THURSDAY JUNE 8, 2017
14,000 REBATE! PROVINCIAL
$
on all
ELECTRIC FOCUS 185 KM RANGE!
18001 LESLIE ST,
(South of Greenlane) Newmarket
905-853-5000
Voted the BEST Window Company again by Reader’s Choice Awards! See Our Ad In This Paper
EMBRACING TRUTH
NEWMARKET SHOWROOM
16700 Bayview Ave., Unit 15
The story can only be told with Indigenous voices
905.853.9400
www.northerncomfortwindows.com
ONLINE at yorkregion.com News, events and information on your desktop, laptop or mobile device
Sunday Reads
Explore unsolved mysteries and read new work by Canadian authors. yorkregion.com/sundayreads
uReport the News newsroom@yrmg.com www.facebook.com/yrmgnews @yorkregion yorkregion.com/ureport
3
Heidi Riedner/Metroland
Greer Atkinson shows Georgina students portraits of her ancestors and shares their story as part of the first-ever Treaties Recognition Week.
NEWS
’We should be way ahead of where we are’ LISA QUEEN lqueen@yrmg.com
Mike Barrett/Metroland
Newmarket’s Steve Foglia is vice-chair of the York Region Accessibility Advisory Committee. As part of this year’s National Access Awareness Week, the YRAAC hosted a forum entitled Building Livable Accessible Communities.
Steve Foglia sat discouraged in his wheelchair outside a Newmarket coffee shop for half an hour one day this week. A car was parked legally in the handicapped spot, but the design of the parking lot meant the vehicle was blocking the cut-out in the curb that would have allowed him to navigate his wheelchair up to the sidewalk. Even when the car moved, Foglia had to wait until someone held the door open for him because there was no automatic opener. While the curb cut-out is built to code, it’s an Ontario standard that doesn’t work practically for people with disabilities, he said.
"In 2017, that this is actually still happening is very frustrating. We should be way ahead of where we are . As a citizen of this community, I have the same right as any able-bodied person who pays their taxes and lives in this community to access the same features in our community as anybody else," he said. "Just because I got put in this chair for circumstances beyond my control doesn’t mean I have to stay in my house 24-7. And a lot of people do because they’re scared to go out." Being excluded from life’s simplest moments has been a challenge for Foglia since a car accident in 1999 crushed his chest and put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. "I lived my first 37 years as, I guess, a ’normal’ hu-
man being, being able to come and go as I pleased. Everywhere I wanted to go, I was able to go," the Newmarket resident said. "Then, once the accident put me into this chair, I realized my world closed off very quickly. There were a lot of places I could not go, especially places I used to attend before. That really upset me." Foglia has spent years working to make York Region more accessible for people with disabilities. He is vice-chair of the York Region Accessibility Advisory Committee, which held a forum May 31 at the regional administrative building in Newmarket. The event included people with disabilities from l See MY, page 2
NEWS
Audit denied for contested PC nomination vote TERESA LATCHFORD tlatchford@yrmg.com The request for an audit of the Newmarket-Aurora PC nomination has been denied. Local riding president Derek Murray, with the support of the riding executive, filed two appeals following the April 8 nomination meeting, claiming candidate Charity McGrath cheated by falsifying signatures on memberships and paying the $10 membership fee for new members, both of which are against party rules.
The first appeal requested an investigation into the eligible voters list, but it was denied. The second request was for PricewaterhouseCoopers to conduct an audit and that request was denied at a recent meeting. PC Party leader Patrick Brown met with the party executive on June 3 and made the decision to use PricewaterhouseCoopers to monitor each nomination meeting going forward. However, the nomination meetings that have already occurred will not
be challenged and Brown will be signing the nomination papers of all 64 candidates who have been selected to carry the PC banner in 2018, including McGrath. While the appeals filed in Newmarket-Aurora, Ancaster and Ottawa have been dismissed, the party intends to review and revise the composition of the appeals panel and make procedural changes to increase transparency and fairness going forward. The local riding executive will meet June 15 to determine what to do next.
Rob Beintema/Metroland
Patrick Brown, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, will be signing the nomination papers of all 64 candidates who have been selected to carry the PC banner in 2018, including Charity McGrath.
CALL NOW F O R
Y O U R
FREE
IN-HOME ESTIMATE
1235 Gorham St., Units 13 & 14 - Newmarket
905-898-3912 • 1-800-263-7437 www.cancoclimatecare.com