Why MMP sounds good to me

View from the Strip
By Casey Lessard

For the most part, I am not well-represented at Queen’s Park. I’m an environmentalist and a vegan (and admittedly a bit of a hippie), and I am not aware of any sitting politicians who represent my views in the legislature. To be honest, vegans are a pretty small minority in this country, but I’m still a citizen and a voter. Shouldn’t I expect to be represented?
Okay, probably not as a vegan, but we shouldn’t fault the citizens’ assembly for recommending that underrepresented people should have our ideas presented in the legislature by someone who actually agrees with us. The Green party, for example, will need a lot more than three per cent to take a riding victory, but with three per cent across the province, doesn’t it make sense that someone from that party should be at the table to present their concerns and ideas? Three per cent is a lot of people: according to Statistics Canada, London is just over three per cent of the population of Ontario. Does London not deserve a place at the table? In fact, London will elect four MPPs this year.
Like you, I don’t agree with everything the Green party says. In fact, I don’t agree with everything presented in any of the party platforms I’ve read this election (or any other election, for that matter). Do you? If so, I suggest you’re in the minority. I believe most people have at least one thing they don’t like about what their party of choice stands for, and that’s equally true when we’re talking about a local candidate, even if they’re your neighbour or friend.
MMP, or mixed member proportional representation, will give you the opportunity to vote for the party you like and pick a candidate from a different party if you think they’ll serve you better at home.
Another plus is that it will give more people a reason to vote. If you know that there’s a chance someone with your ideals will be heading to Queen’s Park, you’re more likely to help make that happen.
The proposed electoral system change has made me pay attention to this election, and I think it would be good to force the big parties to listen to the rest of their legislative colleagues. As is the case in the journalism business, you don’t get an accurate sense of reality by always listening to the same people.

The first day back is the toughest

View from the Strip
By Casey Lessard

Anjhela and I went back to school last week, and it was pretty stressful for both of us. Anjhela commutes to London, and I’m commuting to Toronto; however, the stressful part was not the drive but the first day of school.
This was my sixth “first day,” and I think it might have been the hardest. It’s a lot harder when 100 students are looking at you – and expecting you to say something brilliant.
Being an instructor (I teach photography for journalism students at Humber College each Thursday) carries a great deal of responsibility, and I don’t want to be the one instructor everyone thinks is a hack (I’m sure you’ve had one at some point). It took me a few hours to get into the swing of things, but being an instructor of a skill I know well has already taught me a lot about myself and the education process.
Anjhela is a mature student at the University of Western Ontario, and I’m really proud of her accomplishments so far. She was worried about getting in and then about finding her way around the campus, but she already seems to have the hang of it. From the stories she tells me, life experience does pay off in a post-secondary environment. I am confident she’s going to do very well.
I’m going to do what I can to help Anjhela, and with my class occupying a day a week, some aspects of my daily work at the Strip will suffer. Please be patient – I’m going to try my best to continue producing the quality you expect from this paper. Don’t be surprised if I take a week or two off this winter.
* One person who will not be back to school this year is Sam Marshall, a Grade 10 South Huron student who died last month. If you’d like to take part in a memorial for Sam, the service starts at 2:15 p.m. Thursday, September 13 in the high school’s small gym.

What will the future bring?

View from the Strip
By Casey Lessard

I’ve heard a lot about memories this summer. From tributes to Bill and Helene Regier, to scrapbooking in this week’s issue, reflecting on the past has helped a lot of people in this area, I’m sure.
One of the actors I interviewed for Legends, the musical tribute to rock’s icons playing at the Huron Country Playhouse until this weekend, said we live in a very nostalgic age. If you look at this issue of the Grand Bend Strip, you might think we have nothing but nostalgia to talk about. But sometimes it’s important to reflect on where we’re coming from to know whether we’re going in the right direction.
As young people (and some older ones) return to school this week, it’s a good idea to reflect on the experiences of others, like Elinor and Fred Clarke (page 3). They’re in their 70s and show no sign of stopping. They love life and have made choices that make them feel good about what they have done with the time they have.
I’ve made some bad choices over the years (who hasn’t?), but I’ve learned from them quickly and make more good choices now than bad (I think). I’m glad I’ve made the mistakes I have, because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be writing this column, that’s for sure. I’ve taken a long road to return home, and I don’t remember much I regret.
Oddly enough, it’s hard for me to remember what I did before the Strip. When something consumes you, sometimes it’s important to pause and reflect on how you got to be in the situation you are in. I know I wouldn’t change a thing.
Nancy Gibbs of Time magazine recently compared September’s arrival to the New Year, complete with resolutions fit to be broken.
Looking ahead to this fall, I encourage young and old alike to think about their pasts, but forge into the future without regret. You can’t change your past, but you can definitely make decisions that affect your present and your future.

