In The Moment.
Perfect name for a jazz CD, don't you think?
It personifies spontaneity and improvisation. Now it also stands for quality and class.
In The Moment is the name of a CD released last year by Mississauga jazz bassist Pat Collins. It's a beauty that contains searching, honest music filled with harmonic shifts and a thing that seems to have gone out of style in too many sub-genres of jazz, melody.
The CD is so good that it's just been nominated as best album of the year for the National Jazz Awards (www.nationaljazzawards.com).
Collins, who has lived in Mississauga for about 15 years, is also nominated as bassist of the year.
Maybe the reason that this music is so compelling is that it's been welling up in Collins for so very long. The full-time faculty member at Mohawk College (labour disputes aside) has played on about 50 albums by his count and has performed with the likes of Diana Krall, Dizzy Gillespie, Tal Farlow, Joe Henderson, Shirley Eikhard, Oliver Jones, Jimmy Cobb, Lee Konitz, Peter Appleyard, Rob McConnell etc. In other words, lots of players of the first rank.
He's the regular bassist of choice for Denzal Sinclaire, whom Collins calls, "the best singer in the world."
In an interview at his Levi Creek home, Collins said that writing started coming naturally to him when he stopped trying to force it.
"I was trying to write something I wasn't necessarily hearing. I tried to be true to myself and things have worked out better since then," he said.
Of course, having saxophonist Mike Murley, drummer Barry Elmes and guitarist Reg Schwager in the band doesn't hurt the product. The nine tunes he penned for the CD came out differently than he envisioned, but he's more than pleased with the results.
There are numerous influences on Collins' playing, including, rather surprisingly, a guitar player.
"Ed Bickert really influenced the way I play," said Collins. "Everything he plays is musical. The amazing thing about Ed (who's no longer playing unfortunately) is that in every solo, he would surprise you with something. He would always pull something different on you and that's what improvising is all about."
Among his bass heroes are the late Ray Brown, with whom Collins got to spend time and play golf a couple of times.
"It's neat when you get to meet your heroes and they turn out to be nice people," he said.
One of his idols is Paul Chambers, the bassist who died far too early after seminal work with Miles Davis and John Coltrane. The two share initials as well as a passion for the instrument.
"If you were to take his solos and play them on another instrument, they would still sound great," said Collins. "He transcended the bass in terms of melodic concept. He shaped the way bass players have played for the last 60 years."
Collins laughs when he's asked about the tremendous stable of jazz bassists in Toronto, including his fellow Mississaugan Kieran Overs, the man he once replaced in Moe Koffman's orchestra.
"There are too many good ones," he said. "We all know each other and we all get along really well, and we all play differently. I love going out and hearing the other guys play."
Of course, you can't talk to a Mississauga jazz guy and not ask about Oscar.
It turns out that, growing up in B.C. with the great saxophonist Phil Dwyer (they've known each other since they were 4), the pair were fascinated with Peterson.
"We would put on Oscar records, get excited about them and try to figure out what was going on," said Collins.
In 1997, a long way from Mississauga where they were both living, Collins got his chance to play with the good doctor. Oscar needed a bassist on short notice for a concert in Chicago and someone at York University, where Peterson was once chancellor, recommended Collins.
"That's the most nervous I've ever been in my life," recalls the bassist," whose wife Sherri heads the music department at the Cawthra Park School of the Arts. "My knees were literally shaking at the beginning of that concert. But I was fine after playing the first few bars."
Peterson "was a complete gentleman" who sent flowers to Sherri, who was pregnant at the time and then sent a gift of baby clothes when the couple's son Matthew was born. There are songs on the album for Matthew, who suggested his Dad write a song called Trigalory and for son Daniel, 7. His song is called Siwash, because he's into whales.
One of the problems for jazz musicians is the shrinking opportunities to play, as clubs like the Top of the Senator meet their demise.
So give yourself a treat and go see Collins and his quartet play Monday, March 27 at the Montreal Bistro beginning at 9 p.m.

Unlike everyone else in my family, I have not read Lord of the Rings. (Cries of 'Shame, Shame!' to be supplied here).
Not only have I not read it once, I have not read it many, many times.
This is to provide balance to my wife and children who have continually immersed themselves in the world of Middle Earth.
Despite my father's addiction to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which was always on the coffee table in our house beside Scientific American when we were growing up, I never got the fantasy bug.
So it was with some trepidation that I accompanied my wife, a connoisseur of all things Tolkien and Rowling, to the stage version of the epic at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto Saturday night.
NOTE TO SELF: Each time you make your annual trip to the metropolis to the east, add another 10 minutes of travel time.
Despite leaving 50 minutes before curtain, we didn't make it. This only happens, of course, when you have good seats dead centre in the long, long rows in the front.
The production was a spectacle of the first order, well-acted, beautifully staged and lovingly mounted.
Lots of surprises, the most exciting of which was the literal emergence of a horrid Balrog to take up the entire stage at the end of the first act and blow black gunk at the paying customers.
Michael Therriault, whom I'd seen in a slightly different role as Leo Bloom in Mel Brooks' The Producers in my last trip to Toronto, was deliciously obsequious as Gollum. No matter what else was happening on stage, your eyes were inevitably drawn by the strange, convulsive, quivering shakes and shimmies Therriault used to portray the tormented wretch's psychic struggle.
It's hard to out-act an Oscar-winning computer-generated movie image, but the young Oakville actor managed the trick.
The problems with the production are problems beyond its solution. Despite a three-and-one-half-hour running time, one cannot do justice to the intricacies of such a work. (Despite my own personal failings as a Tolkien reader, I was able to confirm this by speaking to the authority who sat beside me.)
Some characters make cameos that are more mystifying than edifying.
A climatic epic final battle between two vast armies loses something in translation to the stage. Something like scale and impact.
And why would anyone be afraid of the all-powerful Sauron, when he looks suspiciously like a bunch of headlights strung across the back of the stage?
Fortunately, my lack of familiarity with Lord of The Rings allowed me to ignore most of its shortcomings.
I was just too busy being entertained.

