If you liked this page
please e-Mail - it to a
friend
Rural vs Big Cities and a Solution... October
2015
One of the biggest problems in small towns in
Ontario is their inability to attract commercial companies to locate in
them. Big cities seem to be the winners in being able to attract commercial
ventures. Because of this, people are more willing to locate to larger
cities. This is causing an imbalance in the economic structure of our
province.
The problem is that cites are getting
overpopulated and the cost for services and infrastructure for the
overpopulation is getting out of hand.
The solution could be as
simple as both federal and provincial governments providing financial
incentives to private businesses willing to locate in municipalities whose
populations are less than 50,000 and employ greater than 50 permanent
employees.
Both the rural municipalities and large cites can
be winners. The rural municipalities would increase their tax base and large
cities would have growth slowed. The cost of such a plan would certainly be
not as expensive as it is presently.
My suggestion is that
governments should slow the present spending for infrasture costs for roads,
sewers, education and transportation in large municipalities and give small
municipalities money to attract commercial ventures to locate.
Joe Lor - Editor
tdc's FarmGate
Farmers’ Markets in Eastern Ontario - July 4,
2015
I was asked recently what I thought about the
state of Farmers’ Markets in Eastern Ontario.
Prior to
answering, I thought about the present state of the many present vibrant
markets and the number of new ones that have appeared recently and how
people have flocked to these markets as an alternative to the big box
stores. Yes, they look great and the citizens of the area have taken to them
in droves even though their item prices are higher than the crops sold in
the big box stores.
Are these markets
sustainable?
The answer might
surprise many people – No they are not!
The reason for this negative response is that
present vendors and growers are disappearing and younger people are unable
or do not want to take the place of their parents to grow and market primary
crops.
So if we want to maintain or grow our beloved
Farmers’ markets what can we do?
The answer lies
with the government committing resources into funding educational programs
at the community college and university level into teaching those interested
how to grow and market primary crops that can compete profitably against
crops grown elsewhere.
Yes, it will take
time and some of the goals of such programs should be to provide knowledge
to:
Make capital investments into high tech
greenhouse field growing technology,
Purchase and maintain automatic growing,
harvesting and packaging equipment,
Decisions on growing organic or
traditional crops
Competitive marketing strategies for Farmers’
Markets.
With such new emphasis, we could again
have a vibrant agricultural economy in Eastern Ontario.
Joe Lor - Editor
tdc's FarmGate
Trade Deal
Threatens Rural Economy - October 18, 2012
Canada has officially joined the trade talks
with the Trans-Pacific Partnership - or TPP - a group of 11 countries
including the US, New Zealand, Mexico and Chile.
Negotiations are secret, but we DO
know that our agriculture supply management system is “on the table” because
other countries want it to end.
Supply management is the system where the
producers of milk, eggs and chicken manage production levels to match
Canadian demand.
It protects both consumers and
farmers.
Farmers expressed concerns at a recent Town
Hall about the trade negotiations in neighbouring Stormont, Dundas and
Glengarry.
Speakers at the Town Hall
were Ron Versteeg from the Dairy Farmers of Canada; Malcolm Allen, the NDP
Agriculture critic, and Wayne Easter, the Liberal Critic for International
Trade.
These are the key points I heard
at the Town Hall.
Producing fresh food is not like producing
hardware.
Milk and chicken are perishable;
before supply management surpluses were dumped into the market, causing
prices to fall.
Then farmers would produce less
and the shortages would cause prices to skyrocket.
Food production cannot be
increased on short notice: cows cannot work a second shift.
The resulting
cycle of shortages and surpluses caused wild price swings that were hard on
farmers and family food budgets alike.
Critics – who are mostly theoretical
economists - prefer a free-market approach but
ignore
the fact that no major country has a truly free market for these food
products.
The US gives huge subsidies to
farmers - paid by taxpayers - and New Zealand, which is cited as a
free-market example, has a system of farmer-owned cooperatives that controls
all milk processing.
Canadian farmers make a profit of only 10
cents per litre.
Supermarket prices include
processing, packaging, distribution and retail.
Canadian milk is safe and free of
artificial hormones used widely in the US.
The Town hall
participants urged the industry to better communicate the benefits of supply
management to both rural communities and consumers, and to make their voices
heard about these secretive negotiations.
Marjory
Loveys
Policy
Chair
Leeds-Grenville Federal Liberal Association
Globally Traded, Corporate Organic Food
- April 18, 2006
What is organic? Officially, organic means
produced without deliberate synthetic inputs. That’s all. Nothing about
local economies, fair trade, family farms, less energy, and so on. That is
very unfortunate. Don’t ask me… just look at the organic standards approved
in Canada, USA and elsewhere.
I believe the solution is not to debate the supposedly genuine definition of
organic that could privilege small farms and local economies. The word
organic is already defined and it would be counter-productive to argue that
someone’s organic food is more organic than someone else’s organic food. To
conduct a discussion on the definition of organic at this time would be
similar to describing the beauty of a red house when a dozen people have
different definitions and appreciations of the colour red.
