Random Access

A family of raccoons did what concerned human residents of Port Credit could not do Friday: stop demolition of the Gray House, at least temporarily.
Resident Dorothy Tomiuk, who was documenting the destruction of the property in pictures, reports that the advances of the power shovel were halted around 5 p.m. when the last remaining family occupants of the property appeared on the roof, no doubt frantic about their litter and their property values.
They refused, quite sensibly, to face eviction in the bucket of a power shovel. Frank Giannone of Fram/Slokker ordered activities shut down for the night so they could decamp, which we can only hope they did successfully.
The rest of the demolition took place Saturday reducing the old homestead, which once had one of those wonderful wrap-around porches on it, to a pile of bricks.
* * *
Ontario Conservative leader John Tory met with Effie Triantafilopoulos and some of her supporters over the weekend and you can bet he got an earful.
And why not? Triantafilopoulos, a lawyer and long-time top-level federal civil servant political veteran, former council and provincial candidate Brad Butt and self-made businessman Zoran Churchin must be feeling betrayed by their party, after they spent a ton of time and money signing up new members for the Mississauga South Tories.
Turned out it was a colossal waste of time.
Instead they will watch the man they expected to unseat, Tim Peterson, waltz into a walk-over nomination as the only candidate.
Under Tory regulations, a sitting member of Parliament can’t be challenged, so Peterson will be an independent until nomination day and then become an instant Tory candidate.
“It was a very angry weekend for a number of people,” said Butt. “I know a lot of my supporters are very disappointed because this came out of the blue.”
Or did it? The fact that Peterson and Tory were apparently feeling each other out about the switch for months puts things in a different light for many people.
How do you think former MPP Margaret Marland feels? A strong supporter of Triantafilopoulos, she was told shortly before the last campaign, which she lost to Peterson by 234 votes, that he admired her so much, he would never run against her. He changed his mind then too.
There will be a lot of people sitting this one out for the Blue team in the South, including Peterson’s brothers who won’t be dropping in to campaign like last time, or helping out with fundraising.
“I think the Liberals will be looking for a very strong candidate,” says Butt, “someone with a very high profile. They’ll throw every penny they have in there and give Tim the fight of his life.”
* * *
Since when did Billy Talent get to be a Toronto band?
Seems that whenever a Mississauga group or athlete gets famous, the pundits in the Toronto press blur the geo-political boundaries to their credit. The Juno coverage was full of the nasty T-word in describing the boys from Streetsville.
By the way, jazz singer Lori Cullen who grew up in Mississauga and now lives in T-town lost the Juno for Best Vocal Jazz Album to some unknown named Diana Krall.
Never mind. Jaymz Bee, the peripatetic jazz everyman of JAZZFM.91 agrees with yours truly that Cullen’s Calling For Rain was the gem of the five albums nominated. “It was the most exciting, interesting and creative” of the nominees, Bee said today. Damn straight.

When Dr. Terry Sullivan, the head of Cancer Care Ontario, comes calling at Credit Valley Hospital in his annual meeting with hospital staff, it’s a chance for the Province to lay out the big picture on cancer care to the locals: the trends, the plans, the problems and the improvements the provincial body would like to see.
Alternatively, it’s a chance for the doctors and administrators at CVH to give their feedback on how things are working/not working and how provincial initiatives actually track on the ground out here. And, of course, to provide the wish list for future equipment and funding.
After his visit to CVH last week, Dr. Sullivan and Dr. Sheldon Fine, chief of oncology at the hospital, talked about the state of the region for cancer care.
Here’s a quick-hit list of their concerns and comments, filed by subject:

• Breast Cancer: The Ontario cancer progress report that came out in January identified screening for this disease as a major issue. Across Ontario, only 56.4 per cent of women over 50 were screened for breast cancer last year. Sullivan said the numbers are down in Peel. The recent provincial budget aims to significantly boost screening. “We need to communicate better to our highly ethno-diverse population and to our family physicians,” commented Dr. Fine. “We have to make scheduling easier and report the results back quickly in simple, straightforward language.”

• Wait Times: “It’s important not to get sidetracked in all the political banter,” about the issue, said the former deputy minister of health and intergovernmental affairs. “I never met a surgeon or a hospital administrator who wants to be known as a poor performer. There has been constructive, competitive pressure through the posting of this data (on the Internet).” The Carlo Fidani Cancer Centre, which generally has below-average wait times because of high demand and limited beds, is “very sensitive” to the issue, Fine said. New operating room capacity has recently been added and CVH is planning an ambulatory off-site surgery centre as well. “We’re beginning to see wait times fall.” Bringing a fourth radiation unit on line next month will certainly help.

• Colorectal screening: As Sullivan noted, Dr. Fine has been a driving force in addressing the fact that Ontario has some of the highest rates of colon cancer anywhere (3,100 deaths last year). The new $193.5 million program for screening introduced in January includes a voluntary home-screening component that should increase early detection, which can save many, many lives. If you catch the disease at the beginning, “you have prevented the cancer,” Sullivan said. “This is one place where we can make big yards.” Adding colonoscopy capacity at hospitals is also in the works, with a goal of 10 per cent capacity growth in the next year.

• The smoking gun: “We’re making significant progress on the tobacco file through Smoke Free Ontario and it’s big,” said the Cancer Care President and CEO. Smoking rates have fallen below 20 per cent. If only things were as rosy on the rest of the lifestyle front. Still too many carbohydrates being scarfed down daily, not enough fruits and veggies and too little exercise.

• The Peel Perspective: New cancer centres opening in Newmarket, Barrie and Niagara will help take the pressure off here. CVH has pitched its case for installation of a fifth and sixth linear accelerator (radiation units) with the intent they come into use at the same time. The hospital wants the units sooner rather than later and they have a strong case, conceded Sullivan.
“Process innovation” doesn’t cost much and means better patient service, says Fine. Programs need to be housed where they make the most sense for the patient, not the hospitals. Patients should give their health history once and have it travel with them, not have to give it four or five times as they move from the clinic to imaging to chemo to the blood lab etc. Patients have to be assured of quality service no matter which facility they attend. “When you go on an airplane, you don’t have to worry about who the pilot is,” says Fine.

So how is Peel doing in its collaborative efforts to get all the agencies and hospitals on board in creating a unified regional model of health care?
“I think we’re in transition,” comes the guarded response from Sullivan. “Yes, there is some ‘institutional behaviour,’ some hiccups and some balls dropped.”