Regarding the immediate future of the Grand Bend Strip, a lot of people want to know whether it will continue every other week through the winter, and yes, that is my intention. I have a lot on my plate this year, so I may take a week or two off this winter, but my goal for the future is to maintain and improve upon the standard you expect from your free community newspaper.

Salvaging the good from the summer of 2007

View from the Strip
By Casey Lessard

It’s fair to say it’s been a tough summer for our community.
Most obviously, we’ve had to deal with a murderer taking the lives of two of our own, Bill and Helene Regier. The act and subsequent mystery about the killer’s whereabouts made it difficult to grieve without wondering if he would strike again. The fact that the suspect, Jesse Imeson, was found in Quebec and believed to have been in that area since the day of the murders, stopped the worry but could not stop the emotional turmoil so many of our friends and neighbours have been facing. It hasn’t stopped the rumours, and we can only hope the impending trial will bring us some answers.
The summer has been tough on our farmers, bringing little relief from a drought that has already taken a toll on the quality and quantity of crop yields. Randy Regier (page 3) predicts his bean crop will yield 30 per cent less than hoped. He’s not alone, and with global warming, you have to wonder if we will be able to stop this year’s results from becoming a trend.
Fewer American tourists are coming to Ontario each year because of the strong Canadian dollar and all the effort it takes to get across the border. According to the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, visits by Americans dropped one-third over the past five years and are expected to drop another five per cent this year.
We can’t control the weather or other people’s vacation plans, and we can’t predict when something bad is going to happen to our loved ones. Instead of being focused on the bad, we must work to tune into the good that is around us, even when it feels like there’s nothing to find.
I can’t tell you where you’ll find comfort this summer. Perhaps you’ll celebrate at the Zurich bean festival or you’ll spend your vacation at home and stimulate the local economy. Or perhaps you’ll find comfort in the words of the people who share your concerns. Some of them are printed on page 5 of this week’s issue, and many more can be found in the pages of our last issue, a tribute to Bill and Helene Regier. Either way, remember that you’re not alone.

If you would like to share the stories in our tribute issue, we are now making our remaining copies available for sale. Outside of the costs associated with shipping, the proceeds will go to the Our Lady of Mount Carmel church restoration fund, the project the Regiers cared so deeply about.
Send us a cheque for $5 for each copy you would like (P.O. Box 218, Grand Bend, ON N0M 1T0) and we’ll forward $3 (that’s what we figure will be left) to the church.

Letters to the Editor - August 15

Our readers write…

Hi Casey,
Compliments on your paper in general, and special accolades for this special edition honouring the Regiers.
Although I didn’t have the pleasure to know them personally I feel I know Helene and Bill now and what they believed in and stood for through your various interviews with those who knew them so well. Refreshing to be able to read so much coverage about the victims instead of Jesse Imeson. How they lived their lives, their faith and witness in the Church and community has helped their family and friends and those that live in the area to start to heal and forgive the unthinkable deed done by a very troubled young man.
Thank you for your witness and thoughtful writing and reporting.
Sincerely,
Lynda Holmes

Hi Casey,
Just wanted to comment on your coverage of the tragedy in Grand Bend. Your sensitivity to the privacy and grief of others is to be commended and your online updates were timely and informative. The service you are giving your community, without sensationalism, regarding the wishes of family, services, information about the alleged murderer, pictures, truck description, etc. is excellent.
Jamie Hurley
Haliburton

Beautiful tribute! Well done, Casey!
Kelly (Glavin) Lorentz
Via Email

I just want to tell you Casey what a great job you and your staff did with the tribute to Bill and Helene. I know that this issue will be a keepsake for all who knew and loved them. Keep up the good work. Thank you for this beautiful gift.
Sincerely,
Nancy Rader
Dashwood