I wonder what Victor and Agnes Sandford would make of the pile of rich dirt which has been bulldozed into the corner of their 100-acre farm closest to the southwest corner of Eglinton Ave. and Mavis Rd.
It would probably break their hearts. Every time I drive north on Mavis I still glance to my left, in the stupidly vain hope that the lovely Sandford Pond will somehow reappear. Hoping  that the beautiful, open natural stretch of water and weedy vegetation that served as a staging area each spring and fall for migrating waterfowl will still be there.

That's the spot where I saw my first American Widgeon. There were always scads of diving ducks there, especially in the spring.  Every once in a while you'd see a little head bobbing about that definitely looked like a muskrat.

For a long time, the pond sprawled across both sides of Eglinton but now the sprawl is of another kind. Sales pavilions and row houses sprout like the crops that the Sandfords used to raise on their property.

In an excellent column he wrote in 2002 before the developers moved onto the land, Port Credit historian Alan Skeoch recalled how the old-fashioned Sandfords, Victor and his sister Agnes, slowly receded into their little piece of heaven.

Agnes and Vincent Sandford were determined to resist the urban sprawl of Mississauga that gobbled up farms like an insatiable predatory monster, wrote Skeoch. All around the farm new housing estates were built and along the south side the multi-laned 403 expressway sliced its way across the fields.

To the north, clearly visible was the Mississauga landfill project, the city dump in less polite words. It grew higher and higher each year. All around the Sandfords was change. But in their world there was little change. When the electricity failed due to a broken pole, they went back to the use of kerosene lamps. They were not exactly opposed to modernization, they had tractors and hay bailers and veterinary care for their cattle and supermarket food. They just didn't need total change.

If we learn as we grow older and wiser that change is the only constant, why do we become ever so much more emotionally resistant to the inevitable, undeniable transformation of our landscape?
Resistance is futile but it still feels like the only sane response.

The Sandford pond is no more. The Sandford House, vandalized too many times and the victim of a June 24, 1999 act of arson, is a long shot to be preserved and rebuilt.

In a few years, it's likely that only the grove of 100-or-so black walnut trees sitting on public property on the crest of the hill near the house will still stand as mute testament to the people of the land who once lived there.

It's easy to slough off the musings of Prime Minister Stephen Harper about the sins of the media as politically motivated. He obviously considers the Parliamentary press posse his enemy as he moves to rein in the careless flow of public information to, of all people, the public. His goal seems to be to have as much as possible of the government's decision-making power reside in the grey space between his ears.

It's a lot harder to slough off the carefully-chosen words of Governor-General Micha‘lle Jean to The Canadian Press gala dinner in Halifax last night.

Jean has no clear political motivation for her comments. She does have experience as a working journalist, for both the French and English language branches of the CBC.

In a speech in which she cast her comments against the backdrop of her native Haiti, where speaking out against the government was usually a death sentence for journalist or citizen, Jean thoughtfully laid out her concerns about the influences that seem to work against serious journalism in this country.

She decried the disturbing tendency of mainstream media ( due to increasing competition from the Internet and TV headline-news operations) to adopt the tabloid tactics that see all of life and politics reduced to a quick sound bite and a snappy headline.

Here's part of what Jean had to say:  Journalism does not consist merely of reporting the news to the public; it also gives the public a better understanding of a world that is becoming increasingly complex with each passing day and may at times seem incomprehensible, with no reference points, no ideas, and no analyses. To truly inform others is to refuse to allow the news to become a product, a commodity, a profit; it means making the news a tool to explore the world around us, to discover it, to understand it. We are more susceptible to powerlessness and fatalism when we do not understand.

I am absolutely convinced that what is most unique and, if you will pardon the expression, most noble about journalism is that it has an inherent duty to remember, contextualize and understand. But as soon as profitability gains the upper hand over accuracy, entertainment triumphs over reason, lies over truth, then the very ethics of information are at risk, threatened. One cannot practise this profession with integrity without accepting this responsibility.

Good journalism takes time and thought, two things that are often in short supply as understaffed newsrooms produce more, shorter bits of news, for the cavernous maw of the myriad new products that each news organization seems obsessed with trying.

