Random Access

My heart sank when I heard the news: someone had stopped outside Oscar Peterson’s house and hurled racial slurs at the master of the keyboard and his family.
Your first reaction is shame. How could anyone be so thoughtless and stupid and just plain inconsiderate?
The next reaction is anger. You want to say to those responsible, How could you do this to someone so talented, so decent and so venerated around the globe?
Listen to the beautiful playing of this man who produced the majesty of the Canadiana suite, the sweep of Wheatland where you can almost hear the prairie wind whistle across the melody, and tell me that Oscar Peterson isn’t more Canadian than most of us who were born here.
Then think of the shame that your actions will bring to the community where you live.
That was yesterday.
Today comes the news that the incident may not have been racially motivated at all.
Oops. You mean all my angst was in vain?
Does this mean that a group of punks decided to cruise through West Erindale randomly yelling from the street at 80-year-old Lifetime Grammy Award winners and their families? How very strange.
Stranger still are the musings of the good doctor that suggest he might move his family to the West Indies.
It would be a travesty if one aberrant incident prompted such a regrettable move.
Let’s hope that the beast of the Bösendorfer reconsiders.
If Oscar needs to feel wanted, then Canada is the place to stay. This week’s reporting of the incident prompted a quantum outpouring of love and affection for Peterson in letters to the editors and columns right across the country.
If nothing else, this situation has reconfirmed his place of honour in our national psyche.
Most telling to me was an e-mail I received this morning from Constable Craig Platt of the Peel Regional Police media bureau. In cryptic fashion, he says it all: “Active investigation and a priority. He (Peterson) is well-known and a cherished member of our community.”
Geez, even the cops are on the Oscar bandwagon.
This particular incident with Dr. Peterson may not have been racially motivated but every day many other Canadians of colour, who do not share his profile and influence, face acts of unkindness that are racially motivated.
With his career-long willingness to speak out against bigotry in all its forms (remember his opposition to the Canadian government dealings with the apartheid regime in South Africa), Peterson has exemplified class in the face of those who judge people on their place or origin or colour.
He’s a symbol for us all of how Canadians persevere in the face of adversity ( his stroke, his immigrant family’s struggles in Montreal, his brother’s premature death) and can triumph on the international stage.
Someone I just don’t see Oscar leaving town. And if he is serious, we’ll just send his good friend Hazel around to change his mind.
Somehow, it just seems impossible that the man who was inspired by Martin Luther King to write Hymn to Freedom (When every man joins in our song and together, singing harmony/ That’s when we’ll be free) is going to abandon the fight so easily.

Don’t look now, but there are fewer than four months left until the municipal election.
And what’s this? It looks like there might be a contest for not one, not two, but for three offices in a single ward this time around.
The headline race will clearly be the battle between former Mississauga-Erindale MP Carolyn Parrish and former Ward 7 councillor Ron Starr in Ward 6. Due to unforeseen circumstances, not only is there no incumbent for councillor in ward 6 because the City has two additional wards, but there are no incumbent trustees in the combined Wards of 6 and 11 either.
For those of us accustomed to seeing races for open seats once in every generation in Mississauga, it’s a real shock to the system.
The current Ward 6, held by George Carlson, was divided into half for purposes of representation on council, creating the new Wards 6 and 11. Carlson has chosen to run in 11, so there’s an open seat in the southern half, ward 6.
Wards 6 and 11 will remain one entity in terms of representation on the school boards, however, and there will be no incumbents running.
Warren Kennedy is moving out of Mississauga and is not seeking re-election to the public school board in 6-11. (Good thing they didn’t combine Wards 9-11 eh?)
Peter Ferreira, who was appointed to represent Ward 6 on the Dufferin-Peel board after the death of veteran trustee Art Steffler in 2004 is running for councillor in Ward 3.
Where no incumbent resides, a clutch (or is it a cluck) of candidates rush in to fill the void. So far there are four vying for public school trustee and three for separate in 6-11. You can view all the names at http://www5.mississauga.ca/vote2006/candidateslist.
The only real contests for councillor so far appear to be in Wards 6 and 3, where Ferreira did remarkably well against Maja Prentice last time around in a last-second campaign.
Eve Adams is seeking re-election for the first time in Ward 5 following Cliff Gyles’ involuntary inspection of Ontario’s penal system. If any incumbent is likely to be turfed, the common wisdom is that it is after the first term. But Adams hasn’t attracted any big-name opponents yet.
The long delay by Peel board trustee Rick Williams in registering for re-election on the board in Ward 5 prompted some to think he would run for council. However, he has now declared his intent to remain on the board.
The only remaining acclamation for council is in Ward 1. That’s a bit of a surprise given the current controversy over the Fram/Slokker rezoning application on the former St. Lawrence Starch property in Carmen Corbasson’s ward.
Know matter how Corbasson votes on that issue, it’s almost certain that someone in the opposing camp will mount a campaign. If the councillor endorses the rezoning, she may well attract an opponent from the powerful Credit Reserve Association.
The Ward 10 race will be this year’s version of the 2003 race in Ward 5, when you needed a scorecard, and a daily tout sheet, to sort out the 21 runners.
We’re already at 14, not counting three who’ve withdrawn. The potential councillors include some well-known names including current Ward 9 public school trustee Sue McFadden, Mississauga Committee of Adjustment member Craig Lawrence, Elias Hazineh of Palestine House who formerly ran Parrish’s constituency office and Adnan Hashmi, editor-in-chief of Sunday Times of Canada.
McFadden’s candidacy has caused a domino effect, with seven candidates already registered to try to take her spot. And that’s before school board trustees even consider raising their salaries.
If we’re not careful, this thing happening Nov. 13 looks like it might even have the potential to turn into an election.

Sat on Maryann’s bench yesterday and wondered what she would think of the view.
From her spot on the brow of the hill you can’t really get a good view of the red-winged blackbirds who patrol the pond in front of the South building, but you can see the sweep of the lawns down towards the new Health and Wellness Centre. That almost-completed building’s sparkling new glass facade provides a striking contrast to the brutalist architecture of the South building.
If she were here, Maryann would be offering a running historical commentary, replete with colourful anecdotes to enliven the lesson, on the changing facade of Erindale College. That’s right, Erindale College, not the University of Toronto at Mississauga.
Not too many people are better suited to their jobs than Maryann Wells was.
She was the information officer at Erindale — the historic name she much preferred to the politically-corrected UTM — for most of her long career there, which started in 1975 and ended with her death of cancer in December 2003.
Somehow information officer didn’t really cover the Streetsville resident’s beat. But I guess you can’t really give somebody the job title “soul of the campus.”
Maryann seemed to be everywhere constantly boosting the school and its assets. She was unfailingly and genuinely interested in everything that went on there and her passion in relaying it to the rest of the world was contagious.
At the memorial service at the school the spring after her death, it was evident that she had palpably touched all of the myriad campus sub-communities, from students to alumni to administration to cleaning staff.
Maryann had become the public face and voice of UTM by the time of her death. Her longevity at the campus as principals, directors, students and directors came and went was partially responsible, but not nearly as much as her energy and her quiet, persevering personality.
If you wanted a good visit that always made you feel a little better about things, you knew where to find it.
A scholarship in the humanities was established in her honour, and received an overwhelming response from donors. Every issue of the glossy UTM magazine, which she conceived, is now dedicated to her memory.
The bench is located at the spot where Maryann used to wait most days for her ride home. When I pick up my daughter from the campus these days, it provides a shady spot beneath an apple and a pear tree for a few minutes away from the madding crowd.
A tranquil respite from the woes of the world. Just like someone special we used to know.