Finding a quality candidate in short order to challenge freshly-minted Conservative Tim Peterson in Mississauga South, “will not be as difficult as some people think.”
That’s the considered opinion of Liberal executive member Dr. Boyd Upper, who was as shocked as everyone else last week when Peterson decided to sit as an independent now, then run as a Tory Oct. 10.
“We will have a very good Liberal candidate who lives in the community, who has been involved in the community and who has a track record,” Upper said very firmly this morning.
The shock, sense of betrayal and anger that followed the initial revelation of Peterson’s plans is now translating into action. On Saturday, the Liberals under Acting President Tanya Zaritzky, meet to put together a candidate search committee. Zaritzky says the local association has already told head office that they aren’t interested in any parachute candidates.
In lots of cases, the riding association is a group of people supported by, and loyal to, the candidate. Not in Mississauga South. There is a strong core of long-time members. They approached Peterson to be their candidate. He did not install them to do his bidding as happens in most ridings.
That means the association isn’t as weakened by the floor-crossing as many others would be.
Upper doesn’t minimize the fact that Peterson’s action, and its timing, has left the executive scrambling. Not only do they have to find a candidate tout de suite but Peterson was organizing their major fundraiser in June, and it now appears there is going to be a federal election between now and Oct., which will drain off workers and money.
Then there’s the psychological letdown. “Hundreds of people worked their guts out to get him elected, the first time a Liberal has won in this riding since Confederation,” said Upper. “Can you imagine the disappointment?”
The complications that arise when the member decides to change jerseys are numerous. The constituency office staff are normally party supporters who run the “non-partisan service bureau.” But they need jobs like everyone else and Peterson’s staff is staying put.
Even before the press conference made it official last Thursday afternoon, the Liberal Party arrived to whisk away the office computers.
Peterson said today that the Liberal caucus sent loads of information out to the riding office and he understand perfectly well why the computers were spirited away. “It’s no big deal but the staff were upset because they weren’t expecting it,” he said.
Fellow caucus member Bob Delaney says that, as Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Health, Peterson would have received proprietary information on policy development. Removing the computers is simple due diligence, he says.
Delaney has known Peterson for 17 years and certainly didn’t see this as the last chapter to the Peterson family’s impeccable Liberal credentials.
As repugnant as they find the concept of changing parties while in office, Delaney and Upper don’t hold his decision against him personally, strange as that may seem. Upper believes Peterson was legitimately upset with the results of the Clarkson Air Shed Study that shows south Mississauga has some 15 per cent more pollution than other air sheds. The shadow of the pending approvals of Southdown Sithe plant, a new Lakeview plant and the Greenfield South project loom over his decision.
Delaney says: “If Tim looks in the mirror and doesn’t see a Liberal, then he’s better off without us and we’re better off without him.” My guess is Peterson is avoided mirrors altogether these days.
No one is naming names for the South Liberals yet, where former school board chair Peter Ferreira and environmental and heritage activist Stephen Wahl ran against Peterson for the nomination in 2004.
One potential runner is banking executive Charles Sousa, who has the credentials and community contacts the party is seeking, if not the political experience. The Gordon Graydon graduate has lived in the riding since he was five-years-old, more than four decades. He launched an assault on federal incumbent Paul Szabo that fell short in 2004 and jumped too late into the federal nomination last time in Mississauga-Erindale won by Omar Alghabra.

Had to shake my head the last couple of weekends while looking at the papers and seeing that the No. 1 bestselling CD in Canada is Neil Young’s Live at Massey Hall.
This rather unsettling nugget of information tells you several important things.
It confirms that young people have stopped buying CDs in favour of downloading, leaving the real purchasing power in the hands of bald, grey 50-something ex-folkies such as yours truly, where it rightfully belongs.
It tells you that a lot of music from 1971, when the album was recorded, can be just as invigorating now as it was then.
And it tells you Neil Young is a man with a prodigious talent, if not a prodigious voice.
The album is all acoustic, mostly guitar but with a few tunes where Neil works on the piano.
There is an energy here that plugs straight into your solar plexus. It’s a portrait of the artist as a young man, with attitude, at the height of his creative powers. In this era of multi-tracking, digitally-altered, pitch-fixing technical equipment, you forget the raw power of the basics: a guitar, a song that speaks directly to you and the ultimate emotive instrument, the human voice.
It is particularly interesting to hear many of Young’s songs, that we know so well in different contexts, recast in new moulds.
For instance, Cowgirl in the Sand and Down by the River, from Everybody Knows This is Nowhere retain their power, even without the scorching, elongated electric leads that first made them so beloved by all those air guitarists who used to be part of the Clearisil set and are now part of the Geritol set.
There are, however, some disconcerting elements to reliving past glories. You still expect David Crosby to pop up at you at the end of (Four Dead in) Ohio and ask how many more, how many more in that harrowing tone.
The lyrics have changed in A Man Needs A Maid. A man is now afraid (probably of housework), before he needs a maid.
On The Way Home is one of my favourite Buffalo Springfield songs, one of several Young’s tunes from that era that seem to be about about how fame changed him and others’ perceptions of him, in this case someone extremely close. Neil originally sang back-up with Steve Stills on this, the opening cut of Last Time Around, with the wonderful voice of Richie Furay on lead. That was a pop song and a great one.
This version, which again leads off the album, is much more intimate than the original. Still love that line, “I went insane, like a smoke ring day when the wind blows.”
A word about the vocals. On Tonight’s The Night, Young talked about his roadie Bruce Berry singing late at night in a “shaky voice that was real as the day was long.”
It’s a description that suits Young perfectly. He quavers so long on some notes that you feel as if his voice will snap.
It creates a tension that leaves you – yes — helpless... helpless... helpless.

There are a lot of anxious eyes on the site of the former Lakeview Generating Station plant these days, and many of them belong to birders.
While the political pundits are speculating on the prospect of a new gas-fired power plant being built at Lakeview, and trying to calculate the effect on the Oct. 10 provincial election, the plumage prognosticators are trying to figure out the chances that a pair of peregrine falcons may actually nest on the 80 ft. tower, with a 10-ft. extension housing a nesting box, that was built there last year.
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) built the box in an optimum location on the lakefront when the decision was made to remove the coal-fired generating station, where the falcons have been nesting for several years.
Mark Nash of the Canadian Peregrine Foundation (CPF), will be at Lakeview tomorrow to tour the property and see what kind of activity is going on.
The birds are definitely around, but Wayne Weller of OPG says they haven’t moved into the magnificent bird condo with the much-desired waterfront access. “They were back but they’ve gone,” Weller said earlier. It’s quite likely that all of the construction activity with the removal of the power plant has upset them. “Perhaps things will be different when they take down the building in June,” Weller said.
In order to use the tower — the first free-standing nesting structure of its kind ever in Canada according to Nash — the birds would have to break a few falcon rules, which is unlikely.
“They are hunter-predators and they love to dominate the airspace from the sky,”
says the CPF executive director. “When you encounter them in the wild, the first rule is that you never go behind them or above them.”
Since the superstructure of the remaining structures at Lakeview is still higher than the nesting box, the falcons are likely wary of setting up domicile anywhere below. The box was built as high as possible within acceptable safety limits, for just that reason.
One of the things Nash will check out tomorrow is whether the birds, who’ve been spotted fairly regularly in the vicinity, are nesting on the superstructure again.
It’s getting pretty late for finding a new nest. With wild birds, you never know what is likely to happen. They normally return to the site where they nested the previous year. If they don’t nest there this year, will they return in 2008?
There’s no way to know. If they don’t, another pair could always grab the listing.
While Lakeview is still in limbo, there is good news for the other Mississauga raptor nesting sites. At 1 Robert Speck Pkwy. in the city centre, at least three eggs have been spotted in the nest and a fourth is suspected. At St. Lawrence Cement in Clarkson, the home of the late great Nate, two eggs were confirmed March 29 and things seem to be going apace.
Nate, you’ll remember, was the CPF’s first certified superstar, bred in captivity, raised in Richmond Hill and famous for carrying a 30-gram transmitter that gave scientists a ton of valuable information about the migration and breeding and nesting patterns of young birds over several years.
Nate wintered in Colombia, eventually settled down at St. Lawrence Cement with Eva and raised two sets of chicks in 2003 and 2004. It was just about two years ago now that his body was discovered near the nesting site. Nate had been the victim of what was most likely an owl attack.
“You know, I’m still getting mail asking about Nate from Europe and Asia,” says an amazed Nash. “I’m just blown away by that.”
Maybe someday there will be another falcon superstar like Nate. If all goes well, he could be even a Lakeview lad.

