Random Access

Sharlene Lamarsh has a demoralizing mystery on her hands.
Why do so many of the birds who come to her Lakeview home to eat the birdseed and bread she puts out for them, have nylon ties attached to their legs?
"I've noticed it over the past three or four years," says Lamarsh, who regularly feeds the birds. "But now, there seem to be more and more of them."
The plastic tags that are tied around one of the birds' legs come in a variety of colours. They are a type of tie-down strips, with little plastic teeth that you use to tighten something down with. You loop the plastic through a ring, pull it as hard as you can and then snip off the end.
But how could someone ever get close enough to a bird to do that, wonders Lamarsh?
"For a while I thought it might have something to do with West Nile and maybe they were being tagged for some reason like that," says the Eastmount Ave. resident, who has lived in Mississauga since 1994.
But if that were the case, of course, the ends of the tags would have been cut off so that they didn't drag behind the birds and potentially catch on things.
Surely there is no way that the birds could accidentally be getting their legs caught up in the tags somehow? That just doesn't make sense to Lamarsh.
"It's really heartbreaking to see the birds struggling around the yard," says the bird lover. "You want to catch them and cut it off but, of course, you can't get close to them."
On the weekend, Lamarsh took some photographs of the birds including the one of the grackle above who is a regular visitor. You can see part of the plastic tie behind the bird's tail in the photo.
The resident called authorities for help last year, but even figuring out who to call and trying to get a straight answer out of anyone proved difficult. "They just sloughed me off," she says.
Her conclusion is that, "someone must be trapping these birds and tagging them, but then why not cut the tie off?"
Seeing so many birds hobbling around and in distress has Lamarsh upset, angry and frustrated that she can't get any answers. Worse yet it's difficult to know where to begin to ask the right questions.
She called Toronto Wildlife Services today in a bid to get help with her unlikely problem.
"There's one bird I saw the other day who won't even put his one foot down on the ground," she says. "They can't fly properly. It breaks your heart to see these birds just flopping around."
If anyone has any ideas about what's going on here, please let us know.

The gun just went off for the official start of the Mississauga South Conservative federal nomination campaign and one of the contestants has already pulled up lame.
Don Stephens, the ward 2 Peel District School Board trustee, said today that, "I have decided to step aside at this time." The decision was made for personal reasons, on which he chose not to elaborate.
"No one was pushing me," Stephens explained this afternoon. "But this is not a good time for me to run. To beat Paul Szabo, it is going to take a 100 per cent effort and I just can't devote that amount of time."
That reduces the field to four: lawyer Tom Simpson, international financial consultant Hugh Arrison, credit union manager Raya Shadursky and the guy everyone seems to assume the party wants: latecomer Major Ted Opitz, a reservist with the Royal Canadian Regiment.
Stephens politely declined to handicap the rest of the field, who are all trying to sell memberships like mad for the June 10 meeting.
Opitz would seem to be the wild card. He has good credentials, but the wrong postal code.
Mississauga South stalwarts have always been fussy about having their community represented by native sons or daughters (see Tim Peterson for details.)
Arrison, a personable and steady type, may be the beneficiary of being everyone's second choice in this kind of race. Something like the way Bob Horner came up the middle and knocked off some heavyweights (Ron Starr, Alex Jupp) to win the Mississauga North nomination so many years ago.

Sorry about the hiatus. Obviously have some catching up to do. This will be shotgun start... as well as middle and end.
• • •
How do you think most Mississaugans will react when they hear about the proposal to reduce Lakeshore Rd. from four lanes to three lanes, make the centre of those three lanes reversible (eastbound traffic in the a.m./ westbound in the p.m.) and use the fourth lane for a physically-separated two-way bike lane?
There will probably be howls of protest from we car-obsessed Mississaugans, who denounce gridlock from behind the wheel as we wait in a long line of commuters headed for the gym.
Gil Penalosa and his Walk&Bike For Life group are out this week with a brave and intriguing report called Creating A Great Mississauga Community. It details the outcome of a public meeting January 17 and subsequent discussions with ratepayer and community groups in the lakeshore corridor and makes some recommendations that will be rejected out of hand by many, but probably shouldn't be.
Penalosa, the former commissioner of recreation and parks in Bogota, Colombia, has a long history of success in encouraging people to do things once considered madness: such as closing over 91 kms. of main roads on Sundays and holidays in Bogota. The result? Some 1.5 million people get out and moving around when they don't have to take their life in their hands to do so.
