COMMUNITY GARDEN PARTNERSHIP FORMALIZED

The creation and implementation of a community garden at Oddfellows Park on Sidney Avenue in Renfrew is a really good adaptation of a really good idea.

In association with the Renfrew Food Bank, the town has set aside one of its several parks for use as an urban agricultural experiment, where citizens can rent a plot of land, or space if you will, to cultivate for themselves any fruits or vegetables they may desire to bring into this world.

Not only does such a program benefit from a “farm to table” aspect on a smaller scale, but it also fosters a sense of community through interactions with others tending their own plots.

And further, it benefits the efforts made by the volunteers over at the Renfrew Food Bank.

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A GARAGE FORGOTTEN

Renfrew’s Public Works Garage is no longer in poor shape.

It would be better and more accurate to say that the garage, the hub for Renfrew’s fleet of public works vehicles and staff, is in catastrophic shape.  And it has been for years.

This building has been in bad need of work, repairs, and interventions since the turn of the century, which is a hell of a thing to say given the fact that we’re already a quarter of the way through that century.  Yet council after council has sacrificed this municipal property on the altar of budget deficits, shunting it aside as less a priority than the other things that have been funded for over these past twenty-five years.

But now the problems appear to coming home to roost.  Now it appears that a kid throwing a rock at the building may well put the structure in an existential calamity, since the whole place could come crumbling down with as much as an unduly harsh look, never mind a child’s rock.

And all of this against the backdrop of the biggest budget crisis in the town’s history, a crisis that will linger for decades.  And as these things go, the Public Works Garage, ignored for all of these years as money was thrown into things like Ma-Te-Way and office furniture for the Town Hall, remains not only in crisis, but also as a danger to the employees and the equipment headquartered there.

It appears it can’t be ignored any longer.  And right at a time we can least afford to do anything about it.  Funny, not funny, how these things go.

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A MUNICIPAL EXERCISE IN BLAME SHARING

The Town of Renfrew wants your input.

Actually, they want your complicity.

The town is pumping a survey of theirs where they hope to get some direction on where to go as they approach the time when they have to do The Big Reveal, also known as the 2025 Municipal Budget.

It’s not a document they’re overly excited about, mostly because it’s going  to be brutal on you, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer of Renfrew, Ontario, the people who foot the bill and the people who will be most angry when their tax bill shows up in the mail.

The very people who will be most angry at…them.

They’re going to present this as an example of their commitment to openness and transparency, to demonstrate to you how sensitive they are to your feedback, how they’ve discovered the advantages and benefits of being up-front with the people they provide services for and to.

Sure it is.

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AMERICA WANTS GAZA TOO

Imagine, two criminals getting together to commit a crime.

America’s Donald Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

Both needed to win elections in order to stay out of jail.  Both succeeded.  It’s an irony of democracy where the system can allow thugs like these to take charge by taking advantage of a system based upon freedom and government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  Too bad people can make mistakes.  Big ones.

And they never ever learn.  Not ever.  And whoever said that those who refuse to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them?  Well, that guy was on to something, because here we are, again.

Hell, even Hitler was elected back in 1933.  The Germans never saw an election again until 1949, sixteen years and 8.8 million World War 2 deaths later.  To say they might have made a big mistake back in 1933 is a huge understatement.

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FIGHTING A U.S. INVASION

A Canadian version of the Mujahideen?

Well, right off the hop, we have to deal with the whole Islamic specificity of that word, as it properly refers to those engaged in jihad, or the defence of Islam.  And Canada, despite the histrionic assertions of unhinged right-wing calamity thinkers, is not an Islamic country.  Yet no word really matches the need more than this one, made famous by generations of so-called “freedom fighters” who managed to chase, in turn, the British, the Russians, and the Americans out of their lands.

We don’t need to become the Mujahideen, but we may need to ape their organization, their structure, recruitment methods, and tactics if we are to win our multi-year war of freedom from our erstwhile friends and neighbours in the UST, or the United States of Trump.

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A FESTIVAL OF ERRORS?

In conversation with all the gossip-mongers out there who specialize in small-town hogwash, perhaps the topic that comes up most often, outside of Ma-Te-Way of course, is the Renfrew Bluegrass Festival, or more particularly, the cancellation of the Bluegrass Festival once hosted by the Town of Renfrew.

This festival, and its cancellation, appears to have been in the gunsights of Mayor Tom Sidney from the get-go after his election as mayor in the 2022 municipal elections.