The internet, hailed as a vehicle to allow the broadest spread of information, instead seems to have narrowed our view, as the newest tidbit, true or not, flies around the globe.

I urge you not to give in to the demands of machines that produce and market information, the Governor-General said. It is the shades of meaning that make life so rich, so intense, so precious. We may find life so bewildering because we no longer stop to think about it, really think about it.

Interestingly, on the same day that Harper said people aren't interested in, inside Ottawa stuff such as the squabble between him and the media, Jean said that, journalists must move away from the contemptuous attitude that only a happy few are actually interested in thinking, that in-depth reporting doesn't sell, that people just don't want to have to think.

Maybe the Prime Minister and the press corps have more in common than we thought.

It was difficult to say what was tougher for Jeff Rushton — tracking his buddy Kevin Wallace’s Race Across America (RAAM) via the Internet and phone calls in Mississauga— or flying down for the last five days and seeing the pain close up and personal.
If anyone knows what Wallace was feeling as he pedalled 4,900 kms in a little over 10 days, it is Rushton. He’d ridden from California to Florida with him in January 2002. They did a cancer-raising bike trek from Vancouver to Halifax in ’03 and then they’d really worked together, two hours on the bike and two hours off, competing in the two-man section of the San Diego to Atlantic RAAM two years ago.
Despite the incredible toll he knew the ride would take on his friend, the 44-year-old Rushton had no doubt that Wallace would complete his extreme solo cycling marathon this year.
“He just has this incredible fortitude and stick-with-it-ness,” said the Lorne Park resident this morning. “If he sets his mind on something, he will accomplish it.”
I had to talk to Jeff Rushton to find out about what Kevin Wallace must be feeling in recovering from the torture of the race because Wallace doesn’t want to talk about himself.
If Rushton is waking up in the middle of the night and rushing over to get Wallace a water bottle, you can imagine what nightmares Wallace himself is going through.
But Wallace gently guides each of the hundreds of questioners he’s faced away from the tributary of his own race and back to the source of his inspiration: his late mother Betty and the fight against cancer.
“The real story is the power of our mothers and our wives and our daughters to fight this disease,” says Wallace. “They’re the news. I was just a guy out on a bike trying my hardest to get the attention of people. I’m glad I provided some inspiration and great entertainment for a cause like the Betty Wallace Health Care Centre.”
While Wallace is going to be whacked for a while from the sleep deprivation, his sugar and fat energy diet and the neurological effects of his ordeal, Rushton said he won’t suffer the deep funk that many other riders do after peaking for such an extraordinary event.
“That goes back to his psyche and why he did this,” said Rushton, who has also had cancer touch his family. “This was about creating a community of people to fight cancer, a community supporting the cause. It was all about the greater good for him.”
And now it’s about continuing the momentum and keeping the wheels rolling on the fight against cancer. That’s why the banner across the top of the splash page at www.teamrace.com is no longer going to say Kevin Wallace, There is no finish line...
It is just going to say, There is no finish line...
The last 24 hours of the race were torture, said Wallace, but he knew he had to make it for all those battling the disease.
“I had the option to quit but those people who have cancer, they don’t get to quit,” he said.
“Now that the race is over, I get the comforts back in my life,” added Wallace. “For people with cancer, there is no finish line. I’m just humbled to have delved into a fraction of what those people have suffered.”

Imagine wandering over to check your thermostat and finding a text message on it asking if you’d mind if Enersource increased the temperature in your air-conditioned house by a couple of degrees for the next three hours to help ease the power shortage.
It could happen here, sooner rather than later.
Last night at Huron Park Community Centre, Enersource Hydro Mississauga held an open house for the 550 households participating in the Smart Avenues pilot project: a living laboratory to show people how they can really take advantage of the smart meters that will be installed in every house in Ontario by 2010.
By now everyone should be clueing in to the fact, thanks to successive governments who never had the courage or will to address the issue, this province faces a potential crisis with its power supply, likely in the near future.
Way too late, conservation is finally being taken seriously as an alternative.
Enersource has taken the bit in its teeth and run with its conservation program. Smart Avenues will be the centrepiece.
“We want to make Smart Avenues a model for all of Ontario,” Enersource’s Chief Conservation Officer Carmine DiRuscio told the residents from the selected study area south of The Queensway to the QEW from the Credit River to Hurontario St.
There was a glut of information on everything from a gizmo called The Energy Detective (TED) that can instantaneously show you how much power and money you can save by turning off your air conditioner, to timers for appliances, smart thermostats that can cycle your air conditioning on and off every 15 minutes, to the known quantities of Compact Fluorescent Bulbs and front-loading washing machines.
A partnership with broadcaster Anwar Knight (Global TV, Rogers’ Daytime) has produced a series of fun TV spots that give viewers clear, easy instructions on how to save big bucks by simply putting timers on their hot tubs, pool pumps, and freezers and fridges.
There’s even an extreme solution that Enersource calls Power Down on Peak. More like voluntary blackout, I would say. In return for a 100 per cent reduction of power in your home (they'd give you 24 hours’ notice), the electrical distributor will credit your power bill $105 and then give you $25 an additional hour for the time the power’s off. The idea is to develop a pool of volunteers to go completely off-line to reduce demand in a power crisis.
“It’s a no-brainer if you’re not at home,” was one woman’s instant reaction.
It’s obviously not for everybody but it makes the point that radical problems may call for radical solutions, and one size doesn’t fit all. Ten Enersource customers have already been signed up for a small Power Down pilot project.
At the suggestion of Enersource Senior Communications Manager Ken MacDonald, a smart meter has been installed in our house in Erin Mills and our family will be delving into the world of time-of-use rates, dishwashers running on timers at 2 a.m. and wall-to-wall laundry on weekends to see how this thing works.
The new meter isn’t really all that revolutionary. It just records your use of electricity every couple of hours instead of every couple of months.
It’s only going to be smart if we figure out how to use it to maximum advantage.

