Art's blog

It was a furtive mailing. At least, we’re always taken aback at its coming. We wiped away our tears with this pendulous scimitar swinging above our heads. What is this? Up again? First installment $1,500 and two more to go? That’s $4,500 for the year. The town managers are quick off the mark with their tax demands, but the town budget won’t be ready for another six months. Their profligacy knows no bounds. Heavens to Betsy, the decadence, the extravagance, the lavishness of it all. They want special equipment next door for ice rescues. Be good sports and buy it. Cost over-runs for maintaining the new sports centre? Stick it to them. An outdoor shelter for the police over what was once a public right of way? Squeeze it in; they’ll never know. What about raises – those indexed pensions, too? A mere 2 per cent (on the QT actually – three!), but no matter. Keep it under your hat. As for you lot who provide this largess, cough up. There’s no point in moaning and groaning.

Highway 401 on the north shore of Lake Ontario connects the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The stretch from Trenton to Toronto has been officially renamed the Highway of Heroes for the fallen warriors of the Canadian Army returned for burial. As a former serviceman (1943-1951) – yes, I know this puts me in the ancient bracket – I’ll exercise my right to free expression. That is, I’ve heard what veteran warriors have to say on the subject, including a Battle of Britain pilot, a soldier who foot-slogged across Sicily, a sailor who served for three years on minesweepers. Add to those other servicemen and women who were unanimous in agreeing that there’s nothing heroic about being blown up by a bomb or cut down by a sniper. This is not to diminish the sacrifice made by those who died. Of course we honour the fallen and we grieve with their loved ones. Do we not grieve equally for a workman who falls to his death from a scaffold or motorists struck head on and killed by a drunk driver? We would pay fallen soldiers greater tribute and honour by caring for their comrades returned from action maimed, wounded or broken in spirit. Let the yet living benefit from contributions made to erect monuments to slain heroes.

Contractors, engineers and consultants of every stripe must love the Town of Cobourg as gold diggers who come upon a seam of pure gold. It’s easy to understand why. The sky’s the limit when it comes to public expenditures. At least, that’s the clear impression one has from living in this ‘feel good’ town for the past near fifty years. On whatever expense the town managers decide – whether it is staff and employee salaries, fringe benefits or public works – they have a town council harnessed to vote approval. What else explains the highest municipal taxes in the Province? No! It is not acceptable to maintain that disbursements are compatible with other municipalities. Annually, the budget is estimated well above that of the previous year, then reduced after much public debate to a mere two per cent over as though to give the impression of prudent fiscal management. On the other hand, doesn’t this apply to all municipal councils that think their electorates are made of money?

Thanks in large part to an obdurate and intractable car park department of Cobourg Town the Peech’s Market at the foot of Third Street will shut up shop. The owners spent two years negotiating with the Town to create an outlet to serve the downtown condominium owners in the harbour area; he a skilled butcher and manager and she an accomplished cook have decided to call it a day. Why? Because the Car Park Department refuses to allow free parking while customers shop. Every retailer needs parking space to encourage business. Ample – and mostly vacant – space is available in the harbour area. The trouble is, this Town has an insatiable appetite for tribute. Anyone who dares to tarry for a moment while they pop in for a loaf of bread or bag of milk risks the attention of a lurking meter attendant and a $20 fine for illegal parking. A miniature sign requires payment for parking during the summer months only, but it is tiny alongside the larger Paid Parking sign that unwitting motorists read and immediately leave for more attractive pastures. The Peeches asked for free customer parking and were told, in effect, to get lost, so that is what they will do. Where is that poet laureate, needed now to write a lament to register our loss?

Our local newspaper, ‘Northumberland Today’, 8 July 2010, published a letter headed ‘Benefits of wind energy beyond clean’ whatever ‘beyond clean’ means. written by Robert Horning, president of the Canadian Wind Energy Association. The letter extols the benefits of wind power.
As a retired power engineer (hydro, fossil fuel and nuclear power generation), a long-term member of the Canadian National Technical Committee (on nuclear power QA), and contract manager of the (1952) 50Kw Orkney Island windmill (a feathered tri-blade unit), I am deeply concerned with the excess of bafflegab in President Horning’s letter. This communication lacks any detail by which readers can evaluate wind energy.
What is the unit of energy (Kwh) cost, amortized? How does this compare with hydro, nuclear, fossil fuel and solar energy costs? What is the average equipment and mean operating time? What are the maximum and minimum wind velocities for wind turbine operation? These and numerous other technical details are essential for readers to make sense of wind energy.
Statements such as ‘One of the many strengths of wind energy is its diversity notwithstanding its tremendous positive environmental attributes’ have no meaning. This is plain gobbledygook and publication of letters such as this in ‘Northumberland Today’ and other community newspapers is a disgrace, not to mention an insult, to the intelligence of readers.