Instead, I believe that we must separate the debates on the sustainability
of food production versus the sustainability of international corporate food
trade, more specifically separate the ecology of farming versus the business
of agriculture and food. Therefore, food can be produced conventionally or
organically, and food can be local or corporate and global. And we can have
combinations of the two. For example, conventional food can be locally
traded while organic food can be globally traded. Both situations only
address half of the requirements for sustainability. Ideally, we want local
organic from family farms, but we are quite a ways from that.
Both elements are tightly linked as both have elements of energy
consumption, resources, pollution, etc… But we can still have separate
discussions and establish separate action plans. By integrating the two
elements in any discussion, then people get into a debate on priorities over
local conventional versus imported organic. By mixing the two discussions,
then we end up with confusing marketing statements that try to marry
components of both, such as local pasture based beef with some grain
supplements, but the grain is genetically modified, and so on.
Let us leave the word organic to the narrow standards of food production,
mostly because we cannot change a definition that is already cast into law
in most countries. Then we need to undertake a separate debate about the
sustainability of the business of agriculture.
By separating the two issues, then both organic and conventional farmers can
work together on issues of common concern without getting into arguments
about pesticides and fertilizers: the viability of the family farm, local
economies, the revenue crisis, corporate concentration and control, etc…
The National Farmers Union has done an effective job of separating the two
issues. People often wonder why the NFU advocates practices that sound like
organic (non GMO, reduced inputs, etc…) but they do not use the word
organic. That is because they are mostly focused on the business of
agriculture: trade, marketing systems, farm income, corporate control of
inputs and markets, etc… They do that because many of their members have not
fully adopted organic production methods, but they are all concerned with
the sustainability of the local family farms.
Having separated the two issues, we can rely on voluntary standards and
markets to develop organic production methods, in a bottom-up, grassroots
approach that the organic sector has developed for the last decades. The
government need only intervene to normalize organic standards and help with
enforcement.
However, the effort to address the sustainability of food trade and family
farms is a very different approach. To work on a large scale (small farms
can still market a local distinctive product, organic or conventional), then
national and international governments are involved. This is much more a
political top-down approach to affect anti-combines legislation, the cost of
fuel, import regulations, supply management, orderly marketing, etc…
Tom Manley
e Mail Tom at
homestead.organics@sympatico.ca
If you liked this article
e-Mail
it to a friend
Grand Dad's Gift
I think that when you are 66 years old
there is not much left to surprise one in the way of a gift for Christmas
except possibly winning the lottery.
Christmas 2005 and I again became frazzled with the materialism, politics of
who, where and when families would be spending the day,
being politically correct on whether or not one should wish people a 'Merry
Christmas' or 'Happy Holidays' and what would be the proper gift
for aunt Nellie, uncle Ted, mom or dad or whoever.
I am blessed by being able to boast that I have three grandchildren. One
wonderful delightful girl Avery who is eight, a lively boy
A.J.- a lover of trains who is three and a beautiful little 4 month girl
whose dark eyes are causing global warming by melting
the hearts of everyone she looks at.
For the past three years since my daughter and her husband have come back to
Brockville, I have been attending Christmas
eve service at our local church that I went to as a child. I enjoy the
candle light service and the especially the music which
for some reason brings me back to the real meaning of this festive season.
It was here this year that I got my best
2005 Christmas present.
Avery, who has been taking singing lessons was chosen to lead the
congregation by singing solo the first verse of Silent Night.
She was called to the front of the church by the minister who said "Now I
ask Avery to come up here to help us sing Silent Night".
Avery went right to the front of the church, up to where the Minister had
called her, adjusted the microphone and listened to the
organ as it started to play and then began to sing that blessed song. It was
a defining moment for her mom and dad and
everyone in the Church. But although wonderful, it was not my best Christmas
gift.
It happened perhaps ten minutes later, when the service was finished and
Avery was being congratulated
for her solo by various members of the congregation and I was on my way out
the door.
I heard someone say to Avery... "Who is that?" pointing to me.
"It's my Grandpa!" she proudly said.
I turned and smiled as I made my way out of the church knowing that a little
girl had made
her grand dad happy with a gift from her heart.
J.S. Lor
Earthkeeper Poem: 'twas the night before Christmas
'Twas the night before Christmas
and all through the land
corporate farming was here.
It was grand! It was grand!
Hogs were raised.
waste was spread
the future looked bright.
The salvation of farming
now seemed in sight.
More factories were built.
The money rolled in.
If you were an investor
you wore a big grin.
But clouds started gathering
on this happy scene.
Neighbors were calling
the big barns - obscene!
The air in the country
which had been so pure,
had become permeated
with the stench of manure.
The rivers and streams
that had been pristine
were now choked with algae
and resembled latrines.
But the good folk of the country
fought back.
Instead of retreating
they launched an attack.
"Bigger is not always better"
they cried.
And together they worked
to turn back the tide.
So into the future
when Christmas rolls 'round,
will the powers that be
move to limit the harm?
Or will they stand idly by
and not give a darn
as the life is torn from
the family farm?
Larry Powell - Founder, Citizens Against Factory Farms.
