A NIGHT AT RENFREW TOWN COUNCIL: OBSERVATIONS, THOUGHTS, AND COPIOUS NOTES

I attended a meeting of Renfrew Town Council last night, something I’ve not done in a very long time.  I wanted to get a sense of the dynamic of the place, the personalities present, political and administrative, official and non-official.  As in most such endeavours, information was gleaned, intelligence was gathered.

There were only four members in the public gallery, so I’ll have to assume that the legions of voters and interest groups out there ravenous for news emanating from a council meeting must have been taking it in via livestream.  But just like hockey, watching on television and seeing it live and in person are two different event experiences.  Seeing it live, up close, physically almost right there in the middle of it owing to the size of the room and its configuration, is far more personal, immediate, and telling.

I was half-expecting to see a ranking officer from the Ontario Provincial Police attending, possibly as a participant, perhaps, like me, as a witness.  But I saw no Bright White Shirts in the gallery, so no such luck there.  Mine remained the brightest white shirt in the crowd.

Too bad only four of us got to see all of this, but that’s on the public, not council.  So it was me, two gentlemen from a senior’s hockey club looking for a reduction of ice-time costs, and a former mayor and councillor busily scribbling notes for the entire two hours of the open meeting.

I had attended to get a look at the several people in the room who had failed to return an email outreach I had made to them late last week.  I wanted to see what it was about them that made them feel I could be dissuaded just by being simply ignored, a policy akin to an ostrich, its head, and the sand.  One councillor had even blocked my communication attempts, prompting me to wonder if I was embroiled in some sort of adolescent Facebook fight.

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GETTING TO KNOW RENFREW TOWN COUNCIL: PART 1

Two years ago, on October 24, 2022, Renfrew residents (well, some of them, anyway) cast their vote for candidates vying for Renfrew Town Council positions.

It’s important to note that only 2,788 out of 6,459 eligible voters cast ballots that day, representing 43.6% of the total number of people in town who qualified to vote.

Hardly a ringing exercise in democracy, but there you go.

Voters got one vote for mayor, and I believe four (maybe five?) for councillor.  Eight individuals ran for councillor. A voter did not have to use all of their votes for councillor if they chose not to.

The following graphics will show what percentage successful candidates received of the actual vote, as well as a percentage relative to the potential eligible vote.

Also featured are committee and board assignments, as well as other positions with flowery titles.

So, for your information, here is Renfrew’s Town Council on the second anniversary of their landslide victories.

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A UKRAINE WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS? NOT AS WILD AS IT SOUNDS

How far away are we from a Ukraine with nukes?

As far-fetched as that may sound to many, I’m sorry to say that it may not be that much of a stretch at all.

NATO (read the United States) continues to be cowed by Putin’s continuous threats to widen the war, or even go selectively nuclear, if the west continues to supply Ukraine with arms, ammunition, and training along with all the other help they’re providing.  But every time the west crosses one of Vlady’s “red lines,” it all comes up crickets from Russia.

I’ll state this plainly. Russia is barely a match for Ukraine alone.  What, in anyone’s mind, would have them thinking that Russia could handle Ukraine and Poland both?  What about throwing Rumania into the mix?  Still not sure?  Let’s throw the Baltics, including Finland and Sweden, in there too.  Could Russia handle that group of nations?  Of course, if those seven nations added to Ukraine faced Russia, you might just as well throw in the rest of NATO, because those seven nations are all members of the NATO alliance, which means that NATO’s Article 5 has been invoked.  There is absolutely no way in any scenario that Russia would have any chance against this.  No nation could.  It would be the end of them.

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ONTARIO’S BIG CITY MAYORS ASK PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT FOR HELP.

Ontario’s Big City Mayors group got together recently, as thy do, and no surprise, homelessness and the impact that it has on their communities was top-of-mountain when it came to topics under discussion.

When these discussions were completed, the mayors delivered a statement, as they do, but one that was more of a direct public appeal to the provincial government to do something, anything, to lift the onerous pressures homeless persons have on Ontario’s cities.

The folks in Pembroke would be able to appreciate that better than most, I’d say.  Far better than places like Renfrew, I’d warrant.

The BIg City Mayors had plenty to say about homelessness, some of it good, much of it the same old tired ideas that have led to nothing but have only shifted the problem onto some other area of society or provincial government responsibility.

One thing brought up, and it’s all the rage now across the country, is the idea of involuntary treatment for people addicted to drugs and who are homeless.  There are always segments of every population that are more difficult to manage or service for a myriad number of reasons, and with the topic of homelessness, these are the types that create the most onerous burden in terms of dealing with them from a police, public health, and social services point of view.  Throw in mental health and you’ve got one of the primary reasons, aside from bank greed, that there’s a homeless crisis to begin with.

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NEW BROOMS SWEEP CLEAN: JUST WATCH OUT FOR THE SCRATCHES ON THE FLOOR

Many of us from a certain generation are familiar with the old axiom “new brooms sweep clean.”

I guess it was a bit of old, grandma-type wisdom where it was established that a new broom, with its brand new bristles firm and steady, could get that dirt the old worn-out broom in the corner couldn’t handle anymore.  The new one swept all before it, and with a little bit of weight behind it, there would be nothing that could escape it.

