Alan Pickersgill - The View From Here

(January 27) - It’s getting a little silly out there. Maybe a bit more than a little. Last Wednesday evening I got one of those irritating long distance phone calls. You know the type. You probably get them as well, from one marketer or another. It is often either Rogers or Bell offering a free something that will cost money sooner or later. Usually sooner. Or it could be a deal on new windows. Or a wonderful ocean cruise if you act right now.

It wasn’t any of them. It was Gilles Bisson. He was talking about the historic moment we’re living through – it was the day after the Obama inauguration, after all – and I could help create another historic moment by electing him to replace Howard Hampton.

I’ve met Bisson a few times. He comes from northern Ontario and is the MPP for Timmins - James Bay. He’s been in Guelph several times to help with campaigns on a variety of issues.

He’s a very nice guy. Sincere, hard working and all the rest of it. If he was a convent I’d run a glass staircase up his side and keep him around forever. But he’s not a convent and he’s not Barack Obama.

He’s not the only one scrambling to ride the Obama bump. Ikea unleashed a new advertising campaign last week. It tells Americans to embrace change and to start it with domestic reform. They even rented presidential looking limousines and drove around Washington with Ikea boxes strapped to the roof. Pepsi got in the act as well. They plastered Washington with billboards saying “joy” and “hope”. They put the round Pepsi symbol where the ‘o’ should be.

Bisson is more like Ikea than he’s like Obama. He’s safe, comfortable, and accessible. He’s reliable. Steady and sturdy. If you were going to go out and buy a dining room table, you’d tell the sales clerk to bring you one that’s built like Bisson. It’s strength would be that it is just like every other table you’ve ever had. It would do its job and you’d get more than your money’s worth.

You wouldn’t invite your friends over so they could all admire the table. They’d enjoy a meal while being generally aware that if the table wasn’t there, the food would be in an awful mess all over the floor.

The message itself was just one of the things that annoyed me. I confess I didn’t listen to the whole thing. It might have changed as it went on. Not likely, but maybe. I should also disclose that the other annoyance was the call itself. I don’t react well to these things. A taped automatic message at supper time is not a direct route to the warm and fuzzy side of my heart. Sending spam is marginally more effective.

The most annoying thing is that Bisson does not need to jump onto the Obama bandwagon. He has his own strengths that have served him well over the years. Being new is not one of them. If Ontario New Democrats embrace Bisson, they’ll be reaching for a comfortable sweater to keep out the winds of change.

Four people are running for Hampton’s job. They’ll be at Norfolk United Church on February 10. The voting is in March. Three are men, aged 51, 57 and 60. Bisson is the youngest.

If they want to pin their hopes on Obamania, they might note that he is 47 years old. Andrea Horwath, the only woman in the running, is 45. She worked as a community development worker before winning elections. Not that it matters, but isn’t that how himself earned a pay cheque before Chicago sent him to Washington? Of the four Ontario candidates, which one looks the most like Barack Obama?

If I were recording a telephone message to blast across the province, I’d think things through ahead of time. The New Democratic Party of Ontario has only ever had, from the day of its birth, white men in suits as leaders. If the thing we want is historic change, which of these four candidates should we think about?

But then, if I were sending out telemarketing messages, I’d make sure to lose my number. I can’t stand the things.

(January 20) - Sometimes, saving old buildings becomes a lot like refusing to sign a DNR for your ailing granny. A lot of emotional sentiment gets in the way. Nostalgic memories make you want to keep her around forever, but sometime you can’t. The realities of her condition might outweigh memories of better days. I wonder if we are reaching that point with the Loretto Convent.

It is not always nice to acknowledge, but there comes a time when today trumps yesterday. Just as clearly, there will come a time when tomorrow will trump today. The convent is a heritage building with a lot of cultural and historic value. No question about that. It has been standing on the hill for more than 150 years. It hasn’t been used as a girl’s boarding school since 1924. Nuns continued living in the convent until 1996. The building has stood empty since then.