Perhaps as early as Aug. 23, Peel District School Board trustees will be considering giving themselves a raise from their current honorarium of $5,000 to a figure that is likely to be $25-26,000.
The timing, dictated by the Ontario Liberal government, is interesting to say the least.
The Liberals finally got around this year to keeping their 2003 election promise to review the paltry level of trustee remuneration that the Mike Harris government had imposed as part of its guerilla war against the educational sector.
The legislation sets a base salary of $5,900 for every board trustee, allows an escalator based on student enrolment, permits a $50 per diem for meetings and allows trustees to receive mileage in larger boards if they must travel more than 200 kilometres to attend. It also allows retroactive pay for the past 15 months.
Because Peel is the second-largest board in the province but has only 12 elected members, its politicians could well end up the highest paid in the province under the new formula.
Board Chair Janet McDougald says trustees could deal with the issue later this month when the board meets to consider its budget. It must deal with it by Oct. 31, which just happens to be less than a fortnight before the municipal election Nov. 13.
To ensure there is some public input into the decision, the government has mandated that a Citizen’s Advisory Committee on Honoraria be established, consisting of three parents on school councils and three community members of those councils (local residents who sit on the councils but don’t have any kids in the school).
Needless to say, getting a committee like that together on short order in the summer is a problem.
Will the prospect of seeing trustees significantly hike their salaries right before an election result in a host of new, angry candidates on the horizon?
McDougald doesn’t think so.
“Nobody does this for the money,” said the veteran Wards 1 and 7 trustee. “You really have to want to serve your community and have a deep interest.”
Plus, you really have to enjoy being the meat in the sandwich between the public and the rule-makers at Queen’s Park who love to make the decisions and let the trustees answer to the populace for them.
So trustees, go ahead and take your raise. Do it right before the election. Do it while you’re attempting the impossible task of bringing in a budget that’s balanced without enough revenue from Queen’s Park to cover your costs.
And, whatever you do, don’t fall back on that old, lame game of blaming another level of government for your woes.
Just take the money and run.... for election.

La Parrish strikes already.
Look up flamboyant in the Mississauga election dictionary and you’ll see a shot of Carolyn Parrish, leaning out of her newly-leased Smart Car, smiling and waving away.
Of course, you may not notice the candidate right away, because you’ll be too distracted by the neon red-orange wrap on the vehicle and the numerous strips of type along the sides repeating the name of the Ward 6 candidate for council: Carolyn Parrish, Carolyn Parrish, Carolyn.... You get the idea.
Brilliant first campaign stroke, or moral violation of the election sign bylaw which prohibits campaign signs until nomination day? (Sept. 29) Depends on your point of view.
“There are no rules on rolling election signs,” the former Mississauga-Erindale MP and Peel Board of Education chair explains. She had it all checked out before she leased the car.
The intended message, of course, is that the woman who fought so hard to oppose the widening of McLaughlin Rd. past the Britannia Farm which would have cost hundreds of trees, is a committed environmentalist.
Darren Bryan of the City’s planning department confirms that vehicles aren’t covered. “It’s no different than a delivery vehicle having graphics on it and driving around.”
When Ward 6 council candidate Ron Starr encountered Parrish and her vehicle
outside the temporary City Hall in the old Consumers’ Gas building recently, he was amazed.
“I asked her if that wasn’t going to be an awfully expensive deduction for the campaign,” said Starr.
Turns out it’s no deduction at all, as Parrish explained to her opponent (Terry Pierce Jr. and Olive Rose Steele are also candidates).
“I guess if it’s going to be that type of election, I have to roll with it,” said Starr this morning. “I think it’s breaking the spirit of the law. The intent of the signage is clearly for the election,” he said.
The principle of the thing is obviously an issue for Parrish too, since she’s not going to add decals that say “Elect” and “Ward 6” until nomination day when signs can legally go up.
Parrish is recycling her federal lawn signs (minus the Liberal logo obviously) and reusing them.
She’s said often in the past that she wouldn’t put up campaign signs at all if she didn’t have to. But she’s fallen hard for the Smart Car and plans to buy it if she wins the seat. That’s one campaign sign she’s quickly learned to love.
So: Does this put Parrish in the driver’s seat in Ward 6 or just mean she’s already got a little too much political mileage on her?

Not too many musicians can claim they opened for Bob Marley.
Not only did Liberty Silver open for Marley, she opened for him at Madison Square Gardens in New York, and he complimented her on her singing.
Not that she noticed.
You see, Silver was only 13 years old at the time.
As the Meadowvale residents tells the story, “some guy heard me singing in a pool and he invited me to an audition on Spadina (Ave.) After I sang they told me I had the job. We got in a van the same day and drove 12 hours to Madison Square Garden.
“Bob Marley said after the show, ‘You can sing’ but I didn’t really notice. I was just so happy that I made $100.”
Silver had already been giving mini-concerts for friends and neighbours, so $100 looked awfully good after playing for chocolate bars.
The Mississauga singer with the booming six-and-a-half octave voice has never fit neatly into any musical categories, with the result that her career has a certain helter-skelter quality to it. She’s a fixture on the outdoor festival circuit, where she loves to perform.
And she may be better known outside Canada than within. She’s done festival gigs in Antigua and Jamaica as well as all across Canada. She just returned from a Habitat for Humanity benefit concert in Guyana.
After doing The Beaches Festival a couple of weeks ago, she’s in Oakville Friday at 10:30 p.m. in a free concert at the Towne Square.
Having been through the bumps and bruises of show business, on different labels and off, and penalized for her stunning versatility that means she can do jazz, blues, R ’n B, and even country (She had a no. 1 hit on the Canadian country charts), Silver is now firmly in control of her own career.
That means arranging travel, writing songs, booking work and making independent recordings which she sells on her website (www.libertysilver.ca).
“If you want to be successful, you have to oversee everything,” said Silver, a Peterborough resident who’s lived happily in family-oriented Mississauga for five years. “You have to make your own opportunities happen,”
Among Silver’s startling credentials are a concert at the Indy 500 with Roy Orbison, co-hosting of the World Basketball Championship opening ceremonies with Allan Thicke, two Junos, three Genie nominations and co-writing and performing the Olympic themes for the 1996 Games in Atlanta and the 2004 Games in Athens.
Liberty and international sports competitions have a thing going. Her parents, one who hailed from Jamaica and the other from Hawaii, met at an international athletic competition in London, England where they were both competing.
They just may have had an inkling that she was headed for show business. Liberty Silver is her real name.
Among the many awards she has picked up over the years is, appropriately enough considering her start, the Bob Marley Memorial Award given out at the Canadian Reggae Music Awards.
Liberty Silver. One of those talented Canadians whose accomplished work we too often take for granted.