ROBLIN MB
December 3, 2003
Joe Lor
POUTINE AND HOT CHICKEN SANDWICHES AND FRENCH FRIES
They say that the dinner of choice in Le Belle Province de Quebec is Poutine. You know that great dish of French fries covered with a layer of cheese curd and hot beef gravy. Well the great menu item for Eastern Ontario palettes is a Hot Chicken Sandwich with French Fries.
It seems that you can only get a great hot chicken sandwich in the little towns of Eastern Ontario now. You know the one that comes with two slices of white bread covered with gravy with French fries, green peas and a slice of tomato all on one dish.
In the cities they try to fancy it up a bit and have an open faced sandwich with only one slice of bread and with a piece of parsley sitting right on top of some the gravy. They told me once that the reason for only one piece of bread was that it was to show that they only used white meat.
Well, it certainly is not the same.
Well, a real Hot Chicken Sandwich is prepared by taking some left over chicken or turkey and putting it in some boiling water to heat it up. Then put a slice of bread that has all the crust cut off of it on a hot plate, put gravy on the bread, put the chicken on the gravy covered bread, pour some more gravy on the chicken, cover with another slice of bread with no crust and then top it up with gravy so that it just dribbles down the side of the slice onto the hot plate
Now get some frozen green peas and put them in the hot water to thaw and cook. Don’t leave them too long in the boiling water because it will take all the taste out. Frozen corn doesn’t cut it – it has to
be green peas with maybe a little bit of cole slaw on the side.
The French fries must be
hot… As cold French fries just don’t cut it with customers who love Hot Chicken Sandwiches. Besides cold French fries taste like larded cardboard. Hot French fries are yummy covered with vinegar, salt and maybe some ketchup.
Now make sure that if this dish is served that the plate is hot. And I mean really hot! Hot enough that it has to be served holding the plate with a
towel. Really, that hot!
Poutine be damned. We have great Hot Chicken Sandwiches in the little towns in Eastern Ontario.
And if you are on a day trip here – You just have to try one.
Click
here if you know Where to Get Some Great Hot Chicken Sandwiches with French
Fries
and we will print your preferences here.
August 27, 2003
LIVESTOCK CAN BE ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY
By Tom Manley
Chair - Ottawa Chapter
Canadian Organic Growers
The intense debate over the benefits and risks of intensive livestock operations (ILO), especially large hog farms, has clouded the real issues. The media has not helped either, preferring to highlight entrenched positions, neighbours against
neighbours.
The argument over ILOs is not about food, farming, nor simply odours. It is about excessive concentration. The large concentrations of food, that we do not eat, leave the area through vertically integrated supply chains. The large concentrations of putrid manure threaten our environment and our quality of life. They are treated as waste and not as valuable sustainable resources. The government focus has been on containment instead of quality.
Farming cannot concentrate like other manufacturing industries because we are dealing with biological systems and not widgets. Biological systems react to our management practices. The contemporary practice of monocropping of either field crops or concentrated animals creates a breeding ground for disease, reliance on antibiotics, and the massive displacement of nutrients.
People want food and people want farmers, but not any kind of food nor farms. People want diversity, quality, great taste, and excellent texture produced in a countryside that is appreciated as much for its food as for its beauty and its lifestyle.
There are ways to produce pork or any livestock that are friendly to the animal, the farmers, the environment, the neighbours and the consumers. The mixed farm, both small and large reduces the concentrations of single species. The diversity reduces the farmer's risk and leverages complement the enterprises. Direct marketing improves the margins on smaller herds. Local economies put people in touch with each other and they work together for a common goal. Local slaughterhouses and processors facilitate the links between the producers and their markets.
Dry bedding packs bind the nitrogen and carbon and eliminate the odours. Proper composting manages the valuable manure resource without environmental impacts. Diet changes that favour more forages and less grains solidify the manure and reduce the odours. Putting hogs on pasture improves the health of the animal, reduces the use of antibiotics, and improves the flavour of the meat. Selecting species for both meat quality and outdoor production wins friends everywhere.
Let's drop the limited arguments over ILOs. Let's work on better ways to produce good food in a local economy.
Because small is beautiful.
Tom Manley
Chair - Ottawa Chapter
Canadian Organic Growers
PO Box 39, Berwick Ont, K0C 1G0
Tel: 613-984-0480 / Fax: 613-984-0481
tom@homesteadorganics.ca
www.cog.ca/ottawa
BEING IN MY GARDEN
By Astrid Strader
I want my garden to be
Serene
Symbolic
Sensual
I use it as a device to remove myself from the world
Where I can create poetic moods
Get energy - feel alive
The garden doesn't exclude people - just as music doesn't
I can sit quietly and look
Like through a dream window
Dream is symbolic of my inner life
Window is symbolic of the outer life
The windows are vistas created by rooms in the garden
different heights - shrubs, trees and earth contours
What I see is always changing - just like life
"Gardens are constructions of space….