A task force set up by the city to look at future uses for the site issued a report in 2005. It said the convent building is “the oldest existing school building in Guelph and is recognized as an excellent example of a mid-nineteenth century limestone building. It was originally a classically proportioned three-storey building lying on a north-south access. In 1872, a substantial stone chapel was added to the north, and two additional floors and the mansard roof were added by the local architect, George Bruce, in 1896.”

It is certainly a building that deserves to be preserved. Granny still looks good when we see her in the visitors’ sitting room at the nursing home. Not as strong as she used to be, but not hooked up to the heart machine yet.

What we are seeing now is that it is difficult to breathe new life into her. Converting the convent to a museum is proving to be as controversial as the original decision to preserve it.

It has to be upgraded to modern building codes. It has to conform to the city’s accessibility guidelines. It must meet the LEED environmental standards for green buildings.

It can all be done. Not easily, given her age and condition, but possible.

When she gets out of surgery, she won’t look exactly like the granny we remember. She’ll forever have a big glass staircase up the side to make room for two exit doors on each floor. The building code requires them. Then there’s the elevator from Norfolk Street to satisfy the accessibility guidelines.

These seem to be the two most contentious issues to come out of a public meeting last week. The architects have a good record of updating heritage buildings. The new challenges the convent is throwing at them mean bringing it in at budget could be nip and tuck. She won’t be as stately and grand when she starts her new life.

There’s another wrinkle. Apparently there are two outside toilets on the north side of the building. These might be incorporated into the final design. I expect these are somehow deemed to be part of the cultural heritage of the site. So is the treatment of girls in Catholic boarding schools and the refusal to educate them in sciences. It is not a heritage worth preserving.

The council house my family lived in near London airport was built in 1948. It had an outdoor toilet near the back door. The last time I was there, most public housing had transferred to private ownership. When they were renovated, the “privies” were the first things to go.

Some memories are not worth hanging onto.

I don’t mind keeping granny on life support if that’s what the family chooses to do.

But let’s not complain about how she looks when she’s on it.

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By the time you read this, the Bush presidency will be over. Can intellectual shallowness and faulty logic follow him into the dustbin of history? In his final farewell, he pointed with pride to the fact that America has gone seven years without a foreign terrorist attack on its soil. He didn’t mention that before he showed up they went 225 years without one.

Let’s hope the change Obama brings can usher in a more peaceful and just future for the world.

(January 13) - You can’t build your happiness on the unhappiness of others. This is a frequently repeated line in a video we rented over the holidays. Married Life is sort of a Woody Allen and Alfred Hitchcock hybrid. It takes the best of both and melds them into a pretty good movie. The sentiment is a bit ironic in the context of the story. A man plans to leave his wife for a younger woman, but doesn’t want her to be sad and lonely afterwards. He decides to murder her rather than make her life a misery.

Think about this while we get back into tax-cutting season. The federal government is threatening to bring down the mother of all budgets. It will run a deficit while cutting taxes again. Barack Obama hasn’t moved into the White House yet, but he is already signalling more of the same down there. He projects a budget with a deficit in the gazillions of dollars and tax cuts of about $300 billion.

The world economy is a mess. The crisis was not caused by high taxes, and it will not be fixed by lowering them. If cutting taxes was key to a healthy economy, ours would be as fit as a fiddle. Governments across the world have been doing it for so long they forget how to do anything else.

What is the result? We have seen it over and over and over again. As revenue goes down, programs and services are cut. Without the money to do its job properly, the role of government itself is reduced. There is less regulation of important economic sectors such as banking, communications and transportation. Without effective oversight, the greedy become greedier. They are not held accountable for the consequences of their avarice.

We’re on a runaway train. Our leaders should have seen the precipice rushing at us. Maybe they did. They didn’t do anything about it. They simply cut more taxes and gave millions to the people who drive the train. Now they are going to do it again. It has been said that a mark of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. If that is the case, our economic system has gone well and truly nuts.

Tax cuts benefit people who can easily afford to pay them. They hurt those who can least afford it. Those who think their lives will be better if they pay as little as possible into the public purse should remember one thing. They can’t build their happiness on the unhappiness of others.

