59 Carden St.

Healing civic wounds

Posted by Magda
It's a bit of plannerspeak, but there's something compelling about the idea of healing wounds inflicted by a wrecking ball.

Planner Ian Panabaker talked this week about "healing" the damage done on Wilson Street when buildings were torn down in the 60s and the parking lot south of the commercial strip was built. The city's now considering recreating that stretch, perhaps with store fronts along the road and a parking garage behind.

I have a real fondness for the unassuming historic facade of Wilson Street, and was amazed to see the exposed stone and quirks of those buildings on the inside. It's hard now to imagine what Wilson Street looked like before the demolition. I'll see if I can find a photo -- if you've got one please send us a copy and I'll post it here.

Update: here's a photo, courtesy of the public library, of Carden Street looking west toward Wilson around 1890. (Click on it to see a larger version.) You can see the  Church of Our Lady in the distance soon after construction began, before the spires were added. You can see how there's a road, perhaps even Carden, that continues through west of Wilson just south of the current commercial strip. There's also clearly another storefront south of that. That's where the city is talking -- in preliminary terms for now -- about adding storefronts.

How times have changed

Posted by Magda
Ken Hammill thinks he may have been part of the first delegation to ever present to city council.

It was 1962, and council was discussing connecting Gordon Street to Norfolk by excavating under the railway bridge. (That excavation happened in 1965, diverting north-south traffic from Wilson Street.)

I was amazed to hear how rare it was for residents to speak to council back then.

"There was a bit of a fuss as to whether we'd be able to address them in council or whether we should go to committee," Hammill recalled.

Soon after, he was elected to council himself. He said it was an odd night back then if two or three people came to council chambers to watch the meeting.

"It's much more open (now) than it was," he said. "We were a bunch of friends."

It wasn't until council meetings started being broadcast on the radio that councillors started talking to the public, he said.

These days, of course, the meetings are broadcast on TV, electronic voting makes it easy to see who voted how, and the last council meeting was held at the Holiday Inn because it was clear everyone who wanted to hear about the Hanlon wouldn't fit in council chambers. (More than 300 people showed up.)

Why being lazy wins out

Posted by Magda
It's a breakthrough in the deliciously-named field of recreational mathematics: waiting around for the bus, no matter how frustrating, is usually better than walking.

"Many mathematicians probably ponder this on their way to work, but never get round to working it out," said Scott Kominers, a mathematician at Harvard University. His team found that when both seem equally good, you're better off taking the lazy option.

You can check out for yourself the (ahem) simple formula that makes it all clear.

Not sure, though, whether they've taken into account our 40-minute bus service.

Sooner than we expected?

Posted by Magda
Seems we could be getting a convent/museum faster that anyone had expected.

The city's applying for $10 million from the province to help move the museum into Loretto convent -- a surprise contained in council agenda.

Together with the $3 million they're already hoping to get from the feds, it would cover the entire cost of the conversation.

It comes after a provincial minister came to town a couple of weeks ago to announce a new grant for municipal infrastructure.

It's required the city to move fast -- the deadline for applications is Feb. 15, and the money would come at the end of March.

This could just put an end to what seemed like an endless discussion.

Behind closed doors

Posted by Magda

After years of dealing with smells from the wet plant, Ken Spira is satisfied with how the whole thing played out.

Spira and other community members met with the Ministry of the Environment a couple of weeks ago to debrief on the city's guilty plea for releasing odours from the plant.

"They were victims of an environmental offence. We like to go over everything to make sure victims are included in the justice system," ministry investigator Daryl Kowalsky told me today. (I tried to go to the meeting, but was asked to leave since it was meant only for affected residents.)

Residents found out at the meeting just how much their complaints pushed the process forward, Spira said.

"He said it was definitely the neighbours' affidavits and complaints and bringing ministry people in to smell the odours," Spira said.

Spira said he feels confident neighbours will be heard in the process of rebuilding the plant.

