The bucket list, kicked
Nowadays the “bucket list” concept has become a wildly popular cultural meme, thanks to the movie of the same name. Subsequent marketing of the idea to millennials has proven a…
Ian Chadwick
Hypergraphia
An article in the September, 2016, issue of Doctor’s Review looks at the curious, compelling affliction called hypergraphia: the obsessive need to write. I never knew before this that there…
Collus report debunks Block conspiracies
Every year, the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) publishes the scorecard of local distribution companies (LDCs). Across the province, more than 70 LDCs are ranked and rated according to performance, customer…
Promises, promises, promises – all broken
Two years ago, in a series in the Collingwood Connection on the eve of the last election, 2014, all candidates were asked to make statements about certain issues. I thought…
13 Ways to Kill Collingwood
I found it! I stumbled across the secret manifesto The Block is using to destroy Collingwood. It’s in a book called “13 Ways to Kill Your Community” (Frontenac House, 2010)…
Old habits, old junk
The past couple of weeks I have been trying to turn my office (one of our spare bedrooms, once upon a time) back into my office. A working space I’ll…
Enough with the astrology claptrap already
“No,” wrote Phil Plait on Slate, “NASA Didn’t Change Your Astrological Sign.” Which it didn’t. But that hasn’t stopped the wingnuts from wailing over the recent announcement from NASA allegedly…
You’re not invited. Again.
You, the public, get shut out again. Less openness, less accountability, more secrecy, more Block. The annual general meeting (AGM) of Collus-PowerStream on October 6 – the local electrical utility…
Another scathing email to council
Here is the next scathing email from local businessman and developer Tom Vincent, sent to council following the debacle of Monday night’s ongoing effort by The Block to sabotage the…
Sabotaging the hospital (again)
Last night at council, The Borg Block again took another step towards sabotaging the Collingwood General & Marine Hospital’s redevelopment plans. Not unexpected: destroying the community is a key plank…
Your $350,000 wasted
A Freedom of Information (FOI) request I filed recently shows a disturbing abuse of your tax dollars. Money was wasted that could have been spent on doing something good, something…
Dilbert, Dogbert and Collingwood
I’ve often commented that the cartoon strip Dilbert, by Scott Adams, is closer to a documentary than it is to a cartoon. Not just about the quagmire of corporate life:…
Wrinkles: a review
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. It’s the phrase that highlights the entrance to Hell in Dante’s Inferno. It could just as easily by carved above the entrances to…
Dinner at the Bent Taco
We had dinner at the Bent Taco on Pine Street last night. Collingwood’s nuevo-Mexican restaurant is not exactly Mexican but influenced by it, and in a good way. Food was…
The unstrategic anti-plan returns
Wednesday’s standing committee heard that the so-called “community-based strategic plan” has risen from the dead – a document that was committee-driven (not community; and a committee of carefully selected buddies,…
Collingwood is being investigated
Collingwood Council and town administration are in trouble. The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) is investigating them and their recent activities with regards to Collus-PowerStream and its board of directors. This…
Neanderthals: a love story
Squat, hairy, broad shoulders, a big nose, beetle-browed with a low forehead. As Blind Willie McTell wrote in his classic song, Statesboro Blues, “I know ain’t good lookin’, but I…
Their secret emails, redacted
A Freedom of Information (FOI) request I recently filed shows just how devious and secretive some of our council and administration are. You can read the entire series here. The…
Can the mayor fire the interim CAO?
Does the mayor have the authority to fire someone by herself? The interim CAO, for example? It’s a question I’ve been asked a lot of late by residents. I think…
The Wasaga Beach G&M Hospital
You’d think supporting your local hospital’s redevelopment was a no-brainer for municipal politicians. And since ‘no-brainer’ has been the exemplary style of Collingwood Council this term, they should go hand-in-glove.…