Opinion

Thanks for your article — a scholarly article — on “A Poverty of Time.” (Benns’ Belief, March edition) I am tempted to quote Welsh poet W. H. Davies.: “What is this life if, full of care/ We have no time to stand and stare.” 

How do we ‘sell’ our city to others? How do we persuade people who do not live here to visit, stay a while and spend more money than before?

That was up for discussion at a recent city council meeting as two different consultants advised council on how Kawartha Lakes should approach tourism marketing over the next five years.

Our next car is going to be electric. An EV.

Currently, (pun intended) we’re nursing a petrol-sucking, seven-year-old SUV that has traversed highways and back roads from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to subarctic Yukon. (It’s not petrol-sucking any more than the average gas vehicle; I’m just making the case for going greener.)

One of the great things about Twitter is that you only get 160 characters, including spaces, to describe yourself to the outside world. People use their bio to establish their “brand,” to declare their political worldview, demonstrate their sense of humour or simply to give a list of what they do and what is important to them as a way of introducing themselves to the virtual world.

My bio is pretty simple: “writer for The Lindsay Advocate; singer-songwriter; nfp CFO= number rancher; he/him. U of T alumnus. Dad-ish; husband — all the rest would bore you. Settler.”

“Oh, and by the way … we’re Métis,” my long-lost sister shouted into the phone last New Year’s Eve, talking… Continue reading “Mike Perry…Mike Cadeau? Story of a newfound “Half-breed””

More than 30 years ago, when I was a young and green and still-a-very-much-learning-my-craft journalist in Ottawa, I was given some words of wisdom that, ever since, I’ve always strived to adhere to.

“As a reporter, you can never be unbiased,” my good friend and a veteran of both print and broadcast media had warned me. His point was that we’re all human beings, not robots, and therefore have opinions – and that journalists have plenty of them. “But,” he stressed, “as a reporter you can, and must, always be fair.”

It’s important, here, to make the distinction between a reporter and a columnist – the latter uses their space to espouse and expound on an opinion, which, if they’re doing their job properly, is still based on research and reason.

There are many things we can learn from other countries, but one lesson involving nearby New York state is particularly… Continue reading “National census reflects who we are and how we are changing”