Editorials

On page 6 and 7 of this edition the five candidates seeking election in the Lanark Frontenac Kingston Riding are profiled. The profiles were written by me after interviewing each of the candidates over the phone They were each sent a copy of their...

As some letter writers have pointed out, I have been accused, not necessarily unfairly, of talking about the federal election as if it were a non-event in Lanark Frontenac Kingston. Over the years, we have taken on a similar role at the Frontenac...

Lately it has been a lot of fun looking at the mess the United Kingdom has got itself into from the safe vantage point of Canada. Since we borrowed/inherited the UK’s parliamentary system, the way that Brexit has played out over the last 18 months...

Paul Pospisil – the garlic guru Readers of this paper may have noted that two weeks ago we published a photo from the Verona Garlic festival that included Paul Pospisil, who attended in order to participate in the handing out the Eastern Ontario...

The City of Kingston has decided to withhold a payment of $200,000 from Frontenac County for Frontenac Paramedic Services and Fairmount Home. City Council feels they were over-billed for the services without adequate consultation. The City does not...

Late last fall, Kingston Frontenac Lennox and Addington Public Health (KFL&A PH) decided to expend some resources on developing a radon mitigation strategy for all of the residents of its catchment area. This initiative was spearheaded by Dr. Kieran...

Keeping our drinking water safe and our lakes healthy was the goal behind the Septic Savvy Workshop held this summer as a joint activity of the North Frontenac Lake Association Alliance and the Township of North Frontenac. “Through this seminar we...

Dear Frontenac News and readers, Please allow me to respond to the July 24th editorial “One take on the shortage of primary care physicians” by Dr. Emma Cronk. Being a rural family physician myself, I applaud Dr. Cronk’s achievements, concern...

The South Frontenac Planning Department receives a steady stream of inquiries from individuals and developers who are looking to do business in South Frontenac. Given the nature of land use planning, especially in a rural area where each piece of...

(Editors note: The following was forwarded by Emma Cronk’s mother, Leslie, who lives on the Cronk farm near Parham. It was written in response to media reports about a dearth of primary care physicians in the Town of Perth, but it applies as much...

All has been quiet on the Queen’s Park front in recent weeks, at least as far as creating a new template for municipal governance in the province is concerned. A review of how regional governance is working in municipalities across southern...

Doug Ford has never been accused of being subtle, and during the first 9 months of his mandate as premier, signals about the government’s intention to change provincially delivered and/or funded services in Ontario have been crystal clear, as is...

Those who said that the Ford government in Ontario would bring in the kind of tumultuous era that came about when the Mike Harris government ruled the roost in the late 1990’s, might be saying I told you so about now. Under Harris, the delivery of...

What do Jody-Wilson Raybold and Randy Hillier have in common? They are both Canadians and they are both politicians. That’s where their apparent similarities end. Wilson Raybould is an indigenous lawyer from BC. Hillier is an electrician from...

(Bill Bowick is a community activist who lives in Sharbot Lake. A member of the Sharbot Lake Business Group, he has been comtemplating the future prospects for the local community in the face of changes that may come as the result of a train or a...

We’ve been covering Randy Hillier at the News ever since he was the leader of the Lanark Landowners. It’s fair to say he has always been an energetic, but divisive figure. His history with the Progressive Conservative Party, which we have...

When Paul Charboneau announced he was going to retire from Frontenac Paramedic Services last week, he made sure to reference his commitment to continuity, saying that identifying and training the next generation of leaders is one of the primary ways...

As I sit and reflect about my oldest child graduating from elementary school, I thought I would share may family's story and our experience at St. James Major Catholic School.  A school full of children should be surrounded by positivity and love,...

When Frontenac County Council completed their budget meetings last week, the Councillors seemed to be happy about the result. They wanted to keep the tax increase to the cost of living index, which was 3.1%, and county staff presented them with that...

Frontenac Transportation Services (FTS), which is operated by Rural Frontenac Community Services (RFCS), has been funded by Frontenac County under the heading of “grants to others” since FTS was established in May of 2011. County support for...

Among the broad implications of Bill 66, the Restoring Ontario’s Competitiveness Act, which was released in December and will be debated in the legislature, were changes to the Municipal Act which would have allowed municipalities to pass “Open...

Four and a half years ago, the Robertsville ambulance base opened its doors. That was a few months before the 2014 municipal election when the current Mayor and County Warden, Ron Higgins, was elected. Three other members of North Frontenac Council,...

What is it that gets people so excited about seeds. Is it gardening. Some people like to garden. It's peaceful, meditative, back to the earth. If it were gardening alone, then it wouldn't really matter which seeds we had, as long as they grow good...

What comes up when you hear China these days? Dictatorship, authoritarianism, human rights violations, censorship? On a CBC radio episode of the Current in December, host Anna Maria Tremonti interviewed 3 people during a half-hour segment on the...

