Category Archives: News

Long-term drinking water advisories

28 advisories as of July 6, 2023

The federal government of Canada has been promising for decades to restore clean drinking water to First Nations communities. It is a basic human right Canadians expect and deserve, and it is a top priority for all municipal governments. This same concern is not extended to the First Peoples of our country.

According to the Indigenous Services Canada website, four communities had that promise fulfilled over the past year – one in Saskatchewan and three in Ontario – and 28 remain on the list.

Political leaders refer to these situations as “challenging” and “complex”, and I’m sure they are, but surely things could move faster if there was the real will to make it happen. I remember when the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami occurred and Canada rightly sent the DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team) unit to Sri Lanka to assist their citizens. The DART were said at the time to be water restoration experts and produced 3.5 million litres of drinking water a day during that relief mission.

Perhaps the government could declare an emergency here and speed things up a bit? I’m sure if the water in downtown Ottawa was suddenly declared undrinkable, or if bathing babies in it gave them sores and rashes, something would be done pretty quickly. We can and must do better.

Audiences

I thought I saw it all during my time as a theatre usher, but the story in today’s Guardian about a performance of The Bodyguard musical being halted after audience members refused to stop singing tops every one I have. It certainly never happened at the musical playing when I worked at Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London, nor at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto. Most of the shows I worked at RTH were Toronto Symphony Orchestra shows and those audiences were incredibly polite and restrained; the worst thing that can happen at a symphony concert is someone clapping between movements!

Roy Thomson Hall was also rented to other artists. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan performed a fantastic and very long show for an excited and enthusiastic audience. As part of showing their appreciation for him and his music, audience members would make their way to the stage, dance, and toss money at Khan and his musicians. There were probably people singing along, too, but that was expected in this tradition.

I was stationed in one of the upper levels of the hall for the Khan show, enjoying this joyous event, when suddenly a man jumped up from his seat, overwhelmed by both the experience and probably a bit too much to drink, and started down the stairs to the front of my section, seemingly intent on jumping down to the main floor to give money to Khan. His poor wife was crying and pulling on him to stop, and a couple of us ran as fast as we could to intervene. Luckily some men grabbed him as he reached the bottom of the stairs and was getting ready to hoist himself over the railing, and someone helped him find safer passage to the stage.

There was also the evening when some Hong Kong-based pop stars performed to a full house. The audience wasn’t memorable, but it was one of the young singers who caused quite a fuss. He had been a tennis player at one time, and part of his schtick was throwing tennis balls into the audience. He didn’t just gently toss them into the first few rows, but instead lobbed them off the walls of the theatre! Most of the walls at RTH were cement at that time and the balls bounced wildly, bonking people who couldn’t follow the path of the projectiles. The management were livid, but thankfully he didn’t throw too many and no one was seriously injured.

There were always a few difficult patrons, people who weren’t happy with their seats or didn’t like the show, but most audiences were unremarkable and blur together. One audience, though, was unforgettably rude and unpleasant, and it might surprise you to find out who they were.

One December evening in the early 1990s, a religious organization held a Christmas song service for their Toronto region members. There was a delay in getting the stage set, so we couldn’t let the audience in on time, something totally out of front of house control. In my section, questions turned into huffing and puffing and heavy sighing when I denied people entry, promising them it would open soon and they wouldn’t miss anything because actually nothing was happening inside the theatre. People ripped programs out of my hands, others asked to speak to a manager, annoyance and anger tensely buzzing in the air.

After everyone was finally seated and the carol service had started, I went down to the main floor to join other ushers in preparing for intermission and everyone had the same wide-eyed look and similar stories: rudeness, people pushing past, sneering, threats. Some had worked at RTH for years and had never had an evening like it. None of us could believe that this particular group would have been so awful, and the fact that most of the Salvation Army members had been in uniform added a whole other level of strangeness to the evening. I went on to another job where I had dealings with Salvation Army groups and I can’t say anyone ever changed my first impression of them!

PEI Provincial Election 2023

Our provincial election, called six months early of the October fixed election date, limped to a close yesterday. We had the lowest voter turnout in my lifetime, just under 70%, which would be seen as a great result in other jurisdictions but is considered pretty dismal here. The Progressive Conservative party strengthened their majority, and the Green party lost their official opposition status to the Liberals. No NDP candidates were elected.

