Laidlaw Calls It A Career After 14 Years

In a move that I'm sure is going to be met with disappointment and elation in equal measure, Ward 3 councillor Maggi Laidlaw has decided that she will not stand for re-election in 2014. The news was broken in a Guelph Tribune article published in yesterday's edition.

Bad Day to Go Down to River

The images from the flooding in Toronto yesterday were incredible, the modern metropolis and all its trappings torn asunder by a lot of water appearing very suddenly. Well no one in Guelph has yet had to be rescued from a train by the police marine unit, nor have they seen their basement flooded or have been forced to abandon their car in the middle of a highway-turned-river, but city officials are warning residents to stay clear of local water sources in these overly wet times. 

City Wants to Hear About Internet Voting

Here's a stupid idea. I mean that.

One would think with the robocall saga still more or less unsolved that opening up our electoral process to more technological tinkering would be immediately written off, but here we are, and the City of Guelph seems to want to make voting for the people that govern with us as easy as voting for the next American Idol, or determining what other celebrity or trend is "hot or not."

What a Time for a By-Election

Five. There are a total of five by-elections in the province of Ontario now scheduled for August 1. The ridings of Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Scarborough-Guildwood, Ottawa South, Windsor and London West will all be going to the polls in the dog days of summer in what will be a referendum on the relatively brief premiership of Kathleen Wynne seeing as how all five of the seats were once held by Liberals.

Are You in One of Canada's Best Provinces, or One of the Worst?

As we come back from the Canada Day long weekend, it seems apropos to ponder the question, is your province one of Canada's worst, or one of Canada's best?

It Takes a Village Idiot

Canada.com posed the question that maybe this whole Mayor's staffer calling in as a "Dave Q. Public" from Etobicoke, Scarborough and Georgetown is much ado about nothing. On the surface, they could be right. In an effort to keep Rob Ford and issues in the news, maybe the mainstream media is latching on to one sort of "scandal" or another in order to keep Ford, a figure of tremendous love or hate stature, in the news for sales and ratings. You'd have to be insane not to think that, but there is something real to this, relatively slight, controversy. 

2013 Mayor's Awards Announced

Here's some news from the Mayor's office even the most partisan of partisans should have no problem with, the announcement of the recipients of the 17th annual Mayor's Awards. 

Of Pantywaists and Politics

At this point, I think maybe Marty Burke likes to write letters to the editor as a way to irk those of us still sore about his campaign of silence back during the 2011 election, a soreness that remains stinging in the wake of the robocall scandal for which Guelph was the epicentre, and on which Burke has yet to really comment on the record. And that brings us to Burke's latest screed to be published in the storied pages of the Guelph Mercury, and it's nice to see that in spite of everything that Burke is still doing the good work of the Harper political machine, which is to pile on Justin Trudeau.

VIDEO - An Introduction to Guelph

I saw a poster this evening advertising a You Tube video called "Introduction to Guelph." Understandably curious, a decided to click on the link when I got home to see what all the hype was about, and discovered what was a fairly pleasant and kind of heart-warming tribute to the Royal City.

"Swamp Line 9" Mobilize Against Pipeline

The big Alberta related news this weekend is about the flooding throughout many parts of the province, including the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from neighbourhoods all over Calgary. But here in Ontario, a small but dedicated group is more concerned about another flood, the flood of Alberta tar sands oil that might be passing through our area via a new pipeline.

Now when most people hear the word "pipeline" they think of the Keystone XL pipeline, the proposed run from the tar sands to refineries in Texas, there's also the Northern Gateway Pipeline, which takes Alberta oil to the British Columbia shore. But really, Alberta oil runs throughout this country, and some enterprising environmentalists in our neck of the woods want to draw attention to that and take direction to make it stop.