Tag: history

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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RADIO STATION DEAL REVIEWED AFTER FIVE YEARS

In four years, the deal a local radio station signed with an apparently unauthorized and unsupervised member of Renfrew Town staff will come under review, with the town having the opportunity to back out of the deal.

It’s my opinion the town should do just that.

I won’t get into the ins and outs of it, but that radio station should not have their name on that building, Ma-Te-Way, nor should they be allowed to refer to it as they currently do, like it’s theirs.  Because it’s not.

This will become an issue in the next municipal election, whether the status-quo types like that or not.  The sun shines for us as it shines for them, and I’d like to see God’s will and testament where he bequeathed all of that to any fast-one artists who think they run the place.  You may read into that the possibility of town elites, town staff, or town politicians.  Those running outside their lanes need to be shown their lanes, or disqualified from the event altogether.

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A-REEVE-ADERCI: ELIMINATION OF REEVE POSITION AND IMPACT ON LOCAL GOVERNANCE

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.

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PRIDE IN APPEARANCE TAKING HOLD IN DOWNTOWN RENFREW

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.

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OPP DROP BOMB ON CONNECTIONS CENTRE. DID COUNCIL KNOW?

I feel I need to respond to this.

The Renfrew and Area Connections Centre is closing, effective Friday.  The fellow issuing the statement on behalf of Renfrew OPP, Inspector Marc Hemmerick, used the word “pause”  in an emailed statement given to Renfrew’s myFM radio.  I have to crib the statement from their online site because, well, Inspector Hemmerick obviously doesn’t feel I’m worth responding to, having failed to return my call placed last week with the detachment seeking comment on this very topic

“As of Friday the 1 of November 2024, at 4 p.m., the Renfrew Detachment of the OPP will be pausing our participation at the Renfrew and Area Connections Center while the Detachment, OPP’s Grant Support Team and the Town of Renfrew determine what are the next best steps forward for the grant and the community activities it supports.”

That grant money being referred to was good until March 1, 2025.

This smells of sophistry to me. I’m sorry, but it does.  And regardless of the Bright White Shirt — batteries not included — saying “pause,” I hear “close permanently” instead.  I may be wrong, but I don’t think I am.  Time will settle that argument, but in the passing of that time, and amidst a vacuum of information, a vulnerable local population will be set adrift, and it will done with eyes wide-open by all appearances.

The Inspector, the interim detachment commander, cited changes to The Police Services Act and The Community Safety Policing Act as the rationale behind the closing.  As per Renfrew spokesperson Hannah MacMillan, “due to the restructuring of the OPP Detachment Board in Ontario municipalities, the town does hold the funding/grant for the Connection Centre now. “

Not bad for a place that “suggested” they had nothing to do with it outside of providing in-kind facilities for the Centre.

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RENFREW AND ITS MEDIA WASTELAND

I wanted to take a moment to briefly comment on Renfrew’s media landscape.

A moment is all I’ll need since Renfrew has no media landscape.

The newspaper that once was, the Renfrew Mercury, is gone, initially taken over by Metroland then chopped from the roster of their media holdings.  The once/week advertising rag they published also hit the dust, meaning that people lining the bottom of their litter boxes no longer had access to these two august publications.

There is still a sniff of them online, that being the notable Inside Ottawa Valley, which is absolutely awesome if you want to know what’s going down in Smiths Falls, or rather, if you want to know what happened in Smiths Falls two weeks ago.

And then there’s the radio station masquerading as a platform for legitimate journalism, with their blink-of-an-eye coverage of anything and nothing at the same time, but every hour on the hour, so that we don’t have to hold our breath long before being disappointed by the dearth of coverage this place provides. 

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