P.S. I’m going on vacation for a sinfully long three weeks to test taste this summer’s raft of rosés, watch the birds and scour the garden nurseries for bargains. Random Access returns July 24.

You can be sure that at one point in his concert Saturday night on the square in front of city hall, Peter Appleyard will play a song called Django.
“I think it’s the most beautiful ballad in jazz and I told John Lewis that the last time I saw him,” says Appleyard from his home in the country to the west of here.
Lewis, of course, was the pianist and leader of the inestimable Modern Jazz Quartet, the tasty outfit that took the high road in jazz for so many memorable years in the '50s and '60s with Milt Jackson on vibraphone, Percy Heath on bass and Kenny Clarke (later replaced by Connie Kay) on drums.
Appleyard doesn’t play much of the MJQ catalogue because, “I don’t think anybody did it better. I just don’t think I should be doing that.”
If someone asks for The Golden Striker or Bag’s Groove, two Jackson showcases that helped establish the vibraphone as a force in jazz, Appleyard will play them but he doesn’t go out of his way to do so.
The native of Britain plays so often in Mississauga, sits on the board of Orchestra Mississauga and attends so many concerts here as an audience member, that he feels like one of us. He’s never actually lived here but he’s part of our musical framework.
He plays Django, Lewis’ tribute to the great gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt for more than one reason.
When he was a regular at the Park Plaza with Cal Jackson’s band in the '70s, Appleyard used to play the tune often.
Another huge fan of the piece was a regular named Tibo Kapsi. He would sometimes walk into the club while the band was performing Django and yell out “Bartender: four Cognacs.” That may have accounted for some of the band’s fondness for the piece.
Appleyard now plays the piece in honour of Kapsi, who was murdered in a horrible incident a couple of decades ago on the farm in Woodbridge where he raised Black Angus cattle.
Some youngsters were using a car to chase his cows when Kapsi asked them to leave. When they returned, he went out again to confront them. One of the young men had carved a willow branch into a sharp point and threw it at Kapsi, striking him in the chest and taking his life.
“I didn’t play the song for years after that,” said Appleyard, “but now I play it for my dear friend.”
Every once in a while, after he tells the Django story in a nightclub or bar, someone in the audience will have four Cognacs delivered to the bandstand.

If you go to Jason Roti’s political web site, you’ll find a blog that’s written in Latin.
“I’m trying to appeal to the niche voter,” laughs the 21-year-old Ward 3 council candidate with good humour when asked about it.
When you’re a first-time political candidate, strange things happen. Roti has been having difficulty with the website he established for his first run at municipal politics. A block of Latin “dummy text” was used to demonstrate to the former John Cabot Secondary School council president and valedictorian how the text would eventually look on the site. But, the site keeps riverting to that demonstration mode.
Well, Jason isn’t the first politician to try to speak to the voters in a language most of them can’t understand.
The website problem is just another little glitch in a campaign that has already hit several bumps.
If one wanted to be cruel, one could say that Roti is already a political veteran because he’s working on his third ward in just seven months of campaigning for a seat on City council.
He registered Jan. 2 to run in the new Ward 10 because there was no incumbent. “I thought it was a good opportunity.”
But, when his older brother Graziano entered that race a couple of weeks later, Jason switched to Ward 11 where he would face George Carlson.
While out campaigning, he left his car in Ward 3 where he grew up and still lives.
It was broken into. The car stereo and a number of other possessions were stolen.
That’s when Roti decided to run in Ward 3.
“It was like a sign that I should focus in my own community. That’s where a lot of help is needed. The Bloor-Fieldgate area is in rough shape,” he said.
It’s going to be a tough ward to crack. Not only is he facing long-time incumbent Maja Prentice but former ward trustee and now Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board Chair Peter Ferreira has jumped into the race. John Busic is the fourth candidate so far.
As if that isn’t enough Roti, who started a group called Youth Active in Politics to try to get young people more interested in local politics, was in a traffic accident July 9 at Dundas St. E. and Stanfield Rd. He’s still recovering from back and neck injuries but expects to be ready for the fray that leads to the Nov. 13 election.
Asked if there are any circumstances in which he can foresee switching wards again, Roti laughs heartily.
“Pina would probably kill me,” he says, in reference to the City’s no-nonsense election co-ordinator, Pina Mancuso.
While he’s laid up, Roti can always work on his campaign platform, or, if need be, brush up on his Latin.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