Also included in the new report, which will be going on-line soon at www.walkandbikeforlife.org, is a recommendation suggestion to close two of Lakeshore's two lanes Sundays, at least from the beginning of May to the end of September for walk 'n rolling.
• • •
Rambo remembered, in case there was any doubt.
Gabriela Nowakowska's dog — breed to be determined by a court later this month — was very, very excited to see her again when she visited him at Mississauga Animal Control again Tuesday. So excited he had a little accident in his quarters during the visit.
"It was good," reports Gabriela. "I want him to get used to it and I think he is." The weekly visits to the canine hoosegow were approved by City council a couple of weeks ago.
The only problem, of course, is that dog and owner have only an hour or so to get reacquainted. "Every time I leave, I want to take him home with me," says Gabriela.
• • •
So, there will be a nomination in Mississauga South for the federal Tories after all. The riding was finally "released" this week for a nomination, with a likely cutoff for new memberships of May 20, and a nomination the week of June 10.
Biggest question, can the last man in the race be the last man standing? Many observers feel the party brass may be most comfortable with Major Ted Opitz, an Etobicoke resident who came into the contest long after the four other contenders (Tom Simpson, Hugh Arrison, Don Stephens and Raya Shadursky) had all but given up pleading for the contest to be called.
• • •
And a musical footnote.
Alex Pangman, the Mississauga jazz singer who is venturing into western Swing, Torch 'n Twang, bluegrass and the lovely absurdist country vein pioneered by Roger Miller, in her new band called Lickin' Good Fried (after a line in Miller's England Swings) says the debut CD is about 75 per cent finished.
"I think we'll be looking at a fall release," says Pangman.
You can hear examples at http://www.myspace.com/lickingoodfried.

Part-time student. Full-time skyrocketing jazz star.
That's the story these days for Sophie Milman who rolls into the Living Arts Centre Friday night.
Milman has been trying to finish off her BA at the University of Toronto St. George campus while maintaining a touring schedule that will see her on the road for nine months between May 2007 and May of this year.
"It's insane," says Milman of her schedule. She was just another commerce student at U of T until her career took off in mid-term, so to speak, thanks in part to the tutelage of Mississauga's Geoff Kulawick and his Linus Entertainment label.
The singer has been traipsing across North America and Japan, touring to support Make Someone Happy, the jazzy-poppy-folky album that just picked up Vocal Jazz Performance of the Year honours at the Junos.
Milman is now following her dream, singing in the same halls as Sarah and Lady Day and Ella and Carmen McRae, the latter her personal favourite.
Despite her great success to date, Milman shows no signs of inflated ego disease, a common affliction in her trade for youngsters such as she (25-years-old) who take off very early.
"Why not be humble? Look who I'm listening to," she says referencing the aforementioned singers.
In order to finish her degree, the Russian-born, Israeli-raised Milman has been doing a half-year special study course in economics. She was allowed by her prof to get one credit in economics by doing six months of research and producing a 60-page paper. Yes, she aced it.
By the end of this year, her academic career should be over. Her singing one is already nicely launched.
The DVD of her concert appearance at The Montreal Jazz Festival, which was recently on Bravo Television, is now being edited for a September release. She goes back into the studio for her critical third album in the fall.
When we talked on the phone last week, Milman was still abuzz with the energy of the Ron Duquette-produced Feelings From The Heart: The Mayor's Valentine Tribute to Oscar Peterson, also at LAC.
Like all of the performers that night, she was extremely nervous in paying tribute to Oscar. Needless to say, she needn't have worried.
She sang Tenderly (both the song and the style) with the inestimable Oliver Jones (photo) and then closed the show with a rousing version of Sweet Georgia Brown with the all-Mississauga rhythm section of Pat Collins on bass, Sly Juhas on drums and Nancy Walker on piano.
Milman's touring band includes just about everyone on Make Someone Happy including Walker's husband, Kieran Overs.
"I still can't believe he's in my band. He's a Canadian legend, just a monster player," says Milman. "The rest of the band is a lot younger. It went so well in the studio we thought 'Why not ask Kieran to be part of the band?' But he had great teaching gigs and a lot of good gigs in Toronto so we didn't think he'd say yes. But he agreed and it's been an amazing experience.
"He has a positive nature and brings a lot of warm energy. He's really calmed things down," she says.