NOTE: I should have made clear in yesterday’s entry on Carolyn Parrish and her Smart Car that the Ward 6 candidate is planning to declare a portion of her lease costs for the vehicle as election expenses, even though she is not required to do so.

If you read The Toronto Star this morning, you’ll see an alarming article about yet another invasive species that is about to put us back on our heels.
The round goby fish, which has been devastating the Great Lakes for years, has found its way into Lake Simcoe and threatens the native gaming fish there and, by extension, the sport fishing industry that relies on those fish.
It’s just another in the long line of invasive insects and plants that seem to be turning our landscape into a horror movie that is, unfortunately, a reality show.
Dutch Elm Disease. Inchworms. Garlic Mustard. Leafy spurge. Zebra Mussels. Gypsy Moths. Asian Longhorned Beetles (does that include Sean Lennon?) Even killer algae a couple of weeks ago.
In this sea of depressing assaults, there are actually are some good news stories on the Invasion of Our Environment Snatchers front.
One of them is here in Mississauga where a program to use bugs that naturally feed on the beautiful, but bedevilling, purple loosestrife has shown some remarkable success.
Purple loosestrife is an extremely aggressive plant that, if left to its own devices, would choke out our native plants and leave a sterile monoculture.
It wasn’t that many years ago that Rattray Marsh, the natural treasure trove of birds and plants that is the only coastal wetland from Oshawa to Hamilton, was taking on a decidedly mood indigo.
Credit Valley Conservation and the City of Mississauga expropriated the land in the mid-1970s after the gentle veterinarian Dr. Ruth Hussey led a long public campaign for acquisition. (A memorial stone at one of Rattray’s entrances said it best — “Ruth Hussey Because of Her, Rattray Marsh is Ours.”)
Hussey’s spiritual descendants, the dedicated souls of the Rattray Marsh Protection Association, pulled loosestrife by hand but it was only when scientists started importing beetles from Europe that were the natural enemies of the plant that real progress was made.
An initial “seeding” of the bugs in the marsh in the 90s didn’t seem to take hold but a second one did.
“It’s now come under very good control,” says Bob Morris, the long-time CVC employee who is now its aquatic biologist. “At one time, we were used to seeing seas of purple and you still see the odd plant. But nothing like the way it was invading. The beetles really worked out great.”
Morris and the CVC are now preparing to embark on an overhaul of the environmentally sensitive area to see if they can restore it to its former glory. Cattails, reed grass, carp, siltation, changing flooding patterns and upstream development have all changed its character to the extent that some of the plants and species that once made it so special seem to be disappearing.
As that challenging exercise begins, it’s instructive to remember that you can sometimes save Mother Nature from herself — as long as you understand and play by her rules.

Oh, it’s lonely in the middle.
Just ask Wajid Khan.
That’s where the Mississauga-Streetsville MP finds himself today after accepting a post as special advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the Middle East.
After spending the first two-and-a-half years of his career in the Liberal huddle when the party was in government, Khan was invited to step across the line of scrimmage last week to whisper a few plays into the ear of PM/QB Harper.
Khan, a knowledgeable man on the Middle East who was a former captain in the Pakistani Air Force, must have been terribly flattered to be asked to serve his country by giving independent advice to the leader of Canada on a critical foreign policy issue. But he shouldn’t have let his ego override his brain.
He can go fly around the Middle East, call press conferences, make reports and draw conclusions but, sooner or later, the old political football game on Parliament Hill is going to resume.
The whistle is going to blow and a lot of fat guys with mean streaks are going to be looking for prey. Khan’s going to be quivering, all by his lonesome, in between the PC Blue Bombers and the Grit Galloping Ghosts.
And nobody on either team is going to trust him.
There’s a story today in the paper speculating that Khan is going to step down as associate defence critic for the Liberals in view of the obvious potential conflict in his new role.
It’s apparently obvious that Khan can’t give the PM advice on the Middle East and then stand up in the House as a Liberal defence critic and shred the government for heeding — or not heeding — his counsel.
Pardon me, but doesn’t that conflict apply equally to the entire concept of an Opposition MP giving confidential advice to a sitting government?
Khan’s Liberal colleagues smell a Belinda Stronach/ Scott Brisson/ David Emerson kind of odour to the affair. In his most recent newsletter, Mississauga-Erindale MP Omar Alghabra puts it this way:
“This was a surprising move but one that has perhaps been planned for months. I am waiting to see how this relationship unfolds, but please forgive me if I seem skeptical about the future of this relationship or the role that Mr. Khan will be able to perform. I will reserve judgment for now. However, my radar is picking up some questionable signals.”
He’s not alone.
Was Harper’s intent to throw a cat amongst the Liberal pigeons? Is he using Khan to mitigate his a little-too-early-out-of-the-gate pro-Israeli stance? Is this just chapter one in the story of Khan’s inevitable crossing of the floor?
The answer just might be: all of the above.