It might also scratch your floor.

Politics can be like that.

You get a government, or a board, or a similar collection of individuals given a certain task or mandate.  Maybe they start out okay, but over time, stuff happens that leads to the impression among their constituency that they have to be sent packing, whether through their perceived ineptness, incompetence or for the simple fact that they’re tired and have gone flat.  And then comes the statement that grows and grows and grows, a statement dreaded by incumbents everywhere:  “It’s time for a change.”

Hence the need for a new broom, so to speak.  And what do brooms do?  Well they sweep, with new ones even sweeping clean.  Sweeping clean politically will more often mean that every, or almost every existing member of that government, or board, or council, or committee, what have you, will be replaced by someone new, and often extremely inexperienced.  And maybe even packing a grievance.  Or an agenda.  Or, gasp, both.

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NORTH KOREA’S KIM JONG UN ORCHESTRATES HIS OWN BEAT-DOWN

Kim Jong Un, leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and owner of the world’s worst mullet, is back in the news, not that he ever really left it.

And before going on, I’d just like to point out that any nation that feels the need to have the word democratic as part of the official name of the country is more than likely to be the farthest thing from democracy one could find.  And when the word people is also thrown in there, you can bet that the “people” are the last folks consulted when it comes to national policy.

When it comes to national policy, North Korea doesn’t have one beyond keeping the Kim family in power, as they’ve been since the creation of the place back in the late 1940’s.  In fact, the Kims are considered demigods, descending down from a sacred mountain in the nation’s north to benevolently rule over their adoring people.  At least those people they haven’t shot, poisoned, blew up, or starved to death.  Those types of people were killed or allowed to starve and represent a couple of million out of a population 26.2 million.  The rest of the population keep their mouths shut and their heads down, unless they are part of the chosen ones who facilitate the tragic and dark comedy of their Dear Leader.

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ANNIVERSARY BEST WISHES TO MPP JOHN YAKABUSKI

As I, like everyone else, navigate my way through the month of October, I periodically gaze in wonder at the picturesque majesty of nature, especially as it presents itself right here in the Ottawa Valley.  We are truly blessed with a landscape that is unsurpassed by any other place in the province.  Other places have their beauty as well, to be sure, but I don’t need to go out anywhere seeking anything better than what I have right here at home.

What an introduction for a story about a politician.

I just stumbled across the realization that my local MPP, John Yakabuski, is celebrating, or ought to be celebrating, his twenty-first year in office as our riding representative at Queen’s Park.  I shouldn’t have needed a reminder of that, and I regret that I did, but here I am now.

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HOMELESS: DOING A BETTER JOB AND SAVING A WHACK OF CASH WHILE DOING IT.

I did a video story earlier in the week regarding homelessness in Renfrew and the surrounding area, a story that had elements of criticism, as well as praise, within it.  I followed that up with an article giving credit and encouragement to some of the stakeholder groups or agencies (in this case police) that have made meaningful and positive contributions to the effort around homelessness.

Today, in what will likely be my final kick at this can, I wish to offer solutions, not of my own making, but crafted by folks living in other parts of North America and involving the very same issue.  I don’t want to come across as exclusively critical of the efforts, or non-efforts that I see as I learn more about this topic.

So I want to throw some ideas out there for an alternative approach, ideas not originated by me, but noted by me as having some real honest-to-goodness potential.  Unlike some politicians that are exclusively critical, I’d like to show up with some ideas about how to make things better.

One effort, in Austin, Texas, is operated by a group that identifies as Mobile Loaves and Fishes.  If you’re Christian, you may recognize the key element of that title from something you may have experienced in Scripture, a story we’ve all heard many times along the way.  The story of Jesus feeding the assembled masses who gathered to hear him along the shore of the Sea of Galilee.  The Mobile part of the title alludes to the fact that this group operates mobile food trucks as well as the community I’m talking about.

I’m not here to talk about the food truck.  But I will speak to their Community First! Village concept, something now in operation and humming along rather nicely.

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SUPER MOON DELIVERS A SMALL BONUS

Tonight was the night of the the biggest Super Moon seen in the sky since 2007, and as driving towards Arnprior, it absolutely beamed in the night sky in clear conditions.

Also known as a Hunter’s Moon, the Super Moon will be up and at it for most of the week, but dependant upon the amount of cloud cover above where you happen to be. In fact it’s tomorrow, October 17 that will feature the moon appearing to be at its largest, so that makes tomorrow’s moon the true Hunter Moon for astronomy purists. The full moon will be at its perigee of orbit around Earth, meaning that the full moon seen will be at its closest to the planet it orbits around. That’s us!

But that’s not all. Other events will be taking place up there, including the possibility of making a sighting of the comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas, something not seen with the naked eye all that often. If you miss it, not to worry. It’ll swing back this way again in some 80,000 years, so plenty of time to prepare for your next viewing attempt. I can’t remember an easily visible comet in the sky since Hale-Bopp back in 1997, and before that Halley’s Comet in the mid-1980’s. Both were impressive, once-in-a-lifetime events.

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