Walker, the recent winner of the Keyboardist of the Year award in the National Jazz Awards, is in Emilie-Claire Barlow's band. Overs is in Milman's. The Port Credit couple are clearly both front-runners in the Instrumentalist-Most-Likely-To-Be-Backing-The-Next-Diana Krall sweepstakes.
There won't be any losers in that contest.
You can hear Milman's take on all things jazz when she is interviewed by Ralph Benmurgui on Jazz-FM, Thursday morning at 8:40 a.m.

Despite appearances, I have not abandoned you.
Due to some changes in the newsroom, which find me in a (temporary) new job which is totally bewildering at the moment, blogging has dropped on the priority list.
Once I figure out what an interim assignment editor does, I plan to be back with you regularly. In the meantime, please be patient.
• • •
Do have some Rambo news, however.
City council today approved weekly visits by Gabriela Nowakowska to see her not-wannabe pit bull. That pretty well eliminates the need for doggy bail.
• • •

Speaking of bewildering, one of the things you learn quickly by sifting through the innumerable e-mails and story requests that come into The News, is the impossibility of covering everything that goes on in this huge city.
Take Earth Day, for example, which just happens to coincide with Education Weeks.
Every school makes a special effort to showcase its student talents in the same two-week period and there are a million story possibilities and two million photo opportunities, most of which are better than what is available the rest of the year.
Take, for instance, the one that popped up in this morning. Got a call from Ian Santiago of Credit Valley Public School.
The 28-year-old graduate of Corpus Christi and Father Goetz is doing a stint at Credit Valley as a "placement teacher" as part of his studies with the Medaille Teachers' College in Buffalo.
An initiative of his that started out as a variation of the Earth Day Grocers' Project for the Grade 1 class has burgeoned into something that involves the whole school, a local business which has become an enthusiastic partner and — come this Saturday — the broader community.
The school asked the Loblaw store not far away at Glen Erin Dr. and Eglinton Ave. for some outdoor yard-waste collection bags they could decorate for Earth Week and then sell to raise funds.
Rich Morel of Loblaw came through with, not only higher-quality bags, but with some 600 of them so that every student in the school could decorate a bag with a drawing and Earth day message.
The colourful bag banners are now hanging over the railings on the second floor of the Loblaw store so customers waiting in line to pay for their groceries have a mini-art gallery to enjoy.
Come 11 a.m. Saturday, Santiago and several teachers and 20 students will be selling the bags in the front lobby of Loblaw. Half the money goes to the school and half to the President's Choice Children's Charity.
Santiago says there are all kinds of cross-curricular currents going on here: students walking over to the Loblaws (phys. ed), educational reach-out from the school to the community, art, literacy and dare we say it, the thrill for the students of seeing their work on public display.
"It helps to empower the students to realize that, hey, listen your voice matters and you can raise community awareness," says Santiago.
The naked city is full of a million little green stories this spring and this was only one.

Looks like Gabriela Nowakowska's visit with her beloved Rambo, seen above in a recent picture in his play area outside the City's animal control centre, passed the sniff test.
The dog showed no ill effects of being cuddled and pampered by his owner for 30 minutes Tuesday. (Quelle surprise!)
It's quite likely that when an evaluation comes back to City councillors, Gabriela will be allowed to visit her pooch behind bars again. Depending on how that goes, it's possible that the visits could become weekly.
One very good consequence of the visits is that Nowakowska lawyer Anik Morrow will no longer have to ask for bail for the mutt, an unprecedented move which would undoubtedly have taken a lot of court time — none of it devoted to the core issue of whether Rambo is, or is not, a certain breed of dog that may, or may not exist. The three-day hearing for the charges against Nowakowska of owning a prohibited dog under the legislation now looks like it will take place in mid-May.
According to Ward 6 Councillor Parrish, the evidence is growing (see photo above) that Rambo is not a you-know-what. "You should see him now. Very tall and lanky. Very unpit bull-like," she says.
Experts for the crown and the defence will undoubtedly enlighten us in great detail on the characteristics we should be looking for in determining if Rambo is substantially similar to the banned breed.
• • •
All the fuss this week about whether the 5 per cent surcharge City councillors floated in November was a trial balloon, who was responsible for it if it was and who is the one doing the old political flip-flop all misses the essential point: it's still the right thing to do.
Infrastructure renewal is the invisible elephant in the room that no municipality wants to talk about.