Guess the speaker: “Physical education was not my favourite subject. I hated having to change into those stupid bloomers and when the bloomers finally disappeared, there were those ugly polyester shorts. I dreaded baseball because I was completely hopeless at it.
“I was a child who was easily embarrassed and stressed by new situations. In PE, I experienced embarrassment at my lack of skill in sports and stress when trying sports and skills that were new to me.
“With time I became more confident and began to excel in some areas, though I remained markedly awful at gymnastics and dance. Having PE almost every day kept me healthy and pushed me to overcome my shyness and embarrassment.”
Olympian Silken Laumann is talking in her excellent book Child’s Play (Rediscovering the Joy of Play in Our Families and Communities) about the dilemma of mandated physical education. Gym class is the source of painful childhood memories for many overweight and/or athletically challenged students, especially women.
Having listened to a Radio Noon call-in show about the subject I know that for some people, PE combined the worst of both psychological and physical torture, especially if you got a jock teacher who chose to embarrass you because you were missing the volleyball or the field hockey gene.
Despite the above, today is a red letter day for Ontario because mandated phys. ed. is back in elementary schools. Of course, in many buildings with enlightened administrators, it never really went away.
Anyone who works with kids regularly, or has been a parent, knows of the blissful benefits of exercise for children. A little running around takes the mickey out of so many kids, allows them to burn off all that excess energy and, most importantly, means that they focus much better on whatever task awaits them when they return to their desks.
Dr. Mark Tremblay of Active Healthy Kids Canada,(http://www.activehealthykids.ca/) which has been championing the return of phys. ed to schools, has been in Mississauga several times to speak to this issue. He was at St. Vincent de Paul in January 2004 when Premier Dalton McGuinty launched the Activ8 program.
Dr. Tremblay debunked some of the myths about mandatory phys. ed. Rather than damaging academic achievement by adding to the overcrowded curriculum, research strongly indicates that performance is enhanced, even when students have less time for formal studies, especially in math. “As you increase physical education in a classroom setting, the learning rate seems to proceed at a faster rate than if you don’t,” he said. Study after study has demonstrated the benefits of exercise in improving intellectual development and standard test scores.
Not only is getting the blood coursing through your veins good for kids, I’ll bet it’s good for teachers too.
There will always be some people for whom phys. ed is torment but the Ontario government is on the right track with this initiative.
They shouldn’t stop there either. They must train teachers for the job they’ve given them and make Phys. ed mandatory all the way through high school, not just in Grade 9.
“We need to understand that gym isn’t a luxury,” says Laumann, the first-ever recipient of the City’s highest award of citizen merit for her heroic efforts to overcome injury and win a bronze medal in Olympic rowing. “It is a time when kids are strengthening their bodies, developing motor skills and building the attitudes and habits that can lead to lifelong well-being.”

If the first thing you do when you pick up The Mississauga News is to flip to the editorial page and check out the cartoon, you are in good company.
That’s because Steve Nease rules the page, just as he has lo these many years. Steve’s political cartoons provide some of the most acerbic, trenchant, and just plain bang-on commentary on life in our community, our country and our world that you will find anywhere.
It is amazing that Nease, who began working at the dearly departed OJR (Oakville Journal Record) at the end of 1978 and still does page and advertising design for the Oakville Beaver, is still with the chain of community newspapers owned by Metroland Printing and Publishing.
Why hasn’t a big daily paper recognized his immense talent and whisked him off to the big city?
Last year, in Portfoolio — the annual collection of the best political cartoons in Canada — Nease had 15 cartoons published, the most by any of the 42 artists represented. His cartoons are syndicated across Canada.
One done a few years ago touched a nerve that reverberated around the world.
Under the title, Canada’s Worst Nightmare, he drew a caricature of a cow with mad cow disease, wearing a SARS mask and being bitten by a mosquito carrying West Nile virus.
“That one took on a life of its own,” said Nease. “It was on thousands of websites around the world. People in our office were getting it e-mailed to them by people from outside the country saying ‘I thought you might get a kick out of this — not realizing that it was created at a desk about 15 ft. away,’’’ he laughed.
Some of Nease’s very biggest fans have been some of his favourite targets over the years. There are lots of originals of his cartoons hanging in the homes of Don Blenkarn, Carolyn Parrish and Mike Harris.
In one of his many classics, Nease portrayed Blenkarn, looking ever-so-much like W.C. Fields complete with bulbous blinking red nose, in a cheerleader’s outfit leading a cheer for the GST.
Parrish used his cartoon of her as an rogue Canadian missile ready to be deployed against the Bush administration, as a fundraiser on T-shirts she had printed.
Harris may have the biggest collection of all, including the send-up of the Wizard of Oz with the former Tory Premier as the Tin Man. The Cowardly Lion, Dorothy and the Scarecrow diagnose his problem: “No Heart.”
But the “ultimate compliment” is when Nease walks into a house where people have no idea who he is and he sees his cartoons or his Pud strips lovingly posted on that household spot of honour, the front of the refrigerator.
It’s unspeakably unfair that someone who is such a good political cartoonist should also be so talented at the cartoon strip, which is really quite a different form. Through Steve’s paternal pen, we have watched he and his wife navigate the mindfield of child-raising, from cradle to university (Pud is now 23).
Life lessons never seemed so real or so funny.
Instead of buying scads of “parenting” how-to books, prospective parents who want to know what it’s really like should just get a collection of Pud cartoons.
Incredibly, Nease has never had a collection of his cartoons or his strips published.
Since Metroland just celebrated its 25th anniversary, such a volume would be a perfect quarter-century anniversary gift to the community, wouldn’t it?
Maybe we should be thankful, after all, that the world hasn’t figured out just how good he is and beaten a path to Steve Nease’s door.
This way, we get to keep him all to ourselves.

