Toronto’s Mayor Rob Ford is certainly the author of his own recent misfortune. He chose to vote on a motion to set aside a previous ruling that he should himself pay back monies raised by his football charity directly from an appeal from him written on City of Toronto letterhead. Ironically, the motion that would have Mr. Ford off the financial hook would have passed handily without his vote. Instead, Mr. F ...

TORONTO––Ontario’s 72,000 elementary public school teachers were logging online to vote beginning this past Sunday on a province-wide plan to implement one-day rolling strikes in an effort to pressure the provincial government to repeal Bill 115, the controversial Putting Students First Act passed by the legislature on September 11. The act, which effectively freezes teachers’ salaries at August 30 levels f ...

To the Expositor: The MCSEA (Manitoulin Coalition for Safe Energy Alternatives) will try to stop the McLean’s Mountain wind farm at yet another hearing in December, of course arguing on health grounds. I don’t know if people are aware that health and environmental damage are the only two legal grounds for stopping an approved project. This is why opponents of wind farms, such as MCSEA (which I believe was i ...

To the Expositor: Mr. Bud McConnell deserves hearty thanks for his November 14 Letter to the editor in The Expositor, where he assures us that he is well cared for as a resident at Manitoulin Centennial Manor (‘Manor resident responds to writer’s dismay, page 4). The next time I’m in Little Current, I hope to meet Mr. McConnell in person, if he is willing. When the board refused to answer my concerns about ...

To the Expositor: In response to the letters written by Annette Pearson (‘Animals deserve to be treated with humanity,’ November 21, page 4) and Bev Lynch (‘Writer agrees with letter demanding better treatment of dogs,’ November 28, page 4), kudos to both of you. I was the one who contacted the Human Society about those dogs a couple of years ago. They can not go on a reserve so I go in touch with PETA (Peo ...

BIDWELL­­––Islanders tend to be irresistibly drawn back to the blessed shores of Manitoulin, but for one ursine expatriate this past summer, following that urge to return proved fatal. Paula Fields was staying at a camp near Wee Point on Lake Manitou this past summer when she heard a commotion out on the porch. With a room full of children behind her, Ms. Fields pulled up the blind, expecting to see a racco ...

To the Expositor: On November 11, at a Remembrance Day ceremony in the Kagawong Park Centre, students from Manitoulin Secondary School gave a slide show about a spring field trip they had taken to historic European battlefields where Canadians had fought in the past. At the end of their presentation I was given a momento of their trip. It was from the students to the board of the Kagawong Cenotaph. The mome ...

To the Expositor: Our son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter live in Rockville. As we usually do on the first weekend of December, we came up to visit and go to the Journey to Bethlehem. Getting ready for Christmas, I also usually stop on the side of the road somewhere to gather some boughs to take back for our outdoor Christmas containers. Saturday morning I went down Gibraltar Road, pulled over to the sid ...

LAKE HURON—Low water levels, invasive species, pollution and the most recent thing to worry about in our Great Lakes? Plastics, specifically ‘microplastics.’ In a July study of the Great Lakes, Dr. Sherri Mason, a chemistry professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia in New York State has found that of all the Great Lakes she has sampled (Superior, Huron and Erie), each one contained high amou ...

LITTLE CURRENT—The ‘stay of approval’ requested by the Manitoulin Coalition for Safe Energy Alternatives (MCSEA) when it filed for an appeal against the Ministry of Environment’s (MOE) Renewable Energy Approval last month for Northland Power’s (NPI) McLean’s Mountain wind farm project has been denied. “The stay of approval request aspect of our appeal has been denied,” wrote MCSEA spokesperson Raymond Beaud ...