Martha Stewart needs help.
Now, if you’ve ever seen Martha obsess over the glue gun overheating just as she’s about to finish the Christmas wreath made of tobacco leaves she grows on her window sill, or knit doilies from the eyelashes of the llamas she keeps in her petting zoo, this won’t come as a surprise.
Not referring to that kind of help.
You see, Martha is having trouble selling her estate in Westport, Connecticut. Yes, the one that has been such a memorable backdrop for a career that began when she and her husband Andy bought the place in 1972 and she started a catering business that began the process that morphed her into the chief guru and guiding light for all things that fall under that horrid catch-all of a phrase — Lifestyle.
It’s been more than two months and Martha still hasn’t been able to unload the place, which is going for a measly $9 million.
Things are getting desperate. Sure, Martha has sold her East Hampton bungalow for $9 million and her Greenwich Village penthouse for $6 million, but she’s still stuck with the Lily Pond estate on Long Island, the flat on Fifth Ave. in Manhattan, the mansion in Maine and the New Bedford Farm in upstate New York.
Since Martha has been so helpful over the years in giving us all such fabulous advice on decorating the table, perfecting the colour scheme, selecting the cutlery that matches the curtains, maintaining the cutting garden, and throwing the myriad dinner parties that litter our cramped social calendar each month, it’s only fair that we return the favour. N’est-ce pas?
If you want to sell Turkey Hill, (No I won’t go there. It’s just too cheap and easy) you first need to unbraid the leaves of all of your daffodils. Any prospective buyer will be intimidated by the prospect of maintaining a border so primped and primed that the previous owner hogtied the foliage.
Ditch the Martha Stewart Everyday Living tumblers and towels you bought from Zellers when you ventured north of the border. Turn off Martha Stewart Radio that’s playing in the background.
Make some Martha Stewart Surprise Cookies and ice them with Martha Stewart sprinkles. The smell of fresh cookies will cover the scent of the hundreds of missing dishes of potpourri you made while walking in your sleep over the decades you lived there.
Finally, change the names of your dogs. Buyers must be able to project themselves into your house. They cannot see themselves living someplace where you call Zu Zu, Paw-Paw, Chin Chin and Empress Wu in from their canine croquet enclosure. (By the way, the handmade wickets were twisted out of steel by Martha during her many long hours of first-hand research into the decorating habits of the American prison population.)
One more thing: If your house still doesn’t sell, call Bob Vila.

If the Premier is coming to speak to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO), which always holds its annual convention this time of year, you know he’s going to bring some goodies with him.
The press is there in droves to report on any new announcements because there’s not much happening in the dog days of summer.
So, yesterday in Ottawa, it was no surprise when Dalton McGuinty gave municipal leaders a big dose of what they wanted to hear.
The Liberal government is commissioning an 18-month study that will look once again at the thorny issue of what services the cities and towns look after and what services the province subsidizes. The municipalities, especially big ones such as Mississauga and Peel, hope this turns out to be an exercise in “uploading” of costs.
They are still recovering financially from the last service review from the Mike Harris government which downloaded a pile of services and costs from Ontario onto local property taxpayers.
The municipalities want to make this an argument of principle: property taxes are for local services such as building and maintaining roads and parks, hauling away garbage, etc. The larger government responsibilities for social services that benefit everyone, such as health, welfare, child and seniors’ services should be paid for from property taxes, which are based on income and, therefore, ability to pay.
In other words, the little old lady on a fixed income who still lives in a single family house shouldn’t be underwriting welfare costs for the young kid of the wealthy couple next door who refuses to find a job.
The lines of responsibility for service delivery have become so muddied over the years that this argument is tougher to defend, especially with services such as ambulance and housing which obviously have both a local benefit and a greater societal benefit.
At one point this exercise was labelled “disentanglement” and was given the catchy title, “Who Does What?”
One of the major problems with government in this country is that every level wants to have its hand in everything, so no one can figure out exactly who’s responsible when things go wrong.
In its simplest form, the concept of disentanglement is to make one level of government responsible for all aspects of a service, from policy to paying the bills, thus resulting, in theory, in increased efficiency and accountability. The public knows exactly which politicians to throw out on their ears if things don’t work as they should.
Never going to happen. Not only because the entanglement of services is now so ingrained in our system but also because it is so ingrained in our political culture. Elected officials everywhere are conditioned to blame the province/municipalities/school boards/ministry/bureaucrats/city staff/underfunding/Premier/mayor/funding formula/weather for their problems.
If this were a serious exercise, the expert panel reviewing the issue would be reporting before the next provincial election in October next year, not after.
Let’s hope that this review does focus attention on one issue, however, if nothing else — the ludicrous continuation of the so-called pooling of social service costs in the GTA. That sees our property tax money shipped to Toronto so politicians elected by a different set of politicians there can spend it.
In another time and place, that was called taxation without representation and it started the odd revolution.

Do we want our teachers booking off sick so that they can write report cards? Or do we want them standing in front of their classes teaching what they should be teaching?
The unfortunate truth is that there are teachers so pressed for time, especially at the end of the year, that they take some of their seemingly endless supply of sick days to write report cards.
Which is bad enough.
What is worse is that those report cards are written in advanced goobledygook, so that parents have to try to break the pedantic code that is apparently intended to keep secret how your child is actually doing in school.
The System, which obviously provides some kind of master list of generic comments from which teachers can crib, should provide an accompanying translation for parents.
Of course, by the time your kid graduates you’ve pretty well figured out that, “Johnny is encouraged to contribute to class discussions more often in second term,” really means, “your kid slept through fall. Maybe you’d like to wake him up in time for Christmas.”
Anyone who has ever been the owner of a teenage son knows the real meaning of, “Johnny has a clear sense of the course concepts. Johnny should have confidence in his ability. Johnny should apply these skills to go beyond the assignment expectations. Johnny often works with little attention or care to detail. He must complete all assigned work and be aware of the finer details. Johnny is encouraged to take time to reflect on, and revise his work as necessary. Johnny can make valuable contributions to class discussions when called upon.”
Translation: Johnny is a distracted underachiever who spends too much time goofing off with his buddies at the back of the class. He’d better smarten up if he ever wants to make it to university.
Can you imagine how difficult it must be for the many parents whose first language is not English to discern that a comment on a report card that their child is, “approaching grade level” actually means they’re behind in school?
Ontario’s elementary teachers are expected to approve a motion today that calls for the number of report cards to be reduced from three to two.
Fine. However, the problem with report cards isn’t their quantity, it’s their quality.
Call me ignorantly and hopelessly old-fashioned, but I much preferred the anecdotal report cards of the past.
Since communication with the home is obviously so critical in the success of students, let’s start by speaking to parents in plain English.