Don Barber isn’t technically allowed to be in the Mississauga Civic Centre these days, but he’s hanging around down on the main floor nonetheless.
Or, at least, his image is.
A portrait of Barber by Mississauga artist Laurie Kallis, standing in Cawthra Bush, is one of the exhibits in a current show at the Art Gallery of Mississauga entitled, “If 905 Isn’t 416, Why Do we Have YYZ? Defining Mississauga.”
It’s an intriguing little show that reflects, through the eyes of artists who live and work here, what it is to be Mississaugan.
“Conflicted” would seem to be the answer. The works can generally be divided into two categories — those that stand in awe of the natural beauty of the place (a representation in fabric of a lakeshore sunset by Pat Hertzberg, a portrait of a Majestic Oak by Parveen Kaur, a digital print of gabion baskets along the lakefront called Alfred’s Point by Mark Boylan) and those that concentrate on how that beauty is being transformed with skyscrapers and super-highways and things we really haven’t come to grips with yet.
At least one piece combines the duality of those visions. Home, by Fausta Faccipante, features dark, tattered grainy old-time photographic images that appear to have been melded together. You view these through layers of shattered and overlapping glass that distort the images, as if we are seeing them through fading memory. In an accompanying note Faccipante says, “I have lived in Mississauga all my life before it became crazy with development. I would like the natural beauty of Mississauga preserved and cherished by every citizen and visitor of this place.”
Kallis, an off-and-on local resident since 1987, says the portrait of Barber titled Keeper of the Grove, was inspired by her admiration for his willingness to take on the causes that most people consider lost. The accompanying text says, in part, “Swimming against the stream of development-supportive policies, Don Barber is a community watchdog who speaks for this irreplaceable natural treasure of Mississauga.”
Kallis lives right beside Cawthra Bush and actually hauled the painting through the paths there on her way to catch the bus to take it up to city hall. She often bumps into Barber in the bush, surrounded by piles of garlic mustard he has hauled out by hand.
Like most of us, Kallis has problems with some of the things Barber does but she says, “his heart is in the right place.”
Barber cannot see the exhibition himself because of bail conditions stemming from an assault charge laid after an incident at the Civic Centre following a council meeting last June 7.
In the past few days and weeks, Barber has bombarded The News accusing the paper of misleading people when it mentions the assault charge because it does not provide an accompanying detailed description of the circumstances that prompted it.
Apparently, every time we mention the fact he was charged, we must also mention that: 1) Barber was at the council meeting to express concerns about families at the end of the airport runway living with noise; 2) he was not personally affected by that issue but was speaking for the public good; 3) council changed its long-standing policy on public question period that day without notice, which is what prompted the concerns expressed by him and fellow mayoralty candidate Roy Willis; 4) city council considered the request the residents made to address them; and 5) “ City council did not request Roy’s and my removal from council before the (security) guards acted for no apparent reason.”
Barber is accused of having assaulted one of the guards later, a charge which he firmly denies and which he intends to fiercely fight in court.
You can bet he will be well-prepared for that battle — armed with his own world view, an obsessive-compulsive attention to the minutiae of every issue raised and a tenacity that drives bureaucrats and politicians just a little wild.
But just when you want to dismiss him for his aggravating, over-the-top ways (like giving the mayor a bottle of sherry at council for her birthday or putting out tasteless campaign literature that claims she is dying), he turns up something valuable, like the threatened Jefferson salamanders in Cawthra Bush.
Painting a portrait of Don Barber is obviously not a simple thing. Defining him, like defining Mississauga, involves getting used to lots and lots of contradictions.
Barber’s image will continue to stare wistfully into the future at the Art Gallery of Mississauga until May 3.

Well, well, well. Unless you’re Tim Peterson or John Tory, of course.
Then it’s more like: Oh, Oh, Oh.
What happens now?
Last night, the executive members of the Mississauga South Progressive Conservative Association proved that democracy is alive and well when they unanimously voted to support, “an open, public and democratic” nomination in Mississauga South.
The decision, prompted by Effie Triantafilopolous, the spurned candidate who would not quit, is a slap in the face to Tory leader John Tory, who welcomed the riding’s Liberal MPP Tim Peterson to the party March 29 on the clear understanding that his defection was the prelude to a coronation.
Tory sent a strongly-worded meeting to last night’s meeting, not to mention a five-person delegation from party headquarters downtown, to try to convince the executive to roll over and play dead. Didn’t happen.
Tory said in his letter that after “sharing the wide range of views expressed over the past two weeks, particularly on the matter of the PC nomination and the process leading up to it, he (Peterson) and I have agreed to follow through with our original commitment.” In other words, stand aside all you faithful long-term members and you candidates who worked so hard to get ready to beat the said Mr. Peterson, and enjoy the solo selection process.
You can imagine how well that went down with people, such as Margaret Marland, Tory MPP for more than 18 years in the riding, who lost to Peterson by 234 votes in 2003 and spoke at last night’s meeting.
Marland had a 45-minute phone conversation with Tory after the original Peterson announcement to express her disappointment with the defection and its effect on real local Tories like Triantafilopoulos, Brad Butt and Zoran Churchin. “People just peddle themselves around the floor now, for their own personal advantage,” Marland said today. “They forget that it’s a huge privilege to serve. They are elected to serve their constituents and I don’t think that is up for grabs.” Amen.
The Mississauga South PCs have drawn a line in the sand here. If the local riding associations will not meekly roll over and accept the will of the leader to take in defectors, then maybe the flood of floor-crossers will slow to a trickle.
Brad Butt wasn’t at last night’s monthly executive meeting but he has a totally different take on matters. He says the resistance to accepting Peterson has been, “deliberately orchestrated by the only candidate of the three who is not willing to accept this decision (Triantafilopoulos). It’s really sour grapes on her part. The more she exacerbates this, the worse it is for John Tory, Tim Peterson and the Conservative Party in Mississauga South.”
Ouch. If there ever is an actual open Tory nomination held, those speeches are going to be dillies.
The final outcome of this dispute, of course, is anything but settled.
There are legal questions about the authority of the central party to impose a candidate on the local association, just as there are legal questions about the rights of the riding association to thwart the party and the party leader’s will.
Peterson undoubtedly had a few sleepless nights before he made his move. After last night, he may have a few more.
As Walter Scott said a very long time ago, “Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive.”
At this rate, the election campaign itself could prove an anti-climax.

Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen sauntered up onto the stage of Hugh’s Room in Toronto Wednesday night, two working guys armed with a mandolin and a guitar, and gave us an enthralling short history of country-rock music.
From the instant the duo kicked off Bury Me Under the Weepin’ Willow — a folk song imported from Scotland or Ireland probably two centuries ago and transformed into mountain music in the States by the high-lonesome harmonies the duo expertly replicated— those of us fortunate enough to be in attendance were off on a joyous journey.
Hillman is a seminal figure in music who always manages to get overlooked when they take the roll call of founding fathers.
An original member of The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, co-founder of Manassas with Stephen Stills, part of the Souther Hillman Furay (SHF) band, creator of numerous strong solo albums (Slippin’ Away and Clear Sailin’ are two I own and love), Hillman has worked with Pedersen for many years in a duo and as part of The Desert Rose Band.
There was a set list of 49 songs that Hillman plunked down on his stool. I would have said at the beginning that it was impossible for H-P, if I may be saucy enough to use their initials, to satisfy all those in the crowd even if they could have played that many tunes. That would mean satisfying the ones who wanted to hear all The Byrds’ greatest hits, the Gram Parsons-Burrito freaks (count me in) , and the newer fans who wanted to hear straighter country music.
By the end, because their mastery of their craft is so stunning and the interplay of their harmonies so entrancing, Hillman and Pedersen could have played the Back Street Boys greatest hits and we would all have cheered madly .
They gave us pre-Byrds songs such as Gene Clark’s Tried So Hard, early Byrds (Time Between from Younger Than Yesterday), Mr. Tambourine Man (in the version Hillman first heard as a demo by Bob Dylan and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott), Turn, Turn, Turn and Eight Miles High.
They gave us the definitive Burritos’ cut Sin City with Hillman’s voice aching Gram-style in all the right places. There were the Louvin Brothers (If I Could Only Win Your Heart which Pedersen had a big hit with singing backup to Emmylou Harris), Wilburn Brothers (Somebody’s Back in Town)‚ Munroe Brothers (The Old Crossroads), It Doesn’t Matter from Manassas, some country-pop in Danny O’Keefe’s Goodtime Charlie’s Got The Blues, and some Bakersfield soul music courtesy of Buck Owens (Together Again and The Streets of Bakersfield.)
They even paid homage to our own Ian Tyson, whose Great Speckled Bird album ranks right alongside The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo in the breakthrough country-rock sweepstakes.
It is a brave man who tries to elicit a Toronto audience to sing along in a lit room to anything other than Let’s Go Blue Jays, but Hillman conducted an impromptu hootenany on the chorus of Dylan’s You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere from Sweetheart. To the surprise of everyone, it generated a raucous Hallelujah chorus of “Ooo...eee, ride me highs.”
Then the self-described “sissies from California” complained about our weather and were gone, having provided ample evidence that folk and country and bluegrass and gospel and country-rock are in the end, meaningless labels. As Duke Ellington said once a long time ago, there are only two kinds of music: good and bad.
One label that could possibly describe Hillman and Pedersen is “roots musicians.” As ambiguous a term as that is, it at least gets across the idea that they know the traditions, they understand where they came from and they respect and honour their forebears.
And, oh yeah, they play and sing like hell.

Principals, vice-principals, teacher-librarians, and students come and go at Meadowvale Village Public School, but the real institution remains: volunteer Polly Beckett.
A 50-year resident of Mississauga, Beckett sent all of her own children, John, Bruce, Peter and Roxanne to the little school on Derry Rd. W. in the historic village. When her youngest was five, Polly started helping out a little more around the school.
A little help around the school has turned into 41 years of loving labour in the school library, and we don’t mean coming in for a couple of afternoons to dust bookshelves.
You know how they love to call the library everything-but-the-library these days? Well, Polly was a resource centre before anyone knew what a resource centre was.
When a book got damaged, she took it home and mended it carefully. When a class was doing a unit in some subject and the library lacked certain books, she rounded them up and brought them in.
Teacher-librarian Joanne Kostiuk said Monday that teachers all know and love Polly’s “collection” as she called it. “She is the one to pull books for a unit of study on magnets or to bring material from home to support almost any program. This generally means a bag filled with anything from cardboard boxes to dictionaries; newspaper articles to fly swatters; tiny red envelopes for Chinese New Year or lights for an official school opening.”
She’s brought in tools, had husband Tommy make door stops, and even managed to come up with stuffed animals when required.
Her own grandchildren, Devon and Paulina, had their child care program in the Meadowvale Village program with their Nana.
Not much fazes our Polly, except maybe, being the centre of attention.
She accepted her award of recognition from the Peel District School Board as one of its champion volunteers in 2003 shortly after she suffered two broken arms in a fall. When the school had a flood in 2005, she was on hand to help with all the hard slogging.
But when they named the library in the brand new Meadowvale Village Public School (the fourth school in its 171-year history) in her honour today, Beckett was a very reluctant recipient.
Her daughter Roxanne says her mother is just “very humble in her accomplishments. She is a core part of this school. If there is anything, anytime to do in this library or this school, she is here without hesitation.”
The 82-year-old, “loves to keep involved with this community and to keep up to date. And she loves the interaction with the children,” said her only daughter.
In an interview, Kostiuk said some of the teachers were worried that Polly was so attached to the old library and the old school that the transition to the new building would be problematic. “ But they needn’t have worried. She was ready to dig right in like she always does,” said Kostiuk. “Sure there were some regrets about some of the things that you leave behind, but she moves forward.” As for the special spirit that the dedicated volunteer brings, “we’ve captured that and brought it along with us here,” laughs the teacher-librarian.
And what does Polly have to say on the subject? As little as possible.
A gentle spirit with one of those smiles that seems to be lit from a secret power within, Beckett said mockingly, “I’m a volunteer. I don’t want all this adulation.”
She would have much preferred this morning to be straightening the shelves while a teacher read a story to a bunch of six-year-olds sprawled on the new carpets of the library than to be the subject of a standing ovation in the brand new gym.
Asked about her new superstar status, Polly responds with a joke: “I’m expecting much more respect from the administration and the teachers.”
It really isn’t too difficult to figure out what makes Polly run. She loves books and she loves children. “When I come in every morning I know I’m needed. I just want to help out.”
Help she has, for more than 40 years.
These days, it seems everyone has a motivation for volunteering: so it will look good on a resumé or so that it will garner positive media coverage.
Polly Beckett just wants to help out, and she’d rather not have any fuss about it, thank you very kindly.
If you’re looking for a volunteer for glory, you’ve clearly come to the wrong person.

