FIGHTING DEVELOPER ARMADAS ON TRENT RIVER

KNOCKING OUT THE POLITICIANS WITH LAUGHING GAS

Nappan Island broods across the Trent River from my cottage on Burnt Point as a great green wetlands fringed by trees.

The idea that it would be home to a hotel, 700 condos/cottages and a 18-hole golf course is laughable.

So it was just the right touch when the developer pitching this looney scheme to Trent Hills council promised to turn the nitrogen in all the sewage that this new cottage town would produce into laughing gas.
He told council that his new marvelous sewage system would produce nitrous oxide, among other wonders, and that the effluent would be finally sprinkled on the golf course. Hope that doesn't offend the golfers, or the board of health. But then, it was just the right touch in the most bizarre presentation to a council that I have seen since the first council meeting I ever covered in 1957. That was Whitehorse council in the Yukon, and they tried to throw me out when I showed up as the new kid editor of the Whitehorse Star.

Since then, as a reporter, columnist or editor, lately the Editor of the Toronto Sun, I have seen literally thousands of proposals being discussed by every organization from Toronto council to the Ontario Legislature and House of Commons to the House of Lords and the United Nations. I have never seen such an amateurish half-baked presentation.

To think that this would have a huge impact on the area - the equivalent of shoving a community larger than Hastings or Havelock on a sponge of an island - and it was done in such a picayune presentation, would make me sad if it wasn't for that hint of laughing gas being produced just across the Trent.

As a cottage neighbour said to me, this actually would be a marvelous addition to the area, if it was done properly and scaled down. I could boat across with him, play golf, have a nice meal, and boat back home, without driving 30 or 40 kilometres. What a wonderful asset, and our cottages would be worth a lot more.

But there is no reason t0 expect that that would be the final result considering how the scheme has been launched. It is ludicrous for those of us who have boated, fished or swam around most of the island for decades to expect that this scheme, as proposed, would not be a disaster that would litter the landscape with shacks, maybe a new bridge to replace the present midget, and maybe a foot path.

It is just too large. It is in the wrong place.To approve this scheme as it stands would be a violation of the trust that all the property owners in this area have in their neighbours who are councillors.

You just can't take an area where people have cottaged for half a century, building new additions and septic tanks and lanes and bunkies, knowing where the weed beds are and the stumps and the fishing holes, and what neighbor will help you with the latest project and what neighbour will only promise to help, and then plop down in the middle of all this some grand scheme that will make someone a lot of money, and leave behind a lot of frustrated owners/renters who don't understand that the island on which their new summer homes sit was under intense environmental pressure before they bought in.

The fact that the nooks and crannies of the Trent are already choked with weeds, that some cottagers may well go on tax strikes since they can no longer use the water in front of their cottage, that the famous fishing of the past has disappeared, that two sides of Nappan Island really are swamp, all these facts existed before this scheme was proposed.

And this proposal will only make it worse.This is not NIMBYism. It is reality. New jobs would be wonderful for an area already staggering from closures like GM.

But when Canada is dancing with the devil of recession, when the cottage boom may be expiring due to high taxes and higher gasoline costs, it is easy to see that this scheme will be so constrained by costs that the developers will have to be dragged kicking and screaming to do anything that doesn't ruin the environment.

I just built an addition. Before I could go ahead, I needed architect's plans, complete with engineering info, and various permits and approvals from the Lower Trent Conservation Authority and the municipality. I had to spend considerable money and considerable time BEFORE I got the building permit. And the zoning did not have to be changed.

To suggest that any zoning change, even one with a gigantic Hold stamped all over it, be given this developer, means that the municipality is being asked to gift a special deal for money boys from Toronto that would not be given to any existing local taxpayer.
Hector Macmillan, the mayor, astutely observed that the colorful propaganda presented to council was "generic." This proposal should not go ahead, even greatly scaled down, until every bit of info is no longer just borrowed off the Internet but is actually specific to Nappan Island.

If I had been a councillor hearing this scheme, I would have told the developers that I felt insulted to be treated as if I was just some rube on the back 40.
But then, there's always the laughing gas to make us feel mellow while the developer is acting like a dentist trying to pull all of our wisdom teeth at once.'

ENDLESS AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL WARS OF WORDS

TUNING OUT CNN AND POLITICIANS

This endless American presidential election campaign is enough to make you wish for an end to both democracy as it is being practised and the modern 24-hour news cycle.
One tunes in from north of the undefended border and wishes that there were guards against this overkill.
It is not just because I hoped we had got rid of Hilary when Bill zipped up and left the oval office. Then we suffered through her as a senator. And now here she is like used Kleenex. Good heavens. We may have to hide in some remote Siberian corner until this is over.
As it is, I propose we elect the cast of The West Wing to fill all the positions next fall, even if they are all dangerously to the left, because at least they are witty in their reruns ...when you can figure out what is going on.

It used to be we bought those Making of a President books to get the inside scoop after it was over. Now it is coming at us in endless waves ,like an eternal ocean, and you wish for benevolent dictators, which is George W. minus the benevolence and malevolence.

WINDS OF CHANGE NEEDED FOR STALE POLITICS

BORING BORING BORING AS MPs JABBER

After 50 years in Toronto newspapers, with occasional adventures in radio, TV, magazines and books, people think that I must miss it.
Of course!
But not the politics.The politics of today is stale even the first time round in the 24-hour news cycle.
We just had a provincial election where few cared and fewer voted. And so we will be punished by a rerun of a government that wasn't much good in the first place.
The federal romper room regurgitates Jean Chretien's views as if anyone gave a damn. And the media ignore a promise of a drop of 1% in the GST, showing how out-of-touch they are from a real world where a tax decrease is a delicious dream.
At Toronto City Hall, they're preoccupied with raising taxes and protecting their own goodies. This was boring when I was a daily columnist in 1975 and noticed that my own family didn't read my column when I wrote about the need for the city halls of Canada to get more money from the provinces and Ottawa. We have too many politicians and too many bueaucrats and life would be sweeter in T.O. if we fired 10% a year for several years. They have turned amalgamation into a cruel charade. The city hasn't grown that much in four decades, say from 2.15 million to 2.5 million, but the bureaucracy has exploded. Quantity up,quality way down.
What we need is term limits, and maybe one term is too long.
What the politicians of 2007 don't seem to realize, or they don't care when they figure it out, is that most ordinary Joes and Janes don't really have much respect for them and gloomily contemplate a future where politicians aren't going to get better.
The pollsters tell us what we supposedly think about all sorts of things. Except most of us hang up on pollsters and if we are trapped into actually talking to them, tell them what we think makes us look good.
If only politics was as witty as The West Wing. If only the politicians were as bright as those actors.

If only we could turn them off like our TV.