The night before Terry Fox had his leg amputated, someone gave him a copy of Runner’s World magazine.
The edition included an article about an amputee who had completed the New York City Marathon.
“He decided to run not just a marathon, not just across a province, but across all of Canada,” says John Brant, whose working on a story about Fox for the 40th anniversary of the Oregon-based magazine.
Brant, who has worked at the magazine that is the runners’ bible for 25 years, has been following Darrell Fox around as he prepares to launch the 26th version of the Terry Fox run across Canada.
Both Brant and Fox were in Mississauga this morning as Fox, now national director of the Terry Fox Foundation and the official keeper of Terry’s flame on behalf of his family, renewed acquaintances with the good folks at the ScotiaMcLeod office here.
Seven years ago, Lyndon Fournier, the 58-year-old Port Credit-raised manager of the branch on the 14th floor of the Sussex Centre, decided to do some fundraising for a good corporate cause. He called the Fox Foundation and they offered to have Darrell come out to speak to the branch employees.
Fournier, who was then in the Oakville office, had a better idea. He decided to invite clients and family and friends to a fundraising barbecue with Fox as the guest speaker. Now it’s an annual tradition, which raised $10,000 last year.
Once every year, about a month before the Terry Fox Run takes place, Darrell comes to Mississauga to accept a cheque from ScotiaMcLeod to kick off the local races and then goes to the Oakville barbecue. Later, he will attend a barbecue at Fournier’s house, ride his bike and then go for his daily 5-km run.
Today, senior investment executive Dean Morrison of Mississauga will be his pacer.
As a tribute to his brother, Fox has run 5 km every day for the past eight-and-one-half years.
“That’s nothing, absolutely nothing,” Fox said this morning. “Terry ran a marathon 146 days in a row. How could I ever worry about having a bad day and taking one off? We will not rest until we find a cure for cancer because cancer doesn’t take a year off. Every year, 150,000 Canadians are diagnosed and 70,000 die.”
Among those attending today was Kevin Wallace, who just finished raising $250,000 for the cancer centre at Trillium Health named for his mother Betty in another gruelling test of stamina, the Race Across America.
Wallace, who says he’s 90 per cent recovered from that experience, was inspired by Fox’s short, moving presentation, in which he recalled all the pain and pleasure of Terry’s run into the GTA 26 summers ago. (Fox went through Mississauga July 13, 1980).
Darrell read, through misty eyes, the closing words of Douglas Coupland’s fine book on the marathon.
“I could really feel Terry’s experience come alive again,” Wallace said. “It made me feel that Terry is still alive. “He’s probably done more for other people with his spirit than he would have if he’d still been around,” said Wallace. “I can still draw some energy from those lessons, to have a dream and pursue it and to persevere. Those lessons still live.”
The Port Credit Terry Fox Run, organized by Luisa McDonald and Avion John, who both attended today, goes Sept. 17 along the waterfront from the Port Credit lighthouse. Registration starts at 7:30 a.m., with the run at 9:15 a.m.

Next time you’re making mashed potatoes, throw in a few extras.
They’ll come in handy when you want to make pastry, cinnamon buns or cheesecake.
Unappetizing as it sounds, potatoes have invaded the pastry wagon.
It may not sound like such a good idea, but based on a taste test of ham-cheese-basil-potato savoury scones and, especially, Mayan Chocolate and Orange Potato Cheesecake, the eyes have it.
Although we didn’t taste the plum tart that Emily Richards brought along to The Mississauga News yesterday, it looked droolingly delectable too.
Richards, with the help of Mississauga-based public relations firm HealthComm, is on the road on behalf of the Ontario Potato Board plumping the benefits of potatoes as a replacement for artery-clogging fats in baked goods.
The Guelph-based Richards is well-known for her television appearances on Canadian Living Television and Canadian Living Cooks on the Food Network over the past several years. She also does regular cooking demonstrations at the Ponytrail and Winston Churchill Longos outlets and produces that chain’s annual calendar and its regular food magazine.
She’s been working for a year on the unlikely-sounding process of “SpudStitution,” as a press release dubbed it.
Richards doesn’t recommend you tell anyone in advance what they’re eating when you put pineapple macadamia potato cupcakes or chocolate vanilla pecan potato ice cream in front of them. Not unless you really enjoy the sound of Ohhh....yech.
One of the local converts is Laurie Hildebrand of West Acres, a foodie who devours the TV cooking shows and loves to try new foods with a healthy bent to them on her husband and kids, 16 and 13. “Potatoes have gotten a really bad rap because of this whole carbohydrates-are-bad thing,” says Hildebrand. “We never stopped eating them.”
Her family’s verdict on the cheesecake? Well, let's just say it was all gone by the next day.
“A potato has 129 calories, no fat and is full of vitamin C and potassium” said Richards. Not to mention vitamin B6, thiamine, niacin, folic acid, iron, zinc and fibre. Its complex carbohydrates make you feel fuller.
According to a provincial survey, though, Ontarians don’t think of potatoes as a health food. Only 10 per cent eat taters because they know they’re good for them.
That’s not going to change with spudstitution. I’m willing to bet that the health benefits won’t cross your mind while the cheesecake is doing the two-step on your tastebuds.
Here’s the Mayan-Orange cheesecake recipe, one of several available at www.ontariopotatoes.ca:

Mayan Chocolate & Orange Potato Cheesecake

Densely rich, this cheesecake is dark and mysterious with the spicy fruit flavour of the Maya Gold chocolate (Maya Gold bittersweet chocolate is made by Green & Black’s Organic and has a blend of orange and spices in it; if unavailable, use a high-quality bittersweet chocolate).

2-3/4 cups (675 mL) chocolate cookie crumbs
1/4 cup (50 mL) ground almonds
1/2 tsp (2 mL) cinnamon
1/4 tsp (1 mL) freshly grated nutmeg
2/3 cup (160 mL) butter, melted

Filling:
2 pkgs (8oz/250 g each) light cream cheese, softened
1 cup (250 mL) granulated sugar
1-1/2 cups (375 mL) mashed Ontario potatoes, cooled
3 eggs
10 oz (300 g) chopped Maya Gold bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled
1 tbsp (15 mL) grated orange rind
Pinch pepper
2 tbsp (25 mL) spiced rum or amaretto
2 cups (500 mL) whipped cream
Chocolate-covered almonds

In bowl, stir together cookie crumbs, almonds, cinnamon and nutmeg. Drizzle with butter and stir until well moistened. Press mixture onto bottom and up sides of 9-inch (23-cm) springform pan. Centre pan in large piece of heavy-duty foil and wrap bottom and sides. Bake in 350°F (180°C) oven 10 minutes or until firm. Let cool completely.
Meanwhile, in large bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar until fluffy. Beat in mashed potato until smooth. Beat in eggs, adding one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add melted chocolate, orange rind and pepper and beat slowly until combined and smooth. Beat in rum. Pour mixture into pan and smooth top.
Place springform in larger pan and add hot water to come halfway up sides of springform pan. Bake in 325°F (160°C) oven 50 minutes or until set around edges but still jiggly in centre. Turn oven off and let cool in oven 1 hour. Remove from oven and water bath and let cool completely on rack. Place in refrigerator 4 hours or until cold.
Remove sides from springform pan and garnish with whipped cream and almonds.
Makes 16 servings.