Here are my tepid election takes:

  • I knew nothing about the NDP leader, Michelle Neill, before the election, but thought she was extremely relatable and well prepared for the televised leaders’ debate. Her concession speech last night was sincere, positive and classy. I hope she sticks around. Only the NDP and PCs fielded a full slate of candidates, and I’m sure her presence will help build the party over the next four years.
  • There was much consternation on Twitter about why the MLA for my riding, Ernie Hudson, was reelected. He has been the Minster of Health and Wellness for the past couple of years, a time of extreme stress on our health care system. #PEIpoli folks couldn’t understand how anyone would vote for him as everyone seems to think he has done a terrible job in the health portfolio, but I challenge anyone to name one PEI health minster who has ever been well liked or thought to be doing a good job. I can’t think of one, and I’ve met them all in the past 20 years of fighting for access to health care for our area. It’s a cursed position, and I think given to people with very thick skin or someone the premier dislikes. Our health system should be run by those hired to do so, and the politicians made to keep their unskilled hands out of it, but the meddling continues and health ministers rightly pilloried. The people in Hudson’s riding are afraid their small hospital in Alberton will be eliminated, so voting for the candidate from the party almost guaranteed to form government only made sense. He’s a good constituency politician, having worked as a political aide before running himself, and he’s a nice guy to boot.
  • Left-leaning votes keep splitting between the NDP and Greens, and I wish the two parties would work together. I would like to see proportional representation finally come to PEI, and a temporary Green/NDP alliance might make that happen. Both parties have difficulty finding strong candidates, and we desperately need more progressive voices in the legislature. I doubt if there would be much support for this idea in the two parties, but politics is a game, with teams and players and colours and logos, and the old parties play it very well. To win you have to think and move strategically, and use what resources you have to your advantage.
  • I imagine many people in urban PEI don’t realise there are still patronage jobs being handed out in rural parts of the province, thinking that practice died out with the Ghiz government. It did, for the most part, but there are still some seasonal jobs that are “influenced” by MLAs. They expect your loyalty (ie. vote) in return for your job, and if you don’t show up to the polls in a timely manner, you will be reminded and a car will be dispatched to give you a ride to the polls. Politicians will deny this, of course. At least there isn’t someone standing outside the polls with bottles of rum and $20 bills as in the misty days of yore (or maybe there are, but no one offers them to me!)
  • Health care, lack of affordable housing and the high cost of living were the main election issues, while the climate crisis barely got a mention. I understand those who are living in poverty and struggling to make ends meet might not have the climate at the top of their list, but there are many on this island who are doing alright, and don’t seem at all concerned that their children and grandchildren will be inheriting a world that will be challenging at best and unlivable at worst. It is a disconnect I will never understand.

Grabbing

Land use and foreign ownership has been much discussed on PEI recently, but this is certainly not a new preoccupation in this province. When my ancestors arrived from England and Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries, they would have paid rent to landowners back in Britain, people who probably never set foot on PEI. That system ended in the 1870s, allowing people to buy the land where they lived, but Islanders seem to have been touchy about who can own land here ever since.

Someone showed me a post from a Facebook group that referred to certain recent land purchases as “land grabbing.” It’s the perfect phrase to stir people up on social media, but those of us who are not Indigenous Canadians need to be mindful of the history of land grabbing on this continent.

There is plenty of talk about who should own land on PEI, who should be allowed to build structures and where they can be situated, but very little, if any, discussion about how we recognize and reconcile the fact that every inch of this island is unceded Mi’kmaq territory. How must the “land grabbing” discussion sound to Mi’kmaq people?

Peak Load

PEI experienced very cold weather last weekend, with windchills below -40C in some areas for extended periods of time. Pipes froze in buildings, in some cases because of power outages probably due either to Fiona-damaged trees coming down in strong winds or just the stress on the system.

Most Island buildings have traditionally been heated with furnace oil or wood or a combination of both. Households and businesses have been converting to air source heat pumps, often with electrical baseboard backup, as a cheaper source of heat, and as electricity prices are regulated on PEI, a source less susceptible to the fluctuations of world oil prices.

