Editorials

Early this week, a Frontenac OPP release came out announcing that an arrest had been made in a fatal collision case. The arrest was not related to either of the recent fatal incidents in Frontenac County. It was neither the car crash on Burke...

It has been almost a month since a car crash on Burke Settlement Road killed Alex Cryer, a student at Granite Ridge Education Centre, and sent others to hospital. And it has been almost three weeks since a boat crash on Bobs Lake killed Juliette...

A few weeks ago, Linda Rush and Marily Seitz – who have shared the columnist duties in Ompah, decided to withdraw from the column. This week’s paper features the final column for Wanda Harrison in Arden. In all three cases, the decision was made...

The case surrounding a Granite Ridge student who wore a t-shirt saying “There are only two genders” has drawn attention on social media which has spread out from Sharbot Lake across Canada and into the United States. The Limestone District...

When Frontenac County announced last week that their new Chief Administrative Officer was an internal hire, Kevin Farrell, it came as a bit of a surprise, but it probably shouldn’t have. In 2016, after seeing 9 different appointees as Chief...

Eclipse! What to say! Humbling, I guess, at being a witness to a truly spectacular example of the immensity of the universe, our microscopic place in it and the certainty that we will never have any control over what goes on. We can only sit back...

Every day of the year is the National or International Day of something or other, or more than one thing. January 23 is National Pie Day in both Canada and the United States. The date was set in the 1970s by a man in Boulder, Colorado whose birthday...

There has been discussion about waste site employees checking bags at our waste sites.  Why is this important?  Both Addington Highlands and North Frontenac Townships recycle and divert as much garbage from the waste sites and transfer stations as...

So, far it is only a few lines of text in an Auditor General’s report, but slowly across rural Ontario there is starting to be a reaction to the idea that free water testing for total coliform and e coli, will no longer be offered to the 3 million...

There was a lot of enthusiasm among the three people who presented a plan to create a single Public Health Unit to serve six counties and the City of Kingston. It is a plan that seems destined to become a reality, in a matter of months. While all of...

At least once every municipal budget year, someone asks why the Frontenac News don’t always report the same budget increase numbers as the local municipalities report. The first point is that all the numbers that we report come from the townships...

It started in late January. A friend(?) of mine leaned over to me while we were sitting in a restaurant and said, “have you tapped yet?” I was not ready to hear that. I said I was not going to be jumping at a January thaw, even in an El Nino...

On February 2nd, North Frontenac Council had a full agenda for their regular meeting, the Christmas political lull being truly over. Council worked through a series of requests, with little fanfare. They listened to a detailed presentation about the...

Nimbyism is a boon to our business at the Frontenac News. In many cases, it is how we find out that something is happening, because someone contacts us to let is know about it. And more often than not, those people are the neighbouring property...

The Ontario Conservative government is not the first one that thought it would be a good idea for some of the small public health units, such as Kingston Frontenac Public Health (KFLAPH) to amalgamate with other smaller health units. Public health...

As we begin a new year at the Frontenac News, it’s hard to predict what issues will come to the surface over the coming 12 months. There are already signs, however, that 2024 will be the year when climate change issues begin to filter down to...

2023 has been a year of change for many of us, certainly in the newspaper industry. Costs have jumped, most notably in the printing industry with the closing of the Metroland Plant in March. Luckily for us, another small business came though for us...

Almost 40 years ago, I wrote my first Christmas editorial. I was an editor of a student paper, at the time, after leaving the Jewish community in Montreal where I was raised. Where I grew up, Christmas was a day when we played hockey in backyard...

A couple of weeks ago, Canada Post began letting local post offices and community newspaper publishers, that as of January 8, 2024, they would be changing their policy regarding the delivery of community newspapers. Until now, when Canada Post...

It's too bad that Ontario Premier Doug Ford was not a former council member in Frontenac County instead of the City of Toronto. Because, if he was, then maybe Road 38 and Road 506/509 would have been uploaded last week instead of, or along with, the...

The idea behind Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) is sound. If it is possible to store power that can be accessed instantly in order to maintain the integrity of the electricity grid at any time, then the path to replacing fossil fuel electrical...

Addington Highlands Council deferred passing their “Unreasonable Behaviour” policy this week, over Councillor Ken Hook's concern about who makes the final decision about imposing restrictions under the policy, but once that is sorted out there...

There is a newspaper in Lanark. There is a newspaper in Westport, and there is a newspaper in Sharbot Lake. They all publish weekly and will continue to publish weekly. There is, or soon will be, no newspaper in Perth, Smiths Falls, Carleton Place,...

Much of the Premier of Ontario's talk about the housing crisis and the need to build 1.5 million homes has seemed to me to be a ruse to allow big time developers to make more and more profit. And nothing about what has transpired since the 2022...

I was somewhat surprised by the lukewarm reaction of the Frontenac County Planning and Economic Development Advisory Committee to the proposal by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority to set up a Community Broadband Performance Testing...