The image of the old country doctor, who tended to people’s hearts and souls as well as he mended their bumps and bruises and broken bones, is a cliché that you might think belongs in the far distant past.
Wrong.
Just ask Anna Molinaro. She’s one of many of Dr. Ed Davies’ patients who’s trying to figure out how she’s going to cope without him. Dixie Road Medical Associates has been operating in the same place, the original home of one of the founding partners, Dr. Reg Perkin, for 50 years. Dr. Davies, who has been working there for 41, begins a well-deserved retirement at the end of the month.
“He’s not only a good, dependable doctor but he’s very kind and caring,” said Molinaro, who had Davies deliver all three of her children. When her 21-year-old daughter Joanna was killed in an accident years ago, Dr. Davies regularly dropped into her home on his way to work to console her.
“He’s just always there for you,” said Molinaro, who invites the good doctor to family social events. “He’s the greatest. He’s amazing.”
Davies has looked after Don Payne’s family since 1968. “When my wife succumbed to cancer in 1994, he was a great support,” says the 79-year-old. “My daughter was really having a tough time dealing with it and he consoled her.”
When Payne had stomach problems, Davies phoned him at home one weekend after he returned from a seminar in Montreal and told him he thought he’d identified the problem. It turned out he had.
“That’s just the kind of fella Ed is,” said Payne, “calling you up on the weekend. He’s been part of my family.”
Brad Butt, who’s been seeing Davies since he was four or five years old and turns 40 later this year said, “he gives you a sense of comfort, right off the bat, so that you can discuss any issue with him. He’s a very personable guy and very low key.”
When he dropped his plans to do a residency at Vancouver General Hospital to come back to Ontario in 1965 to join the practice, Davies and wife Olwen had to stay with another doctor because there were no rental apartments built at the time.
“I had to make a house call to Cawthra Rd. and I didn’t know where it was,” laughs the retiring doctor, who plans to spend more time gardening, curling, golfing, and working on his stamp collection after he and Olwen return from a boat tour down the west coast and through the Panama Canal.
Family practice is still the foundation of medicine, he allows.
“I’m kind of old school,” he says. “You have to have emotions and a lot of feelings you can share with patients. If they have a lot of sorrow, you have to be empathetic and console them. There always has to be empathy,” said Davies who counts many of his patients among his closest friends.
The old school has its rewards, for both patient and doctor.
“He’s very caring and compassionate and the patients just love him,” said Bertha Anstey who’s worked the front desk at Dixie Rd. for 26 years. “He’s the old-fashioned doctor...very gentle. That’s the family practice that patients are used to.”
Funny isn’t it? How good old-fashioned, common sense human kindness just never seems to go out of style.

When you drive down the lane into Benson and Marjorie Madill’s farm, each curve seems to take you back farther in time.
One second you’re dodging the Dodge Durangos on Hurontario St. and Highway 401; the next you find yourself cooling noticeably as you make your way through the canopy of trees that guide you towards the house and the white barn, with its large block letters that spell out M A D I L L F A R M to all who pass by.
If you step into Ben and Marjorie’s parlour (and you’ll have to because they’re those kind of folks), you’ll see a picture from 1957 that shows the barn dominating the farm landscape around. The 401 is being built and it stops just beside the farm.
Ben bought the land in 1946 for $12,000, the same amount he had to put out in 1952 when the couple were awakened in the middle of the night in their then-house (now the garage) by people coming in from Centre Rd., telling them their barn was on fire. It was too late to do anything but watch the barn disappear and try to keep the flames from getting onto the house.
“I’m the only living person around here who is a down-to-earth farmer whose parents farmed in this area,” Madill says as he visits at the kitchen table and lays out the memoirs he’s produced. “I just sold my wheat today.”
At age 91 Madill still works the land as best he can. The farm was originally 150 acres. The family still has six acres but Ben works most of the 100 acres behind the driving range next door along the north side of 401 over to McLaughlin Rd. The land was sold ages ago and is still waiting to produce the cookie cutter glass box buildings that now stand like soulless windrows on all sides. Instead of the “little boxes on the hillside” that Malvena Reynolds wrote of, the Madills are surrounded by big boxes on the (architecturally) shrill side.
A farmer all his life, Madill is a history buff who probably did as much as anyone to save the Britannia School House, where he started classes back in 1921.
An inveterate tinkerer, Madill has built himself a sun dial, has a huge collection of clocks and can recount the specifications for any number of old pieces of arcane farm equipment.
Fortunately for anyone who values the past, he has documented his life in great detail and has myriads of photos. And fortunately, Marjorie, a member of Cooksville’s Tipping clan, can put find them readily when her husband needs them.
Asked about farming at his age, Madill says, “it’s not a big job. Why would I quit as long as I’m able. I keep on scratching the land.”
In his lifetime, he’s gone from pulling farm equipment out onto Centre Rd. without looking because there was never any traffic coming, to an astounding count of 44,200 vehicles passing by his lane entrance each day.
Attempts to prod him into commenting on the change prove futile this day because he doesn’t want to sound like a bitter old-timer.
Never mind. The “Memories ” postscript in one of his memoirs says all that needs to be said.
“It is sad to see the farms, the fences, the driveways, the barns, the houses, the bush and the trees that once dotted the landscape all giving way to the construction of a new city. The old landmarks are gone.
“The change has been so great that old timers cannot even see or find the spot where their house and barn once stood.
“It is sad to see many of my life long neighbours, friends, school chums and others being stricken with heart attacks, cancer, arthritis and many other health conditions. Many of my friends and neighbours much younger than I have departed from this world.
“It is a short journey down this winding road of life. You cannot choose your time on earth but you can choose to live each day like you will be here forever.”