Music is the art of time"
I can see the layers of time through
Rocks - a stable presence
Plants that change with the seasons - come and go
Enveloping it all - the earth and sky
Sometimes it rains
Sometimes it snows
I try to design my garden like music - fast - slow -
Like the weather changes
So much of our lives are spent in constant motion
Seemingly moving towards a certain goal in life
Sometimes I lose sight and wonder what progress I'm making, if at all
At such a time I find it best to sit down in the garden
To rethink the path I'm taking
The garden touches my heart - goes to the soul
No words are needed
It's where I find real knowing and wisdom
creativity and delight in living
By Astrid Strader, Oasis Gardens
Washrooms - The Good, Bad and Ugly
In Italy, just past the French border near Modane, there’s a toilet
that’s not much more than a hole in the floor with little foot-shaped
indents on
either side. I know, because I stood puzzling over it one summer day three
years ago trying to figure out how I’d use it.
Right here in Victoria British Columbia, there’s a washroom with lighting so yellow that
it strips all the colour from your skin. Glance in the mirror, and you’re
confronted with a ghastly black and white version of yourself. The city uses
the special lighting to keep away drug addicts.
My enduring public-washroom memory is neither of those, though, but of a
blur of washrooms throughout my lifetime that shared in common a long wait for
the women’s toilets. Oh, the incalculable hours I have spent standing in
washroom lineups. It was one of those very lineups a couple weeks ago that got
me thinking about washrooms.
There we women were, politely lined up like always and being careful to
hide our true thoughts, which were that we’re damn sick of lining up. The
topic of the moment was whether it was better to have the next person in line
prop the main door open or line up outside a closed door to ensure more
privacy for those inside.
Our male partners lurked uncomfortably across the way waiting for us to
join them, their own washroom needs met without a wait.
This, I said to myself, is a story. Washrooms are unusual things. Biology,
sociology, gender issues and a little bit of misplaced shame over bodily
functions all come together in the bathroom. Crafting a decent public washroom
in the face of such complexity takes finesse and a solid understanding of
human behaviour. In a culture that prides itself on equality, public washrooms
stand solidly and proudly segregated. I am told of washrooms in Japan where
women walk past men at urinals on the way to their own bathroom stalls, but
that isn’t how things are done here. Here, we like our washrooms
gender-specific. We will spend a substantial portion of our lives in them, but
we’ll rarely talk about it. Some of us will keep personal lists of where the
good ones are, to refer to when we’re out and about. We love some. We hate
others, and not always for reasons that are easily understood.
There’s a washroom downtown, buried deep in the belly of a building at
the end of a dark and menacing hall, that I’ve nicknamed the Bathroom of
Death. I avoid it whenever possible. Beyond the widely acknowledged phenomenon
of lineups for the women’s washroom, neither sex really knows how it is for
the other one inside their private space.
During a recent interview with an architect who specializes in public
washroom design, I mentioned that sometimes women go into washrooms to cry. He
said he never knew that. For my part, I learned only recently that men
sometimes get ice in their urinals, and that once in a while there’s a
men’s washroom with no doors on its stalls.
The most obvious public-washroom issue is simple availability. In downtown
Victoria, the two civic washrooms both close at night. It solves the problem
of nighttime vandalism, but at a cost.“ Go into Centennial Parkade and it’s
like the elevator is the bathroom,” says Victoria city manager Joe Martignago.
“People go in the bushes, on the buildings. There was one night I was
sitting in my office and I could see a guy clear as a bell, urinating up
against the mayor’s window.”
The seminal document on public washrooms in North America came out of
Canada in 1975, when the National Research Council released The Use of
Washroom Facilities in a Theatre Complex. The study found that women -- lining
up even way back then — made up almost
two-thirds of the audience, and that men used urinals rather than toilet
stalls 96 per cent of the time. The findings led to a recommendation that
more space be given to women’s washrooms in the future, and that the
female-male toilet ratio be set at a minimum of 2:1 in building codes to
reduce lineups outside the women’s room.
Two decades later, it finally
happened. Codes in Canada and the U.S. started being revised to require new
buildings to install a greater number of toilets for women. “This will do
much to dispel the long-held belief that long lines at women’s restrooms are an inevitable fact of life that must be stoically endured by
more than half the population,” noted the American Society of Theatre
Consultants as various states introduced “potty parity” laws.
Even without the lineup, studies have found that women take about twice as
long as men to use a public washroom. Maybe it’s because we have a lot of
snaps and buckles, or spend time primping in front of the mirror. Maybe it’s
because we get talking to the woman next to us about her fabulous shoes. But
that’s not all that’s going on.
University of Chicago law professor Mary Anne Case, who’s collecting
public-washroom anecdotes for her paper on public toilets as gendered spaces,
says that urinals make a big difference.“ Count urinals as well as toilets,
and you’ll find that men often have more places to go,” says Case. “Women
are standing in long lines assuming that what has generated the line is them
just taking longer, or chatting. And those may be contributing factors, but
the fact is that sometimes there isn’t equal excreting opportunity.” Case
got into the washroom issue after hearing once too often in the course of
debate over U.S. gender-equality laws that “if this goes through, the next
thing they’ll be wanting is unisex washrooms.” She set out to test whether
the statement was true and if so, whether that was necessarily bad. “When I
started this work, I wasn’t aware of what I would find, which is that square
footage is often the measure of equality,” says Case.