As of last week, as readers of our August 10 editorial are aware, the Frontenac News has been blocked from Facebook, presumably until the dispute between the Government of Canada and Meta is resolved. At the news, we are like a flea caught up in a...

I was planning to write about the possibility that the Frontenac News might get caught up in the Meta Corporation battle with the government of Canada, at some point this summer, not knowing how and when it would happen. This week we found out. All...

When it comes to trails in urban areas like the City of Kingston, the idea of ATV’s motoring up and and down on public hiking, walking, and biking trails is crazy. With roadways clogged with trucks, cars and buses, parks and trails are the only...

Thanks to Jeff Green we have a comprehensive overview of the discussions at County Council concerning the recently adopted “land acknowledgement”. Such ceremonial openings are part of the collection of low hanging fruit proposed by the 94...

I was scrolling through some news sites last week, when I stumbled on an article about Post Media and Metroland joining forces. I did not see that coming, but maybe I should have. Coming up on 6 years ago, the two companies swapped a total of almost...

It could have been 1990, or 1991. My wife Martina was showing her work at an art fair on the grounds of a small church in Toronto, one Sunday in late June. I don't remember why, or how, we had decided to participate in that show, but I do remember...

Last summer, an architect’s report about a potential expansion of the county-owned long term care facility, Fairmount Home, recommended that the existing 128 bed home be abandoned and instead, a brand new $60 million dollar facility should be...

The “7 in 7” regional housing project that Hasting County Chief Administrator Jim Pine brought to a combined meeting of Frontenac County and township councils last week in Verona, was similar in some ways to a proposal he brought to Frontenac...

There is something a bit unseemly about the sunshine list, the annual accounting of how many public sector employees in Ontario earn salaries over $100,000. The list provides access to the name, job title, institution, and annual salary of every...

Frontenac County is a strange animal. One of its peculiarities is that in addition to three contiguous townships with uninspiring names, (North Frontenac, Central Frontenac, and South Frontenac) there is a 4th township which is made up of islands on...

North Frontenac lost a beloved community member, Ed Schlievert, on Tuesday February 21st. Settling in Ardoch back in 1995, he is remembered by many for his restaurant; Ed's Place. Where so many of our community gathered to enjoy his cooking and...

Frontenac County increased taxes by almost 9% this year, the largest increase in memory. And, as we reported last month, members of Frontenac County Council said there was little they could do to lower that increase, after they received the draft...

Over the last 15 years, there have been a couple of successful 'find a doc' campaigns in our region. While the circumstances today are different, those successes are still instructive. In one case, the township of Addington Highlands, with support...

Most Canadians pay scant attention to the fortunes of federal political parties when there is no obvious federal election on the horizon, but of course that does not stop the parties from jockeying for position. The Conservative leader, Pierre...

A year later, it can't be about vaccine mandates any more A year ago the freedom convoy had become a full blown occupation of the City of Ottawa. It was already clear at that time that the reason so many people were protesting, and the support that...

A quick scan of the numbers in the proposed South Frontenac capital budget reveals that staff are proposing to spend about $11 million this year on capital expenditures, including over $8 million on road projects. The biggest ticket item, by far, is...

North Frontenac Township Council passed a motion I brought forward in December, to state that it recognized that we are now in a climate emergency. It also agreed to receive recommendations from myself and Councillor Roy Huetl about what steps the...

Land use planning is bureaucratic, tedious, complicated, and boring. It is also a big deal for anyone who wants to build something, or wants to prevent or change the plan of someone else who wants to build something. Everyone, with the possible...

There is a sense that a new year brings new opportunities, and while we all inevitably slip back into the same patterns of work by mid January, it is important to at least note where we have come from and how we can do things just a little...

Remember the idea of us all being 'alone together', the idea that we were all in the fight against COVID together. That seems so 2020, doesn’t it By the winter of 2022 there was little good will left In its place was an unprecedented protest and...

Bill 23 – the More Homes Built Faster Faster Act, recently passed by the Ontario Legislature, is a set of sweeping measures that reflect the underlying political thinking of Premier Doug Ford. It is all about removing barriers to commerce, in this...

A lot of families with younger school aged children found themselves scrambling two weeks ago, when a contract dispute between Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), representing education workers in Ontario schools, and the Ontario government,...

Early on in COVID, the KFL&A region was the best place to be in Canada. The reason for that was that KFL&A was the only region that did not see any major outbreaks in long term care facilities, and we were able and willing to isolate when the first...

There were distinct dynamics in each of the townships that we covered during the municipal election campaign this fall. They were apparent in candidate interviews and particularly apparent at the all-candidates meetings. And the election results...

At the beginning of the municipal election season, I was worried that it would be a tall order to fulfill the role that we have taken on, at the Frontenac News, to provide a forum for voters to get acquainted, in a basic way, with all of the...