As anyone who watches City council in action for any length of time can tell you, no one can scramble to the moral high ground faster and unleash more rapid-fire similes and metaphors of outrageous rectitude than Nando the Eloquent.
The Ward 7 councillor was close to apoplectic last fall during the municipal election campaign when one of his opponents, Shane McNeil, made several statements on his election website which were less than accurate.
Councillor Iannicca came into The News’ offices one Friday afternoon during the campaign and vowed that, no matter what the cost or the likely outcome, he would sue McNeil for the errors about how much City councillors earned, how much of a raise they had given themselves, etc. His name was more important than any lawyer’s bill and the protection of his reputation was beyond price.
McNeil subsequently removed some of the inaccuracies from his website, toned down others and put a disclaimer on the bottom saying the information was true as far as he was able to ascertain. He also pointed out that Iannicca’s outrage may have stemmed more from a fact that McNeil did get right: that Nando’s brother Sandro had emailed McNeil using a false name to defend the councillor’s record and set the record straight about a number of the challenger’s accusations.
The councillor and his challenger could not even agree on whether a suit was actually launched.
The councillor insisted he had served McNeil a notice of action under the Libel and Slander Act while McNeil said he was served no formal papers. He accused Iannicca of trying to shut him up with threats of a law suit he had no intention to follow through with.
Well, as might have been predicted, after further review, Councillor Iannicca has decided not to pursue the action. His good name and his reputation may have been sullied but it is not worth $25-$50,00 to set the record straight, he said recently.
“My lawyer says on a scale of 1 to 10, my case is an 11. But I am not going to empty my children’s education fund for the nonsense people say in the campaign.” Iannicca says the record has already been set straight in the media and he is satisfied with that.
Moral of the story: be wary of little boys who cry “Wolf, Wolf” and elected officials who cry, “Lawyer, Lawyer.”
* * *
One of the charges against mayoralty candidate Donald Barber stemming from an incident following a City council meeting last June 7 has been dropped.
Barber no longer faces a charge of disturbing the peace. He still faces two charges in connection with an alleged assault on a City Hall security guard, allegations he fiercely denies.
The environmental activist claims the charges were trumped up so that bail conditions could be imposed that banned him from attending City Hall, and “attending within 200 metres of the mayor or councillors” during the election campaign.
Barber claims the dropping of the charge may actually hurt his case. Since tapes of the council meeting show there was no disturbance and that he left council chambers quietly after a lengthy discussion about why the City was changing its long-standing policy on citizens asking questions from the floor, it would have actually been beneficial to him had the charge remained in place, he believes.
He has already fired one publicly-funded lawyer and is having a difficult time finding another.
Laying a private charge against the security guard was a lot more difficult than he imagined. He is now trying to raise funds for his own legal defence fund.
His web site calls the legal action against him “a political trial.”
If he can’t find a lawyer and he defends himself, which is looking more and more likely, Barber’s suggestion that the action is political will certainly become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Mark Nash will never forget the time he went to an inner-city Toronto school to do a presentation to students on peregrine falcons, which are his passion.
The driving force behind the Canadian Peregrine Foundation brought along one of the raptors which make the school visits so special.
The students were enthralled with the magnificent bird. However, at the end of his talk, a young student asked Nash a question that absolutely perplexed him. “The next time you come,” the little girl asked, “can you bring a cow please?”
Nash thought it was a joke until the principal explained later that the little girl, from a single-parent family, had never been out of the city and had never seen a real, live cow.
That’s when the critical importance of engaging the public and students in the fight to save the peregrine falcon really struck home to Nash.
It looks like he and all the falcon lovers old and new, may have the fight of their lives on their hands if the American federal government proceeds with proposed legislation that could badly damage the recovery of the birds in Ontario.
When DDT virtually wiped out the species and governments realized they had a crisis on their hands many years ago, they turned to an unlikely source for help, the falconers who have passed down the tricks of breeding and training the birds for centuries. In order to ensure survival of the species, officials seized birds that were legally owned by falconers, with little or no compensation, to be used in the recovery programs that were launched.
Those programs, including the one in Ontario which has seen broods of falcon chicks raised at the Mississauga Executive Centre, St. Lawrence Cement and Lakeview Generating Station in Mississauga, have made such good progress that the Ontario government recently “down-listed” the falcon from an endangered to a threatened species.
If American federal authorities get their way (and wildlife departments in many affected northern states such as new York, Ohio and Michigan are fiercely opposed to the legislation), those birds will face a new hazard on their annual migration south to places like Costa Rica. In a long-promised payback to the falconers who lost their birds, the U.S. Wildlife Service wants to allow them to sit in wait along well-known migratory routes and capture the birds for training in captivity.
Nash would have no problem with that principle except for one crucial fact: the population of birds in Ontario is simply not well-enough recovered to withstand the losses.
“While there are about 70 territorial areas occupied in Ontraio, there are still only about 140 birds here,” he notes. The effects of West Nile, avian flu and fire retardants called PBDEs which are showing up in alarming concentrations are still not known. Any one of those problems could set the recovery program back very quickly.
American authorities have said that any birds coming from Canada, which have been banded as part of recovery programs here, will be released.
The problem with that is that 80 per cent of the Ontario falcons are located in an area north of Thunder Bay. They nest on cliff faces that are inaccessible by anything other than helicopters. So those birds can’t be banded.
Now, because of the downlisting and the ongoing budget restrictions that have left them woefully short of money and staff, the Ontario Natural Resources Ministry is saying it may not do its traditional annual banding of the “urban’ bird populations, the ones we can get at.
Nash can hardly believe it. “You can’t tell me that there isn’t enough money to put a 29 cent band on a bird” that could save its life, he says.
The Foundation is also seeking a corporate or individual sponsor for a web cam for the site on Executive Centre site on Robert Speck Pkwy. That’s not just because it makes for great computer-viewing, but for much more important reasons.
With a camera in operation, the exact day of hatching can be determined and the ideal time for banding, which is a window of just 9-10 days, can be set.
It is horrible to think that the hatchlings from Mississauga would end up being nabbed on their first flight south for want of a band. Despite his misgivings, Nash “remains hopeful that the provincial authorities will continue to protect our Canadian wildlife resources.”
At least some of our Mississauga birds will be exempt from trapping in the U.S., by dint of their odd behaviour.
Although their young migrate south, many of the urban-raised falcons including those in Mississauga and Toronto, stay here all winter. They can be seen flitting through the city centre all year round. The experts aren’t sure why they stay all year round.
Maybe they read the papers.