The B.C. Building Code lays out the minimum number of men’s and women’s
“water closets” required in public washrooms based on how many people use
the building, but architects familiar with the results say a wise building
manager puts in far more than the code allows for.
Blair Morris, technical director at the Royal and McPherson theatres, says
there have been washroom expansions in both theatres in the last couple of
years, and there still aren’t enough facilities. “If we were building a
new theatre, you’d probably see 20 to 40 per cent more washrooms than
we’ve got in either site,” says Morris. “These days when you’re
running a public facility, it’s customer service.” Up until renovations 18
months ago, intermission at every McPherson performance for eight years steady
ended late because of a lineup outside the women’s washroom. The lineups at
the Royal are legendary, and will remain so until more women twig to the fact
that extra washrooms have now been added in the balcony, says Morris. Not only
does a lineup make the customers cranky, it’s potentially costly.“
If you get something like the symphony kicking into overtime because the
theatre couldn’t clear the lineup at the women’s washroom fast enough,
you’re talking another $8,000 to $10,000 for that next chunk of the
symphony’s time,” says Morris. Laws in 10 states that provide for double
the number of women’s washrooms came about largely as a result of desperate
women at entertainment events opting to use the men’s washroom rather than
wait in line any longer. A decade ago, a Dallas secretary arrested after using
the men’s washroom at a George Strait concert fought back and won, and
potty-parity laws were brought in soon after. California’s laws got a kick
start following one fellow’s unsuccessful attempt to sue a group of
women who had burst into the men’s room during a rock concert as he was
using the urinal. But getting it right on public washrooms isn’t just about
the number of excreting opportunities.
Use of space and accessibility are also important criteria in washroom
design these days, says Vancouver architect Ben Ostrander. Toilets and sinks
have to be both plentiful and well-placed. People in wheelchairs have to be
able to get in and out easily, and reach all accoutrements. The new trend is
for “family” washrooms, which let people of different sexes — parent and
child, elderly person and caregiver — use the
same room.
Hygiene has also moved to the forefront, prompting the
proliferation of “touchless” toilets that flush themselves and
motion-activated faucets. An added benefit of the systems is a significant
reduction in water waste. Everything but the towel dispenser is now touchless
at the Victoria Eaton Centre main washrooms, recently revamped into tiny
enclaves.“ Our bathrooms weren’t inviting in the past,” acknowledges
centre operations manager Pat Bannan. “So we went looking for ideas on
creating a more inviting atmosphere. At the same time, it gave us a chance to
look at water conservation.” Details count. The Eaton Centre renovators
picked a high-end soap for the dispensers, warm lighting, an anteroom so
people wouldn’t end up feeling crowded around the stalls. Women have been
particularly delighted with the changes, says Bannan.“ My only mistake was
putting paper towels in and not a touchless blower,” he notes. “We’re
doing the upstairs ones next, and they’ll have both.”
Elsewhere in the
downtown, public washrooms are vanishing at an alarming rate.
The Douglas Street McDonald’s has closed its upstairs washrooms and now
requires customers to get a key for the lower one. The 7-Eleven farther down
the street has shut its public washroom altogether, as have several other
retailers in the neighbourhood. The problem is injection drug use, the same
issue that prompted city hall to install yellow lights in its Centennial
Square washrooms and Market Square administrators to put black light above the toilets in the square’s
washrooms. Only the toilet paper glows in the deliberately dim and murky
cubicles. Injecting is so common in the Centennial Square washroom as addicts
look for a place out of sight of the police that the city has installed
disposal tubes for used syringes in every cubical. If drug users make it past
the yellow lighting, at least they’ve got the option of being tidy.
Predictably, merchants aren’t happy at the growing use of their washrooms
for drug use. They don’t want customers to have to deal with the sight of
someone injecting, or have children come across discarded syringes. So the
yellow lights are going up, the locks are going on, and the access to public
washrooms is increasingly being restricted. “We basically don’t have a
public washroom anymore,” said one 7-Eleven clerk.
“If a police officer or a transit driver comes in looking for a place to go,
we’ll sneak them in. But that’s about it.”
In the U.S. cities where the move is toward self-cleaning washrooms on
street corners, doors automatically open after 20 minutes to discourage drug
use and loitering. But that doesn’t always work. In San Francisco, which
will soon have 50 of the automated washrooms, a man was found dead of a heroin
overdose inside one of them two years ago.
In a more recent incident, homeless people ended up knocking out the automated
toilets city-wide after jamming the door open on one of them in an attempt to
sleep inside without triggering the self-cleaning mechanism. The incidence of
drug use in public washrooms would likely drop with the introduction of
supervised injection sites. Addicts would instead take their drugs to staffed
sites where they could inject safely and cleanly. But that’s a controversial
subject that’s only now winning the most cautious support from provincial
and federal governments. “The previous provincial government came around to
supporting it, although they couldn’t bring themselves to do anything about
it,” says B.C. medical
health officer Dr. Perry Kendall. “Still, we’re inching forward.” Until
then, downtown washrooms will likely remain a popular option. And
closing them as a solution unfortunately makes it that much tougher for
anybody else to use them, a particular problem for those who live on the
streets.