Yesterday, reporters from throughout the Metroland chain of community newspapers, including The Mississauga News, spent a day attending seminars at Sheridan College on the “new news culture.”
There was a lot of talk about convergence, interactive journalism, blogging, podcasting, the attention economy (how to target your core audience and deliver what they want and attract the advertisers to support it) etc., etc.
All of which is a response to the age of the Internet and the fact that younger audiences, the one advertisers really want to target, are increasingly getting their news from the web, not newspapers.
Sherine Mansour, a former broadcast journalist who teaches in the media department at Sheridan, told us that citizen journalism is here to stay whether we like it or not. The net has let the news cat out of the bag and now anyone and everyone, professional and amateur, can report on what is happening, with or without a particular point of view.
“If you give citizens control of the media, they will use it,” Mansour said. “If you don’t, you will lose.”
She quoted extensively from an on-line manifesto from Jay Rosen on behalf of, “the people formerly known as the audience” to demonstrate that the shift in power is already here.
Rosen writes: “Once they were your printing presses; now that humble device, the blog, has given the press to us. That’s why blogs have been called little First Amendment machines. They extend freedom of the press to more actors.
“Once it was your radio station, broadcasting on your frequency. Now that brilliant invention, podcasting, gives radio to us. And we have found more uses for it than you did.
“Shooting, editing and distributing video once belonged to you, Big Media. Only you could afford to reach a TV audience built in your own image. Now video is coming into the user’s hands, and audience-building by former members of the audience is alive and well on the web.
“You were once (exclusively) the editors of the news, choosing what ran on the front page. Now we can edit the news, and our choices send items to our own front pages.”
All of which is threatening and exhilarating in equal measure.
One of the ideas floated Mansour mentioned as an interactive exercise really was intriguing: giving candidates their own blogs on your newspaper web sites and letting them have at it.
Why not? Shouldn’t elections be the ultimate showcase of citizen participation?
Most newspapers, limited by space restrictions caused by their slavish dedication to the bottom line, can’t or won’t provide adequate coverage of the candidates and issues anymore.
How about blogs being set up on the web pages of The News for the municipal election Nov. 13? Candidates could elucidate on the platforms they can only sketch out in election brochures. They could be asked to respond to questions posed by the paper, or citizens, who could query would-be councillors and trustees on their qualifications or anything else that strikes their fancy.
A moderator of some kind might be required to keep order and try to sift out the lobs and the bombs and delete the slanderous slings and arrows.
Since all-candidates’ meetings seem to be few and far between these days, doesn’t it make sense to move that function to a natural platform in a spot where people already find their breaking community news?
It could be an ideal forum for civic engagement and citizen journalism.

If you didn’t know better, you’d think that Bill 52, legislation that will prohibit kids who drop out of school before age 18 from driving a car, was devised by Mike Harris, not Dalton McGuinty.
It seems so much in the bullying, punitive style of the Harris government which favoured sending young offenders to boot camp to straighten them up.
What this legislation says is, we can no longer whup them upside the head for leaving school, so let’s strap their arms behind their backs symbolically by taking away their ability to hold a driver’s license.
There are many, many reasons why students leave school early, says veteran Wards 3-4 Peel District School Board Trustee Ruth Thompson, who has sat through innumerable Supervised Alternative Learning for Excused Pupils (SALEP) hearings.
That’s a body where 14 and 15-year-old students who want to leave early must explain their decision. The program provides a transition to the world of work for those granted permission to leave early, in some cases involving special classes and work placements.
A lot of kids leave school, according to Thompson, because they have to help support their families or earn money for their own future educations. Taking away a driver’s license isn’t going to prevent them from going, it’s just going to make it more difficult for them to get a job and help out.
“I don’t know that there is any benefit,” says the board’s vice-chair. “There are some kids who just want to go and you’re sure not going to stop them. If you’re stopping them from getting employment, then they’re going to be out on the street and that’s worse.”
Since a lot of those dropping out are high-risk students who have already been turned off school, you’re just prolonging their pain and making it more difficult on remaining students who do want to be in class. And you may have significantly reduced their chances of getting a foot in the door at many service industry positions where a car is a necessity.
Instead of wasting their time on this piece of legislation, Ontario should consider innovative alternative programs to keep kids in school through creativity, not coercion.
Maybe we need a bill that says that if politicians pass punitive legislation that has no apparent benefit, they’re prohibited from running for re-election.

It’s difficult to know exactly how to pacify the rain gods.
Turns out a couple of hours of solid, swinging Big Band music is a pretty good strategy.
That’s how Peter Appleyard and his veteran Swing Fever Band held off the deluge Saturday night in Mississauga.
The odd sprinkles and the dark overhead threats of worse to come didn’t dissuade a few hundred fans who joined Appleyard for a special concert on his 78th birthday to enjoy the classic music of Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn and Benny Goodman, among others.
It’s hard to find good swinging Big Band jazz anywhere outside of the radio dial (check out Glen Woodcock’s show on Jazz FM91 Sundays from 5-10 p.m. and some of the shows on AM740), so when it lands right in your lap like this, you have to take advantage.
About half the space in the grassy knoll in the square outside the Mississauga Central Library was filled with lawn chairs, most of them festooned with umbrellas, as the summer series of concerts came to an end.
With the looming condos on the south side of Burnhamthorpe Rd. providing the mood lighting, Appleyard conducted a quick tour of the rhythms of the 30s and 40s.
The voicings, arrangements, melodies and soloists, which add up to that incredible momentum they call swing is what makes Big Band music a joy to the feet and a comfort to the soul.
With the great Canadian arranger Rick Wilkins handling most of the charts, and with veterans from the Goodman band (Appleyard played with that group from 1972-80) and the Billy May, Bert Niosi and Rob McConnell bands on hand, the swing was assured.
Among the standouts were John Sherwood on piano, Bob Livingston and John McLeod (who seemed to be playing at twice the volume of everyone else) on trumpets, Alistair Kay on trombone and Mississauga’s own Pat Collins on bass.
Of course every big band needs a “canary” and Port Credit resident Carol McCartney more than fit the bill.
She and Collins, who are faculty members at Mohawk College, combined on a tour-de-force of Comes Love, an under-performed standard. Beginning with a bass solo, the piece rode high on McCartney’s clear, clean delivery before the orchestra swooped in to take it out. McCartney has diction that rivals that of Dinah Washington.
Would have been nice to hear a little more of her.
At the break, the mayor presented Appleyard with a birthday cake.
“I believe our city centre should be a place where people can come to enjoy some entertainment,” said Hazel McCallion, in a shocking admission that council meetings don’t have much appeal, even as comic relief.
This summer the City has hosted a series of concerts, including Friday night garage band concerts and Appleyard’s terrific jazz series as part of the “Placemaking” to help Mississaugans figure out where their downtown is.
You think maybe someone would have thought of it in the previous 19 years that the civic centre has been in place, but not to worry.
It may be late, but some old-time music to soften the post-modern architecture is truly welcome.
Give us more outdoor concerts, more music in the square (why not invite Ronnie Hawkins to a homecoming?) and maybe “people place” and “Mississauga City Centre” could be uttered in the same sentence.