Well, the wait is over.
We were all wondering what the “special announcement” would be to honour Mayor Hazel McCallion at the “international tribute” (lots of Lexuses and Porsches driven by representatives of foreign consuls in the parking lot) put on by the Mississauga Board of Trade last Friday night.
The good news is that we did not get a life-sized statue of the mayor as predicted by the mayor’s not-good-friend Donald Barber. Problem with that is that they would have to put it on the top of the clock tower before anyone would notice it.
The better news is that the mayor is being honoured with the designation of a rose in her name. She’ll follow in the floral footsteps of people such as Silken Laumann, who has already has a miniature rose named for her.
Tried to check out the hybridization process for the McCallion rose to establish its parentage but Hortico Inc. in Waterdown, which will be distributing it this spring, is not releasing any more information at the moment. Wonder if you can file a Freedom of Information application on a hybridization process?
A colourful little card handed out at the dinner, which included three photos, gave us some hints about the flower.
It is a medium-sized pink-white bloom, with some yellow tinges, and is mildly scented on semi-glossy foliage. It is likely a floribunda, since it is described as an all-season bloomer.
We are assured that, since it is in the mayor’s likeness, it is vigorous, versatile and can be grown around most of the world.
The whole process got me thinking what characteristics you might want to include if you were trying to breed the perfect Hazel Rose.
First of all, I would not name it for the mayor at all. There is a famous cultivar called a Shropshire Lad, so why not The Gaspé Gal or maybe even The Queen of Streetsville?
The rose would have to be extremely hardy, not to mention tough, along the lines of the Explorer series already developed in Canada. It should be down to earth too, a rambler or a shrub rose, something that scrambles all over, implants its tentacles everywhere and won’t let go.
And yes, there must be thorns. Lots and lots of thorns to honour our lacerating leader.
Looked through an excellent, comprehensive web site at www.rose-roses.com to seek out potential crosses based on names and/or characteristics.
But then a little blurb on the front page stopped me dead in my tracks and made me realize that there is no rose that could really honour Her Warship.
There, in red type and underlined for emphasis are the words that spell out why we cannot horticulturally replicate our mayor.
“There are no Blue and Black Roses.”
Say what?
Forget it then. If we can’t have a black AND blue rose to honour our Hazel and her trademark style, then there’s simply no (prickly) point.
• • •
Guess who is being crowned tonight as the Progressive Conservative provincial candidate in the riding of Brampton-Springdale?
Former Peel Police Chief Noel Catney, who retired at the end of 2005 after 35 years on the job. Interesting that so many ex-police chiefs (Julian Fantino comes to mind) are so infatuated by politics.
First thing Catney needs to do? Develop a better public speaking style and drop the sentimental sap that he used to trot out regularly at every public function.

Now that there seems to be a hiatus in the Mexican stand-off in provincial politics in southern Mississauga, a little reflection on the convoluted situation might be in order.
Tim Peterson has disengaged himself from the Liberals, is now an independent and will join the Conservative caucus as soon as the current sitting of the Legislature concludes.
He and Tory Leader John Tory (say that three times fast) were expecting the nice former candidates in the riding who have been slugging their guts for the past few months in hopes of beating ... Tim Peterson ... to politely fold their tents and go home.
Brad Butt and Zoran Churchin reluctantly agreed to do so but Effie Triantafilopoulos, a long-time Conservative who has experience as chief of staff in federal Cabinet ministers, executive director of the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association and CEO of Save The Children Canada until last Sept., wasn’t quite so quick to genuflect to the (former) enemy.
The independent-minded executive committee of Mississauga South obviously also found it distasteful to be made a pawn in the floor-crossing game that is spreading like a bad bacteria (PC Difficile?) in Canadian politics.
Which leaves Mr. Tory with a few little problems. At the moment, he really can’t force Mr. Peterson down the throats of the local executive.
In a letter to the executive which it summarily ignored, Tory said, “Our party has a proud tradition of allowing sitting Progressive Conservative MPPs to stand uncontested in their riding for our Party’s nomination. This privilege recognizes the broader and important role that our caucus members play in assisting our other ridings and nominated candidates with their election readiness efforts and to build our party’s organization.”
Because the leader and the member decided to have Peterson sit as an independent first, to minimize the floor-crossing fuss, he is not yet a member of the caucus and, at the moment, not entitled to the proud tradition accorded sitting members.
Whether he is entitled after he joins the caucus is another interesting question. The Tory rules apparently just say that a member gets a walkover nomination. Is a guy who got elected for your opponents a Conservative member at all?
Tory can probably force the local executive to call a nomination meeting with his chosen candidate, but he risks alienating even more of the members than he already has. It is already likely that many long-time Tories will sit this one out in the South rather than vote for the guy who beat Margaret Marland.
If Tory should have a sudden fit of conscience and decide to hold a “fair, open and democratic nomination” as the riding executive has requested, he has another, bigger problem. How can Peterson possibly win such a contest?
The other three candidates have sold hundreds of memberships while Peterson has sold none. Triantafilopoulos has reportedly sold between 700-1200 memberships herself.
Even if all new memberships sold were set aside and the process was started over again, how many warm bodies could Peterson possibly sign up given his last-second, election-bed conversion to the Tory cause?
Peterson, of course, agreed to change parties on the assumption he would be ceded the nomination.
So Tory must either ignore the will of the leaders of the Mississauga South riding and risk alienating those who will run the campaign he hopes to win there or break his commitment to Peterson. Not exactly a great choice, but critics ill no doubt say it is a mess he largely created himself.
Does it occur to anyone else that, if we did the logical thing in a so-called democracy, and had a rule which required that every nomination for every party must be open, we would be a lot farther ahead? Parties would not have to protect weak incumbents. Strong ones would have little difficulty keeping their right to run, likely being acclaimed.
The best benefit? You would almost never see people cross the floor if they had no guarantee they would be the candidate for their new party in the next election.

If Harmeet and Christel Walia don’t make it in the pizza business, it will not be for lack of trying, nor lack of innovation.
You have to admire their gumption.
The 31-year-olds met in Alabama when Christel was at bible college. Harmeet grew up in the GTA and when the two got married and came back here, they wanted to pursue their dream of providing foster care.
They run a foster home for Peel’s Children Centre in the Mavis-Queensway area. As if that isn’t enough to keep them busy, they decided to jump into the pizza business a couple of years ago, buying a fading pizzeria in an out-of-the-way plaza on the South Service Rd. at Vanier Dr.
It’s that odd plaza that was hidden behind a wall for many years. Part of the wall has now been removed but it is still a commercial enterprise that appears to have turned its back on the world.
The Walias set up shop as Peroni’s Pizzeria. Christel already knew the business from slugging away in a pizza parlour in Oakville when she first came to Canada.
So, how to put a little pizza joint on the big map?
Well, first the Walias got themselves on Restaurant Makeover on The Food Network. It was nine days of incredible stress, recalls Christel with a laugh as she sits in front of a wall of tomato sauce cans that were part of the décor the show provided – but worth it. The show is still running and bringing in curious customers.
Now Christel has come up with a new wrinkle that is good news for the growing numbers of people who suffer from some form of celiac disease, a form of gluten intolerance that means many people can’t eat bread products.
Peroni’s has become the first pizzeria in Mississauga to make its product with organic spelt crust. Spelt is an ancient grain (three times as expensive as wheat) that is allowing many folks to eat pizza for the first time in years.
One of them is Monica Nickle, who can walk to Peroni’s from her home in Lorne Park. In a short mid-afternoon break from her seven-month-old twins, Nickle explained that she used to drive to Toronto to get pizza on spelt crust, which was often dry and tasteless.
When her husband came home with spelt pizza the first night Peroni’s made it available, Nickle couldn’t believe her taste buds. “It was the best pizza I’d had since I moved to Toronto,” she enthused.
The secret, according to Christel is a mistake she made when she added too much water to the light spelt flour, and it came out a whole lot tastier.
Christel has been interested in healthy eating for quite a while, given her own stomach issues, which she endured for many years. A book called Eat Right For Your (Blood) Type by Dr. Peter D’Adamo got her own system straightened out and now she wants to do the same for others. “We want to produce something that people can enjoy eating and that will go through their system in peace,” she laughs.
Pizza isn’t exactly health food but, “just because it’s pizza, it doesn’t mean it’s not healthy.” She’s even thinking of providing soy cheese in future.
The quality of the product — and the service — is at the basis of every retail success, argues Walia. That’s why Peroni’s uses home-made dough, high quality Stanislaus tomato sauce, has a slightly higher cost and why it has a limited delivery area (Winston Churchill- Lake Ontario-Hurontario St.-Dundas St.) to get it there hot and fast.
And, oh yeah, that woman at your door with the pizza boxes is as likely as not to be Christel herself.
For more information visit www.peronispizzeria.com. or call 905-891-0022.