The Centennial Square washroom closes at 4 p.m. in the winter months, and
few downtown businesses let anyone but paying customers use their washrooms.
But everybody has to go sooner or later, which explains why city parkades so
often smell like urine.“ Personally, I think there ought to be quite a few
more public washrooms in the city,” says city manager Martignago. “ The
question is how to put them in and not get them abused.”
In Seattle, city council recently approved spending $638,000 US over the
next 10 years to install and operate five self-cleaning washrooms downtown.
The city had planned to charge people to use the toilets until staff pointed
out that Washington state law prohibits pay toilets. It seems that back in
1977, state legislator Rep. John Bagnariol — desperate for a place to go
during a trip through Snoqualmie Pass — had found himself outside a pay
toilet without the right change. A law banning them was passed soon after.
Mary Anne Case, the Chicago law professor doing the washroom survey (toiletsurvey@law.uchicago.edu),
went into her study thinking that the
answer to achieving true washroom equality would turn out to be public
washrooms modelled after the kind that airplanes use — unisex, private cubicles.“ I’m less sure of that now,” says Case. “It’s certainly
not clear that the culture is ready to give up sex-segregated washrooms. There
seems to be a fair amount of attachment for them, particularly on the part of
women.” Some women believe they’re safer in women-only washrooms, although
Case notes that the Ladies sign on the door didn’t stop a Las Vegas man from
pursuing his victim into the women’s washroom and killing her there, out of
sight of security cameras.
Others appreciate the social aspects of segregated facilities, the chance
to “be alone with one’s own” for a little while, says Case. Venting
about the boss, having a good cry, sharing a laugh -- public washrooms are
where it all happens.
Former B.C. reporter Miro Cernetig once buttonholed then-premier Bill
Vander Zalm on some pressing issue of the day while the two of them stood
alongside each other at the legislature urinals. U.S. journalist Hunter S.
Thompson once found himself sharing a urinal with Richard Nixon, and seized
the moment to lambaste the disgraced president. I’ve witnessed nothing so
dramatic in the women’s washrooms of the world,
although I’ve certainly exchanged many an important weight-loss tip, travel
highlight and anecdote about my children. Even the inevitable lineups aren’t
so bad if the conversation is interesting enough.
“Of course, the good of sex segregation is also the bad if you never know
how the other half lives,” notes Case. “What are women, and men, missing
out on by the fact that they are using sex-segregated space?” Case would
rather have used other people’s data on public-washroom attitudes for her
study, acknowledging that as a law professor, “I’m no social scientist.”
But the data wasn’t out there, so she’s having to come up with it herself.
Participants are being asked to keep track of their observations in public
washrooms — the cleanliness, special touches, graffiti, sexual activity —
and to quiz their opposite-sex friends as well for the full picture. So far,
she has found that men’s washrooms frequently have more of those
all-important excreting opportunities, but women’s washrooms typically have
more frills — tissues, lotion dispensers, couches. Women are more prone to
socialize in the washroom; men stick to the task at hand. And while women are
willing to use men’s washrooms in a pinch, the reverse
isn’t true. But the lengthy waits that send women sneaking into the
wrong-sex washroom are rarely a problem for men anyway.
I asked architect Thom Weeks, who revamped the McPherson washrooms, for his
favourite washroom. He named Toronto’s Princess of Wales Theatre. “Nice
lighting, good arrangement of sinks.”
TC movie critic Michael Reid, rare among his peers for having an immediate
response when asked what public washroom he likes best, cites Bartholomew’s
restaurant in the Executive House Hotel. The urinals are separated by
partitions with the current day’s newspaper tacked to them, which Reid finds
a pleasantly civilizing touch. My favourite was one in the upper levels of
Canada Place in Vancouver, so luxuriously appointed that I briefly experienced
the feeling of being rich enough to have the best bathroom ever at my
disposal.
Better still, there was no lineup. It restored my faith in the possible..
Jody Paterson - e-Mail
Jody
Victoria British Columbia Canada - Times Colonist Newspaper Columnist
For More About Public Washrooms:
Check out tdc's FarmGate's
Ottawa Washroom Evaluations
Toronto Washroom Evaluations
New York Washroom Evaluations
Los Angeles Washroom Evaluations
Nutrition and Food
As a nutrition and foods educator, I am often frustrated when having to explain food
labeling to my students and private clients. Why? Well, read further on to four points
that I would like to make. In a world that is difficult to navigate, having to make simple
food choices should not cause a headache...or worse. I would like to appeal to all of you
out there who also find they are in the doldrums when it comes to food and nutrition
issues and that, as a responsible consumer, we want nutrition information that is clear
and straightforward...so that we can make responsible food choices for ourselves and
family, for our health and wellbeing (that includes foods used in restaurants, etc.) Here
are four issues and questions to raise with the candidates running in your area:
1. Canadians want comprehensive, easy-to-read nutrition information on
all food labels so they can improve their health and reduce their risk of diet-related
disease. Currently, just over half of foods have any nutrition information and those that
do, often conceal the amounts of important nutrients , for example, trans fat, fibre.