Dear Mr. Lessard,
I am a big fan of your paper. Since moving away a year ago it’s so nice to still be connected to your area with all the happenings and events. I was especially moved by your last issue with the tribute to the Regiers.
My favorite feature is the column each issue by Rita Lessard. But one thing puzzles me. Why are her columns so short? Rita and I go waaayyy back and I have never known her to write a short letter. The ones I receive are usually 7-9 pages long and beautifully written. Now, I can’t imagine that you would stifle her creativity by editing her words of love and wisdom. As her son, you must realize that each word she prints is carefully thought out and each paragraph is just as important to her as the next.
As the editor of the Strip, I’m sure you can find other ways to cut space so that Rita’s columns can be printed in their entirety!! Please don’t deny your readers her words of wisdom. We need more honesty and humor and Rita is the person to put it out there for all the world to see.
I can’t wait for my next issue to arrive. Thank you for listening.
Judith Angyal
London

Ed.: Thanks for your comments. As you know, this paper would not be possible without my mom’s contributions. She helps with writing, distribution and emergency financing. I try not to cut anything from her articles but sometimes it’s necessary. Please note this week’s article took mom five pages of 6”x9” note paper to write.

Dear Casey and the Grand Bend Strip,
I wanted to take a moment to thank you for the tickets to Miss Saigon. My husband and I attended the Sunday, July 22nd matinee and really enjoyed the show.
Thanks a million for the tickets.
Your paper is great. It’s really nice to see local people and businesses showcased.
Keep up the good work!
Sincerely,
Sherry Selves

Ed.: Drayton Entertainment graciously gave Grand Bend Strip readers four pairs of tickets to each of Miss Saigon and Mom’s the Word.
Mom’s the Word winners: Carrie Hohner, Lisa McBride, Suzanne Toner, Deb McNair.
Miss Saigon winners: Lana Shelton-Seys, Jenny True, Patrick Adrian, and Sherry Selves.

Local talent deserves our support all year

View from the Strip
By Casey Lessard

It should not be a surprise that our community has a lot of talented people. Some of them are profiled in these pages each week, and I don’t imagine we’ll ever run out of people deserving of our attention. We have lots of local musicians, actors, dancers, artists and otherwise creative people in our midst.
The real question is: are we wasting the opportunity to keep these talented people here all year by celebrating our arts community three months of the year? Are we doing enough during those three months to develop artists while they’re here so they come back?
Grand Bend businesses are experienced in the art of grabbing opportunities when time is of the essence. Let’s use those skills to give the arts community a school for the arts, theatre programming for kids, teens and young adults, and legislation supporting buskers and street artists.
Artists within this community would welcome official support for such programs, but our addiction to making hay while the sun shines means the long-term health of the community will struggle unless more people learn there is money in the arts. Haliburton is a great example of an arts-rooted community that relies heavily on summer visitors. Take a drive down any road and you will find thriving artists’ studios and shops. A fine arts college campus opened a few years ago, and their community theatre is heavily supported. Their volunteer community radio station has the most listeners in the county.
Tourists come here for entertainment and to get away from their workday worries. Art, in its many forms, is part of the solution. Sunbathing and partying are entertaining, but only in measured doses. The area’s demographic is changing, and if we want to remain relevant, it’s time to shift our focus to a more viable community vision with the arts ranking as a high civic priority.

A good woman

The people behind the scenes are often the ones who never get the credit they deserve.
As I face every new issue of the Grand Bend Strip, Anjhela is a tower of strength and keeps encouraging me to push ahead. As of this week, she understands my struggles first-hand. She typed in almost all of the text in this issue, transcribing my interviews verbatim. She contributed about eight hours of typing, which in a normal week I would have done myself. It’s a lot of work, and without her contribution, you would not be reading this right now.
Anj, you’re a great woman who treats me really well, so thanks.
My mom’s amazing, too. Not only has she helped me a lot over the years and recently, but she’s a true model for her work taking care of people. Over the years, she’s taken care of six men (before you get the wrong idea, I’m talking about my dad and the five of us boys). Now, with my dad recovering from surgery, I’m sure she’ll demonstrate her strength again.
I realize it’s not Mother’s Day or anything like that, but we don’t need an excuse to say thanks. We need to take care of each other and show our gratitude when we get the chance.