Give Mayor Hazel McCallion and council credit for talking about how we should prepare to replace all of the roads, culverts, community centres and arenas that were built in a surge of development and are going to have to be replaced in a surge of capital spending.
If Mississauga, a relatively young city, is going to have these kinds of problems, imagine what Toronto's are like?
It's good to see Ward 6 Councillor Carolyn (she's everywhere, she's everywhere) Parrish has become a convert to the cause of infrastructure renewal. There was a time when, as an MP, Parrish was quite convinced that the City had hundreds of millions of dollars in "slush funds" and didn't really need federal help.
Those funds are all committed to replace public works that must be renewed and the list of additional needs and costs is much longer.
If the province and the feds don't step up, and it's unlikely they will ever be able to fund all municipalities' needs, cities will have to step up to the plate and ask property taxpayers to foot the bill. Yes it's regressive but a responsible municipality has no other choice.
If only council had started his infrastructure retirement planning a little earlier. Instead of giving ratepayers a tax holiday for a decade in relatively good times, council should have been collecting a surcharge of 1 or 2 per cent annually and putting it in reserves for the rocky post-development levy times to come.
• • •
Jazz fans are in for some fine upcoming local treats.
Sophie Milman, who records on Mississauga's Linus Entertainment label and who topped off the mayor's tribute to Oscar Peterson Valentine's Day concert with a rousing version of Sweet Georgia Brown is coming Fri. May 2 to LAC (more on that in a blog next week.)
Two local churches are also jazzing it up.
At Erindale United in Erindale Village on Sunday May 4 at 3 p.m., superb jazz saxophonist Mike Murley tops a nice triple bill with ragtime and blues pianist Bill Westcott and David Mott, who will be performing that great jazz instrument, the baritone sax. Tickets are $15.
Next weekend, the Church of Holy Spirit on Tynegrove Rd. near Burnhamthorpe Rd. and Golden Orchard Dr. holds its jazz weekend, starting with a launch of the new CD called New Every Morning by Reverend Tim Elliott Friday night. Elliott conducts his seminar Clarity and Courage on Saturday and things culminate Sunday with Elliott and a four-piece combo consisting of front-liners Perry White on sax, Brian Barlow (father of Emilie-Claire) on drums, Scott Alexander on bass and Mark Eisenman on piano.
More information at www.holyspiritchurch.ca.

You'd think peregrine falcons, if they had any sense, would prefer the luxury of a made-to-order nest box, nestled on the shores of Lake Ontario, to the cold hard ledge of an apartment building.
Not so, apparently, at least judging by the pair of peregrines who settled last year on the superstructure of Lakeview Generating Station. They managed to set up housekeeping there, despite the best efforts of officials from Ontario Power Generation and the Canadian Peregrine Foundation (CPF) to dissuade them with nets.
The building was to be demolished and nobody wanted any raptor fatalities on their consciences. The nest was unsuccessful, as it turned out, so the careful planning of a potential move of the chicks from a ledge high atop the power plant to the nesting box didn't have to come into play.
This spring Mark Nash, the voluble executive director of CPF, has been keenly watching the 120-ft. nesting box that OPG provided to protect the vulnerable raptors, who nest on cliff faces in the wild.
While the male returned to the site and showed lots of interest in it, the missus apparently doesn't hold with such new-fashioned digs. The pair of potential Lakeview tenants has now shown up on an apartment building ledge on Mill Rd. in Etobicoke, where detective work carried out through the binoculars by CPG officials has confirmed it is the same pair. CPG is now madly working with the condominium board and management there to make sure that the birds can build a nest and raise a brood.
"It's the first time in our recollection that a pair have established on a residential building in the heart of the city," says Nash.
But that doesn't mean that all is lost at Lakeview, he quickly adds. "We're still keeping a close eye on it. Many of the birds don't return until the end of April. A lot of the migrators have yet to come back to their territories. They're still far down south in Colombia and Southern and Central America.
If they find an undefended territory, like Lakeview, there's still a good chance a male will set up shop there "and try to claim a gal," says the group's executive director.
Meantime, things are progressing well at the other two nests in Mississauga. The year-round inhabitants of the Mississauga Executive Centre at 1 Robert Speck Pkwy. have successfully mated and a hatch should be upcoming in a few weeks.
At St. Lawrence Cement, a long-standing nesting site where some staff have been keeping a watchful eye for years, the birds "are down on eggs." They have moved house, to a different elevation in the huge complex, which is almost impossible to observe. Probably something to do with privacy regulations.