(a) Does your party support mandatory, standardized and complete nutrition labelling for
all foods, yes or no?
and
(b) What will you and your party do to ensure that Canadians get this important public
health information about all of the foods we eat?
2. Private food advertising and public nutrition education: Canadians are
bombarded with over $700 million in commercial food advertising annually urging us to
drink caffeine-laden soft drinks, alcohol, greasy burgers, sugary cereal and candy, salty
processed foods, and foods high in saturated and trans fats.
We and our children pay for this advertising -- the cost of which is included in the price
of food -- pay again in the GST charged for many of these types of foods, and pay,
ultimately, with our health. Meanwhile, the federal government spends a fraction of one
percent of this amount on disseminating balanced, independently produced nutrition
education messages.
(a) Does your party support earmarking a portion of the GST (and, in Nfld., N.B., and
N.S., the federal share of HST) revenues collected on snack foods and soft drinks to fund
independent nutrition counseling (perhaps under medicare) and nutrition education programs
to offset the negative impact of the commercial promotion of junk food, yes or no? If so,
how much?
3. Genetically modified foods: Canadians want the federal government to
ensure that genetically modified foods are approved as safe before GM foods are sold. In
addition, most Canadians want genetically modified foods and GM ingredients to be
identified on package labels.
(a) Does your party support pre-market testing and approval procedures for GM foods that
are open to public scrutiny before GM foods are sold, yes or no? and
(b) Does your party support mandatory labelling of foods containing genetically modified
ingredients, yes or no?
4. Food, Poverty and Kids: 78% of respondents to a recent national survey
say they are concerned about the issue of hunger. 60% say that the federal government
should take responsibility. More than 726,900 people used a food bank in March 2000.
That's more than double the 1989 total. 40% of these people were under the age of 18.
Experts agree that good nutrition improves performance in school and is much more cost
effective than medical treatment after the onset of illness.
(a) What will you and your party do to ensure that the physical and intellectual
development of Canadian kids doesn't suffer for lack of something to eat?
Astrid Strader, Prescott, Ont.
Oasis Institute for Healthy Living Inc.
(613) 657-4688
eMail your comments on this article to: ras@recorder.ca
4-H IN THE CITY
For most of their eighty-five year history 4-H clubs have been
associated in the public’s mind with farm life – kids raising cows or other
animals. However, major changes have occurred in 4-H clubs since the Seventies.
Unfortunately, the public image hasn’t yet come close to catching up with the private
reality. 4-H in America has gone urban! 4-H in Canada still seems to be mostly down on the
farm. This could be an opportunity missed.
More than half of the U.S.’s 4-H five million members now live in urban areas of
10,000 people or more. To some extent the shift is attributable to the decline of family
farms. This could account for the decline in rural membership, but the upsurge on the
urban side?
Part of the urban answer may be the increase in home schooling and the need for parents to
augment the bare bones curriculae of their state public school offerings. Nor do no
frills, formal school environments offer the array of extra-curricular activities which
educators have long argued are necessary to give hands-on real experience of the vicarious
materials provided by textbooks and electronic instruction. Youth concern with their own
neighborhood environments may also be a factor.
With that, however, the guiding philosophy of 4-H has an important appeal that can speak
to kids wherever they may live. 4-H has travelled to more than eighty countries with
widely different cultures. The quick commute down the interstate from rural to urban
America should, therefore, come as no surprise.
To "Learn By Doing" and "To Make The Best Better", the 4-H slogan and
motto respectively. The 4-H Pledge:
I pledge
My Head to clearer thinking
My Heart to greater loyalty
My Hands to larger service
My Health to better living,
for my club, my community,
my country, and my world.
This is heady stuff, easily transferable to about every locale in the world. 4-H programs,
which give flesh and form to the philosophy are not so easily transferable. In recognizing
this and having local clubs determine for themselves appropriate activities and programs,
4-H leaders facilitate very relevant expressions for the philosophy.
In New Jersey, 4-H’ers are involved in activity which includes bike care and safety,
go-karting, aerospace and rocketry, consumer education, and animal sciences. In Washington
State, outdoor discovery activities, food and fitness, teen leadership, and gardening are
in the mix. So, too, are cycling, climbing, and cross-country skiing. Utah, where the
majority of 4-H’ers are urban, also has similar activities. In Minneapolis, special
program activities have been developed for new immigrants in low income housing
neighborhoods. In California, Iowa, and Tennessee, 4-H’ers are involved in learning
computer literacy, as well as website design and maintenance. Significantly, almost all
urban 4-H’ers are involved in community vegetable gardening, food and nutrition
activities, and community beautification and ecology projects.
Canada certainly has the preconditions for decline in its 4-H membership; notably,
declining number of family farms and/or agricultural land being taken out of production.
Canada also has the preconditions for an upsurge in 4-H urban membership; notably cutbacks
in extra-curricular activity support in our school systems, increase in home schooling,
and, of course, that shift in population to more urban areas which occurs when the family
farms are absorbed into multinational agri-business or transformed into housing
developments and industrial parks. Add to that increasing interest in urban agriculture,
particularly organic food production, and increasing interest on the part of young people
in environmental matters – certainly here is an opportunity for 4-H to find a fit for
its philosophy and resources. We may need to do more than point to one or two urban 4-H
clubs, such as that which meets in Riverdale Park in Toronto, to say the matter is being
worked on. 4-H came to us from the U.S. Why not, therefore, replicate some of their most
successful club activities?