As Bob Dylan famously said, “You don’t need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
After watching Dalton McGuinty parry with the media yesterday at the Trillium Health Centre, you don’t need a political pundit to see how the Liberals will fight the election that will be held in October 2007.
The announcement of more funding to reduce wait times that took place in the lobby at Trillium’s Mississauga site had the look and feel of an election stop.
And the way McGuinty answered, or rather avoided answering, the questions/provocations from the media in the post-announcement scrum was very telling.
He absolutely refused to be drawn into any discussion of the questionable Liberal tactics in the Toronto by-election, saying simply, “I am proud of our campaign.”
He took every negative critical query and flipped it over to maker a positive statement about his government’s record.
Next year at this time, McGuinty and the Liberals will be fighting a retroactive campaign. By that, I mean they will try to run against Mike Harris all over again and pretend that the kinder, gentler Tory regime of John Tory does not exist.
A question about long waiting lists for hospital services other than the five the Liberals have targeted for wait-time reductions drew this response: “We are making real, solid measurable improvements within medicare and that has been our message from day 1.
“Our test scores are better. There’s better morale and enthusiasm within and about public education.”
Then the Premier posed a series of pointed rhetorical questions that you can expect to hear again on the hustings.
“How many days have been lost to school strikes since we took office? Has the economy continued to grow? Are wait times in hospitals down?
The clear message: You may not be crazy about me but I’m still way better than the last guy you hired.
He may not have Mike Harris to kick around anymore but that won’t stop Dalton from donning his boots.
Beating up a straw man is a lot easier than combating a real, live opponent.
Can McGuinty run the 2003 campaign over again or will the Liberal strategy just raise — you should pardon the expression — a red flag with voters?

Dave Taylor calls it “Mississauga’s best-kept secret.”
Standing on a boardwalk under a leafy canopy amidst the dappled light that always seems to make the floor of the forest a magical place in late afternoon, one is not the least bit tempted to disagree.
Off to the left of the boardwalk stands a gigantic sugar maple tree that is in the range of 400 years old. The specially-sprung walkway is designed to minimize the disturbance of the fungi on the forest floor that are critical to the maple’s survival.
Special boxes have been built along the boardwalk for the white-footed mice who reside in the woods and are the subject of research by a University of Toronto at Mississauga professor.
This is Riverwood, Mississauga’s garden park in progress on the east bank of the Credit River and Taylor is the education director for the Mississauga Garden Council, overseeing the school and public education programs for the property.
“To have this wonderful piece of wilderness one mile from where I live and three miles from the city centre... it’s amazing,” says the 57-year-old, who taught in Mississauga’s public schools for 31 years. “As a photographer and a naturalist, this is fantastic.”
In another life, as the author of 90 books including a new one on Black Bears, Taylor has seen parks all over North America. He’s off to Yellowstone next week.
He thinks Riverwood has the potential to stand among the best of them. “You’ve pretty much got everything that was here in 1850,” he says.
The remnants of a butchered elk have been found in front of the Chappell estate, the former home of MP Hyl Chappell and his wife Grace, whose rose garden has been restored.
There’s hope that the endangered Jefferson Salamander might still be on the property. The kettle pond could be reconfigured to provide a home.
Wood ducks have been seen on the property and students may be enlisted to build nesting boxes for them.
Investigation is underway to see if flying squirrels can be reintroduced to the property. Work by UTM students has shown that wildlife from Erindale Park is moving north to Riverwood. There are two pair of resident coyotes. White-tailed deer seem to be everywhere.
A jump in the population of small mammals has piqued the interest of predatory birds including a Coopers Hawk who has been seen circling with the turkey vultures, which are common.
A pending partnership deal will create a bird-feeding trail. “I hope you’ll be able to see a barred owl waiting by the feeders like you can at Cranberry Marsh,” says Taylor.
Partnerships with Heritage Mississauga, a series of strong garden speakers (like Mississauga’s own Liz Primeau), the ongoing support of UTM staff and student researchers and a walk and talk program that introduces the park through the eyes of the experts, are all building momentum for the park.
For the most part, the gardens in the master plan are still a ways off, but that
doesn’t faze Taylor a bit.
“It should be like Disney World, it should never be finished,” he says.
Interesting comment, but a bad analogy.
For the essence of Riverwood will be the fact that it will be the anti-Disney world, a place where natural beauty can be found in all its unadorned glory in the midst of the urban experience.

