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Sunday Reads
Explore unsolved mysteries and read new work by Canadian authors. yorkregion.com/sundayreads Mike Barrett/Metroland
Emergency Response Unit officer Matt Ready demonstrates rappelling techniques at the grand opening of the new state-of-the-art York Regional Police training facility in East Gwillimbury July 12. See story, p/2
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ONTARIO
Provincial Tories express anger over leadership KIM ZARZOUR kzarzour@yrmg.com Is the Ontario Progressive Conservative party imploding? With a strong lead in the polls, PC Leader Patrick Brown appeared to be cruising to an easy victory in the next provincial election. Now some say the party is in danger of collapse. Disgruntled and disillusioned PC supporters are reportedly dropping out in droves following months of allegations of improprieties, intimidation, ballotstuffing and fraud by Brown’s supporters during local votes to nominate PC candidates. PC Party president Rick Dykstra seems undeterred by the loss
of supporters, saying the party has grown from 10,000 members to more than 100,000 in the past two years since Brown became leader. "We are gaining new members daily and we will continue to work with all of our current members as well," Dykstra said. But longstanding, card-carrying members of the party, expressing their disappointment and "disgust" with the party’s tactics under Brown, are vowing to withhold their votes or marshalling forces to defeat their leader. Several splinter parties and organizations have mobilized, hoping to derail the PCs in the next provincial election. Brown has said the controversy is evidence of the party’s
"The party absolutely is imploding. I’ve never seen anything like this.... [Brown] can’t win at the rate he is going - he’s losing support of the people the party has always had." – Marie Leone, member of Newmarket-Aurora Ontario PC association strong momentum and, based on an internal memo obtained by Metroland, it appears he wants to "bring closure and move forward". In the memo, Dykstra announced that all 64 candidates selected to date would be endorsed by the leader and further appeals for reconsideration would be ren-
dered moot. "Rather than constantly looking in the rear-view mirror, we simply need to move forward," he said. But not everyone is prepared to ignore the rear view, and the fallout continues among longtime members of the party.
"We can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as we ever have seen it," Tim Broschuk, president, Dr. Richard Bonato, VP, Carl Arsenault, CFO, and Vel Velauthanillai wrote in their letter of resignation from the executive of the Kanata Carleton riding association June 11. The executive quit en masse; the executive board of nearby riding of Ottawa West-Nepean executive board quit days later. "The party has veered so far from the place we joined that we can no longer in good conscience say that we identify with what it stands for." A similarly worded statement l See DISILLUSIONED, page 3
WHAT’S ON
Cry, laugh, be moved at 10-Minute Play Festival AMANDA PERSICO apersico@yrmg.com For less than the price of an Imax movie, you can take in six different plays during the Newmarket National 10-Minute Play Festival. The festival takes over Old Town Hall and Pickering College Theatre July 22 and 23, with 24 different plays divided into four play pods: Set/Reset, Check/Mate, Lost/Found and Bare/Bones. "Think of peas in a pod," said festival executive and artistic director Michael Halfin. The six plays in a pod are linked thematically, he said. The festival features plays written by Canadians found around the world, including a Canadian expat living in Beijing and others from across the United
States and Mexico. Ten real-time minutes is plenty of time to tell a story and have audience members on the edge of their seats. "It’s not sketches," Halfin said. "This is theatre for this generation. Think YouTube: this is how the message is delivered and then they move on to the next." While a two-hour play has a collection of subplots and characters, 10-minute plays exploit the exact moment when life inadvertently changes. Imagine a couple who have been married for 30 years and being a fly on the wall the moment the marriage is over, Halfin said. "Life can change in 10 minutes," Halfin said. "These plays bring that immediate experience,
Susie Kockerscheidt/Metroland
l See FESTIVAL, page 8
Actors Helly Chester (left) and Julia Hussey rehearse a play entitled The Mess, which deals with a woman who has Alzheimer’s disease, for the Newmarket National 10-Minute Play Festival.
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