At the municipal level, there is nowhere left to go. Tax cutting is not an option. Deficit budgeting is not an option. To maintain services at the levels we need, taxes have to increase. When expected sources of revenue dry up, there is no room to manoeuvre.

We saw this happen when the city learned it would no longer qualify for an annual provincial government grant. The money was to help cover the cost of services downloaded from the province. When it dried up, there were only two options left. Raise property taxes even more or cut services.

Coun. Bob Bell was quick off the mark with a call to cut services. This type of knee-jerk reaction just keeps us going on the same calamitous journey. It will not help bring the runaway train under control.

What we need is politicians at all levels of government to step forward with the courage and vision to say enough is enough. We have taken the easy way out for far too long and it’s not doing us any good. It is time we got back to a level where our government has the resources needed to run the country properly.

We like to whine about them, but taxes are not evil. They are the price of admission to civil society. If we value our community, we must be willing to pay the cost of keeping it together. To make it strong, we have to protect the weak. We must look after those who were damaged in the rush to the bottom.

None of us will be happy if we’re all casualties of the train wreck.

(January 06) - The new city hall will open soon. Coincidentally, council just approved a new policy for naming parks and public buildings. A process has been set to commemorate an individual’s "outstanding achievement, distinctive service or significant community contribution." The timing is just about perfect. We can correct an oversight that has gone on for far too long. When it finally opens its doors, the new building should be named the Carl Hamilton Civic Administration Centre.

There are very few people in Guelph who can match Hamilton’s record of service to the community. He was first elected to city council in 1970 and served continuously until health considerations prompted his retirement in 1993. Only Norm Jary and Ken Hammill put in more years on council. Jary’s years were spent mostly as mayor. Hammill sat with Hamilton on Council. He is now continuing his good work through the Friends of Guelph. They are raising money to fund a public space in front of the new building.

Carl Hamilton passed away seven years ago, on Feb. 10, 2002. He was a lawyer with a deep commitment to social justice. He was an environmentalist long before most people could spell the word. He cared about our city and the people who live here. His was a steady voice of reason and moderation in the years when developers came to council with an overblown sense of entitlement.

From 1958 to 1961, Hamilton was the National Secretary of the CCF. During the 1970s he ran as the NDP candidate in three provincial elections, coming a strong second to Harry Worton in the last two of them. He was respected and trusted by all who knew him, even if they sat down at different political tables.

In September 2003, a year and a half after he died, Wellington County installed a bench in his memory in the courtyard across from the entrance to the Crown Attorney’s office. We are still waiting for the city he served so well to give him the recognition he deserves. This wait should be over in 2009. Making it happen should be our community New Year’s resolution.

The first step in the new naming procedure is public input. The new naming committee will receive suggestions from citizens, and will make recommendations to council. If you agree that Carl Hamilton should be commemorated in this way, go to the city website, look up the e-mail addresses of your councillors, and send them a message of support. You can send a copy to me at pickersgill.letters@gmail.com.

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Development is about to pick up on the east side of Guelph. People bought homes in the area with an expectation they’d soon have a grocery store close by. Some have waited 10 years. If things go according to plan, they will have a new branch library by September. This will kick-start commercial development. Loblaws owns land on Watson and has been putting off building a grocery store for years. It will happen sooner or later.

When it does, we will have to pay attention or it could go horribly wrong. If we’re not careful, it could mirror the ghastly mess that landed on the west end. The area around the corner of Imperial and Paisley has all the aesthetic charm of Hespeler Road in Cambridge. It doesn’t have to happen again. The staff in our planning department could adopt a New Year’s resolution to make the east side of Guelph a "gaudy sign free zone."

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While I enjoy thinking up resolutions for other people, I avoid them for myself. It just sets me up for failure. It makes more sense to adopt an achievable goal for the year. Start with a realistic self-evaluation and make it measurable and possible. That’s what distinguishes a goal from a dream. I could set a goal to run a 25k marathon this year, but I know it won’t happen. So my goal for 2009 is a bit more modest. Before the year is out I want to step onto my Wii Fit balance board without it groaning and saying I’m obese. About 20 or 30 pounds should do it.