Tag: history

PETER EMON AS MAYOR?

What makes a mayor a good mayor?

I ask this because I believe I just witnessed a good mayor in action.  The only thing is, the guy’s not the mayor.  He’s the reeve.

Peter Emon sat in the big chair last Tuesday and played the role of Master of Ceremonies for that evening’s Town Council meeting, and I have to say he didn’t look out of place, not one bit.

To some, this might have the appearance of me being a cheerleader for Emon’s mayoral prospects in 2026, assuming the man is even in the running for the position.  I recently penned an article outlining a recent integrity complaint against the reeve, the second one since I’ve taken an interest in the workings and personalities of our local government.  In the first one, he was found to be in the wrong, and in the second, he was found to be not.

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McDOUGALL MUSEUM CONSIDERED FOR BUDGET CUTS

How important is Renfrew’s McDougall Mill Museum?

A couple of points are worth considering before leaping to any kind of response.  First, the McDougall Mill was one of the very first structures in Renfrew’s history, located at the Second Chute of the Bonnechere River, and from there serving as the focal point for the community that would grow around it.  In terms of heritage and heritage buildings, the museum is the pre-eminent historical structure in Renfrew.  The fact that it’s morphed into the curation and preservation of important relics connected to Renfrew’s past makes all the sense in the world.

Second, the McDougall Mill’s place in the community is embedded in the town’s corporate logo, and it’s been prominent in just about every effort at promoting Renfrew beyond the town’s limits.

It stands as the very symbol of Renfrew.

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THE BAFN MYSTERY

Who are the Bonnechere Algonquin First Nation, or BAFN?

To the uninformed or less-informed eye, the title suggests an aboriginal group of some sort, more than likely a First Nation.  The word Bonnechere suggests a group who calls elements of, or the entirety of the Bonnechere River watershed their home, their ancestral home.  And if you’re from around this part of the 613, you might understandably conclude that they have some affiliation with, or are actually part of the Algonquins of Golden Lake, or Pikwakanagan.

And although BAFN and Pikwakanagan are both listed as members of the AOO, or Algonquins of Ontario, the two barely talk to one another, if at all.  Phone calls to the Band leadership in Golden Lake were initially warm and friendly, until I mentioned BAFN as my point of enquiry.  

There’s been no communication since.

So who are these mystery people and what’s the reason for my interest in them?

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COUNCIL EXHIBITING HR PERPLEXION

Town Council has been struggling with the composition of an HR — Human Resources — committee, or panel, or tribunal, or whatever other term they might come up with to adequately describe a small group of people tasked with representing the town in grievance procedures involving town employees.

There are a plenty of big-ticket, red-seal, five-alarm topics and issues that our seven elected politicians can grapple with, and disagree over, some involving millions of dollars, even tens of millions of dollars.  But it’s this HR issue, a veritable fart in a mitten, that has them contorting themselves with lines of reasoning that shift as easily as the tall verdant grass in a jaunty spring  breeze.

Ma-Te-Way, the Town Hall renovation, construction overages, lights for ballfields, integrity investigations, demands for resignations, demands for defenestration from committees, all of this pales in comparison with the steep and rocky slope that leads to the top of Mount HR.

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CANADIANS SHOW DISPLEASURE WITH TRUMP

You may have noticed recently that there are a fair number of people expressing their displeasure with U.S. president Gotfried Schitzinpantz and his whole gang down in Mar-A-Lardo, Florida.

Displeasure is too polite of a word, of course, but we’re Canadians and being polite is supposed to be a national trait.  That said, it appears Canadians are really really mad with the president, and rightly so.

And we seem to have our own way of exhibiting this anger, unique to us, and somewhat Canadian to a core.

I was driving along the highway last week and saw a black flag fluttering from a flagpole along the side of the road.  It looked to me to be one of those F**k Trudeau flags, although it did cross my mind that maybe the owner of the property hadn’t heard yet that Trudeau had stepped down.  Maybe he was just being prudent and attempting to get the full value for the flag, since he paid good money for it on Amazon, and by Christ he was gonna fly it nevertheless.

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CANADA STRIKES BACK: SAAB GRIPEN INSTEAD OF THE F-35?

The Locheed-Martin F-35 is an impressive piece of technology.

The single-engine stealth fighter was identified as being an integral part of the future of the RCAF, or Royal Canadian Air Force.  So much so that the government has moved ahead with the purchase of 88 of the creatures, with the first sixteen of them due to be delivered as early as next year.

This, as presently constituted, is the Cadillac of warplanes, and there’s a reason why Israel bought a truckload of them, because Israel has no choice but have the most formidable airforce in its neighbourhood, if not the best in the world pound for pound.

But there’s a difference between Canada and Israel then it comes to air power.  Foremost is that the Israelis utilize a lot of attack missions, or offensive operations, in which the need for stealth — the ability to approach targets without being detected by enemy air defences — is absolutely essential.  Often, as in almost always, the Israelis need to sneak through hostile and contested airspace to even get close to their targets, let alone return successfully from missions.  The stealth package, therefore, is absolutely essential to their function and mission set.

Canada requires an attack capability as well, of course it does, but our mission-set is mostly air defence of our home territory and air superiority as part of a combined arms approach on the battlefield.  While stealth is an important component to those tasks as well (hell, it’s never a bad thing to be invisible when you’re a warplane), it’s not as vital as it would be to our friends in Israel.

But in the F-35, we’d have it anyways, so what’s not to like?

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COUNCIL TO PICK UP COY SLACK FROM CHAMBER

My congratulations in advance to the winner of this year’s Citizen of the Year Award.

Whoever it may turn out to be, the selection for such a prestigious award, and I mean that, is reflective of the fact that you’ve had a tremendous positive impact in your community, and for your community.  And unlike hockey rinks where you can just “buy” your name recognition, the Citizen of the Year accolade is awarded by others, hopefully objective others, who see and witness the impact of your efforts on things, movements, and people.

It represents positive recognition to a person who wasn’t hell bent on getting the recognition in the first place.  And so, in that sense, it’s a terrific and legitimate honour.

But it won’t have the stamp of approval from the local Chamber of Commerce.

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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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TEACHING CANADIAN HISTORY

I have a bit of a concern with the education system, but I don’t want to come across the wrong way.  I only hope to articulate my thinking in such as a way as to not come across the wrong way.

History can be a complicated thing, mostly because it’s often a story told by the ‘winners” of the conflicts big and small that are woven through the tapestry of the human story.  For millennia, human history was often conveyed as oral storytelling, and as such, would often take on the feel of grand stories often involving the participation of deities, gods, merchants of evil as much as the actual doings of the actual humans who often serve as principals of these stories.

Recorded history tightened that up a bit, but only a bit, and it wasn’t really until Johannes Gutenberg and his printing press that recorded history was available to people in written form, that is, of course, if they knew how to read, which most didn’t.  And even with this, recorded histories were still subject to human bias in storytelling, so that even today there are often competing versions of events that some people interpret one way while others interpret differently.  Bias is still a big part of it, but it also comes down to the reality that if three people experience or witness the same event at the same time, you can count on three different versions that may be agreeable generally but differ on the specifics.

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