With all this added draw, our electrical system experienced its highest peak load ever on the weekend. When the CEO of Maritime Electric was asked in a CBC interview “How high can you go?”, he said he didn’t know and didn’t want to ever test it. I can’t say I found this to be very comforting.

On the same day this interview aired, the PEI government announced that a program to give Island homeowners free heat pumps will be expanded. Shouldn’t our electrical utility be able to tell us if they can meet this increasing demand, or if the system can handle it? I’m pretty sure Islanders would not be thrilled with the rolling blackouts common in other places.

Mel’s Tea Room

News out of Sackville, New Brunswick that Mel’s Tea Room is closing, sending Mount Allison University alumni into fits of nostalgia. Generations of Mount Allison University students ate, socialised and studied at Mel’s, and I was certainly one of them. It was like something out of a movie: green walls, counter with stools, hard booths, great diner food and strong coffee. Always someone coming and going. When I attended Mount A in the late 80s, their magazine section was second to none.

Town residents and students had an uneasy relationship at times, similar to the way people who live in a touristy city feel about those who crowd their streets. While residents knew that the university was good for the economy of the town, we students could certainly be a pain. At Mel’s, though, everyone sort of just got along on common ground. Even as thoughtless youth, we knew it was a place to revere and appreciate. Everyone loved Mel’s

I have only been there a few times since I graduated in 1989, the last being in 2013 when Steven wrote the lyrics for an opera presented by students of the Mt. A music faculty. I grabbed some shots on my last visit, the diner eerily sort of empty that night. I had my usual club sandwich and fries and soaked the place in, remembering all the fun I had there, all my pals, the thrill of being one in a long conveyor belt of students who felt at home at Mel’s, knowing I would eventually be replaced, but loving the smoke and coffee and fries and friends and laughter.

Mel’s tea Room
Rainy night on Bridge Street
Mel’s Booths
The booths, the floor, those green walls
Jukebox and Speakers
Jukebox and fabulous speakers
Mel’s Chair
Sit a while
Mel’s Menu
Club sandwich and fries, please
Veggie Burger?
Veggie burger?
Mel’s Booth
Booth wall, complete with names carved on trim
From A Booth
View from a booth

History doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes

On the front page of this morning’s newspaper was a story about a new ferry arriving to fill in for the MV Holiday Island, which will be out of service for an indefinite period of time following an engine room fire a couple of weeks ago.

And here’s the front page of the same publication 75 years ago to the day, what looks to be a special section celebrating the arrival of the new MV Abegweit ferry, a vessel so mythologized and beloved by Islanders that a set of doors from the ship currently feature in an exhibition about the PEI tourism trade at the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown.

When I was a child, the Holiday Island and sister ship, MV Vacationland, were sometimes referred to as the “hot dog boats” because the Abegweit (almost always just called The Abby) had a lovely dining room, while the two smaller summer-only ships only had snack bars and were not as luxuriously equipped. Everyone wanted to catch The Abby!

Ketchup on Porcelain 

I am the cleaner
called by the housekeeper
who got a text from the valet
that a Reagan china plate
had been smashed in the President’s Dining Room.

As I swept up the red and gold shards
I thought of all who had slept there when it was a bedroom,
ate there after Jackie turned it into a dining room.
I remember the Bush twins
flicking cereal at each other
when they visited their grandparents.
I was new then, and they were naughty, but polite,
raised in privilege, but with humility, too.

The last family ate healthy meals together.
Laughing teasing sharing.
Phones banned from the table.
In awe of this place.
Grateful and light.
Always my first name.
Hello and please and thank you.

As I try to carefully remove the ketchup from the white woodwork
	The blue and cream rug
	The handmade gold wallpaper
	The delicate vases
	(it went everywhere)
I realize we will need experts
To do restoration work.

The conservators will need to dig deep
into their tool chests
to find something
to remove the stain that
the man-child has left.
Thumbs constantly rubbing his glass and metal soother,
rage and rudeness.
He doesn’t know my name.
No hello, just grunts and discontent.
It’s January 5.
Just a few more days.

“What is normal?”

This piece on the former Indian day school on Lennox Island First Nation has made me rethink so many things I thought I knew. I happily went to a brand new, modern elementary school only 15 minutes from Lennox Island at the same time the children there were being abused and mistreated. I’m ashamed that I had no idea this went on next door to me. This is the truth.