How is this for scary stuff?
“The once-renowned Ontario Ministries of Environment and
Natural Resources have been allowed to atrophy and deteriorate such that:
• we no longer know or are capable of knowing the state or the health of Ontario’s natural environment
• we are not in a position to anticipate and prevent imminent environmental
impairment.
• we are not keeping pace in developing laws and procedures sufficient to protect
our natural heritage from degradation.
• where we have such laws we are not inspecting and confirming that they are
complied with – in fact, in some cases we know and acknowledge that there is
substantial non-compliance.”
Those are the words of Ontario Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller who warned, in releasing a special report in Sudbury yesterday, that the core functions of the two key ministries that deal with the environment are being “starved” of funding.
While politicians gab and gab about what standards should be set for air and water emissions, those debates turn out to be a lot of acid gas where the rubber hits the road.
In a classic example that Miller cited yesterday, wildlife conservation officers who are supposed to be monitoring struggling species in northern Ontario can’t always go out into the field because their transportation budgets have been slashed so deeply. Volunteer groups are holding bake sales to help raise their gas money. Egads!
If you don’t think this, affects Mississauga, you’re wrong. The long-awaited Clarkson Air Shed Study took a lot longer to produce than expected, in part because it was being done by overworked staff. Talk to Dave Taylor at Riverwood about his book on black bears and hear him extol the virtues of ministry staff, who spend their own time on weekends, crawling into bear caves to tag animals. Witness the problems finding a ministry biologist to band peregrine falcon chicks in our two thriving urban nests here.
Budget restraint is one thing. Budget suffocation is another. In 2006, the MOE’s budget was actually lower than it was in 1992-93.
While the health budget continues to explode, the budget for two ministries, which could mitigate pollution problems through proper enforcement of emissions that trigger so much illness, languish at a combined one per cent of the total provincial budget.
How are we going to make the world green if we aren’t even willing to pay for the basic tools to monitor what’s going on in our own backyard?
• • •
Tim Peterson isn’t the only former Liberal who wanted to join the Mississauga South Progressive Conservative Association. When the candidate race between real Tories was first heating up, former Mississauga-Erindale MP and now Ward 6 Councillor Carolyn Parrish applied to join, so she could vote for Brad Butt at the nomination meeting.
Parrish said she thought it was finally Butt’s time to get himself elected after numerous tries.
The Association politely wrote back to Parrish and explained that, in light of her public threat to have City politicians run in provincial ridings to put the pooling issue on the public radar, maybe her joining the Tories wasn’t such a great idea after all. They probably had visions of Bush-stompings, or variations on the theme, dancing in their heads.
Parrish is not exactly fazed by the rejection. “I’ve been kicked out of better places,” she joked in reference to former Prime Minister’s Martin’s action to boot her from the federal Liberal caucus at the end of her 13-year career in Ottawa.
Interestingly enough, she may now end up supporting a Liberal in Mississauga South, since her friend Charles Sousa suddenly has a chance to run in the riding because of Peterson’s defection to the Tories.

Angela Shaw and Julie Curitti don’t look like the types to start a food fight.
But, in their own quiet way, they have initiated a scrap that could end up reverberating in the halls of Queen’s Park and in every single long-term care home in every single municipality in Ontario.
Angela and Julie are old friends who first got to know each other 35 years ago when they were students at the Credit Valley School of Nursing (now Bronte College) located just south of Trillium Health Centre.
When Julie’s parents and Angela’s mother-in-law went into the Cawthra Gardens long-term care home on Lolita Gardens, the friends were asked to become co-chairs of the family council, a group of advisors to the administration who represent the residents and the community.
Like any responsible members, the RNs who both have full-time jobs, set about educating themselves about how long-term care works.
When they were being given a tour of the kitchen at Cawthra Gardens by the dietician, they asked about how the allowance for food costs works in senior homes.
The allocation – a formula of $5.46 per resident per day — absolutely stunned them. “Our mouths just dropped,” said Shaw at her long-time Erin Mills home this week.
That was the start of a journey of discovery, education and now — advocacy — that has filled every nook and cranny of what used to be their free time.
On Angela’s dining room table are piles of petitions, some 8,000 signatures collected in just three weeks, after they met with Mississauga East MPP Peter Fonseca and he asked them to prepare something he could present at Queen’s Park.
The pair have been regulars at masses at Julie’s church, St. Christopher’s on Clarkson Rd. N., for the past few weeks. They have been to the convention of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, where they quickly got the endorsement from its 23,000 members (the Peel chapter sponsored the motion) to up the “Raw Food Cost” allowance to $6.75-a-day now, as recommended by the Dieticians of Canada and 25 cents more this fall.
Everywhere they have gone, the reaction has been the same. When people hear that number, $5.46 per senior per day, which includes three meals (with two choices at each one), three snacks and all the beverages, they recoil in disbelief. Then they ask where they can sign up.
“It’s taken on a life of its own,” says Julie of the little campaign that snowballed. They fold out a map on the dining room table. Outlines in yellow highlighter are all the municipalities where people have supported their effort. Most of the map is covered.
“Twenty five to 60 per cent of seniors are at moderate to high nutritional-risk,” says Julie, a Lorne Park resident. “Nutrition is even more important for seniors because they are not able to fight off illness as well.”
Angela and Julie don’t want to use inflammatory language to get their point across. They even point out that the Liberals increased the allowance during their term of office. The problem is, it is just not enough.
They characterize their campaign as more about health teaching than protest.
Whatever it is, it is working. All kinds of people are approaching them to sign on.
Linda Dietrich, regional executive director of Dieticians of Canada, says the Mississauga women’s home-made campaign is gaining momentum across the Province. It is likely to have more traction with the politicians than all the papers and recommendation and studies that her group has submitted over the years to support the same cause, says Dietrich.
“People are shocked by that number ($5.46-a-day) and they should be shocked,” she says. “This is a public campaign. These are the daughters of residents. We’re thrilled they are doing this.”
Can two courteous, but quietly angry nurses make the Ontario government do something it knows it should do? We can only hope.
Whether they are successful or not, Angela and Julie have promised to make the voices of seniors’ and their concerned children heard, and you can be positively certain they are going to do that.
A little daunted and surprised by how deeply they have touched the public nerve on the issue, Angela says, “we promised we’d take very good care of all of these voices, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