Raising calves for exhibition at the annual town fair is still OK if you live on a farm in
the country. But along with that we should be mindful that 4-H is moving into the 21st
Century well positioned to have a tremendous positive influence on the next generations of
city dwellers. 4-H may be the natural vehicle to develop urban gardening into an urban
practice as widespread and relevant as recycling.
Art Montague
Mail your comments on
this Article to Art Montague
If you liked this article e-Mail
it to a friend
Art Montague has written for Canadian trade journals and newspapers, and co-authored a
criminology textbook still in use. Through his volunteer community work, he has become
involved in urban vegetable gardening and the study of food sustainability issues
worldwide. He enjoys writing for Themestream about his adventures in grandparenting a
three-year toddler nicknamed K.C.
Some Other articles on the Web by Art Montague
Meet
the Urban Farmer
City-bred, I associated vegetable gardening with the country. That is, until the past few
years. |
Rooftop
Gardens: The Sky's The Limit
The rooftops of St. Petersburg, Russia, are made to order for rooftop vegetable gardening.
One expert suggests enough could be grown to supply local needs with a surplus for export. |
Garbage
To Live By
In some parts of the world, where survival is at stake, one person's garbage is another's
salvation. |
Farmers Today
Farmers don't have a small voice in political issues, we are
just not skilled in how to use the powers we do have. Farmers are the food
producers. Farmers make up an industry ranked 2, 3 or 4th in provincial income
generators (depending on whose numbers you use), and yet we do not do a very good job of
lobbying our concerns to either the government OR the people of the province or country
who we feed. What we need is to change this! What we need is some political
willpower!
We have to do like the American farmer - get the public on our side. It isn't just
Willie Nelson who is supporting the American farmer - it is their society who supports
them! Why are we such a quiet and polite farmers in Canada? Why aren't we
getting
people on our bandwagon? Everybody knows who feeds them, and if we did it right.....the
Canadian public would get on our side too! We need professional help, and at this point, I
don't mean psychiatrists!
We need lobbying in the worst way, even though I don't like the tactics used sometimes,
but big business is in there like Flint and we are big business too....it's just that we
don't have a single "corporate voice" that is pushing hard enough. We need
to
hire a professional lobbyist or two - or get a good AALP grad hired to do the job!
Any volunteers? OFA - do you have the funds to hire such a person? CFA - can
you hire another dedicated lobbyists? If we don't do something soon, the prices are
dropping out the bottom for commodities and we may not have an industry to save at that
rate!
Richard Buck
Speaker to the agricultural and tourism industry
e Mail Richard at richard@agritourscanada.com
If you liked this article e-Mail
it to a friend
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Certified Angus Beef
The demise of the corner butcher shop is a real shame and speaks volumes of the
changes in "affordability" of goods over the last 20 to 30 years.
Locally we have The Village Grocer, who do carry the real thing and our local Loblaws does
carry a limited selection of Angus 'choice', so does the local IGA.
I can remember when we used to buy most of our meat direct from Bradley's and later The
Steak Shop was pretty good, but they're gone as a consumer presence. I understand that
some people are desperate enough to buy freezer-friendly cuts (or more precisely,
freezer-friendly packaging of consistent portions) that they'll even buy the stuff that
M&M sells (I don't know anyone who ordered more than once from Sealand). But NOTHING
beats the quality of what a good butcher can deliver when he knows you want quality.
In the early '80s there was a decent butcher in Briddletowne Mall, and I still had to
special order, sometimes a couple of months in advance, to get the right barbecue cuts.
While I never liked Omaha's cuts (often too big and they over-trim), I'll admit to buying
McIntosh (Chicago), Judith Christ Select (Houston), and Balfour's (Boston) when I was
making the big money: but now it's an affordability/value question, and that's what I was
hitting on in my note - but packaged meat/seafood does make a great gift; and, like Dale
implies, if you don't go into a butcher's shop every week, then you get what he wouldn't
sell to his regulars; so, that's when I'd use Dale's service.
The "cheap" revolution has come to dress-makers, painters (sure, you don't use
College-Pro if you don't do it yourself), tailors, garages, and carpenters too. Geez, I
can remember when only people starting out bought made-to-measure at Harry Rosen's, now
manager-types by off-the-rack at Moore's.
PS, don't waste good money on buying expensive cuts for children, I can hardly wait until
my little one gets to be a teenager and can appreciate a big T-bone on the barby.
Phill Giles
Woodwright & Trim Carpentry
Unionville - (905) 479-1781
pegiles@home.com
http://members.home.net/unionville-woodwright
If you liked this article e-Mail
it to a friend
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One of the things we love to do in Ontario is to
reflect
upon ourselves and our environs and sometime make a
comment or two on how we live or should live.
If you have a
contribution either in prose or poetry that you wish to share
on this page please submit using the following form.