A Toronto doctor once offered his patients some brilliant advice on how to improve your general health.
He suggested taking a cookbook to bed. Not just any cookbook though. A very special cookbook: Edna Staebler’s Food That Really Schmecks.
He told his patients they should pick out a recipe they really liked to try the next day and invite a friend over to share the meal. He said the experience would be better for them than any medication he could possibly prescribe.
That story came to mind when reading a tiny one-paragraph note in The Toronto Star last week that announced that, at the age of 100, Edna Staebler had died after a stroke in a Waterloo nursing home.
Although she had a long and distinguished career as a journalist and creative non-fiction writer, the Order of Canada recipient was justifiably known best for her cookbooks, Food That Really Schmecks, More Food That Really Schmecks and Pies and Tarts With Schmecks Appeal.
I found a copy, autographed no less, of More Schmecks in the Mississauga Library sell-off section a few years ago and we have enjoyed many meals from it since.
Staebler’s folksy, down-to-earth style is as inviting as the aromas that will waft from your oven when you start trying the recipes, many of which come from the Mennonite community.
Her Speedy Pat-in Pastry recipe was a godsend when the doctor said there was a cholesterol issue to deal with and the taste buds refused to give up peach, or strawberry-rhubarb or lemon meringue pies.
Edna’s books are full of little yarns that precede the recipes like this one for ginger raisin muffins. “One day when four friends were coming to my cottage, I didn’t have an egg to put in my muffins so I had to invent some without eggs. The man of the company ate four, the ladies two apiece and they were the fat ones (I mean the muffins.) The ladies at Marnie’s ate quite a few of these too but they were smaller (again I mean the muffins.)”
The Muffins in Half an Hour section is my favourite of More Schmecks. This one is particularly nice and happened to be the favourite of Staebler’s sister Ruby.

Date and Orange Muffins

1 whole orange 1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup orange juice 1 teaspoon soda
1 cup chopped dates 1 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg 2/3 cups white sugar
1/2 cup butter or margarine 1 teaspoon salt

Cut whole orange into pieces to remove seeds. Drop pieces into a blender with the orange juice and whirl until peel is finely chopped. Drop in dates, egg and butter or margarine and give blender very short whirl. Into a bowl, sift the flour, soda, baking powder, sugar and salt. Pour orange mixture over the dry, stir lightly, just to moisten. Drop spoonfuls into buttered muffin tins and bake at 400 F for about 15 minutes. They are super.

It was Aug. 13, 2002 when 31 trustees from nine of the largest school boards in Ontario met at the Peel District School Board to show their solidarity against what they called the bully tactics of the Ontario government.
The provincial Conservative government of the day had just sent in investigators to review the books of the Big Bad Three, the Hamilton, Toronto and Ottawa boards that had all illegally and knowingly approved budgets with deficits. They wanted to highlight the fact that the Tories’ much-vaunted funding formula for schools was not working.
Among the most feisty of the trustees at the post-meeting press conference was Toronto’s Kathleen Wynne. She drew applause from her fellow trustees after her impassioned remarks in which she called the provincially-appointed auditors, “henchmen — sent in to do the job for the Premier.”
Tonight, Wynne will be back in Mississauga again, across the road at the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board this time, singing a slightly different tune.
Exasperated with the Tory education policy, she ran as an MPP in 2003 when the Liberals won on an education-friendly agenda. Somewhere in Halton Region John Snobelen (speaking of henchmen commissioned by Premiers) is on his favourite quarter horse and smiling broadly.
Now, as the third education minister in six months, Wynne will be the one sending in auditors, investigators, advisors and supervisors (otherwise known as henchmen) to figure out why school boards can’t balance their books.
Methinks she already knows. Methinks she had it figured out when she was a school trustee.
It appears that Dalton and the boys have decided that there’s been a little too much Snobelen-like, Harris-like confrontation with school boards over budget problems from the self-proclaimed “education government.”
Sandra Pupatello (bad cop) is gone and Kathleen Wynne (good cop) is here to calm the choppy waters.
The fact that Wynne will speak to Dufferin-Peel trustees in a public forum tonight signals a change in approach, a change undoubtedly triggered by the fact that the next provincial election is barely more than a year away.
It looks like the Liberals may want to postpone their fiscal fight with school boards for a year, perhaps by commissioning the full review of the funding formula that they promised the last time around.
They’d better be careful how they do it, though. You can bet John The Tory is waiting to paint the Premier as a weak-willed wimp if he and his education minister cave too easily to the school boards.

