My best friend in my elementary school years was, to my knowledge, from the only Indian family in Lindsay — Deep Chatha. His parents owned Queensway Market and Queensway Motors, businesses that many readers will doubtless remember at Queen and St. David streets.
Deep was cool enough to have an Atari system and often after school we’d hang out at his house where we’d obliterate misshapen, pixelated asteroids.
At the end of July, Mayor Andy Letham warned that people were “going to notice” the service cuts that were coming. Ditching and brushing, grass-cutting and street sweeping, service centres and arenas — all of this and maybe more affected by the pandemic.
This is utter nonsense for citizens to have to accept.
Every year approximately 4,000 Canadians die by suicide, averaging nearly 11 people every single day.
Suicide has been an issue that has impacted all genders, races and ethnicities around the world for centuries. However, with the onset of a global pandemic in early 2020, suicide measurements also saw a change.
I cannot imagine what my former colleagues are thinking about the 2020 calendar year.
This has probably been the toughest year ever for Ontario educational workers. The public seems to have forgotten that the year began with a series of job actions by unionized educational workers from across the province hoping to convince an intransigent government to negotiate in good faith.
Teachers were winning the battle for public opinion and the government was on the back heel until COVID arrived last March throwing the school system into chaos.
Michael Wesch, a cultural anthropologist and professor, says there are three main questions that unite all of humanity. “What am I doing here? What am I supposed to be doing? And am I doing it right?”
COVID-19 has all of us asking these questions again even if we thought we had them figured out.
Our governments, for example, are starting to conclude that the austerity measures they have imposed last 40-plus years (from Conservatives and Liberals at different levels) were based on self-interest and greed.
One of the most irritating things I used to come across regularly in magazines was ads for U.S.-based products with fine print at the bottom that read “Canadian and foreign orders” should add “x” amount of money to cover shipping.
I was never irked at the extra cost; I was dismayed that we were listed separately from foreign orders — as if we were some Puerto Rico-like territory of the U.S.
To the new owners of the Grand the citizens of Lindsay ask that you please work with owner Charlie McDonald and save our iconic restaurant.
There are few things left that reminds us of our humble beginnings.
The Grand the building and the Grand the bar are two different things to most of us.
The bar-restaurant has been here for 160 years and Charlie and his staff have made it a home away from home for over 10 years.
Pandemics force us to take stock of our values in society; they clarify our sense of mortality and reveal how strong or weak our social fabric is.
More sensitized to our common humanity now, we must organize our economy to care for one another better.
The very first article I wrote for this publication, months before it would have a print version, dealt in part with the shame I felt working full-time in construction and still qualifying for a portion of welfare.
Bad luck (and some bad decisions, if I’m really honest about it) had made for some bad times.
This is in response to the article in the Advocate’s June 2020 magazine edition, “The Great Debate” on the proposed federal gun law.
Removing the newly listed (and unlisted) prohibited firearms won’t end or significantly reduce gun violence as the government, and society, are collectively seeking.