Casey Lessard
Publisher/Editor

The New Kid on the Block

I’m sure some people think it takes about a day or a week to make a newspaper, but with a birthday of May 16, Grand Bend Strip comes into the world about nine months after it was conceived. I think that’s appropriate because I view it as my baby, and it’s likely the only one I will ever have to give birth to.
My girlfriend, Anjhela Michielsen (she’s one half of the Stone Angels profiled in this issue) has been very patient while I pursued my dream to become a newspaper photographer. We were living together last winter after I left the television news business to try to pursue freelance work full-time. As a starving artist, fate offered me an amazing opportunity when I was at the peak of my despair. I moved to the cottage country town of Haliburton, where I did photos and some stories for two weekly newspapers and a summer weekly. I was told hard work would pay off, and it did (make no illusions: working for a small-town newspaper is not the place to make your millions). Not only was the lifestyle wonderful, I made good friends and worked with the best in the business. That was evident at the recent Ontario Community Newspapers’ Association awards, where we earned top honours for newspaper of the year (both won in their readership class) and another dozen awards. Among them, I received two: best feature photo and second best photographer of the year. Hard work does pay off.
Throughout that time, I’ve wanted to return to the area where I was raised, and work on building a life with my girlfriend in a town close to our families. Not many good jobs come up in the newspaper industry around here, so I thought I’d create my own.
I could see how difficult it was to know what there is to do here other than lay on the beach or get drunk. Grand Bend is a tourist destination, so people should have a simple way to find out what’s going on.
And that’s why Grand Bend Strip focuses on literally anything that you can do with your precious spare time. At the Motorplex or the Playhouse; on the water or in the air; sitting at the bar or walking the fairway; at the beach or in your kitchen: we give you enough ideas that you won’t have time to do them all this week. In fact, we give you two weeks worth of ideas.
Sometimes I feel like I’m all alone doing this. I don’t have a corporation backing me, and no salespeople or graphic designers. It’s me selling the ads, drawing them up, interviewing and photographing the people you see in the paper, and me picking up the newspaper at the printing plant. My fingerprints are on every page of the newspaper you are reading, and that feels great. I hope you can feel it, too.
Many others have left their mark on this project, directly or indirectly. My advertisers are supportive local businesses and I encourage you to tell them what you like about this paper during your next visit. I have great contributors like nature writer Jenipher Appleton, chef James Eddington and pro golfer Cameron Rankin; these people know what they’re talking about, and I’m proud to have their names in these pages. Deserving thanks go to Martha Perkins, Greg Hoekstra, Jessica Young, Lance Crossley, Steve Galea, Darren Lum, Bryn Weese, the rest of the staff at the Haliburton Echo and Minden Times and the people who live there. Thanks to my amazing Haliburton roommates Jamie Hurley, Bruce Bozec and Teddy Penn. Carmen Kinniburgh at the Canadian Cancer Society has been a great supporter as has Mike Rennie. Working at CKCO/CTV in Kitchener funded my education, and former news director Larry Rose gave me my first break in the television industry. Colleague James MacDonald at CNN Hong Kong and his wife Heather have always inspired me. Working at the Woolwich Observer in Elmira resulted in my first Canadian community newspaper award, and I earned two more after their glowing recommendation to Haliburton. I also wish pirate sailor Matt Jaques could be here to be part of this adventure.
Most deserving of credit are my families: my brothers, their wives and kids; my aunts and uncles; and the Michielsens, Masfrankcs and Martins. All of them give encouragement; some their time and money to get me started.
My girlfriend, Anjhela, and my mom and dad are my biggest fans, and I couldn’t do this without them. All three have done whatever they can to do help my dreams come true, and I can’t thank them enough.
If you’ve read this far, I also want to thank you. My goal is to give you a very personal newspaper that is a testament to the power of getting off your butt and doing something.
All of us have that power, and when it comes to your leisure time, sometimes you need a hand figuring out how to spend it. Volunteer, take up a new hobby like birding or golfing, soak up the culture of live theatre or drag racing, enjoy a good meal, spend some time in the garden.
Grand Bend Strip is dedicated to giving you ideas for things to do around here. And yes, that includes laying on the beach or sitting on the patio. We simply advise you to also try something else this week.
Finish reading this paper, but keep it around for a couple weeks. Show it to a friend from out of town, and brag about the people making great things happen in our community. Write us a note and tell us what else you like about the Grand Bend area. Share your experiences so others can discover something new.
And if you run out of ideas, remember our motto: For a good time, Strip!
Casey Lessard
Publisher/Editor

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