Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor, RE: The Children's Treatment Centre Dundas County Bike-A-Thon 2023 May 27, 2023.

The Dundas County Bike-A-Thon was a beautiful sunny day to raise monies for the Treatment Centre for abused children in Dundas County and elsewhere in the Counties.

Team Sam Laurin raised $3,195.00 in Dundas County. Congratulations to all! It's never too late to donate monies to this charity which exists without government support.

Yours truly, Douglas Grenkie Chair for Dundas County

Dear Editor,

I looked out the window and the sky was yellow. Step outside to get into the car and the smell of smoke was inescapable. Sports events can- for all.

One of my favourite examples of this is not in North Dundas or North Grenville at all, but is actually on the Ottawa side of the border, near Kenmore. At the intersection of York’s Corners Road and Marvelville Road, a four way stop sign controls the traffic. For decades, motorists local to the area have asked, “why”? The purpose of a four way stop is to control low visibility or high traffic intersections. The intersection at York’s Corners and Marvelville is neither low visibility nor high traffic most of the year, though I suspect that visibility drops significantly in the late summer and early autumn due to corn growth. This would explain the four way stop. The rest of the year, most drivers barely slow down. I’m not kidding! It’s so common to see drivers in all four directions roll through this stop sign at 40-50 km/h that anyone could probably observe at least a handful of cars doing it in the span of a 15 minute observation. It's possible to see far in all directions, and so if there are no cars coming, local drivers “save the brakes”, so to speak. I am not condoning this – just reporting the facts! One day when going through there, I noticed that a pick up truck waited about 30 long seconds to make sure I was going to stop before proceeding, likely because he is used to seeing cars simply speed through.

Another spot that causes confusion is where County Road 3 meets Cameron Road in Inkerman. When entering town from the northeast on County Road 3, after the initial curve, proceeding straight will bring you off County Road 3 and onto Cameron Road. Technically, drivers should signal a right turn if they intend to proceed straight onto Cameron Road. Instead, it is more common to see drivers signal a left turn to take the curve that simply keeps them on the same road they are already on – County Road 3. Some signage would probably help those who aren’t familiar with Inkerman, before they start to lose faith in the whole road system! celled, recess kept indoors. Endless prescriptions for inhalers. Millions of people in Canada and the US affected by air pollution warnings. This is where forty years of denial and delay on climate change have gotten us. Over 3.3 million hectares of forests burned so far this year against a ten-year average of 254,000 hectares. And we are not even in summer. Yet Premier Ford is unable to acknowledge the link between climate change and the forest fires that have affected so many.

The most frustrating spot for me is the new 60 km/h speed limit on County Road 43, between South Gower Drive and Kemptville town limits. The 60 km/h reduction makes sense for the intersection itself – perhaps 500 metres in all four directions approaching the intersection of County Road 43 and South Gower Drive. Instead, the speed reduction extends far too long, particularly going west from the intersection all the way into Kemptville. This 2-3 km section of road is a well paved, wide, high visibility, straight section of road with only sparse homes and businesses. If any standard section of county road in Eastern Ontario can be labelled as “X”, then this particular section of County Road 43 would be “X”. Except here, X does not equal X, because no other similar section of county road would have a 60 km/h speed limit. I get tailgated going 80 km/h through there, which tells me others agree.

As is usually the case, there are two sides to this problem. Drivers need to respect road rules and use safety common sense, but the province and municipalities also need to impose rules that match the actual traffic and environment conditions. Making everyone see road rules as useless because they are unnecessarily strict ends up making roads more dangerous, rather than safer. Ontario is already a place where speeding is seen as tolerated. Lets face it – a thin majority of drivers go 100 km/h on our county roads, and when was the last time anyone got pulled over for it?

It's time to break out the algebra. X must equal X. If it’s safe to travel 80 km/h on one stretch of road, it should be safe to go the same speed on an identical stretch of road nearby. No one is asking for a German autobahn, but a little common sense would travel a long – and more efficient – way.

We are addicted to fossil fuels, and this addiction poses a real threat to current and future generations. A threat to my 3-year-old daughter, to your children and grandchildren. We know we need to break our addiction to fossil fuels, and we have the tools to be able to do so. Yet instead of investing in cheap and clean renewable energy, Premier Ford ploughs ahead with his plan to ramp up dirty, polluting, expensive fossil gas generation, adding to the pollution that causes more than 7,000 premature deaths a year in Ontario and pumping more climate-wrecking carbon into the atmosphere.

Only Mike Schreiner and the Ontario Greens have a credible plan to crush climate pollution, to protect our farmlands, wetlands, and woodlands. To build affordable, caring, connected communities where people want to live. To ensure we have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and food to eat.

Steve Gabell

Dear Editor, Peaceful greetings to all residents of North Grenville.

I wanted to be the first one to get a letter in to the editor regarding this year’s heyday fundraising event. I’ve lived in Kemptville for over a decade, and since I retired last year, it was my first opportunity to volunteer to help prepare for this amazing event. I was there on Wednesday and Thursday helping to pick up products that all the amazing folks of the community dropped off to be sold Friday night and Saturday in order to raise money for the Kemptville District Hospital. What an amazing experience and what an amazing group of volunteers that I got to meet and work with.

The amount of cars that continued to drive up hour after hour. It was truly incredible! And so much merchandise lined up on the lawn of the community centre waiting for all of us volunteers to get it into the building. By 3 PM, Wednesday afternoon, we had almost already filled the arena! Every time I went back inside with another load, I was amazed at how the volunteers on the inside had managed to sort out and start putting together displays merchandised by “department”.

I am sure not having this event due to past pandemic years encouraged people to bring in three years of items they needed to move out. We started running out of room pretty early on with more folks coming to drop off. The “sorters” were hard at work making sure that only undamaged and clean products made their way to the selling floor. The main objective of Hey Day is to raise money for the hospital. If we accept dirty or damaged products that we can’t sell and end up having to throw it into the garbage bins, it is counterproductive to the intent of this fundraising event. Those garbage bins need to be paid for every time they’re emptied. I noticed some people getting very angry at the volunteers who had to refuse their product. I heard that there were some mean things said on Facebook about this situation and about our hardworking VOLUNTEERS and I wanted to ensure that the town realizes we are all in this together. We are doing this as a community mainly to raise money for a continued on page 6