Springwater News – A true community builder
I was surprised at the last Springwater Council meeting when there was a report and discussion on print communication. Council was presented with various options with the main focus on either retaining the status quo with Springwater News, or splitting print advertising between the Springwater News and the Barrie Advance. What surprised me more was that the motion to retain the status quo was only supported by Councillors Cabral, Hanna, Ritchie and Ma-Chapman. Of course it would have helped if the chair of the meeting (Mayor Allen) would have kept the discussion on track, rather than allowing it to run off in tangents with broad discussions on communications and social media which was not the subject of the report. The communications person tried to mention a couple of times that this was a discussion only on the use of print media but that seemed to get missed in the confusing dialogue. What should have taken 10 minutes took about an hour. That is why you need strong leadership at these meetings, so Council members have clarity on the matter before them.
I took recent copies of the Advance and Springwater
News and did a comparison. Both editions were 24 pages. The Springwater News pages
are 50% larger to start with. About 20% of the Springwater News was advertising
while 80% of Advance was advertising and virtually no news except for a few
Barrie related matters. What keeps the Advance alive is the paid distribution
of flyers which is the main reason for their existence. The Springwater News is
received in your mailbox while, in my case and two snowblower shear pins later,
the Advance is thrown in my driveway and becomes a brick in cold weather.
I grew up in the north part of Springwater, then known
as Flos and, as the old timers know, Flos and Vespra became Springwater in
1994. It has developed into a true community of communities and I do attribute
much of the glue holding it together to the Springwater News Community Newspaper.
By simply reading an edition you do know what is happening in our roughly 525
square kilometer township. Each community is welcome to share their news and
you see community articles from Midhurst, Hillsdale, Anten Mill, Grenfel and
others, so we become connected. We also get regular updates from our MP and MPP
which is quite helpful. It boggles my mind why our Mayor, who gets free space
for a column, opposed it along with our Deputy Mayor. The reason the
Springwater News is effective is because it is locally owned by Michael Jacobs
and is not under the corporate thumb of someone analysing spread sheets in an
office tower in Toronto or Montreal, dictating how it will be run. It would be
nice to see readers compliment the work that has been done by the Springwater
News to hold and unify our beloved Springwater over the last quarter of a
century.
COVID19 – Another Lockdown – Does it even work?
We are back in the Grey zone but with many stores open
at 50% capacity which, if nothing else, only adds to the confusion as that is a
change from the lockdown at Christmas. So we, Toronto and Peel are in the
Lockdown while York Region, which is about 5 times our Simcoe Muskoka population
is in Red with virtually everything open with some restrictions. Considering we
have many commuters to the Toronto and York Region areas, how will that stop
the spread? The only losers again are those that are shutdown such as our
restaurants and small retailers. I believe most of our community spread is from
our larger big box stores and the careless behaviour of some individuals who
gather indiscriminately. I do question the safety of the large retailers as I frequent
them. I went to Shoppers Drug Mart twice in one day. There was no one
monitoring people arriving, there was no sanitizer in the sanitizing station on
either occasion, no one is disinfecting the self check outs and this is a
business in the health care field! I went to Canadian Tire and again virtually
no control or monitoring of any note. The spread I really do believe is from
the crowds at these large retailers and not from your local restaurant or small
business that has spent thousands on plexiglass seating and workspace separation.
These smaller businesses have clear protocols and constant monitoring. I
question, and would love to see any statistics that merited them being closed
after the first lockdown. What is worse is that if you are a person of faith
you cannot gather in a congregation in your Church with more than 10 people to
worship. The statistics do show that few if any infection spread occurred in
our churches, as most churches implemented some of the most restrictive protocols
right from the start. Why are they not being allowed gatherings if sanitizing,
mask wearing and physically distancing requirements are met? We are now a year
into COVID and for some reason, the medical experts are running the ship and
they keep changing the rules. We didn’t elect them either. I believe in science
but when someone is making a decision that impacts so many and they as
professionals have nothing to lose, I do expect our elected officials at times
to question them and be the final sanity check. That happened in the beginning
with Ford but now he seems to be gun shy which is disappointing. The only good
news is that vaccinations, and some natural herd immunity is building as
reported by John Hopkins University Health Centre and we will be out of this
badly organized and executed Pandemic Plan. I fear the aftermath of the
unbridled sovereign debts we have created will haunt us for three generations economically
because of COVID being so badly managed by elected officials at all levels of
government.