As exciting as word of the successful new nests is, Nash is even more revved up these days about a thoughtful corporate donation by Mike Reynolds, product manager in the systems security group at Panasonic Canada in Mississauga.
Earlier this spring, a camera that was a decade old at the Sheraton Hotel peregrine nest in Toronto died a natural death.
You might not think that the reality TV of peregrine voyeurism would get big global ratings but this version of Falcon Crest apparently resonates far and wide.
When the camera died, "I had 200 e-mails by the end of the day," says Nash. "By the end of the week I had 1600 e-mails, some of them very irate. Some were from places and countries that I didn't even think had electricity," he laughs.
At 2:30 a.m. in the morning, a frustrated Nash sent off an e-mail to Panasonic asking for assistance for the volunteer organization, which has no budget for cameras.
By 10:15 a.m. the next morning, Reynolds wrote back offering demonstration models that are going to bring web-cam viewing of the nesting sites — including the MEC locale in Mississauga — to a whole new level.
The old analogue system with its computer software and myriad potential breakdowns has now been replaced with a network IP camera. "It has two wires, one goes into the power and one into a network connection hooked into a high-speed line. We can now have real-time streaming live right to our web site," says Nash. "For us it's like going from the horse and buggy to an automobile."
Best of all is that people like Nash no longer have to jump into their cars in the midst of a frigid winter and drive up to 90 minutes to a nest site just to reboot a computer and get the cameras working again.
Reynolds says, "if Pansonic can help and it benefits everybody, why not?"
Of course, it didn't hurt that Nash invited Reynolds to a banding at the Sheraton Centre last year where the Panasonic executive could see the little balls of fluff, which seem to be all beaks and claws, get their travel identification.
After you see the squawking vulnerable babies up close and personal, it's hard to resist them, admits Reynolds. "I guess I'm a little soft at heart."

As Gabriela Nowakowska walked out of the back door of The Mississauga News this afternoon and into the bright spring sunshine that finally seemed to offer the promise of a summer, she sighed and said, "You know what? This would have been a wonderful day to take Rambo for a walk."
Well, Gabriela didn't get to take her dog for a walk today but it was a very good day, nonetheless. For the first time since that fateful Dec. 25 when she let him out in the backyard of her Kingsholme Dr. without checking to make sure the gate was closed, she got to see, hug and play with her pet.
It was the debut of the experimental Dog Prisoner Pound Visitation Day at the Mississauga Animal Control Centre and the 20-year-old owner of Rambo, the alleged pit bull, took full advantage.
Gabriela obviously likes playing with her dog a lot more than going to court or talking to reporters.
The shy young woman was much chattier than usual outside the control centre after her half-hour visit.
The visit was intentionally low key so staff could evaluate how things went.
The only one who didn't get the low-key message, of course, was Rambo who got understandably rambunctious after being reunited with his owner.
In a thoughtful presentation last week to City council, Selma Mulvey of the Dog Legislation Council of Canada (a regular Random Access commenter) pointed to research that suggests keeping dogs cooped up without much human contact for several weeks or months can have physiological and behavioural side effects, making dogs fearful and aggressive.
"When the owner finally does regain custody of their pet, there can be a lot of work for them to do to rebuild the relationship," Mulvey said in her deputation.
Council decided to allow today's visit to see how things went and to get an evaluation from staff before considering a visitation policy for the future. Very sensible under the circumstances, especially since there are unlikely to be a lot of other cases where a dog is held for months on end while the legal wheels grind on.
(A cynic would add: unless, of course, Gabriela wins her case.)
Think of today's visit as a little fuzzy toy thrown out to those among the public who still believe politicians are all heartless animal haters.
• • •
"Who has learned to garden who did not, at the same time, learn to be patient?"
So said gardener and writer H.L.V. Fletcher. That was before he met my helleborus, of course.
Maybe Fletcher was lecturing my hellebores under the winter snow this year — or perhaps it's the fact that there WAS some winter snow this year, but darn if the things don't look like they've caught on after lo, these many years, of simpering. (See below for proof.)
The hellebores always put on buds in the fall and give the promise that maybe they will actually be the "Christmas rose," as advertised, but then appear wan and wizened in the spring when the snow melts and do nothing.
But not this year. This year they are sitting up pretty and showing off their dapper yellow centres.
Now, too bad the guy in charge of the garden didn't plant the white one between the two, darker maroon specimens.