Councillor Miriam Mutton is looking for a ‘pay increase’ for members of council. She relates what councillors are paid for their services to ‘regular increases for its [the Municipal Council’s] staff.’ This is nonsense. Councillors receive honoraria; council staff are paid salaries. An honorarium and a salary are not the same.

To parody Giuseppe in The Gondoliers, the culminating pleasure that I treasure beyond measure is the gratifying feeling of being in agreement with Mayor Peter Delanty. He disagrees with Councillor Mutton and one has to agree with him. Remuneration for councillors should be decided by the citizens of Cobourg.

If Councillor Mutton believes that remuneration for those who serve should be equated with services rendered she should stick to her business of landscape architecture. What is a town councillor worth – $30,000, $50,000, $100,000 a year? If that’s her idea of payment for services rendered she had best apply for employment with the town and leave the serious business of volunteer service to those best able to carry the burden.

The ‘Orient Express’ is no match for the service, elegant dining and comfort of VIA Rail’s ‘Continental’ from Toronto to Vancouver. Not the Eurostar with its flashy style and high speed nor the Trans Mongolian Express for sheer distance nor the efficiency of Japan Rail can compare with VIA’s Continental. As for excitement, ‘The Polar Express’ has to go a long way to beat the Continental.

Leaving Edmonton in the early hours of day, travelling to Vancouver to spend Christmas and New Year with my daughter, Kate, the carriage attendant delivers a note in unfamiliar handwriting. It reads: Mr. Cockerill: There is a surprise for you on the train. Look for the girl with dark hair.

‘Where is this girl with the dark hair?’ I ask. The attendant cannot tell; he doesn’t know. As it is the breakfast hour, I enter the dining car and decline a seat with three other diners because I spy, at the far end of the carriage, the seated rear view of a young woman with dark hair. She is alone and might have written the message, so I pass between the diners clutching the note in my fist to question her. I cough a slight cough to attract her attention.

She turns, her face wreathed in a delicious smile. No! It is more than that. She has the fabulous grin of the Cheshire Cat. Eyes glistening with delight, she flings her arms about me and says, ‘Hello, Dad.’

She is Kate, who flew to Edmonton the night before and, with VIA Rail’s collusion and connivance, boarded the train undetected. She had her note delivered by the stone-faced attendant who was in her confidence. Her surprise is complete – and so is my day.

Pavement bollards at Royal Hospital, Belfast

This photograph showing bollards installed on the pavement of the Royal Hospital, Belfast, to prevent nurses from parking their vehicles reminds one of the plague of bollards that infests the Town of Cobourg. One wonders how long it was before the workmen in Belfast realized how they were to get home.  

Cobourg owes its pestilence to an over-enthusiastic council with more money than sense. Bollards of the same design and appearance as those in the illustration are installed throughout Cobourg, overrunning the side streets, back streets, main traffic arteries. They are anchored at intervals to lumps, bumps and projections from the sidewalks into the roadway and superciliously referred to as ‘traffic calming’ devices.

Traffic calming may be the clever intent of the Works Department, but they are hazardous to drivers and induce in them a fury of frustration. As a result, calming traffic is the last thing bollards do. To Town bus drivers and tractor trailer operators making deliveries they are pestilential nuisances that add to the perils of negotiating tight corners and parking.

Bollard sales representatives have done a sterling job of selling these monstrosities, for they crowd the thoroughfares of North America and Europe alike. There is no stopping their spread.

A letter to the local rag referring to ‘those bollards on council’ was rejected, one presumes, for the perceived obscene insinuation regarding their parentage when all one meant was they had the same brainless imagination as bollards.