"If it requires an amendment to their certificate of approval to reconstruct, and as long as city advises us when they plan to proceed so we can then be heard by the ministry and tell them our concerns, we feel confident," he said.

What's in your sewer pipe?

Posted by Magda
I just saw deep into your sewer pipe. And it was pretty.

I spent the afternoon with a delegation visiting from Mozambique, learning how we do budgeting and urban planning in Guelph. (More on that in the paper tomorrow.)

I was amazed by some of the things city staff were showing the visitors, like the electronic Guelph map where you can select different layers -- opt to see all the city's trees, the zoning, all the pipes...

But the most space-aged were the videos, seemingly embedded into the map, of sewer pipes. Staff do these virtual colonoscopies regularly to find out the quality of the pipes to avoid, for instance, repaving a road a couple of years before the pipes need replacing.

It's hard to imagine how these things were done with pen and paper.

Can we learn from Eden Mills?

Posted by Magda
Some of the 350 residents of Eden Mills are working to decrease their footprint on the planet -- to nothing. The effort is spearheaded by Charles Simon, pictured below.

It's a noble, though staggering, effort, initially attempted by the village of Ashton Hayes, population 1,000.

Some have suggested this kind of effort is appropriate for a small town, but less so for a big city. Is that really true? In many ways, big-city living is better suited to environmental efforts, because it's easier to take transit, and with more grocery stores to choose from, it's easier to find the one that has local produce.

At the same time, I can see how a small town can more easily develop a kind of positive peer pressure.

Here's hoping things go well for Eden Mills -- Ashton Hayes cut its emissions 20 per cent in the first year -- and that they show us reducing our footprint is something we can all contribute to in a very big way.

More like Guelph?

Posted by Magda
A Kitchener resident wishes Kitchener could be more like Guelph.

The City of Kitchener says plowing all of its more than 1,000 km of sidewalk would cost $3.8 million -- about $40 in property tax for the average home. In Guelph, sidewalk plowing totals just over $400,000.

But even as Guelph discusses canning sidewalk plowing, Nathan Grieve wishes Kitchener would start doing that.

Hanging it out to dry

Posted by Magda
The province wants to ban the bans -- on clotheslines, that is.

The energy minister said yesterday he was launching a 60-day public consultation into the issue after the province's chief conservation officer said in November those bans should be removed.

Most people already have a right to hang their clothes on the line. It's just certain subdivisions, like the Pineridge development in south Guelph, where the developer has homeowners sign an agreement not to hang their clothes outside.

(Guelph, by the way, achieved some fame when columnist Gerry Barker told CBC's the Current about how clotheslines in winter can become diving boards for squirrels.)

I found a lot of support, and some opposition, when I wrote a story on the issue this summer. I wonder whether the province will hear any opposition from Guelph.

Ward 4 deserves to know

Posted by Magda
Gloria Kovach faced some criticism for not giving up her council seat the first time she ran for the Conservative nomination.

Just as it's ok for people to criticize, it's also ok for her not to give up her seat. (The municipal act doesn't require her to step down unless she actually becomes the MP. She said clearly the first time round that she wouldn't give up her seat until that moment.)

What's not ok is that now that she's won the candidacy, she's not telling anyone whether she wants to step down.

My colleague Thana Dharmarajah called her late December to ask whether she was planning to step down. Kovach initially said she had a few minutes to chat. When Thana asked her question, Kovach suddenly said she had no time left, asked Thana to call her back later, and hung up. Subsequent phone calls and BlackBerry messages went unanswered.

Yesterday, my colleague Stephanie MacLellan BlackBerried Kovach, and didn't hear back.

It's true that showing her hand would open her to criticism. But criticism is inherent in any public figure's life, and her constituents deserve to know whether she plans to keep representing them.

Update: I just spoke with Gloria Kovach, and she said she doesn't intend to give up her seat.