Landslide Tom — he won by 13 votes — apparently told his newly assembled Council that the Renfrew Bluegrass Festival was no longer going to be a thing, and that he was going to be putting the boots to what a lot of other people seem to think was a wildly successful venture.

Why?

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ANGER AS A CHOICE

My tone can be harsh, and my barbs can be sharp.

To read my material, one could reasonably assume that I was one miserable human being.  Depending on the day and the topic, one could reasonably be correct in that assessment.  And I completely get that.

By my account anyways, I’m kind of a good guy.  If this was a movie, I’d want to be one of the fellers riding along with the loveable but crusty old  sheriff in pursuit of Black Bart, that bastard who robbed the bank and shot up Miss Kitty’s saloon.

So why the tone?

It’s sometimes an uncomfortable reality that, when you’re fighting the “bad guys,” even the good guys have to employ the kind of tactics that the opposition use to advance their own causes, to use language that they might not appreciate. 

If these were people who could be reached through rational, good-faith  discussion, then sign me up, I could do that all day.  But many of these types are well below that bar, are dismissive of rational argument, and couldn’t give a fig about what we may think. 

To get their attention, you have to piss them off.  And to piss them off, you have to get under their skin, expose their anger, flush them out of their smug certainty that being the loudest voice in the room is the one that ultimately prevails.

It’s tough to land a punch on people like this.  And sometimes, with some of them, you have to take the elevator to the basement to even get within range of landing a punch.

So welcome to the basement.

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FORMER CAO A MYSTERY MAN

Who is Rob Tremblay?

Over the past several months, I’ve had plenty of conversations with numerous locals regarding local government, local governance, the administration of local governance, and the general way in which things are done or not done when it comes to this sleepy little town along the banks of the mighty Bonnechere.

It’s amazing, though, how often that name pops into the conversation on its own.  I don’t know Rob Tremblay from a head of lettuce, and similar to a head of lettuce, information on him seems hard to come by.

I know he was the CAO —Chief Administrative Officer — of Renfrew.  And then he wasn’t.

Just like that, poof, a lingering puff of smoke, and there he was, gone.  Surely not enough time in that office to leave a footprint.  And yet, from the conversations I’m having, you would think that he not only left a footprint, but a bootprint with a bruise.

I didn’t meet anyone who really pumped his tires, I can tell you that.  And as I said, I don’t know the fellow, or know of the fellow, other than he kept coming up unbidden in conversations.  Not that I’m an elite investigator or anything, but it surely means something.

It means there’s either something more out there to be known or there’s an individual in desperate need of a reputational reboot, at least as it pertains to a sleepy little town along the banks of the mighty Bonnechere.

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RUNNING FOR MAYOR

Who would want to be the mayor of Renfrew?

Other than perennial candidate Cal Scott, what person would have the willingness to take on a thankless position at the head of a table of squabbling councillors and overly-confident and assertive administrative types?

Is it the base salary of $20,425?  Add committee and board assignment remuneration to this base salary, but where does that get you?

As recently as 2022, the mayor landed some $42,400, so one could maybe be forgiven for assuming that the mayor’s position took an almost twenty grand haircut in the two years since.

My point here is that it can’t be for the cash, at least not in 2025.  Maybe in 2022, when it was all rainbows and cherry blossoms, but not now.  At least I don’t think so.

Trying to get information on this sort of thing is like sitting in the dentist’s chair while they take multipole measurements of each tooth in your mouth while everyone in the room gets older.  Because of this, I’m going to take the $42,400 number as my working number, and to hell with what the internet says.

So, after all that, my question remains, who would want to be mayor of this place?  Is just over forty grand enough money for the self-abuse that surely follows everyone who wears the chain of office?  And if it’s not, how much salary would be enough?

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THE BILLIONAIRE’S CLUB

What happens to a man when he becomes a billionaire?

I’d include women in that question if they represented more than the 12% of existing billionaires, but it would be surprising to a lot of us to know that there are fully 337 female billionaires out there in the first place.  Surprising, not because they’re women, but rather because 337 is 12% of a much larger number of total billionaires.  And to me, that’s just flat-out troubling.

Female billionaires don’t appear to be the type who run around wedging their names into the world’s headlines.  They don’t appear to offer overly contentious commentary of local, national, and international stages.  I’m absolutely positive they have the financial heft to make their opinions known, and probably aren’t terribly shy in making their wishes come true.  They just seem to go about it in a way that makes them come up a rosier version of their male counterparts.

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