.

Mental health issues are commonplace. Most people are simply born with it. Didn’t deserve it, nobody does, just part of the bargain of life, I guess. Part of having a life to live, as simple as that.

Mental health-related issues are very common, hitting all type of people, not caring how much money you have, what you look like, or what your last name is.  The stigma attached to mental health makes many fearful of reaching out for any kind of help.  There are no easy solutions, medicinal or otherwise.  No easy fixes.  No preventative vaccines.

We hear the term a lot, maybe almost to the point of being desensitized to it, which would be too bad. If true, we’d be looking at things more shallowly than maybe we should.  And that’s not what needs to happen.  As to what does need to happen, I’m not really sure to be honest.

Some of how you treat yourself has to do, I think, with how you treat other people.  We have no idea the impact we have on the lives of others, and no knowing what depths we reach with a simple act of kindness to a stranger

Not just to the stranger, but to ourselves as well.