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Dropped by the Georgian Bay Animal Rescue's August Adopt-a-thon, Saturday. While I don't have the totals yet, the event was very successful, and several cats were adopted. What we intended as a few minutes' visit stretched into an hour or more, once we entered the cat room.
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I think the only thing I ever really missed about the city when I moved up here was the variety of food we had within walking distance of our house in Toronto. We could walk to Vietnamese, Japanese, Indian, Greek, Korean, Italian and Szechuan restaurants, all within 10-15 minutes of home. A little further, but still not very far, we had Thai, Mexican, Lebanese, Moroccan and new-age vegetarian.

Today in Collingwood, we can walk to almost as wide a variety of national and international tastes. This town has come a long way in the past 20 years, in terms of its culinary landscape. Pizzas, doughnuts, burgers and pasta dominated it when we first arrived. Now our choices are very broad and urbane, although they are still with us.

I don't...

By now, most readers will be aware of the resignation of the BIA's chair over the ongoing dispute between the organization and the town. That head butting stems from a disagreement over the terms and conditions in an agreement jointly signed by the town and BIA and the province.

I've written about some of this previously, but, of course not the contentious hissing and spitting that went on in three in camera meetings when the matter was raised with council. Council has not met with the BIA board, although the chair met with the mayor twice, once after the BIA's letter to the province had been sent, then again after the BIA's letter to its members was sent.

You can read about the resignation on the ...

Dale West is gone. Not shuffled off this mortal coil, but gone from the local airwaves. Yesterday morning he got his walking papers from the Peak FM.

Do they have too many news people at the Peak? I'm pretty sure Dale was he only one. Cost cutting, I suspect, was at the root.* I'll miss him. He was always honest and open with me and told me what he felt of council and my own performance. And he gave us local news on the radio.
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An uncredited photo from the mayor's news "blog": two election hopefuls and their albatross. Looks like a big, happy family. Once upon a time, it was. The two councillors beside him were ardent supporters of the mayor and pretty much followed his lead back when this council was newly elected. You could basically count on a six-three vote back then. What the mayor wanted, the mayor got. I was, of course, one of the three on the losing side of many fights.
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I just uploaded my first version of my Election 2010 Web site. It's a rewrite of my 2006 site, with updated content and issues. A bit of a quick job, but adequate, I think, and a chance to learn the new Expression Web 4 software I recently got.

It still needs some new photos, which I hope to get this weekend. Perhaps I could get one of me at the hole on our main street that could have been Admiral Collingwood Place? Or sitting on the sidewalk in front of a restaurant where a patio used to be?

You can view it at: www.ianchadwick.com/election2010/. I have a direct link for PayPal if you feel generous enough to donate to my campaign that way. You can also contact me to donate the old-fashioned way by cheque. All donations are...

Just a heads up for those readers who enjoy playing chess, and like the ambiance of a chess club, with its social interaction. Tim DenBok is starting an adult chess club this fall at the Collingwood Library. It will meet weekly and, at least at the start, be no charge to join.

Should we collectively decide to join a national organization and become more formal (for those who want to move up the rungs of the rating ladder), a fee may be necessary, but that's for the future.

Tim already runs the very successful and popular chess club for kids...

In his book, The Local Food Revolution, Canadian author Gordon Hume wrote, "Food is a key part of community's reputation, image, the buzz created, and the local flavours and textures of the region... Food will continue to feed and shape our creative communities. It is also a crucial component that ties together the creative economy and innovative local community-building."

So when a staff report came up on Monday recommending a local food procurement policy for municipal events and functions, as well as recommending a coordinated effort between regional municipalities, farm produce suppliers, and the health unit to provide and encourage access to local foods, I thought it was a motherhood issue we would all stand behind.
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Just before we went in camera, Monday, I asked Councillor Jeffrey if she had voted to pull the the BIA out of the contract it signed with the town. She said yes and indicated it was a unanimous vote (although it was not made clear who was at that meeting).

At that point, the mayor took over and shoved the rest of the discussion behind closed doors.

While some of that heated debate probably belonged there, how someone voted in a public meeting did not. I think that section should have been held in public. Instead we had an angry 90-plus minute "discussion" about it behind closed doors.

The public only knows, because I asked and she answered before we went in camera, that council's representative on the BIA - Kathy Jeffrey...

Another cherished childhood myth demolished. This week paleontologists Jack Horner (one of those I respect the most) and John Scannella revealed that the beloved Triceratops was not a separate species, but rather the immature form of Torosaurus. First Brontosaurus, now Triceratops disappears.

Well, okay, it doesn't vanish. It may simply get a name change, like Brontosaurus became Apatosaurus. In part it's because paleontologists are learning more almost daily and the fossil records are at best spotty and it often takes years or decades to assemble evidence that clearly identifies adults and juveniles.

Fossils of both were discovered by the famed collector Othniel Marsh who raced against his competitor, ...