It's no wonder that the working title for the documentary that director Maya Gallus wants to make about Mazo de la Roche is entitled, "The Mystery of Mazo de la Roche."
Gallus, a principal in Toronto's Red Queen Productions who has already made well-received documentaries about author Elizabeth Smart (By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept), the Dionne Quintuplets and skating legend Barbara Ann Scott, was there filming at the ceremony Saturday at which a first-ever plaque in Mississauga from the Historic Sites and National Monuments Board of Canada was celebrated.
After decades of benign neglect of her incredibly popular Jalna series, de la Roche is enjoying an unprecedented revival.
Her books are in print in English again in Canada for the first time in years (Interestingly, they were never out of print in Québec), a new biographer has stripped away more layers from the trail of red herrings she created in her "autobiography" and now she may become the subject of a documentary by Red Queen, which would be financed by both the National Film Board and Bravo Television.
As Museums of Mississauga Manager Annemarie Hagan outlined in a brilliant evocation of the intentionally unfocussed de la Roche persona at Saturday's event, "it's important to realize that confusion about her personal life is exactly what Mazo always intended — after all, she once listed 'privacy' as her only hobby." This is a woman who managed to write an autobiography that did not give her birth date, changed her name from Maisie Roach to the much more literary-sounding Mazo de la Roche and, "took great care to throw shadows over many aspects of her own, real life," as Hagan put it.
This obfuscation actually made aid in her storytelling exercise, says Gallus, because much of her film will involve peeling back the numerous layers of gossamer that de la Roche drew across her trail.
The subtext of her complex relationship with her lifelong companion and cousin Caroline Clement is yet another fascinating sidebar to the main story. It was Clement who supported the two by working at the Toronto's Fire Marshal's office while de la Roche spent her days writing madly in their "ridiculous little cottage within its beautiful silver birches and pines, trailing arbutus and other wildflowers" in Clarkson.
De la Roche is a "walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction" as the songwriter might say. She suffered frequent bouts of depression and was deeply wounded by negative reviews, yet was far ahead of her time in handling her own business affairs and demanding her fair due from publishers.
"She was very comfortable in what was largely a man's world," says Gallus, at a time when women were still treated largely as babies. "She had enormous courage and great faith in herself."
She had an absolute compulsion to write and was "driven" to write the Whiteoaks saga, creating in the process, one of the truly great characters in the Canadian literary canon in Granny Whiteoaks.
Ultimately, as Hagan pointed out, it all comes down to the books. It doesn't matter whether Benares, or other houses, were the models for Jalna because the family she created in them is still so real. "The real Jalna and the real Whiteoaks do exist. They really do," said Hagan. "They aren't even hard to find. Mazo handed them to us on a silver platter - or perhaps I should say - between the covers of the 16 books she wrote about the Whiteoaks."
Maybe there's so much speculation about which house was Jalna, adds Gallus, because the way Mazo draws it up, "the house of Jalna is actually one of the characters. She is so very contemporary in her writing as well, in the deep connection she makes with nature and animals," says the Toronto movie-maker. "Nature always plays a big part and each scene always includes a detailed description of the trees, the plants and the weather." No doubt, her experiences in the wild woods of Clarkson contributed there.
Mazo would have loved Saturday's event as the winds whipped, the rain fell and there was a distinct chill in the air, as she symbolically was given a long-overdue, warm embrace by the Canadian establishment.
One of those attending Saturday was Helen Wilson, now 85 and a museum volunteer. She grew up in Bayfield, Ont. and remembers that, because she was so tall for her age as a child, she could get into the "adult" section of the nearby Clinton library and check out the Jalna books.
"They were so delightful," said Wilson, who now lives in Port Credit. "I've just been rereading them, all 16," she told the museum historian with a delicious little laugh as she left the ceremony. "This time, I get it all."
The books remain compulsively readable. That may be the only reality of true consequence, when it comes to reviewing the life and times of Mazo de la Roche.

A rummage through the Britannia School House and Britannia Farm file yesterday proved informative and instructive, on the eve of yet-another historic announcement about the future of the property by the Peel District School Board.
The file begins with a May 12, 1971 front-page report in The Mississauga News which explains how the Town of Mississauga has leased the farm from the school board for $1 in hopes of proceeding with a massive recreation area.
