Grand Bend, Ontario community newspaper and entertainment events guide. Also serves Zurich, Dashwood, Port Franks, Exeter, Parkhill. Casey Lessard photos.
| Search the site: |
View from the Strip By Casey Lessard Erryn Shephard of F.I.N.E. asked me the other day what I like to eat. I struggle to respond, but here goes. I love pizza and fries, a good burger, pasta, Indian-style food, burritos, and chocolate. Lots of chocolate. One catch, though. I’m vegan, which means I don’t eat [...]
View from the Strip By Casey Lessard Today, we remember the deaths of Bill and Helene Regier in their home one year ago. Our thoughts are with the family and friends of these community leaders, who are dearly missed. When we asked one of the Regiers’ sons what we should do for the one-year anniversary, [...]
View from the Strip By Casey Lessard No one can deny the fact that the arts are an important part of our community. All you have to do is look at this issue of the Grand Bend Strip to see the creativity of the people who live in our community. From musicians to actors, dancers [...]
The inevitable day has arrived. I had hoped I would be able to continue to provide the Grand Bend Strip newspaper for free indefinitely, but after thinking long and hard this spring, I realize that the only way for the paper to publish this winter is to ask for your support. Like you, I value [...]
View from the Strip By Casey Lessard Everyone seems to be concerned about the price of gas these days, and I’m certainly among the crowd. I’m not eager to face the pumps when I have to resume my commute to Toronto every week to teach this fall. But what do you do? I’ve been trying [...]
View from the Strip By Casey Lessard This week’s Grand Bend Strip goes to Exeter for part two of a survey to see what barriers people with mobility issues face every day. For readers who did not see the Strip’s survey of Grand Bend and Parkhill, please visit our website, http://www.grandbendstrip.com/ where you can see [...]
View from the Strip By Casey Lessard “We’re only open two months, so…” “We don’t get a lot of people in wheelchairs, so…” “It’s an old building, so…” These are only three of the reasons Rick Lewcock and I heard from business owners about why their businesses weren’t wheelchair friendly. We made a journey through [...]
View from the Strip By Casey Lessard It’s not often Grand Bend attracts attention on a national stage. Last summer, the country watched Grand Bend and Mt. Carmel for a horrible reason: the murders of Bill and Helene Regier. Friday night, my work covering their murders for the Grand Bend Strip was honoured nationally when [...]
I wanted to briefly discuss the Olympic torch relay and the debate over how best to solve the human rights crises caused by China. While Tibet has been the prime concern for Western activists, we can’t forget that Darfur continues to be an unsolvable problem at the United Nations Security Council because of China’s oil interests in Sudan.
So what do we do? Boycott the Olympic Opening Ceremonies or the Games? Avoid the Olympic media machine? Keep working on the diplomatic front? Or do we expect our athletes – who have worked for years to stand on the podium – to represent the concerns of Canadians and boycott the games?
Don’t forget Ontario’s trade mission to Beijing this weekend, which forced the Liberals to pass the buck to the federal government, saying it’s not the provincial government’s job to speak up on national issues.
It’s everyone’s responsibility to speak up for human rights. For now, I’ll be speaking with my wallet and avoiding anything Made in China. If you have a better solution, drop me a line.
(Reader Lee McCutcheon was inspired by the View from the Strip, March 12, and wanted to share some words written for his mother’s funeral in 2005):Saying “Goodbye” never hurts so much as when we know that it is final. Throughout our lives we issue each “Goodbye” comforted in the knowledge and reasonable expectation that each [...]
View from the StripBy Casey Lessard It’s easy to take life for granted as we rush through our daily routine. My week includes driving back and forth to Humber College in Toronto, and often to London to spend the day at school with Anjhela. I’ve done a lot of traveling over the years and often [...]
View from the StripBy Casey Lessard The Grand Bend winter carnival was a great success; I haven’t seen so many different people involved in local activities since the summer. Congratulations to the organizers for great work.Congratulations also to my parents for sticking it out for 45 years. They’ve been able to make love work through [...]
View from the StripBy Casey Lessard I’ve frequently had the fortune of being on the cutting edge of technology, starting with my time at the University of Western Ontario. There, I took a computer science class that introduced me to email and websites, both of which were relatively new. Then, when I studied broadcast journalism [...]
View from the StripBy Casey Lessard It’s been a great year here at the Strip and in my household. My family and I have enjoyed visiting your homes, and we look forward to being part of your lives in 2008. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, Happy New Year from all of us. To the rest, [...]
View from the StripBy Casey Lessard It’s amazing how contentious change can be. This issue of the Strip profiles the varying opinions about plans to improve the beach and its parking lot. Lambton Shores wants everybody on side so it can get on with the project.Barbara Gare discovered this firsthand earlier this month, after she [...]
View from the StripBy Casey Lessard An important meeting is taking place this weekend (Saturday, October 27 at 9 a.m.) at the Grand Bend Public School, and anyone interested in the future of Grand Bend should attend. It’s billed as a beach revitalization meeting, but anyone who attended the last one in the summer knows [...]
View from the StripBy Casey Lessard Maybe I have a soft spot for people who have taken a big risk and left the comfort of a job or home to start a new life doing something completely different. You’ll read about Thomas and Gail Bailey, who started their own church. Hank and Diane VanderVelden have [...]
View from the StripBy 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 [...]
View from the StripBy 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 [...]
View from the StripBy 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 [...]
View from the StripBy 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 [...]
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 [...]
View from the StripBy 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 [...]
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 [...]