In October and November, in response to the rotating strikes by members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), Canada Post continually updated the public about the impact of the strikes on the service. They suspended delivery time...

It has now been two weeks since marijuana became legal in Canada, and it is also about 10 days, for most Canadians, since the novelty will have worn off. The tv cameras are all gone from the new legal dispensaries, as are the line ups, but...

A recent opinion piece, titled “What history can teach us about proportional representation,” published on September 9 in The Toronto Star, concludes that Proportional Representation (PR) was to blame for the 15 European democracies that fell...

I spent the better part of the last week talking to candidates for mayor and council in South Frontenac. The profiles that resulted from those conversations start on page 6 of this edition. I woud first like to thank all of the people I talked to....

The Ontario government has given a bit more time for the incoming municipal councils to think about whether they will permit cannabis retailers to set up shop within their jurisdiction. At first, they were faced with a decision in December, at their...

Disagreements and personality conflicts among members of municipal councils tend to remain in the background, coming out more often through innuendo and off the cuff remarks, delivered under people’s breaths or away from public view at all. The...

There was a 100% increase in the number of stoplights in Frontenac County when the new light was switched on at Road 38 and the Wilton Road in Harrowsmith a couple of weeks ago. Both of the stoplights are located in South Frontenac. There is one on...

(The following has been edited since being published in the print version of the Frontenac News on September 13, to include statements from PaulaMurray, the chair of the Board of Trustess with the Limestone Board) Eleven candidates for Limestone...

The last time beer cost a dollar in Ontario, the price of beer was higher than it is today. Doug Ford’s “buck-a-beer” promise from the election campaign last spring had nothing to do with the beer market, fairness, or anything like that, but...

Brian Lipsin is surprised by the outpouring of community support after his record store was flooded last Saturday, ruining much of his stock of records, cd’s, tapes and posters. No one else is. Lipsin, who lives on a farm property near Harrowsmith...

I’m a programmer. I love the challenge, and I especially love how a few lines of code can save hours of monotonous labour. So much human potential is wasted carrying out mind-numbing tasks, and it’s my hope that one day technology will free us...

Not if you are up at White Lake, just north of 7! On the south shore of this unique body of water sits the White Lake Fish Culture Station. Central Frontenac is fortunate to be home to one of only nine such facilities operated by the Ontario...

I have no way of knowing why the Government of Ontario decided to institute electoral reform in the City of Toronto a couple of days before the close of nominations for an election that is 21/2 months away. It does appear to be some kind of a...

Frontenac County Chief Administrative Officer Kelly Pender came to Council two years ago with a concern and a proposal about how to approach it. He said that the Frontenac County Administrative Office, which is located in what is known as the ‘Old...

As reported last week, construction on the K&P trail has cost more and taken longer than anyone thought it would and will require a new infusion of cash, and some careful engineering as well. And once it is done, the section that is currently...

There was a moment in the Ontario election campaign when voters were telling pollsters they were seriously concerned about supporting Doug Ford for Premier. Ford has been a polarizing figure in Toronto City politics and has no history on the...

We have known about the June 7, 2018 voting date for four long years, and for at least two it has been the date everyone expects that the long reign of the Ontario Liberals will come to a quiet end. Just like Stephen Harper before her, on June 7...

Sooner or later, the Frontenac County office needs to be renovated or replaced. The office is located in a grand old house, but there is wasted space, a lack of accessibility, and other issues that will be expensive or impractical to deal with...

Just as relief was sweeping over Kingston at the news that prison farms would be reinstated, the federal government announced it did not plan to bring back the now famed Pen Herd that had been separated following the closures in 2010. Instead,...

There are a range of syrup makers in our part of the world. Syrup is, at its core, a very simple process, a lot of home syrup makers are able to make enough for family and friends with a one time investment of anywhere from a couple of hundred...

The Save our Prison Farms activists, a collection of farmers, prison rights activists, and community activists of various sorts from Kingston and the surrounding region, began fighting what looked like a doomed battle when the Federal Conservative...

Remember Patrick Brown. Way back in time, almost three weeks ago now, he was the leader of the Ontario Conservative Party, the Premier in waiting. The upcoming Ontario election was ‘his to lose’. And then he was gone, so gone. The Ontario...

When the North Frontenac News was established as a not-for-profit enterprise in 1971, its stated purpose was to knit the small isolated communities together north of Verona. There were other information sources about the world ‘out there’ but...

I have often wondered why the tax rates in the Frontenac townships vary so much, and why it is that residents living in my own township, Central Frontenac, pay a much higher tax rate than anyone else. It should be easy to compare tax rates in...

The last time we all went to the polls was for the Federal election way back in the fall of 2015, when the 10 year old Steven Harper led Conservative government was tossed out in favour of the Liberals under Justin Trudeau. This year the 14.5 year...

It’s generally a good sign when you manage to last an entire year with any organization. This is particularly true in the news business. Last year at this time, I was just preparing to give notice at The Frontenac Gazette. It wasn’t any specific...