Some random notes today.
You remember Kevin Wallace — the marathon cyclist who runs Gears cycling shop in Port Credit and completed the brutal Race Across America (RAAM) of 4900 kms. from San Diego to Atlantic City in June. Completing was an accomplishment in itself as the riders slept about one hour a day for each of the 10 days the torture test took.
Well, Wallace hopes to have a movie deal soon. He’s talking to producer Carolynne King, who did The Walter Gretzky Story and Deeply, starring Kirsten Durst... pre-Spidey kissing.
“If it happens, it will be the story of me and my mother,” said Wallace, on hand to lend moral support when Darrell Fox was in town recently to promote the Terry Fox runs in September. “RAAM was a sacrificial ride,” said Wallace who admitted he’s still recovering psychology from the experience.
Kevin, who began his bike shop in what seemed like a closet on Clarkson Rd. N, south of the railway lines, reveres his relationship with his mother. Her death from breast cancer has informed his life and his will ever since, helping him to establish the Betty Wallace Women’s Health Centre and inspiring the annual Gears 24-hour spin at the Hershey Centre.
Lots of material there for a five-hanky special.
• • •
Where, oh where, did somebody come up with the dim idea to move the Farmers’ Market at Square One this summer?
It had operated wonderfully well in the nether townships of the parking lot north of the mall near the Wal-Mart until this year, when it was shipped closer to City Hall and confined to a much-smaller area that leads to traffic tie-ups and frayed nerves.
You can’t cruise up and down the rows like you used to and the farmers are grumbling that sales are down. How about some down-to-earth common sense here trumping corporate strategic goals? In other words, put it back where it belongs.
• • •
Peter Appleyard really seemed to be enjoying his birthday gig Saturday night outside the Central Library. He was obviously feeling nostalgic and told some tales of the old days between songs.
Growing up in the thrall of Lionel Hampton on vibes in the Benny Goodman Band, and then getting to replace Hamps in 1972 was beyond imagination, he said.
At one gig shortly after Appleyard joined Goodman, they were playing the Round Table Club behind the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Johnny Carson was dancing with the 1940s musical star Gloria DeHaven.
The band played Satin Doll. Carson approached Appleyard after the number and asked what it was. “Good,” said Carson upon confirming it was the Billy Strayhorn-Johnny Mercer classic. “I just won $100. Gloria thought it was Hot Toddy.”
Appleyard was then asked to come to the table and confirm the song’s title. When DeHaven asked what song it was, the puckish Appleyard replied Hot Toddy.
Carson didn’t hold a grudge though. He invited Appleyard on The Tonight Show shortly thereafter. Not only that, Appleyard explained. But a few months later DeHaven booked him to accompany her on a tour.
Now that’s the way to work a joke.

Thank goodness Peel District School Board trustees put an inane proposal to take a step backward in time by replacing hand-dryers in washrooms with paper towel dispensers into the garbage, where it belongs.
Talk about your regressive proposal.
What kind of example would it have set for students, had the board endorsed a recommendation from its health and safety committee to rip out the mechanical washers and go back to paper products? How were they planning to explain to students that they would be contributing to the more-rapid depletion of our forests?
At their next student environmental summit at the H.J.A. Brown Centre, were they going to ask the environment clubs to do the installations?
The recommendation may have been well-intended, but it just doesn’t pass muster.
There are studies indicating that air drying doesn’t work as well as hand-wiping in getting rid of germs, in large part because people don’t completely dry their hands. With the potential threat of a flu pandemic, or the latest outbreak of an unknown SARS-like virus, some health officials are proselytizing for paper in washrooms again.
Brampton Trustee Steve Kavanaugh, who has some background in this area from his professional life, was positively insistent that paper is the way to go for improved hygiene.
When I bounced the notion off Rohit Mehta, a 16-year-old student at John Fraser Secondary and the chair of the Peel Environmental Youth Alliance, he was astounded that the idea was even broached.
“Hand dryers are the best thing that’s happened to school washrooms,” he said. “They should have signs in the washrooms, like they do at the ROM, that show you how to wash your hands properly, how to clean between your fingers.
“If they teach us in school how to prepare for a bombing and how to prepare for an evacuation, they can teach us how to wash our hands,” said Mehta, who’s going into Grade 12. “I’m guessing that 80 per cent of kids don’t wash their hands anyway.”
And therein lies the rub, or the non-rub in this case.
It’s not what kind of equipment you have to wash and dry your hands, it’s that you understand its importance and that you do it properly.
If we really have an issue with the effectiveness of hand dryers, let’s try the infrared paper dispensers like the ones used in places where hygiene is critical, such as hospitals, before we decimate another few hundred acres of forest.
One more indisputable argument Mehta makes about wasting nearly $800,000 on paper towel crankers: “There are tons of other areas where it could be spent better.”

The cat will be let out of the deficit bag Wednesday when proposals come before the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board on how to stem the flow of red ink over the next two years.
It’s been a weird and wonderful ride to get to this point, starting with Gerard Kennedy (“We won’t micro-manage from Queen’s Park”) dropping in to chat with trustees in February about their fiscal follies and then stomping out in disgust... to an April report by auditors who slapped the board’s wrists ... to the appointment of special advisor Peter Lauwers, who has been working with senior Board staff for the past few weeks to try to sort out how to close the gap between what the funding formula generates and what Dufferin-Peel spends.
Parents, who were involved in this process in the beginning when the board used them to boost a petition campaign to convince the ministry not to disassemble the local system, are going to be invited to come forward Sept. 14 at a special meeting to tell trustees what they think of the cuts before they are dealt with.
Too bad meaningful public consultation before the fact has become a victim in what has developed into a nasty tug-of-war between the ministry and the board. It would be nice to see what exactly is on the chopping block before the axe is in the backswing.
Board Chair Peter Ferreira is as mystified as anyone about how things got in such a poor state between the Ministry and the board. He’ll get a peek at the recommendations tomorrow. They’ll become public next week.
Ferreira is taking solace in the fact that a coalition of northern school boards, both Toronto boards and the Peel public board are all screaming that they can’t balance budgets with the inadequate tools the ministry provides: a dysfunctional bus funding system that has been broken for years and a directive to close small schools (like Port Credit’s St. James) with none of the promised guidelines on how to do it. Yes this “education government” has provided more money. But it does so in envelopes targeted for its own political agenda (i.e. smaller class sizes) that don’t usually help with the big picture problems.
Sharon Hobin, who chairs Dufferin-Peel’s Central Committee for Catholic School Councils, won’t be surprised, or too upset, if busing to so-called “lighthouse” programs like St. Sofia and Holy Name of Mary is cut, or if noon-hour busing to kindergarten is gone. She’s more concerned about the more insidious, less visible hacking that happens when the bottom-line mentality hits the local school yard.
“I’m more worried that the cuts may not be on things that are as high profile and public. They may really hit the schools, and the principals will just have to suck it up,” said the Erin Mills resident. When schools lose vice-principals and are paying supply teachers out of the money taken out of pop machines, something’s terribly wrong, Hobin said.
Remember how the McGuinty Liberals promised to review the school funding formula?
They have their hearts in the right place and they’ve opened the wallet some. The public battles with boards will just continue, however, until the basic problem of the flaws in the funding formula is finally faced head on.