It’s a case of trying to follow in his daughter’s footsteps for Thomas Thomas, who has registered to run for Ward 5 trustee on the Dufferin-Peel Catholic Separate School Board.
Thomas’ daughter Tracy was the surprise winner of the 2003 race when Rick Falco tried unsuccessfully to get himself elected to City council.
Still a student in computer science at York when she won, Thomas has a new career with Mississauga’s Hewlett-Packard and has decided not to seek re-election because she travels a lot and her new career is very demanding of her time. That’s one of the reasons for her spotty attendance record at board meetings.
There were already three well-qualified candidates (Hilda Andrade, Clarence Clarke and Rosemary Rosanova Shields) in the race when Thomas made up her mind not to run and her Dad jumped into the race.
Thomas was a Dufferin-Peel trustee representing Ward 4 from 1988-91 when he lost a close three-way race. He ran again unsuccessfully in 1994 and, after being convicted of election fraud as a result of voting irregularities in that campaign, he was banned from running for election in 1997.
Perhaps inspired by Cliff Gyles, who ran for re-election in 2003 just a few months after being convicted of two counts of municipal corruption and two counts of breach of trust, Thomas also ran for Ward 5 councillor, collecting 290 votes or 2.34 per cent of the vote.
His conviction is old news that no one is interested in except the media, Thomas said this morning. “That was a long time back,” he said. “I don’t know why people want to bring it back. Ninety per cent of the people don’t even know about it. It’s just the media that bring it up.”
The conviction is probably not even on his official record anymore since it’s been more than a decade since the conviction, he said. “It’s the media who want to keep the thing going.”
It’s understandable that Thomas would like to minimize his brush with the law. His point that most people in the ward probably don’t know about it, however, is precisely why the media should report it.
Past records are always scrutinized intently at election time, as well they should be. Even those little white lies on CVs and election brochures have come back to haunt many a candidate.
It is inevitable that candidates will have to speak to their records, even if they were not convicted. Mississauga Ward 6 candidate Ron Starr had fraud charges against him in conjunction with the operation of a charitable group’s summer camp dropped in April 2002, but you can bet he will be asked about it and you can bet he’ll have a response ready.
At least two candidates in this municipal election have restraining orders against them requiring them to keep a certain distance away from City Hall and the incumbents they hope to replace, as part of their bail conditions. They haven’t been convicted of anything as their trials are still pending.
But if there is a possibility of electing someone to City council who may not be legally allowed to attend the inaugural meeting at city hall, isn’t it the public’s right to know that?

Is there more interest in this year’s municipal election than usual?
If you’re judging by the lower number of acclamations, the answer is clearly yes.
There was only one acclamation for 2006, for Catholic school trustee Esther O’Toole in wards 9 and 10, her second “bye” in the last three contests.
In 2003, by contrast, there were five acclamations including one for a councillor, Katie Mahoney. In 2000, there were eight, including another for a councillor, Pat Mullin.
Mind you, before we get carried away, it’s good to remember that two days before the deadline, there were no candidates for the job as trustee for the board which is responsible for public schools for Francophone students. Of course, that is a difficult position because the board covers a huge area and there is a lot of travel involved, just to get to the board meetings. Incumbent Lise Dubois of Etobicoke, who had been acclaimed for the previous two terms, didn’t run again.
The happiest person in the city to see a candidate was Election Coordinator Pina Mancuso, who didn’t have to extend nominations past the deadline. Had no candidate signed up, an expensive bye-election could have been required.
In the end, not one but two Mississaugans put their names forward: Christine Guindy and Mark de Pelham, whom you may remember as the NDP candidate in the Mississauga South federal election earlier this year.
His campaign manager, Brian Hurley, is a candidate for Ward 2 councillor as part of what the incumbents are referring to as the “Larry Taylor slate” — newbies to municipal politics who are using this campaign as a kind of living laboratory to practice organization and strategy (and winning, if all does well.)
There were some surprises in the last-minute shuffling. Grant Ouellette dropped off his inventive campaign video for mayor, which features him interviewing a puppet named High-Rise Hazel, just before he switched to run for Ward 2 councillor. Guess the dummy told him to do it.
Even more people joined the throng for Ward 10 councillor, which now stands at 24, exceeding the field last year in the Cliff Gyles shame-a-thon. There’s always hope that a councillor starting a second term is vulnerable, so 10 are trying to knock off Eve Adams in Malton and environs, where larger fields are a tradition anyway.
Speaking of Ward 5, many expected former long-time Catholic trustee there and second-place finisher in ‘03, Rick Falco, to try to knock off Adams again. Instead, he’s switching to Art Steffler’s old ward, in 6 and 11. It’s the seat he was expected to be appointed to easily after Steffler’s death. A disastrous speech, however, prompted trustees to appoint Peter Ferreira instead. Yes, the same one who was quickly elevated to chair of the Dufferin-Peel Board and is holding a rematch in Ward 3 against incumbent Councillor Maja Prentice.
The merry-go-round never stops.
Don’t look now, but there are even two Brad MacDonalds (yes, same spelling) in the race, one for Ward 5 councillor and one the incumbent Ward 8 public school trustee.
With a shameful turnout of 19.99 per cent in 2003, there is nowhere to go but up.
We’re guaranteed of two exciting council races in Wards 6 and 10 and a minimum of four new faces on the school boards.
By Mississauga standards, where our motto seems to be Pride in the Past and Faith in Our Incumbents, this election promises to be an improvement.