A year before the town had submitted a report with proposals, "for a stadium which the town and the school board will require sooner or later, mass picnic areas, a bridal path, numerous fields for soccer, baseball diamonds and even a ski hill which in the summer could be used as an amphitheatre."
Fast forward to 1986, when then-director John Fraser waxes poetic about the potential of the still-stunningly green 200 acres of land smack dab in the geographic and demographic centre of Peel.
"One could imagine a children's place, a large tract of land, in the centre of one of Canada's most-densely populated areas, dedicated to the education and development of the child, enriching their lives. The plastic artificiality of Canada's wonderland or the commercial trappings of the West Edmonton Mall are no substitute for the natural foundation that underlies our history in southern Ontario."
Among the potential uses Fraser foresaw: a replica pioneer village with a demonstration farm, an art park, a Christmas tree farm so students could cut their own trees and continuation of the "sugaring operation" in the maple sugar bush, which used to be a highlight of March break activities.
"If this project could capture the imagination of our community, we could have, for our children and for future generations of children, a place dedicated to them; a place in the midst of commerce, industry and asphalt where a child could stand in a quiet pasture and feel the soft texture of grass on bare feet," concludes Fraser.
They don't write bureaucratic reports like that anymore, alas.
Other blips along the way to farm non-development included the Britannia Golf Centre (designed by world famous golf course architect and Erindale Secondary School graduate Thomas McBroom) which was abruptly driven into the rough by a highly-indignant Education Minister John Snobelen.
In 2002, there were plans for an office building and convention centre at the corner of Hurontario and Bristol Rd. In 2004, the board approved a three-storey, 60,000 sq. ft. building there for the Centre for Education and Training.
In view of the past history, it's no wonder that Board Chair Janet McDougald was the first to admit at a session with local reporters last night that just because the board is announcing yet-another approved plan for the farm, does not mean it will necessarily happen.
This one, though, really does feel different. It has the smell of something — money not manure — that hasn't been associated with many of the past endeavours.
The board hired an experienced commercial broker-consultant in DTZ Barnicke to guide them through the process and had nine firms on its long list, including some of the province's and the country's major players.
The short version of the deal is that the board hacks 31.67 acres off the southwest corner of the farm, with highly-desirable frontages along Hurontario St. and Bristol Rd. W. (outlined in red in the aerial photo) and leases them to a developer (Osmington Inc. partially owned by the Ken Thomson family) for 99 years. In return, the board gets a huge upfront one-time payment for the development rights as soon as Osmington has received approval for five to eight office towers from the City of Mississauga, expected to be one to two years.
The board puts the money in a reserve and uses some for capital improvements on the farm (perhaps a visitors' centre, upgraded walkways, a student science-environment centre along Cooksville Creek, revival of the sugar shack, or whatever else works.)
The money is also used to upgrade the board's beautiful but underused two northern field centres, namely the Jack Smythe and G.W. Finlayson Centres.
It's not too hard to follow the rationale here. You do something you don't really want to do — create a wall of office towers along Hurontario and develop a corner of the farm — to gain a greater good, resuscitating vital outdoor education programs that have been sadly neglected for far too long, and for which there is virtually no provincial funding.
McDougald freely admitted that she couldn't answer a number of critical questions about the venture at this point, for various reasons.
For example: How exactly does one determine what fair market value now for development over a period of 99 years?
The height and size of the buildings will be determined by the municipal review process.
"The board has not discussed what will be done with the revenue, but we will be responsible with it," the chair said.
There will obviously be a temptation of future boards to dip into the farm fund to pay for other needs, such as the crumbling schools that there is never enough money to fix. The board can put guidelines in place to try to prevent that, but there is no guarantee of what future boards will do.
The exact location and role of three heritage buildings that must be moved is not known, although the developer will pay for the move and upgrade the buildings so they are useable again. (The student demonstration farm visitation program that used to be run at Britannia had to be abandoned because the buildings didn't meet building code and safety standards.)
Maybe the biggest question of all is: Is this just another in the long line of promising but ultimately failed proposals or will something finally happen on the Britannia farm?
As noted here before, retaining a huge piece of pristine green property in the midst of our nearly-mature city, with nothing on it but fox, deer racoon, skunks, sugar maple trees, hop-hornbeam, red oak, white birch, black cherry, American beech, blue beech, Witch-Hazel (not the one at City Hall), aspen, a silver and red maple swamp and even a provincially and nationally rare viburnum called a Southern Arrowood, wouldn't be the worst option in the world.