Judging by the enthusiastic reception that Elizabeth May received last night during the Sierra Club Peel session at Jack Brown’s Education Centre, it’s a lot easier being green these days, Kermit the Frog’s opinion notwithstanding.
You have to think that The Green Party will get a lot more consideration from voters this time around, especially if the voluble May gets an opportunity to debate the other leaders on the national stage.
She has a nice touch with the numbers without being overwhelming, making it plain that our climate change policies must be based on science – real science that is — not the political brand.
Most of all she struck the right tone. Yes, the prospects of rising sea-levels and flagging gulf streams and tundra slushies and methane bombs released from beneath the polar ice are scary as hell. But there are lots of things that can be done by rational people to start turning it around, starting with honouring international treaties that force everyone to be part of the solution.
Judging by opinion polls, it looks like the public is way ahead of politicians on this issue, which can only be to the advantage of the Greens. They are starting to look like a haven for voters who are: a) sick of the mainline menu and b) anxious to prove that the environment really should be the number 1 priority for everyone who shares the planet.
• • •
Donald Barber was in court again yesterday, pursuing a private charge against the security guard who was involved in the incident at City Hall last June 7 that led to the two assault charges he faces in a trial scheduled for November. The counter-charges that Barber has filed of assault, public mischief and making false statements, among others, will now be re-filed because of administrative problems with their wording.
While in the private court session, Barber was handed a CD containing the 9-1-1 calls made June 7 from City Hall to police. Even though he had not heard the tapes, Barber was happy with the description accompanying one call: “Male had been causing problems in the council chamber.” He says that a tape of the council session which he is still trying to get through the courts will prove he was not causing any disturbance (that charge has already been withdrawn) and that the security guards were harrassing him because of his ongoing criticism of the McCallion regime. The search for a free lawyer continues.
• • •
A Mississauga South update. Dave Duncan of the Conservative Association, one of the 25 members who have petitioned for a general meeting to show the will of the association for an open nomination, says that there is nothing in the party nomination rules that ensures an incumbent an automatic nomination. The rule states that, “a riding association which has a sitting PC MPP... is not required to conduct a candidate search.” That seems to suggest they could have one if they wanted.
The next paragraph states that, “a riding association which does not have a sitting PC MP seeking the nomination shall strike a candidate search committee.” Since we are told that Tim Peterson is an independent at the moment and the riding doesn’t have a sitting PC MPP, doesn’t that mean a search committee should be struck? How about candidates like... say ... Brad Butt, Zoran Churchin and Effie Triantafilopoulos?
One self-described “dyed-in-the-wool” Conservative, who also signed the call for an open nomination, is 76-year-old John Hart, a former Ward 2 public school trustee. “He’s not our sitting member,” says Hart of Peterson. He calls the party’s plans to install Peterson over three candidates who’ve been running since October, “ridiculous.”
Hart is afraid that he will lose his right to vote Tory once again. He was never a supporter of Margaret Marland, to put it politely, so he has handed in his ballot unmarked for the past five elections.
Meanwhile, over on the Liberal side, Charles Sousa appears to be the annointed one, although there are apparently three other prospective candidates. Sousa, the senior banker who is a lifelong riding resident, officially confirmed his candidacy this week, complete with a quote from past president Tanya Zaritzky.
It states, “I am overjoyed that Charles is seeking the nomination. He is exactly the candidate we need to win in October. Anyone who meets Charles is impressed by his integrity, his intellegience and his compassion. He is a good man and a strong leader, which is why so many people from the riding association have already expressed their support of Charles as our candidate.”
One other aberration. Apparently Tim Peterson’s application to renew his family membership in the Liberal association arrived the day before he made the announcement that he would be switching parties. Guess somebody really knows how to keep a secret in that family.

The next time somebody asks you what you can possibly do with a university degree in philosophy, think of Michael Raynor.
Born in Wasaga Beach, Raynor and his Mum, who was the first female nurse ever to work underground in Canada in the mines of Thompson Man., moved to Mississauga in 1984.
The young man went to high school at Appleby College in Oakville where he and the school team won the national debating championships in Grade 12. He went to Harvard for a degree in philosophy.
Raynor is now one of the young lions of strategic business planning in North America and around the world. His new book, called The Strategy Paradox, is really starting to gain some momentum, although business books are notoriously slow starters. Sitting in his Erin Mills home recently, he talked about how he got his start.
“I was working the night shift at the old Molson Brewery as a summer student. On my breaks, I used to read the want-ads.” One of those ads caught his eye — for a company in Mississauga called Tennessee Associates International, a consulting firm that did advanced statistical training for national corporations.
Its managing director was Phil Green, who would later found the local cycling advisory committee and become a two-time federal PC candidate here.
Green could tell Raynor was razor-sharp intellectually when he interviewed him but he hired him because there was something truly insightful about how he looked at things.
“Lots of people study business and it tends to create conformist thinking,” says Green. “I am a great believer in bringing the perspective of one discipline into another. We all become victims of our own education.”
Raynor had the immediate ability to pick up on the “logical and illogical” of the way things were done, remembers Green. That’s a trait that would come in handy in his future life in developing business strategies.
With his interests and his aptitude, Raynor was almost, by default, headed for law school, until the Tennessee experience in southern Mississauga (the office was in Port Credit) let him escape that fate, a fate he really didn’t want to face.
He worked at Tennessee for a while, picked up his MBA from the University of Western Ontario. Then he got his Ph.D. from Harvard Business School.
If there were a top 10 hit-maker list for business brains, Raynor would now be the guy with the bullet beside his name. The rising star with Deloitte Consulting LLP flies around the globe giving keynote speeches to major international conferences about his ideas. For instance, he’ll be talking to the leaders of the world’s biggest newspaper chains about the effects of the Internet on their business at an event in South Africa soon.
The Strategy Paradox, which has received excellent notices, builds on the thesis he completed at Harvard. Drawing from notable cases histories, such as that of Sony Betamax, Raynor shows how you can do everything right in business and still be wrong, if the market changes on you at the critical time.
The Mississauga father of two provides a tool box for avoiding all of those nasty surprises the future can bring, and urges senior managers to develop a variety of constantly evolving strategic options for potential use.
“Taking philosophy was helpful to me in just about every way,” says the 39-year-old. “It taught me to think critically and to construct a simple argument clearly, and in a compelling way.”
His first “solo CD,” as he jokingly refers to the book, was not an easy process. “It’s like one of my favourite quotes, from Kark Weick: ‘How do I know what I think until I see what I say?’” Writing it all down gave him the opportunity to really start leaning what he thought.
He had the ideas all straight in his head but they would not organize themselves on paper for the longest time. “I had mountains of material and no thread to the argument,” he says.
So how did this big dilemma get resolved?
“I’m almost embarrassed to explain this,” says the author, who is already working on his next book. “I woke up at 4 a.m. one night and I had dreamed the table of contents.”
Kind of comforting, isn’t it? This hard-headed business guru solved his writer’s block with a little subliminal help from the netherworld.
Published by Doubleday, The Strategy Paradox has already sold out its first printing and is well on its way, for a business book, to becoming a best seller.